How Mexico ensures access to safe abortion without legalizing it
June 6, 2022

When it comes to abortion, Mexico offers a glimpse of a possible future for the US.

Like its northern neighbor, the country is a federal republic of 32 states in which the legality of abortion varies. It does not have a federal law, or Roe v Wade-like constitutional decision legalizing abortion—a position the US is likely to find itself in by the end of June, when the Supreme Court is expected to officially announce its decision on Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The decision, a draft of which was leaked last month, might overturn the precedent stating that a woman has a right to obtain abortion as part of her right to privacy. If the leak is confirmed, it would end the federal protection of abortion, and making its legality dependent on the individual state

This would open the way to restrictive laws in Republican-majority states, many of which have trigger laws ready to go into effect as soon as the Supreme Court ruling is out, including ones that could lead to the arrest of women experiencing miscarriages. But in Mexico, the situation is different in a small, but very significant way: Abortion is not legal, but has been decriminalized federally. On Sept. 7, 2021, Mexico’s Supreme Court unanimously ruled that it was unconstitutional to punish abortion as a crime.

The effects of decriminalization

The 2021 Mexican supreme court decision was propelled by the so-called marea verde, or green wave, a Latin American transnational movement promoting abortion rights, which pushed for the approval of abortion laws in countries including Argentina and Columbia, and in Mexican states. While it stops short of full legalization, its effects are significant in effectively giving women, including those who don’t qualify for an abortion in their home state, broader access to safe abortion.

In Mexico no outcome of a pregnancy is criminalized—including miscarriages, no matter how they occur—so women who get abortions outside of the medical infrastructure, for instance by inducing an abortion with medication at home, can seek medical attention at any time without putting themselves in danger of being reported to the authorities.

Medical abortion in Mexico is offered in medical settings via two medications, mifepristone and misoprostol. But women who choose to have a medical abortion at home, because they don’t qualify for legal abortion in their state, or prefer to deal with it independently, typically take misoprostol only, following World Health Organization protocol (pdf). Abortions done with misoprostol alone are just as safe as those with the combination of drugs, but easier to obtain without a prescription as it’s sold over the counter as a medication to treat ulcers in every state.

The right to support women who have abortions

Veronica Cruz, a leading pro-abortion activist who founded Las Libres, an organization that provides accompaniment to women who wish to terminate unwanted pregnancies in the state of Guanajuato, says things have changed since the decision even in very anti-abortion states like her own. Las Libres has been operating for 22 years, and has developed a so-called “escuela de acompañamento“—a training for women who want to offer physical assistance as well as medical and legal information to others seeking a termination of a pregnancy.

Even prior to the 2021 decision, Las Libres didn’t shy away from providing abortion accompaniment and information despite the legal risks. “When the law restricts a right, it isn’t right, and if the law isn’t right we have to reject it,” says Cruz. The goal of the abortion movements remains to legalize abortion in all states, she says, but decriminalization has helped reduce some of the stigma around abortion and has allowed activist networks to move more freely and safely.

This includes facing fewer risks in organizing and facilitating travel for women in anti-abortion states—in both Mexico and, increasingly, from the US—end their unwanted pregnancies. Women who face significant cultural and social obstacles to abortion in their home state—for instance Guanajuato, where the stigma against abortion is strong—can seek financial, logistical, and emotional support from pro-abortion networks to travel to another state to terminate the pregnancy through surgical abortion, even after the first trimester, when misoprostol is most effective.

Believe women, by law

This works alongside an instrumental legal provision, introduced in 2013 to actualize the right to abortion for victims of rape, who have a right to end their pregnancy in every state in the country.

The decision states that in order to obtain an abortion under the rape exception a woman doesn’t need to provide a police report of the assault—as was the case in several states prior to the decision. Instead, her word that it happened is sufficient.

A linked provision, upheld by the supreme court late this past May, confirmed that for minor victims of rape, defined as those between the ages of 12 and 18, there is no need of for parental consent to obtain an abortion, freeing many teenagers to seek abortions despite familial opposition or incest.

“Sometimes the patient doesn’t want to present the report to the police, and we respect that,” says José Luis Flores Madrigal, a doctor and director of the maternal and infant health hospital Esperanza López Mateos, in Guadalajara, in the state of Jalisco. “I simply have to believe her.”

“That really struck me in the hospital, when we were learning about the rape exception, when […] I asked if [women] needed to prove anything and [the doctor] just said, ‘no, we just believe women,’” says Julie von Haefen, a North Carolina state representative who was present at a meeting with Mateos. “I will remember that forever probably, just the matter-of-factness of that statement was just so revealing, because not everyone in the United States believes women.”

The post How Mexico ensures access to safe abortion without legalizing it appeared first on Quartz.

UPDATED

Mexico snub throws Americas' summit into disarray

Shaun TANDON
Mon, June 6, 2022

President Joe Biden's plans to reboot US engagement with Latin America -- especially on critical topics like migration -- took a major hit after key partner Mexico snubbed a regional summit opening Monday in Los Angeles to protest Washington's exclusion of three far-left countries.

What was meant to be a week-long showcase of cooperation looks more likely to become a display of division that reflects diminishing clout over a region where long-time US economic and diplomatic influence faces a growing Chinese challenge.

Confirming it was not inviting Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela to the Summit of the Americas, a senior White House official cited "reservations regarding the lack of democratic space and the human rights situations."

In response, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said he would stay away.

"You cannot have a Summit of the Americas if you do not have all the countries of the Americas attending," Lopez Obrador announced, complaining of US "hegemony" and "lack of respect for nations."

Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard will represent Mexico instead, but the leftist populist leader's absence will diminish the impact of a summit where US-Mexico relations are at the heart of major immigration and trade issues.


The senior US official did not directly respond to Lopez Obrador's boycott, saying only that "the United States recognizes and respects the position of allies in support of inclusive dialogue." The official also said non-governmental representatives from Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela would be present.

In Havana, the communist Cuban government issued a statement calling Biden's decision "anti-democratic and arbitrary."

Biden is expected to make announcements at the summit on economic cooperation and fighting Covid-19 and climate change, said Juan Gonzalez, the top White House adviser on Latin America.

The US president, who flies to Los Angeles on Wednesday, also hopes to secure an agreement to help regulate surges of migration from the region's poorer and violent countries to the United States -- a major concern for US voters and an area where Republican opponents see Biden as vulnerable in upcoming midterm elections.

- Playing down Mexico spat -

State Department spokesman Ned Price played down the seriousness of the spat with Lopez Obrador, saying "we understand his position" and that the US-Mexican relationship is "broad and deep."

