United States will welcome the next Summit of the Americas in the city of Los Angeles. This appointment has to serve, according to White House sources, to strengthen relations between partners and allies in the region and address different problems, such as migration, corruption and climate change, among others.
The US president has chosen a team of special advisers for this meeting of high-ranking leaders. Among them is the former congresswoman of Ecuadorian origin Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.
“We have a very big responsibility to establish and strengthen our relations with all the countries in the region,” Mucarsel-Powell explained during an interview with the voice of america from his home in Miami, Florida.
According to her, all the topics that will be discussed have a common denominator: “Create a sustainable, equitable and resilient future.”
The senior official acknowledges that the challenge facing most countries in the world is “the weakness of democracies” and “democratic institutions.”
“This is a critical moment to demonstrate to all citizens of the Americas region that democracy can solve the most difficult issues we are facing right now,” she said, assuring that she is “ready for this job.”
But, above all, he insists that “it is a time to show that the region is united against any government that is violating human rights,” with special attention “to what is happening in Nicaragua, but also in Venezuela and Cuba.” .
“This is a time when democratic countries have to unite to position themselves in the opinion that democratic institutions are the institutions that we are going to value and protect,” he added.
However, he hopes that this formula will serve to “demonstrate to all the citizens of the Americas that their voices matter more and more”, especially when they demand “governments with integrity, transparency, support for the free press and defeat the disinformation that has weakened the democratic institutions in the region.
Nicaragua and its departure from the OAS
The Summit of the Americas will take place at a particularly delicate moment after the Government of Daniel Ortega order the expulsion officials from the office of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Nicaragua, announced the departure of the organization and took over its headquarters in the country’s capital.
“We are seeing all the measures that the Government of Ortega and Murillo have taken. Not only is it jailing peaceful protesters who have raised their voices against this regime, but it is also showing us that it is taking authoritarian steps,” he explained.
Along these lines, Mucarsel-Powell considers that this attitude is due to the position of pressure that the international community has exerted to desist with this type of policy. “This is my personal opinion and I believe that the Ortega government feels not only isolated, but also threatened by the position we are taking in the entire region,” he said.
The position against Venezuela
The serious political, economic, social and humanitarian crisis that Venezuela is experiencing is something that is being viewed with great concern throughout the region. Biden’s special adviser clarified that “the position of the United States has not changed at all” and that the government “continues to recognize Juan Guaidó as interim president” of the country because he “was the only one elected from the National Assembly.”
In his opinion, the diplomatic route has to be a space to find a solution to the situation that this South American nation, led by Nicolás Maduro, is experiencing.
“What we are trying to do, and I think it is something that we should have done from the beginning, is to have diplomatic talks so that there can be elections in Venezuela, to give Venezuelans the opportunity to rise up against the Maduro drug regime and elect a ruler who will be able to protect the rights of Venezuelans,” he commented.
Regarding the meeting between US officials and Venezuelans at the Miraflores Palace, Mucarsel-Powell confessed that this meeting “concerned” him and he wanted to be personally interested in the intentions of the White House with that visit, which occurred days after announcing sanctions. to Russian gas and oil for the invasion of Ukraine.
He assured that this meeting, above all, had the intention of freeing Gustavo Cárdenas and Jorge Alberto Fernández, two Americans imprisoned in Venezuela.
“For the families of those people, that was a success of the talks,” he argued, insisting that the United States wants to find ways so that “Venezuelans can change the government themselves.”
The keys to fighting corruption
Latin America is positioned as one of the worst evaluated regions in the international lists on corruption, something that directly affects the politics and economy of the countries as it encourages, according to experts, violence and inequality.
Venezuela, Haiti, Costa Rica, Cuba, Nicaragua, Honduras, Argentina, Uruguay and Guatemala are some of the Latin American countries that appear in the report by Transparency International, an organization that monitors corruption levels around the world.
A few days ago, former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández was extradited to the United States accused of drug and arms trafficking, taking advantage of his position as president of the government.
Given this scenario, corruption will be another of the topics that will be included in the discussion agenda of the meeting in California because, according to Mucarsel-Powell, “we cannot strengthen democratic institutions if we do not take the corruption that has existed not only in Latin America, but also in democratic governments here in the United States and in other democracies around the world.”
