US vice president Kamala Harris (left) and Guatemalan president Alejandro Giammattei during a press conference at the National Palace in Guatemala City last June 2021. Photo: AP/Jacquelyn Martin.
This Tuesday, May 17, the president of Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei announced that he will not be participating in the Summit of the Americas, to be held from June 6 to 10 in the US city of Los Angeles.
“They’re not going to invite me to the Summit anyway, I sent word to say that I am not going to go (…) as long as I am president, this country deserves respect.” Giammattei declared in the context of the inauguration of a cultural event that the Embassy of Mexico installed in the Guatemalan municipality of Palencia.
Giammattei, a far-right politician, made the announcement after Washington—in clear interference in internal affairs—criticized the re-election for four more years of the current attorney general of Guatemala, María Consuelo Porras, who is designated by the US as a “corrupt and anti-democratic actor” and has been included since September 2021 on the so-called “Engel List,” allegedly for hindering criminal prosecution in corruption cases.
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On Monday, March 16, the US Department of State designated Porras under Section 7031(c) of the Foreign Operations and Related Programs Appropriations Act, which implies that the prosecutor and her husband Gilberto de Jesús Porres de Paz “are not eligible to enter” US territory.
Guatemalan president Alejandro Giammattei announces that he's not going to the Summit of the Americas.
"I've sent word that I'm not going to go." pic.twitter.com/Ckg6xV8pdz
— Kawsachun News (@KawsachunNews) May 17, 2022
According to the US State Department, Porras ordered prosecutors from the Public Ministry to ignore anti-corruption investigations, to protect political allies of hers and gain undue political favors.
At the moment, the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, his Bolivian counterpart, Luis Arce Catacora and several CARICOM countries have announced that they will not attend the Summit of the Americas after it came out that Washington would exclude Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua from the event.
For her part, the president of Honduras, Xiomara Castro, also joined the call made by her other counterparts calling for no nation to be excluded from the summit that is intended for all countries in the hemisphere. President of Chile, Gabriel Boric and Argentina, Alberto Fernandez, also criticized the US’ intention to exclude some countries but did not announce the intention of not attending the summit.
The fact is that less than three weeks before the summit, to be held in Los Angeles, no official invitations have been sent and more than half of the countries in the hemisphere—including Brazil also with no intention to participate due to their strained relations with the Biden administration—have announced their intention not attend a summit that many call a summit for US lap dogs.
Many analyst interpret the almost derailed summit as evidence of the lack of US hegemony in a region considered for decades as its back-yard (front-yard recently), this as a result of the multipolar world that has been shaping up for the last 2 decades where Russia and China offer better terms of relation than the usual US threats and sanctions. Adding to this is a new wave of leftist or center-left governments in the region that does not necessary bow to all US orders.
Featured image: US vice president Kamala Harris (left) and Guatemalan president Alejandro Giammattei during a press conference at the National Palace in Guatemala City last June 2021. Photo: AP/Jacquelyn Martin.
(RedRadioVE) with Orinoco Tribune content
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
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