U.S. Hosts Some of the Americas

    Lopez Obrador

 MEXICO CITY — 

Despite a major U.S. lobbying effort, the president of Mexico hinted strongly on Friday that he will not attend a high-stakes regional summit next month in Los Angeles because the Biden administration refuses to invite a trio of leftist governments.

Mexico is arguably the most important Latin American participant in the upcoming Summit of the Americas, which administration officials have said will include a special focus on immigration. It starts June 6.

 

In his daily marathon press conference, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said he was still awaiting a response from President Biden or the U.S. State Department to his demand that all countries in the Western Hemisphere be invited.

Every host nation for the summit, which occurs every three or four years, has discretion in drawing up the guest list, and most if not all countries are routinely included. This is the first time the summit is taking place in the U.S. since its 1994 inaugural session in Miami.

Administration officials have made it clear they will not invite Venezuela or Nicaragua, because those countries’ authoritarian leaders do not represent the model of democracy Washington and others in the region seek to promote.

U.S. officials also said initially they would not invite Cuba, then suggested they might welcome a “low level” delegation from Havana. A diminished status did not appeal to Cuban officials, however, and President Miguel Díaz-Canel said earlier this week he will not attend.

A new student movement emerges in Mexico

 Abigail Thorton

A nascent student group calling itself Yo Soy 132 (or I Am 132) held its second national march June 10, in protest of Mexican presidential candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto. Estimates had the crowd numbers in Mexico City alone at over 90,000–almost double the estimated 46,000 that were present for the first march against the candidate in mid-May.

Much of the recent organizing in the country has been explicitly against the possible victory of Peña Nieto, a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI by its Spanish initials, that is positioned to potentially return to power after 12 years out of the presidency and before that over 70 years in power. The PRI is considered by many to have been an authoritarian regime, and some Mexicans fear the possibility that with the return of the PRI, there could also be a rollback of freedoms in this still fledgling democracy.

Recent momentum and interest in what many had considered to be a lackluster presidential campaign has been credited to the development of this new student movement. At a campus visit by Peña Nieto to the Universidad Iberoamericana (known as the Ibero) on May 11, students at this private university surprised many by surrounding the conference and shouting accusations, questions and demands that the candidate leave the campus. Amidst this unexpected protest, Peña Nieto left abruptly, with students in pursuit. Videos of the scene were quickly uploaded to various social media networks, and images of the candidate fleeing the campus immediately went viral.

Read the entire piece. http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/7160

The Americas Program