The President of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel. Photo: Twitter/Presidency Cuba.
The Cuban president stated that the regional meeting is “a show with a colonial tint” in which common problems will not be addressed.
This Wednesday, June 8, the President of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel, said that his country feels honored to be at the top of the list of those excluded from the Summit of the Americas. The first plenary session of leaders took place on Wednesday.
“We are honored to head that list, alongside the leaders of Venezuela and Nicaragua,” President Díaz-Canel said this Wednesday morning during a speech addressed to representatives from civil society in Cuba.
Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela were not invited to the ninth edition of the regional meeting that began last Monday in the city of Los Angeles, and whose host is the United States. The US refusal to invite Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba, generated a series of condemnations and boycotts from heads of state and government spokespeople across the Americas.
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Díaz-Canel recalled that the “repudiation” that has arisen in most governments of Latin America and the Caribbean for the “opportunistic selectivity” of Washington is well known. Likewise, he stated that his country felt honored by the “gallant solidarity” expressed by his peers from Mexico, Bolivia, and Honduras, in addition to the Caribbean leaders “who have emphatically rejected exclusions.”
“We cannot fail to denounce the farce of summoning the countries of the region once again for a show with a neocolonial tint,” said President Díaz-Canel, and recalled Cuba’s previous history of submission to US hegemony, prior to the Cuban Revolution of 1959.
Key issues ignored by Summit’s hosts
The Cuban president described the Summit as a “public relations show aimed at US internal politics,” and asserted that the White House cannot hide its “lack of real interest” in the “most serious and immediate” problems of Latin Americans, among which are the economy, inequality, racism, discrimination, the judicialization of politics [i.e. lawfare], and “the efforts of the large transnationals to corrupt politicians,” among others.
For the Cuban president, in this meeting, which takes place every three years, the opportunity will be lost for his counterparts to discuss “many problems” that affect the countries of the Americas.”
“It could have been otherwise,” he said, and added that the US government, “with its enormous economic and technological power” and its “great influence,” could have made a “transcendental contribution” in this debate.
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President Díaz-Canel, who had already announced at the end of May that he would not attend the meeting in Los Angeles, also said that the summit should address shared concerns such as migration to the north, and the region’s relationship with “the global capitalist model and the advance of neoliberalism.”
On this subject, he pointed out that the US government “has applied for four years a policy aimed at encouraging irregular emigration” of Cuban citizens as part of its policy of “economic war” against Cuba. Currently, according to data from the US immigration authorities, the Caribbean country ranks second in irregular migrants detained trying to cross the border between Mexico and the US, after the US unilaterally decided to close its consular operations in Havana.
Democracy
Díaz-Canel also questioned the “moral authority” of the US when referring to the “standards of democracy and human rights” as a criterion for invitation to the summit. “The pretext constitutes an insult to intelligence and common sense,” said Cuba’s president.
“The promotion of democracy and human rights are just chimeras in a political system in which the interests of producers and marketers of weapons of war take precedence over the lives of children, the right to health and education,” President Díaz-Canel said.
In his speech, Díaz-Canel expressed his belief that “times have changed,” and that Latin America and the Caribbean do not accept “the imposition of the interests of imperialism” and the failed U.S. effort to continue implementing the Monroe Doctrine.
Finally, the Cuban president recalled that the People’s Summit will be held until Friday, also in Los Angeles, where, according to information he has received, there will be “a real scenario for debate and confrontation of ideas, with a broad agenda, connected to the most pressing concerns of the hemisphere as a whole.”
Featured image:
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/SL/EF
