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In Upcoming Summit, Latin America Calling out U.S. Double Standards

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NPR reports Thursday: “U.S. adviser tries to talk Mexican president out of skipping Summit of the Americas.”

GUILLAUME LONG, via Dan Beeton, beeton@cepr.net, @ceprdc
Long is senior policy analyst at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Economic and Policy Research.

In a forthcoming article, he writes: “So far, the Ninth Summit of the Americas, to be held in Los Angeles from the 6th to the 10th of June, is not going according to plan. It is certainly not promising to be the celebration of U.S. leadership in the western hemisphere that the Biden administration wanted.

“This is because many Latin American and Caribbean governments are unhappy with the U.S. government’s decision to exclude Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua from the summit. The countries of the hemisphere have grown accustomed to U.S. double standards when the arguments of democracy and human rights are flaunted. Who can forget that the United States managed to have Cuba expelled from the Organization of American States (OAS), but never batted an eyelid with the memberships of Chile under Pinochet, Argentina under Videla, or Guatemala under Rios Montt, to name but a few murderous governments?

“And this logic of politicizing democracy and human rights has not fundamentally evolved since. Haiti, with elections postponed since 2021 and a government without democratic legitimacy which faces very serious accusations, has not been blacklisted from the Americas Summit. Nor, of course, has Colombia, one of the United States’ closest allies, despite its historical and ongoing abysmal human rights record.”

Long held several cabinet positions in the government of Ecuador, including minister of foreign affairs.