Ill-feeling outlasts Washington's exclusionary Americas summit

Criticism continues to dog a US-hosted Summit of the Americas this month that was marked by high-profile absences in response to Washington's divisive politics and tactics of exclusion.

The event in Los Angeles may not have been favorable for the host country, according to Eugenio Aragao, a former justice minister of Brazil and adviser to former president Inacio Lula da Silva, who is running for the presidency again.

The summit "showed much more regional resistance to the pretentious leadership of the United States, and mainly because the US excluded Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba from the summit, (which) was very badly received by almost all of the participants," Aragao said.

Political scientist Joao Cumaru said the meeting showed the extent of the divisions in the region. "It failed to give concrete signs of progress in the US-Americas countries dialogue, and also in terms of their relationship," he said. "The summit was considered a failure, even before it started. This reflects a much larger issue－the US' lack of engagement with Latin America."

Speaking from Recife, the capital of Brazil's Pernambuco state, he said the "US investment has slowed in the region, which was badly hit by the pandemic".

The ninth Summit of the Americas took place in California's biggest city from June 6 to 10. The aim of the summit, first held in 1994, is to bring together political, social and economic leaders from across the Americas and the Caribbean to discuss the future of the region. This year's event was mired in controversy with the exclusion of the three national leaders.

"There was undoubtedly tension in the plenary due to the absence of several heads of state. A tension that reflects the ideological compass that today guides Latin America, and that will make it difficult, at least in the short term, for the US to regain its influence in the region," said Joshua Cespedes, a Venezuelan political scientist based in Chile.

The hosts excluded Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro, Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega and Cuba's Miguel Diaz-Canel.

"Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador led a movement to boycott the summit, seconded by other countries, because of the non-invitation of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela," said Pedro Carmona, a former Venezuelan opposition leader who teaches at the Sergio Arboleda University in Bogota, Colombia. "The reason given by the US was that countries whose actions do not respect democracy should not be invited."

Argentine President Alberto Fernandez, acting as the head of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, assumed the role of spokesperson for those not invited and criticized US President Joe Biden for the exclusions.

"We would definitely have wanted another (type of) Summit of the Americas. The silence of those who were absent challenges us," Fernandez said in a speech at the summit.

Amid the ill-feeling at the summit, the US put forward a migration policy for the region. Washington promised to deliver aid and foster development in the Northern Triangle, which encompasses Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Hundreds of thousands of migrants from these countries each year seek entry to the US via Mexico. In 2021, more than 1.7 million migrants were detained by US authorities at the southern border with Mexico.

"It is a positive response, although not sufficient for the migratory crisis facing our continent from north to south," Cespedes said.

Still, many analysts in the region are skeptical of the promises made during the Los Angeles summit.

"I am very skeptical of this type of summits and meetings … because despite the good intentions, little is formalized for the purpose of implementing policies that, in some way, allow for an improvement in the quality of life of the people," said Ramon Abasolo, a lawyer and political analyst in Lima, Peru.

The writer is a freelance journalist for China Daily.