The three revolutions have met this Friday in Havana to “establish a position before the imperial vision that seeks to exclude the peoples of America,” Nicolás Maduro revealed as soon as he entered the Palace of the Revolution, venue of the meeting. Neither the Bolivarian leader nor the caudillos Miguel Díaz-Canel and Daniel Ortega wanted to deceive anyone on this occasion: it was their own counter-summit as a response to the exclusion from the Summit of the Americas, to be held in June in Los Angeles.
“We have a summit of integration, solidarity, cooperation. Humanist summit, our summit,” stressed the host, who, in the previous hours, had assured that under no circumstances would he attend the conclave in the US despite the fact that no one had invited him. In recent days, Washington has been looking for some formula to invite a second-level Cuban leader.
Under the umbrella of the Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Our America (Alba), and with the firm support of Bolivian President Luis Arce, also present, the three dictators staged a common front against Joe Biden, despite the fact that all of them advance contacts of greater or lesser rank with Washington. “United, no one will be able to silence us! They are not mere slogans, it is a historical necessity,” said Díaz-Canel, who has accused the United States of taking advantage of its status as host to “adopt interventionist concepts.”
“If there is something democratic in the Americas, it is Alba,” Maduro fired for his part, minutes after the US Treasury Department renewed Chevron’s license to maintain only minimal operations in Venezuela, without the possibility of extracting and exporting oil, as the Bolivarian government and the powerful US oil company intended.
Biden’s decision is another clear message for Maduro, who torpedoes the resumption of negotiations in Mexico by maintaining his demand for the release of Colombian tycoon Alex Saab, by vetoing the presence of Norway and imposing the participation of his ally Vladimir Putin.
“It will be the humble peoples who will carry our flags. Nothing and no one will be able to stop it!” exclaimed Maduro, who, for days, has argued that there will be surprises in the continental conclave.
Although the participants in Havana have insisted that the Alba is the main path for the “union and liberation of the peoples of America”, there are other secondary paths. One of them is the one undertaken by one of his main allies in the region, Argentine President Alberto Fernández, who sees himself full of obstacles. His government would be promoting, according to the official Télam agency, the holding of a parallel summit in the Californian city, with the support of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the Mexican president who has already announced that in protest he will not attend the official summit, although he will send to his chancellor, Marcelo Ebrard.
The meeting would be convened by the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), created in 2011 by Hugo Chávez and Lula da Silva to consolidate the continental hegemony of the left and which is now being revived. The ultimate goal would be the participation of the three dictatorships punished by the US.
“The Summit has been close to being postponed by the US government several times. A very important number of countries in the region have expressed serious reservations not only about the issue of the invited countries, which is what has been reported the most in the press, but they have taken the opportunity to convey their criticism of US foreign policy on Latin America,” summarizes the internationalist Mariano de Alba for EL MUNDO.
“For example, several Caribbean countries have asked for guarantees that they can receive oil from Venezuela again, given that the US is already in talks with the Maduro government. The issue has been so controversial and thorny that Washington is seeking that the approach be commercial opportunities and public-private alliances. The region needs to have an effective relationship with Washington”, adds De Alba.
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