"Mexico is an important hemispheric player. We are very gratified that... Foreign Secretary Ebrard will be in attendance. We will have a number of opportunities to engage with our Mexican counterparts."

The Biden administration also notes it has secured the presence of other key regional players, including Argentina's left-leaning Alberto Fernandez and Brazil's far-right Jair Bolsonaro.

Benjamin Gedan, who heads the Latin America program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said Lopez Obrador's absence would mark a "significant void" and said Mexico's leader seemed more focused on domestic political gain.

The boycott has been "a really unfortunate subplot in the run-up to the summit because it has drained an enormous amount of US diplomatic energy for a bizarre cause celebre," Gedan said.

Biden has crafted a positive agenda, avoiding simply summoning Latin American leaders to lecture them on democracy, corruption and China, he said.

But, he added, it was unclear whether Biden will bring substantial resources to the table, in contrast to China's lavish infrastructure spending and trade privileges.

"I think, inevitably, the United States will disappoint," Gedan said.

- 'Progressively less ambitious' -

The Summit of the Americas is the first held by the United States since the inaugural 1994 meeting in Miami, where then-US president Bill Clinton sought the creation of a trade area to cover the whole continent except communist Cuba.

The United States has since soured on free trade, with Biden following the lead of his predecessor Donald Trump, who said such pacts hurt US workers.

Trump championed a hard line on Venezuela and Cuba, and did not attend the last Summit of the Americas, in Peru in 2018.

Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Council of the Americas, recently told a congressional hearing that each summit has become "progressively less ambitious."

Los Angeles, he said, "offers the perfect opportunity for Washington to announce a commitment to regional growth and recovery."

Michael Shifter, a senior fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue, said the drama over summit attendance showed Washington's waning hold over the region as China muscles in.

The United States "still has a lot of soft power," Shifter said. "As for political and diplomatic influence, it is diminishing by the day."

bur-sms/sw

Mexico president's summit snub shows limits of U.S. reach in Latin America

Americas Summit in Los Angeles

Mon, June 6, 2022, 
By David Alire Garcia

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The Mexican president's refusal to attend a U.S.-hosted summit because of disputes over the guest list highlights how Latin America's leftists are pursuing an increasingly independent foreign policy from Washington.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador had said he would not go to the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles this week led by U.S. President Joe Biden unless all governments in the region were asked.

On Monday, he followed through as Washington said it was not inviting its antagonists Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua on the grounds of human rights and democratic shortcomings.

Lopez Obrador's firm line over the past few weeks won backing from other left-leaning governments across Latin America eager to stand up to Uncle Sam, fanning diplomatic tensions just as Washington tries to re-engage with its southern neighbors.

Luis Guillermo Solis, a center-left former Costa Rican president, said Lopez Obrador's determination to clamor for an inclusive discussion showed off his anti-imperialist credentials, striking a tone with centuries of resonance in the region.

"The easiest way to do it is to symbolically fight with the United States," Solis said. "It's a well-known play in our neighborhood."

The summit aims to promote democratic unity, but the dispute exposed divisions between Washington and governments sympathetic to Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel, Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega and Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro, self-styled leftists who have long been reviled by the U.S. foreign policy establishment.

Leftist leaders in Argentina, Chile, Honduras, and Bolivia have echoed Lopez Obrador's sentiments, taking U.S. officials by surprise and leaving them scrambling to ensure Biden is not left talking to empty chairs when he arrives on Wednesday.{nL1N2XM1B8]

Biden is under domestic pressure from Republicans as well as some fellow Democrats not to look soft on Cuba and Venezuela with the approach of elections in November that will determine whether his party keeps control of Congress.

The controversy risks overshadowing Washington's desire to prevent democratic backsliding in the region, said John Feeley, a retired U.S. ambassador and veteran Latin America diplomat who helped organize previous regional summits.

Feeley also flagged concerns about Brazil's far-right President Jair Bolsonaro undermining confidence in his country's October election and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele's push to seek re-election despite constitutional term limits.

"Choppy waters is going to be the reality," said Feeley.

CUBA'S PULL

In March, Cuba began handing down jail sentences of up to 30 years to dozens of people arrested last year at the biggest anti-government protests since the island's 1959 revolution.

That month Citlalli Hernandez, secretary general of Lopez Obrador's ruling party, led a delegation to the communist-run island before he himself went in May, lauding the government and inking a deal to bring Cuban doctors to Mexico.

Hernandez hailed what she called Cuba's own version of participatory democracy, its achievements in health and education, and rejected any suggestion it was a dictatorship.

"We deeply respect the process of Cuban revolution," the 32-year-old senator said.

Her support points to the enduring appeal of Cuba's one-party model among a swath of Latin America's left, underlining a sharp split with Biden's center-left Democratic Party.

While Biden partly rolled back some of his Republican predecessor Donald Trump's toughest sanctions, he and most Democrats remain stern critics of Cuba's record on democracy and human rights.

Costa Rica's Solis believes the region's real political fault lines are not between left and right.

"It's a problem between democracy and authoritarianism," he said, describing Maduro's government as "criminal left" and Ortega's Nicaragua as "more like a monarchy".

Venezuela and Nicaragua have criticized the summit as exclusionary, and Cuba's Diaz-Canel said he would not attend regardless of whether he was invited.

Biden is well placed to warn about the risks of weakening democracy, given the false claims of widespread voter fraud and other misinformation pushed by Trump, said ex-diplomat Feeley.

But even the most successful bilateral talks in Los Angeles will unlikely shake the broader trend, he said.

"The overall panorama will continue to be difficult, confused and confusing."

(Reporting by David Alire Garcia; Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick in Washington; Editing by Dave Graham and Grant McCool)

U.S. 'understands' Mexican position on Americas summit after boycott -State Dept

WASHINGTON, June 6 (Reuters) - The United States "understands" Mexico's position on the Summit of the Americas, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Monday after Mexico's president made good on a threat to skip the event because all countries in the Western Hemisphere were not invited.

Price said U.S. officials including Secretary of State Antony Blinken were in discussions with officials from U.S. neighbors including Mexico in very recent hours over participation in the summit.

"Certainly there are a diversity of opinions when it comes to who should be invited to the Summit of the Americas," Price said. "We have done our best to incorporate the viewpoints of the hemisphere."

Although Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador would not be attending, Mexico would still participate and would be represented by Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard, Price said.

The boycott of Lopez Obrador and possibly some other leaders could diminish the relevance of the summit in Los Angeles, where the United States aims to address regional migration and economic issues.

Price defended Washington's decision to exclude Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua from the meeting, taking place in Los Angeles this week, saying the convener of the meeting has broad discretion over who participates.