“For the United States, the message has always been that no one is above the law and I think that the judicial system has to be strengthened,” says the former congresswoman, convinced that corruption cases can be dealt with this way.
“The Summit of the Americas is an opportunity to bring out the union between civil society, business society and government leaders so that they can have that conversation about how [los ciudadanos] they can have better representation in their Latin American governments”, he added.
The turn to the left in Latin America
In recent times, inhe Latin American region is taking a turn to the left with the election of more liberal presidents. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico, Gabriel Boric in Chile o Pedro Castillo in Peru They are some of the new leaders who define themselves as leftists. And in a short time the same thing could happen in Colombia.
“We have to respect the voices of Colombians in the elections and after seeing who they are going to elect, whatever party, we must have the commitment to support Colombians for the decision they have made,” he said about the elections in which Gustavo Petro, the most important leftist leader of the moment in Colombia, has a great chance of winning the elections.
Given this scenario, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell also emphasized that the US commitment is to respect “free and transparent elections”, although she did not go into assessing whether the US Administration is concerned about this shift. “We have had this position globally: do not violate human rights, do not start taking autocratic steps that could affect democratic institutions,” she warned.
In that sense, he stressed that “the most important component” of the Summit of the Americas “will be democratic governance,” which involves “respecting the voices that go out to vote and the elections in each country.”
“We have to always have that position that we have to respect when there are free and transparent elections, and the voices of the people who elect their government and their rulers,” he added.
That is why he insisted that it is the duty of the United States “to show that democracies work and that together and united we can face the obstacles that we have in the region.”
“Because it is not only democracy, we also have economic problems, development problems, we have the problem of climate change, we have to face the deforestation that we are seeing in Brazil, we have to work together to control the contamination of water and garbage that we are looking at the ocean”, he explained, aware that “we have to find the answers to be able to face all these obstacles”.
immigration
The migration issue is going to be another of the star issues included in the agenda of the countries participating in this summit of the highest diplomatic level. Biden, when he took office as president in January 2021, promised to address illegal migration flows to the United States as a priority and try to encourage economic opportunities to prevent the population from being forced to emigrate.
“This is an issue that affects us, not only the United States, but also other countries. We have seen how Colombia has had to open its doors to more than 2 million Venezuelans who have had to escape from this regime, which has violated the human rights of Venezuelans,” he said, recalling that thanks to the collaboration of other countries in the region, it has been possible to address this crisis.
During the interview with the VOAthe official defended that “no immigrant wants to leave the country and leave the family behind to escape violence”, so it is important to forge alliances with “the private sector and the governments of the region” on investment issues and access to funding to promote job opportunities for Central Americans and other South American populations.
Republican criticism
From the Republican caucus, some have criticized certain government policies in the region. On the Venezuelan issue, for example, Florida Senator Marco Rubio attacked Biden for the rapprochement between the United States and Venezuela at the Miraflores Palace and described the meeting as “embarrassing” after the sanctions imposed on Russian oil for the war in Ukraine.
“The United States does not need a single drop of oil from Maduro, we can produce more than enough here if Biden would allow it,” he said.
At the same time, he assured that this meeting represents a “betrayal” for the Venezuelan exile in the United States. “It is an embarrassment and a pity that they have abandoned and betrayed those who are fighting for the freedom of Venezuela,” he said.
The immigration issue has also caused rejection by Republicans in Congress. The Republican opposition said it was alarmed by the record numbers of illegal immigration in the United States, which they described as a “humanitarian catastrophe.”
Revenue from Mexico has surged in recent weeks, and two memos released by Republican leaders accuse Democratic President Joe Biden of making the situation at the border “the worst in American history.”
In a press conference, Republican senators denounced the weak response of the Biden government to the situation, which they considered “out of control.”
“Today a crisis is raging on the southern border,” said Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz, adding that it was “created by Joe Biden and (Vice President) Kamala Harris.”
He accused the Democrats of supporting illegal immigration, since they consider “the two million illegal immigrants who arrived last year as future voters.”
The border guard counted 1.7 million episodes of detention of undocumented migrants in the last fiscal year, the highest number ever recorded.
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