AMLO defends Cuba’s right to attend the Summit of the Americas

the president of Mexico, Andres Manuel Lopez Obradoraffirmed this Sunday that he will insist that Washington include Cuba in the next Summit of the Americas, during a visit to the island whose backdrop is relations with USA in the midst of a massive migratory wave.

“I will insist with the president (joe) Biden that no American country be excluded from next month’s summit, to be held in Los Angeles, California, and that the authorities of each country freely decide whether or not to attend said meeting, but that no one excludes anyone.”said López Obrador, after being decorated with the José Martí order (national hero).

Look: López Obrador arrives in Cuba to complete his political rapprochement with Havana

The summit, from which Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela have been excluded, will emphasize the migratory crisis, an issue that centered the tour that López Obrador concludes this Sunday on the island, after visiting Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Belize.

For his part, the president Miguel Diaz-Canel He said he coincided with the Mexican president “in the inadmissibility of the unjustified exclusions of countries of our region from hemispheric events, as it seems will happen” with the quote from Los Angeles.

For the Cuban academic Arturo López-Levy, from the Californian Holy Names University, “Lopez Obrador prepares the ground to talk about the issue in a tone that is also friendly with the United States.”, warning him that “for the construction of a pan-american integrating space (…) it is important that there are multilateral norms that are respected”.

“In that sense, the possibility of holding an incomplete summit cannot be left to the host country.Lopez-Levy added.

Let Cuba be “reborn”

López Obrador makes his visit to Cuba when this month marks the 120th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two.

Mexico it was the only Latin American country that did not join the isolation of Fidel Castro’s government in the 1960s, which included the separation of Havana from the OAS, and maintained its relations and trade with the island.

AMLO was received this Sunday by Diaz-Canel with military honors at the Palace of the Revolution, where both held official talks and signed cooperation agreements on health.

In his speech, López Obrador said he will continue “insist” for what “The United States lift the blockade” against Cuba, facing its worst economic crisis in almost three decades, and expressed his hope that “the revolution will be reborn in the revolution” and that “it will be able to renew itself.”

For López-Levy, AMLO’s exhortation “it’s not rhetoric” otherwise “a call for Cuba to solve as much as possible problems such as economic viability and national reconciliation that are used to revile the continental left and center left”.

Migration

During his tour, the Mexican president asked Washington to become more involved in solving the economic problems that generate disorderly emigration to the United States and promoted his job promotion program “Sowing Lives”.

“We are very insistent that there be investment in North America, to integrate well in North America. This is going to require ordering the migratory flow”he said before embarking on his tour.

From October 2021 to March 2022, more than 78,000 Cubans entered US territory through the border with Mexico, according to the US Customs office, which adds Cuba to the migration problem between the two northern countries.

Havana has current migration agreements with Washington, which have been paralyzed since 2017.

Under those agreements, the United States must issue 20,000 permanent emigration visas to Cubans annually and return illegal migrants intercepted on the high seas.

And Cuba must prevent illegal emigration by persuasive methods and reintegrate those returned without legal consequences.

“Pivot”

Mexico acted as an intermediary or facilitator between Cuba and the United States at moments of maximum tension in 1981, when José López Portillo and his Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda hosted a secret meeting between Secretary of State Alexander Haig and Cuban Vice President Carlos Rafael Rodríguez.

Also Mexican President Carlos Salinas was an intermediary between Bill Clinton and Fidel Castro in the rafters’ crisis of 1994.

In both cases they were the first steps towards migratory agreements.

“Mexico under the presidency of López Obrador has somewhat returned to the status of pivot in a triangular relationship”Lopez-Levy added.

Is a “silent diplomacy that cautiously advances possibilities of a detente that will ultimately depend on the specific will of Havana and Washington.”

Source: Elcomercio

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