"It is unfortunately notable that one of the key elements of this summit is democratic governance, and these countries are not exemplars, to put it mildly, of democratic governance," Price said, citing the recent jailing of artists in Cuba, shrinking space for civil society in Nicaragua and President Nicolas Maduro's leadership of Venezuela that is not recognized by the United States.

Representatives of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, who Washington recognizes as the country's legitimate leader, as well as non-governmental delegates from the three barred countries, would participate in the summit, Price said.

 (Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk, Simon Lewis and Daphne Psaledakis Editing by Chris Reese and Alistair Bell)

Mexico leader to skip Biden's Americas Summit

AFP - 

Mexico President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador announced Monday he would skip the regional Summit of the Americas in the United States due to Washington's failure to invite countries it views as undemocratic.

© PEDRO PARDO

Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador says he will not attend the Americas Summit in Los Angeles

The White House confirmed that President Joe Biden would not be inviting Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua to this week's summit in Los Angeles.

"I'm not going to the summit because they are not inviting all the countries of America and I think it is necessary to change the policy that has been imposed on us for centuries: exclusion," said Lopez Obrador in his daily press conference.

Lopez Obrador said Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard would be representing Mexico in his place.

The leftist populist had threatened last month to stay away from the summit unless all countries were invited.

Cuba's President Miguel Diaz-Canel announced he would not attend even if invited, while Guatemala's conservative leader Alejandro Giammattei pulled out after Washington sanctioned his top prosecutor.

The White House had said last week that Biden was eager for Lopez Obrador to attend.

"You cannot have a Summit of the Americas if you do not have all the countries of the Americas attending," said Lopez Obrador, who has also urged the US to end sanctions against Cuba.

"Or you can have it, but we see that as the old policy of interventionism, lack of respect for nations and their people."

A senior US official told AFP that "the US continues to maintain reservations regarding the lack of democratic space and the human rights situations" in the three barred countries.

"As a result, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela will not be invited to participate in this summit."

Lopez Obrador said his snub would not affect his "very good relations" with Biden, whom he said was under "pressure from the Republicans" to keep out the three countries.

"I'm really disappointed about this situation, but I do not accept that anyone puts themselves above the countries, I don't accept hegemony, not from China, not from Russia, not from any country," he said.

The Mexican president said that he would still visit the White House in July where he would look to discuss pan-American "integration."

"That's how they created the European Community and then that became the European Union. That's what we need to do in America," he said.

The summit is due to focus on migration, climate change, the Covid-19 pandemic and "the fight for freedom and democracy," the White House has said.

The United States has stepped up criticism of Cuban authorities following the arrest of hundreds of people for taking part in anti-government protests last July.

The Biden administration refuses to recognize Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro or Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega due to alleged election irregularities.

jg/dga/bc/bgs

Mexico's president boycotts US-hosted summit in snub to Biden

Mexico's president has announced that he will not travel to the U.S. this week to attend the Summit of the Americas -- another snub that has distracted from the Biden administration's efforts to use the tri-annual meetings to reassert U.S. leadership in the Western Hemisphere.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador called President Joe Biden a "good man" on Monday, but blamed U.S. domestic political pressure for Biden's decision to exclude Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua from the summit.

"I believe in the need to change the policy... of exclusion, of the desire to dominate for no reason and not respect the sovereignty of countries, the independence of each country, and it will not be a summit of the Americas without the participation of all countries in the America's," said López Obrador, often known by his initials as AMLO, during a press conference.MORE: Amid boycotts, US scrambling to make Summit of the Americas a success

AMLO is not the only head of government to boycott the meetings over the invitation list. The leaders of Bolivia, Antigua and Barbuda, Guatemala, and Honduras have said they will not attend, while others -- including left-wing leaders in Chile and Argentina -- have criticized the U.S. decision while still confirming their attendance.

Biden will travel to Los Angeles later this week with first lady Dr. Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff to host the summit, with plans to announce agreements on migration, economic development, public health, climate change, democracy, and more.


© Pedro Pardo/AFP via Getty ImagesMexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is seen during his daily morning press conference in Mexico City on June 6, 2022.

But the boycotts have dominated talk around the summit, with some critics saying the administration has not done enough to rally participation around common objectives.

"A lack of robust agenda that speaks to the region has opened the door to distractions in the form of ideological & political theater," tweeted Ryan Berg, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

It's unclear how much of an effect AMLO's absence will have, especially as he announced he would dispatch his Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard in his place. The populist, nationalist president also said he would meet with Biden in July at the White House.

But losing the leader of the world's 15th largest economy and the second most populous country in Latin America is a blow, especially after Biden sent his friend and former Senate colleague Chris Dodd as a special adviser for the summit to Mexico and other countries to shore up attendance.

Biden also "incredibly values personal engagement," according to his top White House official for the region Juan Gonzalez, perhaps making any snubs more insulting. Months ago, the administration publicly floated the idea of inviting AMLO to an LA Dodgers baseball game -- a warm gesture toward a leader who has rhetorically challenged the U.S. and who, some critics say, has undermined Mexican democracy.

Some analysts say, however, that over a year into his administration, Biden has not put enough energy into his stated goal of reasserting U.S. leadership in its hemisphere and promoting democracy in a region that has seen significant backsliding and political upheaval.


President Joe Biden meets with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in the Oval Office of the White House, Nov. 18, 2021 in Washington, D.C.

"Unfortunately, the Biden administration did not put all the political capital needed to address more than 10 political problems" from Haiti to Venezuela and to make the summit a success, said Manuel Orozco, the director of the Inter-American Dialogue's migration, remittances, and development program in Washington.

"The quantity of problems that are mounting in Latin America and the Caribbean vis-à-vis the United States is just overwhelming... The political capital wasn't there," he added.

Dodd had more success elsewhere, especially in Brazil. President Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right leader of Latin America's largest country, announced last week he would attend the summit and have his first one-on-one meeting with Biden, with whom he's had frosty relations because of his environmental policies, attacks on Brazilian democracy, and close ties to former President Donald Trump.

In addition to Dodd, the administration deployed Jill Biden on a goodwill tour in May to Ecuador, Panama, and Costa Rica, where she was warmly received by heads of states and fellow first ladies and visited hospitals and schools supported with U.S. funding.


© Erin Schaff/APHonduran President Xiomara Castro and Vice President Kamala Harris walk through the presidential palace in Tegucigalpa, Honduras on Jan. 27, 2022.

Vice President Harris also called Honduras's left-wing President Xiomara Castro last month, but less than 24 hours later, she announced she would not participate if there were exclusions.

Harris has been tasked with stemming migration from Honduras and other Central American countries and attended Castro's inauguration in January, trying to secure an ally in the country's first female leader. But she's been criticized for visiting the region for three days in the 15 months since Biden announced her role -- keeping the politically fraught issue at times at an arm's length away.

