Mexico’s president says he won’t attend Summit of the Americas

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador confirmed Monday that he won’t attend the Summit of the Americas hosted by President Biden in Los Angeles this week as a result of not all international locations in the Americas are invited. 

López Obrador had beforehand threatened to skip the summit if the Biden administration did not invite international locations like Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. Those international locations didn’t obtain invites over human rights considerations and their “lack of democratic space,” a senior U.S. official mentioned Monday.

The official mentioned the U.S., as the host of this year’s summit, has “wide discretion on invitations, but deeply values and respects the diversity of views of our regional neighbors.” Non-governmental representatives from Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua are nonetheless registered to take part in stakeholder boards, in accordance with the official.

“There cannot be a summit if all countries are not invited,” López Obrador mentioned. “Or there can be one but that is to continue with all politics of interventionism.”

López Obrador mentioned his overseas affairs secretary, Marcelo Ebrard, will lead the Mexican delegation in his absence. Instead of going to Los Angeles, López Obrador mentioned he would go to communities that have been broken by a latest hurricane later this week.

The Summit of the Americas, which brings collectively international locations from throughout the hemisphere, is held each few years. 

The U.S. is internet hosting the summit for the first time since its launch in 1994 in Miami, as half of an effort to impress help for a free commerce settlement stretching from Alaska to Patagonia.

But that objective was deserted greater than 15 years in the past amid an increase in leftist politics in the area. With China’s affect increasing, most nations have come to anticipate — and wish — much less from Washington.

As a end result, the premier discussion board for regional cooperation has languished, at instances turning right into a stage for airing historic grievances, like when the late Venezuelan chief Hugo Chávez at the 2009 summit in Trinidad & Tobago gave President Barack Obama a duplicate of Eduardo Galeano’s traditional tract, “The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent.”

While in Los Angeles, Mr. Biden and different world leaders at the summit will announce a brand new financial focus for the area, and hone in on immigration, local weather change, COVID-19 and meals safety. Last week, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre insisted these priorities are the focus, not drama over the visitor record.

“So there is an array of issues for the region that we are going to discuss,” she mentioned. “These are priorities. These are incredibly important. And that’s what you’re going to see for next week.”

Ed O’Keefe and Sara Cook contributed to this report.