The Failure of the Summit of the Americas

It’s important to remember that this summit corresponds to the obsolete OAS, a tool which is essentially used to guarantee the US’s domination over the region, demonstrated by both the trajectory and policies set up by this organisation throughout the years, with these practises being increasingly called into question by the formation of new regional organisation blocs; the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) being the most relevant.

The OAS and the Summit of the Americas have been put forward by their supporters as a way of realising unity on the continent, when in reality they have been constructed within a relationship of imposition on the one side and submission on the other, with some notable exceptions. These exceptions include the dignified role of Jorge Toriello Garrido, Guatemalan Ambassador to the OAS, who denounced the U.S. promoted, financed and directed intervention against Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, (a particularly emblematic case for Guatemala), [translators note: Guzman was overthrown as president of Guatemala in a CIA backed military coup in 1954], or the dignified role of ambassadors from the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and others, who have been organising at the heart of this regional organisation in defence of their independence and sovereignty (emblematic cases for Our America, that of Marti and Bolivar, the great united continent).

The Summit of the Americas started to go downhill when a good part of the Latin American and Caribbean countries managed to put the breaks on the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), in the 4^th Summit held in 2005 in Mar del Plata, Argentina. After that act of clear and coherent insubordination, alternative organisations such as the Common Market of the South (Mercosur), created in 1991 but developing with renewed vigour today, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), created in 2005, and the recently establish CELAC in 2010, began to be reinforced.

The 6th Summit came round with all of this accumulating, with the added matter of other issues of transcendental importance, including the call for the inclusion of Cuba, proposed by various Latin American countries, which led to presidents such as Rafael Correa of Ecuador and Nicaragua’s president Daniel Ortega refusing to attend the summit in solidarity with the island. This is a demand which has been vetoed by the United States once again. Another issue is a call to support the people of Argentina in their demand for their sovereignty over the Malvinas (Falkland) Islands, backed by the majority of Latin American countries but blocked by the United States and Canada, who are prioritising the interests of the English empire and their alliance of interventions, invasions, occupations and the general looting of the world. A third relevant issue was the proposal to reconsider how to combat the international drugs trade, with this summit making it evident that the strategy imposed by the U.S. for dealing with this matter had failed.

Given the advance of these processes for independence, sovereignty, dignity and solidarity, which are being consolidated in several Latin American countries, as well as the management of a regional politics that is radically different from that of the OAS, the result could have been no other: the resounding failure of the 6^th Summit of the Americas. There was no agreement, and much less a consensus, there was no Final Declaration.

There were positive results however: 1) Solidarity with Cuba in the recovery of its full rights as a state, 2) Solidarity with Argentina in putting an end to the English occupation of the Falklands and recovering sovereignty over them, 3) The raising of the debate on an alternative search for methods to counteract the international drugs trade.  

In the face of speeches on the breakdown of unity in the Americas, which were dominant in mass media broadcasting, in the organisations of the old regime (which are still operational today) and in small groups of submissive and servile diplomatic bureaucrats, today a unified objective is being developed by governments and peoples, which is being built on a refusal to submit. A servile unity with the United States will no longer be possible.

Either unity is constructed on the basis of full respect for sovereignty, without intervention, imposition or conspiracies, or it won’t be constructed at all. Instead, there will be an alternative unity, the unity of CELAC and the ALBA, the unity between people.

We are currently faced with a conjuncture which will clarify the permanent path that our people will follow: submission or rebellion, dependency or sovereignty. That is the dilemma for Our America right now, Bolivar’s great continent.

Translated by Rachael Boothroyd for Venezuelanalysis.com