U.S. officials have said they could not invite the leaders of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua because of their crackdowns on civil society and democracy, arguing that the region's countries agreed in the 2001 Inter-American Democratic Charter that any "interruption of the democratic order" in one country "constitutes an insurmountable obstacle" to its participation in the summit.

Instead of attending, AMLO announced he would travel on Thursday or Friday to the Mexican state Oaxaca, which was hit by Hurricane Agatha last week, to survey the damage and the reconstruction efforts.

MEXICO

López Obrador's party wins 4 of 6 gubernatorial elections, consolidating its power

Mon, June 6, 2022

Supporters of then-presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his Morena party await him in Mexico City in July 2018. (Emilio Espejel / Associated Press)

The party of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has continued its consolidation of power by winning four of the six governorships on the ballot in local elections, according to electoral authorities Monday.

López Obrador's National Regeneration Movement — known as Morena — along with its allied parties won in Tamaulipas, Quintana Roo, Oaxaca and Hidalgo on Sunday. An opposition coalition won in Aguascalientes and Durango.

The victories give Morena control of 22 of Mexico’s 32 states, an important advantage heading into the 2024 presidential elections.

“With 22 governorships and a well-evaluated president, everything appears to indicate that Morena shores up first place heading into the presidency in 2024,” said Patricio Morelos, a politics professor at Monterrey Tech university.


López Obrador has maintained high popularity while Mexico’s opposition has floundered, steadily losing ground. However, so much of Morena’s success is attributed to López Obrador that there are doubts whether the party will hold together after his term ends, when he says he will retire from politics.

“It is a historic day for ‘Obradorism,’” said Mario Delgado, Morena’s president. “We continue advancing and the people keep confirming with their vote that it is an honor to be with [López] Obrador.”

Mexico’s Ruling Party Expands Power With Local Election Wins



Max de Haldevang
Sun, June 5, 2022,

(Bloomberg) -- Mexico’s ruling Morena party won four of six states it didn’t already control in local elections on Sunday, consolidating President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s political power further beyond his traditional strongholds in the south of the country.

Morena and allied parties were projected to win the states of Oaxaca, Quintana Roo, Hidalgo and Tamaulipas, the latter of which is located in the country’s northeast bordering Texas, according to rapid count results posted by Mexico’s electoral institute on Twitter. A coalition of opposition parties including the conservative National Action Party, or PAN, and the PRI, which ruled Mexico for most of last century, won the states of Durango and Aguascalientes.

The results were broadly in line with expectations by pollsters, even if Morena officials said they aimed to win all six states.

The election was a litmus test of Lopez Obrador’s support after three and a half years of government, and of the strength of opposition parties, which have banded together against him by putting forward joint candidates. Since Lopez Obrador, known as AMLO, won the presidency in 2018, Morena and its allies have swept across the country, and with Sunday’s results they will govern 22 of Mexico’s 32 states.

Mexico’s economy hasn’t yet recovered the level when AMLO took power in December 2018 after being greatly affected by the pandemic, with the fifth-most Covid-19 deaths of any country. But the 68-year-old president remains widely popular, in part thanks to his anti-corruption agenda and social programs that give working-class Mexicans monthly cash transfers.

Morena’s strong backing reflects “to a very significant extent the enduring popularity of President Lopez Obrador, his long political coattails, and the impact of the social programs created by the administration,” Goldman Sachs Group Inc. chief Latin America economist Alberto Ramos wrote in a note before Sunday’s vote.

A strong Morena performance would put it in a favorable position to win the presidency again in 2024, when Lopez Obrador steps down after his single six-year term. It could also spell the end of state control by the PRI, which governed Mexico for decades of one-party rule until 2000, Eurasia Group wrote this week.

After Sunday’s results, the party will govern by itself just two states -- both of which are up for grabs next year.

Biden scrambles to avoid Americas Summit flop in Los Angeles

INVITED BUT WILL NOT ATTEND

AMLO AND BIDEN

NOT INVITED 

Cuba ALBA SummitVenezuela's President Nicolas Maduro, left, and Cuba's President Miguel Diaz Canel, flash V-signs as they pose for a group photo during the XXI ALBA Summit at the Palace of the Revolution, in Havana, Cuba, Friday, May 27, 2022. (Yamil Lage/Pool Photo via AP)Less


ELLIOT SPAGAT, JOSHUA GOODMAN and CHRIS MEGERIAN
Sun, June 5, 2022, 8:03 AM·6 min read

LOS ANGELES (AP) — When leaders gather this week in Los Angeles at the Summit of the Americas, the focus is likely to veer from common policy changes — migration, climate change and galloping inflation — and instead shift to something Hollywood thrives on: the drama of the red carpet.

With Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador topping a list of leaders threatening to stay home to protest the U.S.’ exclusion of authoritarian leaders from Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, experts say the event could turn into a embarrassment for U.S. President Joe Biden. Even some progressive Democrats have criticized the administration for bowing to pressure from exiles in the swing state of Florida and barring communist Cuba, which attended the last two summits.

“The real question is why the Biden administration didn’t do its homework,” said Jorge Castañeda, a former Mexican foreign minister who now teaches at New York University.

While the Biden administration insists the president in Los Angeles will outline his vision for a "sustainable, resilient, and equitable future” for the hemisphere, Castañeda said it's clear from the last-minute wrangling over the guest list that Latin America is not a priority for the U.S. president.

“This ambitious agenda, no one knows exactly what it is, other than a series of bromides," he said.

The U.S. is hosting the summit for the first time since its launch in 1994, in Miami, as part of an effort to galvanize support for a free trade agreement stretching from Alaska to Patagonia.

But that goal was abandoned more than 15 years ago amid a rise in leftist politics in the region. With China's influence expanding, most nations have come to expect — and need — less from Washington. As a result, the premier forum for regional cooperation has languished, at times turning into a stage for airing historical grievances, like when the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez at the 2009 summit in Trinidad & Tobago gave President Barack Obama a copy of Eduardo Galeano's classic tract, “The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent.”

The U.S. opening to former Cold War adversary Cuba, which was sealed with Obama's handshake with Raul Castro at the 2015 summit in Panama, lowered some of the ideological tensions.

“It’s a huge missed opportunity,” Ben Rhodes, who led the Cuba thaw as deputy national security advisor in the Obama administration, said recently in his “Pod Save the World” podcast. “We are isolating ourselves by taking that step because you’ve got Mexico, you’ve got Caribbean countries saying they’re not going to come — which is only going to make Cuba look stronger than us.”

