Mexico’s president said Tuesday that he will not attend next month’s Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles if the Biden administration excludes Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, adding his voice to growing warnings of a boycott by some leaders. region of.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has said in recent weeks that the US government should not exclude anyone from the summit, but he had not previously threatened to stay home.
“If they exclude, if not everyone is invited, a representative of the Mexican government is going to go, but I would not do it,” López Obrador said during his daily press conference, fresh from a visit to Cuba. He said that his Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Marcelo Ebrard, would go.
The absence of the Mexican president would be a blow to the summit that is expected to deal heavily with the issue of migration on the US-Mexico border. The Biden administration has worked for months to build a regional consensus. Cabinet members have visited the region urging allies to tighten immigration controls and expand their asylum programs.
“Our goal is… to sign a regional declaration on migration and protection in June in Los Angeles, when the United States hosts the Summit of the Americas,” President Joe Biden said in March, when he received the president of Colombia, Iván Duque, at the White House.
He called for “a new framework for how nations across the region can collectively manage migration in the Western Hemisphere.”
This cooperation will be critical as the United States grapples with the high number of immigrants arriving at its southern border and prepares to lift the restriction on asylum claims later this month, which is expected to draw even more immigrants to the United States. the North.
But leaders of Caribbean nations have also discussed a collective boycott of the summit if countries are excluded and criticized the US plan to invite Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó. The United States recognizes him as the legitimate president of that country, but many Caribbean nations do not.
“We do not believe in the ostracism policy of Cuba and Venezuela. We do not recognize Juan Guaidó as president of Venezuela. In those circumstances, Antigua and Barbuda will not participate,” said Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne.
He said a consensus had emerged at the Caribbean foreign ministers meeting in Belize in March to boycott the summit if countries were excluded, “but I’m not sure that consensus will hold.”
St. Vincent’s Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves took a similar view: “If Guaidó goes on behalf of Venezuela, if the Americans did it it would be an act of madness,” Gonsalves said on a radio show over the weekend, stating that Saint Vincent may not attend if Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is excluded.
Cuba is an active member of the Community of Caribbean Nations, and the communist-ruled island has provided thousands of free scholarships to Caribbean medical, engineering, and other students since the mid-1970s. Successive Venezuelan governments have helped to Caribbean countries with prefabricated housing and cheap oil.
A senior Biden administration official said the backlash is largely a posturing in response to a strong diplomatic push from Cuba – a perennial touchstone for the Latin American left – and that the United States expects few leaders to follow through on their threats not to attend the summit.
Behind the scenes, several Caribbean leaders have indicated they plan to attend, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private diplomatic communications.
The official said the administration expects both López Obrador and Brazilian Jair Bolsonaro to attend.
Cuba was excluded from the first six hemispheric summits, held between 1994 and 2012. But Cuba was invited to the 2015 meeting in Panama after growing threats of a boycott by leftist Latin American leaders if it were excluded, as well as the thaw of relations with the United States under President Barack Obama, who met with Cuban leader Raúl Castro at the event.
Cuba was also invited to the last summit in Peru in 2018, but Castro sent his foreign minister instead because Venezuela’s Maduro had not been invited. US President Donald Trump also did not attend.
Argentina, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, also called this month to avoid the exclusion of any government.
In a tweet, he described the summit as “a great opportunity to build a meeting space in which all the countries of the hemisphere participate” and urged the organizers to “avoid exclusions that prevent all the voices of the hemisphere from dialoguing and being heard. ”
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