12:30 p.m., June 5, 2022
“Los Angeles is home to the largest Latin American immigrant communities and the glory and glitz of Hollywood, but today this city is plagued by crime, poverty and hordes of homelessness. » Who thus paints the portrait of the City of Angels, which is about to house the work of the 9th Summit of the Americas? He is an editorial writer for Chinese television CGTN for whom this crucial international meeting in the United States’ zone of influence could well end with ” a failure “ if Washington does not correct its behavior « arrogant ».
A sign that the White House is embarrassed, the list of Summit participants was still not public on Saturday at midday as the meeting begins tomorrow and the presence of the Mexican President, Manuel López Obrador, the large southern neighbor, remained very uncertain. To the point that Joe Biden’s adviser for Latin America, Juan Gonzalez, already specified on Wednesday: ” We really want him there, the president personally cares a lot. »
A counter-summit organized by Havana
It must be said that the list of guests was not easy to establish for this summit which is being held on American soil for the first time since its foundation in 1994 in Miami, under the presidency of Bill Clinton. Strong in his conviction that democracy and human rights must be at the heart of his diplomacy, Joe Biden did not invite Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. Result, Havana organized last week a so-called counter-summit of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), to which the three excluded went, joined by the Bolivian President, Luis Arce. For his part, the Mexican president indicated that he would not go to Los Angeles if all the heads of state were not invited.
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Beyond this protocol and political issue, the subjects that the United States is promoting for this summit are nevertheless important enough to generate collective commitments. Whether on the issue of migration, while 600,000 Venezuelans have fled their country to take refuge with their neighbors and 100,000 Cubans and Haitians still hope to cross the borders of the United States after fleeing the Covid pandemic, the political repression and criminal violence in their respective countries. Or on the theme of economic recovery on the scale of the American continent. According to the Axios news site, Joe Biden and his vice-president, Kamala Harris, could also announce in Los Angeles a vast plan for the economic relocation of migrants who flock to the US-Mexico border, with the help of Canada. and Spain, which would be a first for the United States.
China’s Growing Influence in Latin America
But what remains in the blind spot of this summit is China’s growing influence in Latin America. “This is a matter of concern that we share with our partners”commented very diplomatically the number two of the State Department, Wendy Sherman, during a meeting Thursday with experts and journalists from several European media, includingthe JDD. In twenty years, trade between China and Latin America has increased twenty-five times while Beijing’s investment in the region has doubled and mergers and acquisitions of Chinese companies with Latin American companies have increased eightfold. . Joe Biden will talk about his B3W plan in Los Angeles – Build Back Better World, rebuilding the world better – and which is another option for Xi Jinping’s new silk roads.
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“But China is not limiting itself to massive investments or generous lending in exchange for taking pledges in kind, it is presenting all these Latin American countries with an alternative model where Western democracy is not the first of the norms. », comments Laurence Nardon, director of the America program at the French Institute of International Relations (Ifri). Too busy in Europe with the war in Ukraine and focused on the field of tomorrow’s rivalry in the Asia-Pacific, Joe Biden cannot neglect his South, where the issues of economic development, migration and the rule of law are intimately linked, under the gaze of a China for which the United States has long ceased to be a model of virtue and an example.
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