To bolster turnout and avert a flop, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have been working the phones in recent days, speaking with the leaders of Argentina and Honduras, both of whom initially expressed support for Mexico's proposed boycott. Former Senator Christopher Dodd has also crisscrossed the region as a special adviser for the summit, in the process convincing far right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who was a staunch ally of Trump but hasn't once spoken to Biden, to belatedly confirm his attendance.

Ironically, the decision to exclude Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela wasn't the whim of the U.S. alone. The region's governments in 2001, in Quebec City, declared that any break with democratic order is an “insurmountable obstacle” to future participation in the summit process.

The governments of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela aren’t even active members of the Washington-based Organization of the American States, which organizes the summit.

“This should’ve been a talking point from the beginning,” said former Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Tom Shannon, who in a long diplomatic career attended several summits. “It’s not a U.S. imposition. It was consensual. If leaders want to change that, then we should have a conversation first.”

After the last summit in Peru, in 2018, which President Trump didn't even bother to attend, many predicted there was no future for the regional gathering. In response to Trump's historic pullout, only 17 of the region's 35 heads of state attended. Few saw value in bringing together for a photo op leaders from such dissimilar places as aid-dependent Haiti, industrial powerhouses Mexico and Brazil and violence-plagued Central America — each with their own unique challenges and bilateral agenda with Washington.

“As long as we don’t speak with a single voice, no one is going to listen to us," said former Chilean President Ricardo Lagos, who also faults Mexico and Brazil — the region's two economic powers — for the current drift in hemispheric relations. "With a cacophony of voices, it is much more difficult to find our place in the world."

To the surprise of many, the U.S. in early 2019 picked up the ball, offering to host the summit. At the time, the Trump administration was enjoying something of a leadership renaissance in Latin America, albeit among mostly similar-minded conservative governments around the narrow issue of restoring democracy in Venezuela.

But that goodwill unraveled as Trump floated the idea of invading Venezuela to remove Nicolás Maduro — a threat recalling the worst excesses of the Cold War. Then the pandemic hit, taking a devastating human and economic toll on a region that accounted for more than a quarter of the world's COVID-19 deaths despite making up only 8% of the population. The region's politics were upended.

The election of Biden, who was Obama's point man for Latin America and had decades of hands-on experience in the region from his time on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, set expectations for a relaunch. But as popular angst spread during the pandemic, the Biden administration was slow to match the vaccine diplomacy of Russia and China, although it did eventually provide 70 million doses to the hemisphere. Biden also maintained the Trump-era restrictions on migration, reinforcing the view that it was neglecting its own neighbors.

Since then, Biden's hallmark policy in the region — a $4 billion aid package to attack the root causes of migration in Central America — has stalled in Congress with no apparent effort to revive it. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has also diverted attention away from the region, something experts say could come back to bite Biden if rising interest rates in the U.S. trigger a stampede of capital outflows and debt defaults in emerging markets.

There have been smaller snubs too: When leftist millennial Gabriel Boric was elected president in Chile, setting high expectations for a generational shift in the region's politics, the U.S. delegation to his inauguration was led by the second-lowest ranking Cabinet member, Small Business Administrator Isabel Guzman.

Shannon said for the summit to be successful Biden shouldn’t try to lay out a grand American vision for the hemisphere but rather show sensitivity to the region’s embrace of other global powers, concerns about gaping inequality and traditional mistrust of the U.S.

“More than speeches," says Shannon, “”he will need to listen.”

___

AP Writers Matthew Lee in Washington, Daniel Politi in Buenos Aires, David Biller in Rio de Janeiro and Gonzalo Solano in Quito contributed to this report.

___

Goodman reported from Miami.

 

At this week's Summit of the Americas, Canada has stake in U.S. border challenges

WASHINGTON — If foreign policy was purely a matter of geography, one might assume Canada would be free to go check out the buffet at this week's Summit of the Americas once the discussion turns, as it surely will, to the migratory tide flooding the U.S.-Mexico border.



But at the dawn of a turbulent new geopolitical era, evidence is mounting that America's southern frontier — along with the political and economic challenges and opportunities it represents — is closer in many ways than most Canadians might realize.

And if President Joe Biden hopes to realize his vision of a comprehensive, holistic solution to the economic and social ills that imperil the Western Hemisphere, experts say he'll need Canada to be an integral part of that conversation.

"Canada has an enormous amount to contribute, because Canada is the country in the Americas that has come closest to getting immigration right," said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank based in Washington D.C.

"There's a lot that the rest of the Americas, including the United States, could be learning from Canada."

The idea behind the summit in Los Angeles, which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will attend beginning Wednesday, is to find a way to address some of the underlying political, economic and social causes of northward migration in the first place.

En route, Trudeau will stop Tuesday in Colorado Springs, Colo., where he and Defence Minister Anita Anand will meet with commanders and military officials from Norad, the joint-command continental defence system that's awaiting a long-needed upgrade.

He'll be joined in California by Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault and Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly, who is scheduled to meet with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Mexican counterpart Marcelo Ebrard.

As a cornerstone of Canada's economic growth, federal immigration policy strikes a delicate balance between economic, humanitarian and labour-policy priorities, all the while preserving public buy-in to keep the ever-present political dangers at bay, Selee said.

Those dangers, weaponized to great effect by Donald Trump, now loom larger than ever in North America, where the former president's isolationist, build-the-wall rhetoric has proven so potent that it's become standard Republican doctrine.

And while the migration challenges at Canada's southern border pale in comparison to those that confront the U.S. along the Rio Grande Valley, they are there — and they share a connection.

Despite the more than 2,300 kilometres separating Canada from Mexico's northern frontier, U.S. customs officials as far north as Maine have in recent months encountered dozens of people who entered the country from the south.

It's likely many were headed to spots like Roxham Road, a popular destination for those looking to make a refugee claim in Canada without being returned to the U.S., which is what automatically happens when they show up at an official entry point.

"It would not be surprising if there are people coming from or through Latin America that really want to get to Canada in the end," Selee said.

"Canada has just enough people who come from elsewhere in the Americas that it could become a much more attractive destination over time, particularly if the U.S. is a less hospitable environment."

It's been 28 years since the U.S. hosted the inaugural Summit of the Americas in 1994, "and we're obviously living in different times," said Juan Gonzalez, the National Security Council's senior director for the Western Hemisphere.

For starters, Russia has invaded Ukraine, the lasting impact of an ongoing two-year pandemic continues to reverberate, inflation is testing new records and many people on this side of the planet are "really starting to question the value of democracy," Gonzalez said.

