Summit of the Americas ‘Stillborn,’ Failing Even Before It Began
June 7, 2022 (EIRNS)—Former Bolivian President Evo Morales appropriately described the June 6-10 Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles as “stillborn ... born dead,” due to the U.S. exclusion of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua. Sacha Llorente, a former Bolivian diplomat, called the summit “failed even before it began,” but that those who were not invited “will be very much present.... Due to the [U.S.] arbitrary discrimination, those who don’t go are protesting but those who do go will also protest,” because the summit has nothing to offer, Telesur quoted him saying. Addressing Venezuela’s Parliament yesterday, President Nicolas Maduro captured the summit’s essence: “It has no agenda, it has no theme, it has no decision points, it has nothing to link the meeting to the problems and issues that are of interest and a priority for the people of the Americas.”
State Department spokesman Ned Price and White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre are still twisting themselves into knots trying to explain why Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela weren’t invited and insisting that Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s absence isn’t a big deal because, as Jean-Pierre said, Mexico will contribute in a big way to the summit’s “deliverables.”
Deliverables? Here’s where the “stillborn” part comes in. Every nation in the Americas is in urgent need of economic development, infrastructure building, healthcare, and some require emergency assistance in healthcare, housing, disaster relief, and education—such as Haiti and Caribbean nations. What Joe Biden will present with much fanfare June 8 is the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity. Purportedly a program for economic development, it is doomed to fail because that it is based on the existing economic paradigm of free trade, private sector investment, decarbonization and “clean energy jobs,” and “sustainable and inclusive trade.”
In a global financial collapse, anything less than what the Schiller Institute has proposed for regional economic development based on U.S.-Chinese cooperation on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) won’t work, and the Americas Partnership is a sorry alternative to the BRI.
The same is true of Vice President Kamala Harris’s $3.2 billion program to address “the root causes” of migration, including investments from “apparel companies” like GAP or SanMar that employ people in in-bond assembly plants, or “maquiladoras.” In the impoverished Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, is it a priority for Visa to expand financial inclusion and digital infrastructure? To make the investment climate more attractive, there will be a big focus on combatting corruption, promoting “rule of law,” reducing violence, and of course, “empowering women.”
What about true infrastructure, such as roads, rail, schools, hospitals, electricity, advanced technology? Educating youth in science and aerospace? Harris, who is supposed to be responsible to address the “root causes” of migration in the Northern Triangle, will also launch the Central American Service Corps, a $50 million investment administered by the State Department’s USAID, that will ostensibly create community service jobs for youth in education, tutoring, food security, and health services.
