(Mexico City) The President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, finally announced on Monday that he would not participate in the “Summit of the Americas” which opens the same day in Los Angeles because the United States excluded Cuba, Venezuela and Nigeria.
Posted at 10:03 a.m.
Updated at 10:56 a.m.
“I’m not going to the summit because we don’t invite all the countries of America. I believe in the need to change the policy that has been imposed for centuries: exclusion,” Mr. Lopez Obrador, the United States’ main partner in Latin America, told reporters.
The left-nationalist president had been threatening for weeks not to travel to Los Angeles if the United States excluded Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.
These three countries will not be invited because “the United States continues to have reservations about the lack of democratic space and respect for human rights” in Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, confirmed to AFP on Monday. a White House official.
“I very much regret this situation, but I do not accept that anyone puts himself above other countries. I do not accept hegemony, neither from China, nor from Russia, nor from any country”, detailed the Mexican president.
Very popular in his country, Mr. Lopez Obrador has indicated that he could meet President Joe Biden at the White House in July, with whom he claims to get along very well.
“I want to talk with him about integrating all of America,” Lopez Obrador said, citing the example of the European Union.
Mexico, which shares 3,200 kilometers of border with the United States, sends 80% of its exports to its large northern neighbor under a North American free trade agreement which also includes Canada.
On the occasion of the summit, President Biden hopes to conclude a regional cooperation agreement on a politically explosive subject, and which has earned him violent criticism from the Republican opposition: immigration.
The number of people seeking to enter the United States after fleeing poverty and violence in Central America and Haiti is on the rise. Thousands of migrants are concentrating on Mexico’s northern border, hoping to cross into the United States.
The summit must also address climate change, COVID-19, and “the fight for freedom and democracy,” the White House said.
On the occasion of the summit, Washington wants to show the muscles against China, which is advancing its pawns in an area long considered by the Americans as their backyard.