Biden will propose what Gonzalez called a strategy of shared responsibility and economic support for those countries most impacted by the flow of migration. It will also include a multilateral declaration "of unity and resolve" to bring the crisis under control.

Leaders of "source, transit or destination countries" will seek consensus on how to tackle a problem "that is actually impacting all the countries in the Americas," he said.

"We need to work together to address it in a way that treats migrants with dignity, invests in creating opportunities that would dissuade migrants from leaving their homes in the first place, and provide the protections that migrants deserve."

The U.S. Border Patrol calls it "push and pull" — the myriad factors that spur people around the world to abandon one country in favour of another, often as clandestinely as possible. Those motivations were muted during the COVID-19 pandemic, but no longer.

Police intercepted nearly 10,000 people entering Canada between official entry points during the first four months of the year, compared with just 3,944 during the same period of 2019. And last month alone, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported 9,157 encounters at or near the Canada-U.S. border — seven times the 1,250 apprehensions in April 2021.

Late last month, two Honduran nationals appeared in court in Montana to face human smuggling charges after they allegedly led a group of migrants into the country by walking across the Canada-U.S. border.

Two U.S. citizens are also facing similar charges in a pair of separate cases — one last month that saw a group of Indian nationals rescued while trying to cross a river that separates Ontario from New York state, and one in Minnesota linked to the January deaths of a family of four from India who died of exposure in frigid conditions in Manitoba.

Agents in Maine have also recently encountered carloads of illegal migrants, including five Romanian nationals who entered from Canada. Two other separate incidents involved a total of 22 people, 14 from Mexico and seven from Ecuador, who entered the U.S. via the southern border.

"There are a number of push-and-pull factors … that make people want to leave their country or come to another country for one reason or another," said William Maddocks, the chief U.S. Border Patrol agent for Houlton Sector, which encompasses Maine.

Human smugglers are always keen to exploit that desire, he added. "Where these people see an opportunity for making a profit, that becomes their business. Anytime we change the laws, there will be people who seek to exploit those changes."

Other summit priorities will include helping countries bring COVID-19 under control, forging new ties on climate and energy initiatives, confronting food insecurity and leveraging existing trade agreements to better ensure more people are able to reap the benefits.

Defending core democratic values will also be a major focus in Los Angeles, which is part of why the U.S. has not invited leaders from Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela to attend — three authoritarian countries with dubious records on human rights.

Others, including Mexico's Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Bolivian President Luis Arce, have vowed not to attend unless all of the hemisphere's heads of government were invited. The U.S. has yet to release a final list of attendees.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 6, 2022.

James McCarten, The Canadian Press

Latin America, Caribbean 2022 poverty seen higher as Ukraine war bites: U.N. study


Peru inflation protests grip tourist capital Cuzco, gateway to Machu Picchu

Mon, June 6, 2022, 

(Reuters) - A United Nations commission has increased its projection for poverty in Latin America and Caribbean for 2022, citing economic disruptions caused by the conflict in Ukraine.

Latin America and Dominican Republic poverty will rise to 33% of the population this year, a 0.9 percentage point uptick versus 2021. Extreme poverty is seen reaching 14.5% this year, 0.7 percentage point more than in 2021, according to a study published by the UN's Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (Cepal).

Higher fuel prices, and fertilizer and wheat supply problems provoked by the war in Ukraine have fanned inflation while intensifying hunger, casting doubts about the region's growth prospects, the U.N. agency said.

Cepal warned of a significant jump in people in the region deemed food insecure.

"These levels are markedly higher than those observed before the pandemic and make the possibility of a speedy recovery more distant."

The UN arm has recently cut its estimates for economic growth in Latin America and Caribbean for 2022, citing economic disruptions caused by the conflict in Ukraine.

The mostly Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking region is seen growing 1.8% in 2022, revised down from a prior forecast for growth of 2.1%.

Inflation in Latin America and the Caribbean more than doubled between the end of 2020 and the end of 2021, to 6.6%. Cepal projects that consumer prices will rise 8.1% during the 12-month period ended in April 2022.

The region's economies were seeing a slowdown this year in growth and trade even before Russia's invasion of Ukraine in late February, as well as the persistent drag of the coronavirus pandemic.

Latin American countries face "internal contexts characterized by a strong slowdown in economic activity, increases in inflation and a slow and incomplete recovery of labor markets, which increases poverty and inequality," the report said.

(Reporting by Natalia Ramos; Writing by Carolina Pulice; Editing by David Alire Garcia and Leslie Adler)

Kamala Harris' biggest assignment is in Latin America. But she hasn't gone there much

Noah Bierman
Mon, June 6, 2022

Vice President Kamala Harris' biggest assignment is addressing the root causes of migration from Latin America. But some question how seriously she is engaging on the issue ahead of a big summit this week in Los Angeles. (Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times)

Vice President Kamala Harris has spent just three days in Latin America since President Biden assigned her 15 months ago to tackle migration issues in Central America — half as long as First Lady Jill Biden devoted during a single trip to the region last month.

The lack of travel is a reminder of what some observers see as ambivalence from Harris toward a high-profile issue that is politically fraught at home and challenging abroad as she embarks Monday on a week of diplomacy at the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles. The issue of migration is certain to take center stage at the conference, a meeting of nations across the Western Hemisphere intended to showcase U.S. leadership in the region as the Biden administration seeks to tackle such complex challenges as the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change.

Harris and other top U.S. officials have been scrambling in recent weeks to shore up attendance at the summit, which some countries have threatened to boycott over the Biden administration's decision to exclude leaders of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.

"I don’t know if Central America is still a priority in the U.S. agenda ... in this electoral year," said Alvaro Montenegro Muralles, one of the founders of a group called Justice Now in Guatemala, who met with Harris last year. That lack of consistent focus, which predates Harris, has been one of America's problems in sustaining a long-term strategy, he said.

Specialists say Harris’ lack of engagement in the region — partly the result of unreliable governments she has to deal with there — has stymied her ability to cajole its leaders on a raft of policy challenges. Harris has also not been a key player in the intensive effort to persuade Mexico's president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to drop his summit boycott threat, nor has she been deployed to Latin America like Jill Biden, who recently spent six days in Ecuador, Panama and Costa Rica promoting the summit.

“She is not perceived as a credible person on Latin America," said Michael Shifter, past president of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington. "She has not established herself with the Latin Americans."

Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei greets Vice President Kamala Harris as she arrives at the Palacio Nacional de la Cultura in 2021. (Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times)

Biden asked Harris last year to address the so-called root causes of migration from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador as people in those countries, including children and families, fled in record numbers. Migration from the region has spiked due to a web of factors, including poverty, corruption, racism, disease, natural disasters and gang violence.

