Why does the list of attendees at the summit seem more important than what is agreed upon in this forum?
The US government’s invitation to the region’s heads of state reveals a policy in many ways. The entanglement over the invitations is the entanglement of politics towards the region. They do not know what to do with Maduro and Díaz-Canel, although there is a greater and more energetic definition of the couple that devours Nicaragua, Ortega and Murillo.
In relation to those who rule in Venezuela and Cuba, the basic and traditional attitude of the US is to confront them as the criminal regimes that they are; however, with the red and pink turn of recent years, the attitude of López Obrador in Mexico, the possibilities of Lula in Brazil, those of Petro -now diminished- in Colombia, the loose wheels of Bukele in El Salvador and Xiomara Castro In Honduras, to give a few examples, Washington’s policy is lost.
In the case of Venezuela, there is the added problem that since Trump and later with Biden, Guaidó was recognized as interim president, initially amid great enthusiasm. That internship was worn out within Venezuela in a radical way; abroad it has been maintained, languidly in recent times, by the United States and Colombia. There are countries that the US wants to be at the summit – Mexico in the first place – but López Obrador has said that he does not accept the exclusion of Cuba and others that do not accept the presence of Guaidó. In such a way that this summit is entangled.
What weight does the Biden administration currently have among the countries of South America?
My impression is that they care about Latin America and the Caribbean in conceptual terms, but in practical political terms they are not clear about the objectives, the allies and the treatment of enemies. A policy that goes, for example, from proposing Maduro’s departure from power to negotiating with him on his terms, does not clarify anything but confuses everything. Having forced the fight that Guaidó initially raised for the “cessation of usurpation”, the exit of the regime headed by Maduro, to the negotiation to obtain from that regime “free and fair elections” implies a turn that has not yet been assimilated by those who fight for freedom in Venezuela.
Juan González, who is President Biden’s main adviser for the region, has a Latin American sensibility, but does not seem to have been able to articulate a visible, organic and successful policy. However, the upcoming summit, with all its risks, may serve more than for each country in Latin America for the US to organize its vision and policies.
The possible victory of Petro in Colombia would reinforce the progressive turn in the region. Do you think that Latin America will continue to be just as divided regardless of the government’s tendency?
The term “progressive” means many things at once and several of them contradictory. “Progressivism” is usually synonymous with “left”, a concept that is also highly questioned in Latin America where the horizontal line that goes from left to right has been surpassed by the vertical from authoritarianism at one extreme, to liberalism, libertarianism or full democracies, in the other.
In any case, the trajectory of Petro, his allies inside and outside Colombia, and his attitude in the electoral campaign until the first round, show him more on the side of leftist extremism from which he comes than on the side of the moderate left, even the one that competed with him and engineer Hernández. I don’t see Boric, Fernández and López Obrador in comparsa with Petro, but worse things have been seen…
Does Cuba continue to be a very divisive factor between Washington and the rest of the southern countries?
Cuba is the elephant in the glassware, according to the hackneyed resource to highlight a large and neglected problem. Throughout the region and in the State Department there are divided positions in relation to the Cuban regime on the best way to promote openness and obtain some concessions such as the freedom of political prisoners.
There are those who think that the siege should be strengthened and others maintain that dialogue is the best way to obtain some, albeit meager, results. Neither of these two policies has obtained the results that have been proposed, which should lead to rethinking the fundamentals of how to deal with a tyrannical regime stabilized through a harsh and inclement repression. Of course, there are also governments – scarce for now – that consider that the departure of the Cuban, Venezuelan and Nicaraguan regimes is the most profound and long-term solution. The divisions in this, as in other matters, are not between countries but between political positions that sometimes go through the governments themselves.
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