It’s a daunting task, one that Biden himself took on in 2014 when he was vice president under President Obama. Despite Biden's vast experience as a leading foreign policy player in the Senate, he also failed to stem migration from the region or contribute appreciably to improving conditions there.

Though the issues are tougher today than a decade ago, many veterans of Latin American policy saw the opportunity for Harris to expand the assignment and position herself as a key player throughout the hemisphere, just as Biden had done, even before he was officially asked to work on Central America. The then-vice president traveled to Latin America 16 times over eight years.

"He was doing some tough diplomacy. ... It wasn’t go and show the flag and eat the local cuisine,” said Eric Farnsworth, who leads the Washington office of the Council of the Americas and Americas Society, a think tank focusing on the region. “That type of role is what many of us anticipated that the current vice president would be doing."

Farnsworth credits Harris with bringing “high-level attention to some really difficult issues” in the three countries she was tasked with improving. But he also noted there hasn't been much progress.

“Have we seen dramatic change in Central America?” he added. “The answer is no.”

A White House official who declined to be named said Harris has dug into the job, at least as it has been defined by Biden. The vice president has helped direct $1.2 billion in private investment to the three countries, announced an anti-corruption task force established by the Justice Department and a federal human trafficking task force, along with strategies aimed at better spending U.S. development dollars. The official said she has also played a key role in urging Caribbean countries to participate in the summit, where she plans to introduce climate and energy programs intended to help them.

Air Force Two, which carries the vice president, arrives at La Aurora International Airport in Guatemala City last year. (Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times)

The official said Harris will meet with business and civic leaders and expects to announce more private investments in the region at the conference. The official pointed out that the vice president has spent a day each in Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico, noting that it's rare for an official at her level to visit the same place twice in a short period.

Harris' travel has been limited in part by the pandemic and a series of unreliable partners. She made her biggest bet in Guatemala, spending a day there in June last year to meet with President Alejandro Giammattei. She pressed him publicly to support anti-corruption prosecutions, but the lead anti-corruption prosecutor, Juan Francisco Sandoval, was fired just six weeks after Harris and Giammattei exchanged smiles and handshakes.

The dismissal infuriated and embarrassed American officials who had put stock in Giammattei’s assurances that he wanted to combat corruption as much as Harris did.

It also deeply frustrated human rights and anti-corruption activists who met with Harris in Guatemala.

“The government is like the central piece of the corruption now,” said Montenegro of Justice Now. “They’re the ones that are attacking judges. They’re the ones making business with Russian guys.”

The trip quickly turned into a domestic political headache too. Harris was blasted by liberals and activists for telling would-be migrants to "not come" north because they would be "turned back" at the U.S. border. Republicans, meanwhile, sharply criticized her for not visiting the border when she traveled to Mexico after Guatemala. (She went weeks later.)

Harris has since pivoted to Honduras, making a brief trip to attend the inauguration in January of President Xiomara Castro in hopes that she will offer a more stable partnership. But that country’s problems also run deep. Former President Juan Orlando Hernández was extradited to the U.S. in April to face a slew of federal weapons and drug charges, a sign of how deeply embedded the drug trade is in the government.

Even if Castro proves to be on the same page with Harris in fighting that corruption, Harris’ engagement appears to have limits. A day after the vice president spoke with Castro by phone last month to discuss cooperation on economic and migration issues, Castro tweeted that she would not attend the summit unless everyone was invited.

Vice President Kamala Harris holds a virtual bilateral meeting with Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei in April 2021. (Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times)

It is not clear whether Giammattei and Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, will attend. If they join the boycott, Harris' reputation in the area is likely to suffer.

Human rights and anti-corruption activists in Central America have wondered why Harris was given such a difficult assignment. Some have speculated it was to undermine her political prospects. Others worry the political situation in the U.S. and in their countries has tempered her enthusiasm to wade into the region's intractable challenges. Either way, such talk has eroded the faith of some reformers that Harris has the sway, or time, to create lasting change.

Manfredo Marroquin, a Guatemala-based human rights advocate, said he believes Harris has pulled back since her early trip to Guatemala because “she doesn’t want to expose herself” to the potential embarrassment of having her attempts at reform undermined by the region's anti-democratic leaders.

“She knows the risk of having a setback,” he said.

Carmen Rosa de Leon, a human rights activist who is now living in Spain because she fears being jailed by the Giammattei government, said she likes some of the changes she has seen under Harris, including a greater focus on working with local groups to distribute humanitarian aid. Such programs can take years to develop.

The countries' leaders, meanwhile, "are expecting that the Republicans are going to win” in the 2024 presidential election, Rosa de Leon said. “They’re expecting that they just have to wait" for a change in administrations.

Times staff writers Courtney Subramanian and Tracy Wilkinson and staff researcher Cary Schneider contributed to this report.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

We should fear, then embrace, Latin America. But not for the reasons you think

Phil Boas, Arizona Republic
Mon, June 6, 2022

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador will not attend the Summit of the Americas because the United States did not invite less-democratic nations.

The U.S-Mexico border is America’s window to Latin America.

As we look through it today many of us see chaos – a mass of humanity or roughly 7,800 migrants a day – showing up at our doorstep and trying to cross over. That’s nearly five times the number it was five years ago.

Forty-one percent of Americans surveyed in March tell pollsters they worry “a great deal” about illegal immigration, the highest percentage since 2007, Gallup reports. Another 19% are worried “a fair amount.”

As leaders of North, South, Central American nations and the Caribbean meet this week in Los Angeles for the Ninth Summit of the Americas, expectations could not be lower. Many believe the host-nation United States will face-plant.

“The threat is not simply that this year’s summit will be a flop – yet another example of feckless U.S. policy toward Latin America,” wrote Christopher Sabatini, a Latin American expert, in Foreign Policy. “Rather, the real risk is that – after nearly three decades of summitry – this year’s event may be interpreted as a gravestone on U.S. influence in the region.”

We don't understand the Latin American threat

For decades the American people have viewed the world south of us as a constant irritant, pushing northward and putting pressure on our national sovereignty, wages, hospital emergency rooms and broader welfare net.

We often ignore that Latin America is a source of enormous economic bounty. Among the top five U.S. export markets to the Western Hemisphere were Mexico ($256.6 billion), Brazil ($42.9 billion), Chile ($15.7 billion) and Colombia ($14.7 billion), reports the Office of the United States Trade Representative.

Our anxiety about the border and human and drug smuggling often lead to policies to shutter our southern window and Katy bar the door. Our impulse is to build walls, beef up U.S. Border Patrol, deploy National Guard to the border, expand high-tech deterrents and alerts.

All to confront a threat in Latin America.

But Americans don’t understand the greater threat in Latin America, one far larger than our inability to control the human surge at the U.S.-Mexico border. It is potentially more destabilizing and grows more ominous by the day.

Our policy prescription to meet this new challenge requires not roadblocks and fences, but an approach completely counter to today’s impulse. We need to embrace Latin America as never before if we are going to ensure our own national security and the stability of our side of the world – the western hemisphere.

China is growing more belligerent

As the United States welcomes the region’s leadership to talks in one of our great international cities, this would be a good time to pivot.

The nations of the Americas come to Los Angeles this week with an expanded understanding of the world and how it might evolve in the near future. Authoritarian powers in Asia have shown their hand through multiple world crises over the last five years.

In China, Xi Jinping has consolidated power and hardened his control of a nation that grows more militaristic and expansionist. In 2020, China completed the authoritarian takeover of Hong Kong, as millions there protested and later submitted to their Communist overlords.

The Chinese government was slow to tell the world of an emergent and deadly virus that originated in one of its important trade cities – Wuhan – and perhaps in a government laboratory. They stonewalled inquiries into the origins of COVID-19 and were unwilling to meet the transparency standards of democracies even as the virus killed 6.2 million people worldwide.

Unbowed by its role in the pandemic, China became more belligerent and threatening to its neighbors with what came to be called “Wolf Warrior diplomacy,” named for a chest-thumping jingoistic film about Chinese military commandos. In the same month COVID-19 was revealed, a Chinese ambassador threatened Sweden, “We treat our friends with fine wine, but for our enemies we got shotguns.”

In February, China stood aside as Russia invaded its neighbor Ukraine, obliterating large cities with bombs and committing crimes against humanity through summary executions of civilians.

As most of the advanced world protested, the Chinese sat idle. Xi, had after all, just signed a pact with Russian President Vladimir Putin in opposition to the United States and the West – a “friendship” with “no limits.”

The democracies began to worry that China would invade Taiwan.

Latin America embraces China's investments

As the world has become alert to the gathering threat of China and Russia, it is time for us to start listening to the Pentagon brass who have been warning for years that the Chinese and Russians, but particularly the Chinese, have taken an intense interest in Latin America and have begun to pour strategic foundations throughout our southern neighborhood.

In less than 20 years (2002 to 2021), Chinese trade with Latin America has rocketed from $18 billion annually to $450 billion. “Today, China is the second-largest trading partner for Latin America as a whole and the biggest trading partner for Brazil, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay,” wrote Brian Winter, editor of Americas Quarterly, in Foreign Affairs.

“Throughout this dramatic rise, the Chinese have been welcomed by many as ‘the new gringos’ – a fresh-faced, alternative partner to the United States, free of the baggage accumulated over 200-plus years of often imperialist U.S. behavior.”

Gen. Laura Richardson, combatant commander of U.S. Southern Command, told a U.S. Senate panel that the “Chinese have 29 port projects” across the command, which includes Central America, South America and the Caribbean, reports U.S. Naval Institute News.

Twenty-one nations in the region have “signed up” for China’s Belt and Road infrastructure projects, Richardson said. Belt and Road projects are widely seen as a strategic expansion of Chinese power with possible dual military uses.

Adm. Craig Faller, commander of the U.S. Southern Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2021 that China used the COVID-19 pandemic, “to rapidly expand its ‘corrosive, insidious influence’ – from money laundering for transnational gangsters to using its own ships to illegally fish protected waters and benefit from illegal logging and mining,” U.S. Naval Institute News reported.

“... ‘I can’t stress enough the full-court press’ China has put on the Western Hemisphere by promoting itself as an effective vaccine distributor to combat the pandemic, underwriting 40 port expansions or developments, offering questionable loans and pressuring the few remaining countries who recognize Taiwan as an entity to drop diplomatic recognition of the island.”

Meanwhile, democracy is eroding in Latin America

If the U.S.-China rivalry were to become a “hotter conflict,” China could also leverage these strategically located ports to disrupt U.S. commercial and naval access in the Western Hemisphere, wrote Leland Lazarus and Ryan C. Berg, in Foreign Policy.

“In recent years, China has wielded its commercial might to retaliate against Australia for demanding an investigation into the origins of COVID-19, India for ongoing territorial disputes, and Lithuania for increasing ties with Taiwan.”

For their part, Latin Americans nations remain open to widening Chinese investment and influence.

“The idea we are hearing more now – that China poses more risks to us than other big powers – is not convincing to me,” Andrés Rebolledo, a Chilean trade diplomat, told the Christian Science Monitor.

“My advice for Chile and Latin America is the same. Be the sweethearts of everybody, but married to no one.”

Democracy is in decline in Latin America. Venezuela has collapsed. Mexico is slowly sliding away. A few other nations are following Cuba’s lead toward more authoritarian models. All of this has led to resistance to this week’s Summit of the Americas.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador refused to attend after the White House left Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua off the guest list.

That caught the attention of the Chinese, who responded with glee. The Chinese foreign ministry argued the Summit of the Americas should not “be reduced to a ‘Summit of the United States of America,’ ” adding: “Instead of benefiting Latin America . . . the U.S. has brought Latin America wanton exploitation, willful sanctions, inflation, political interference, regime change, assassination of politicians and even armed aggression,” reports the Financial Times in London.

U.S. must raise its game in Latin America

How does the U.S. get back into the game with Latin America? Our nation has broken with its troubled history in the region and begun to treat those south of us more as partners than as subordinates.

We need to work with those countries to reaffirm our commitment to democracy. The democracies in the Americas have on several occasions signed such declarations going back to the 1940s. Time to call on those old values at the Summit of the Americas.

The United States can point to its immigrants from the south to show that the people of the region vote with their feet for liberal democracy and free market economies. Ours is the most welcoming country in the world to immigrants, notes the U.S. State Department. More than a million people a year arrive from abroad to become permanent legal residents.

The nations of the Americas need to condemn what the Russians did to Ukraine, to affirm our commitment to democracy and to dissuade the Chinese from invading Taiwan.

With supply chains roiled by the pandemic and the aggressive moves of Asia’s authoritarian powers, we need to build upon what has already begun – to bring back more manufacturing to the hemisphere to create here shorter, more efficient, more robust supply lines.

We need to invest more in Latin America and help it recover from the pandemic, beginning with greater vaccine distribution.

None of us wants a New Cold War, but we are in a contest of great powers and we will need to again promote democracy heavily to ensure that our own democracy remains secure.

That doesn't begin with construction of a wall.

It starts by making common cause with our fellow democrats in Latin America.

Phil Boas is an editorial columnist at The Arizona Republic. Reach him by email at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Latin America poses a threat worse than a 'border invasion'