President Joe Biden is facing enormous difficulties five months before the crucial midterm elections in November, which could end his term, not legally but de facto, if the Republicans win a majority in the House of Representatives and a few more seats in the Senate. The violent rampage in the country (indiscriminate shootings almost daily) and the proliferation of armed militias throughout the country place it in what some analysts, such as philosophy professor Jason Stanley (Yale University), have called "a legal phase of fascism," a phase that, depending on the evolution of the global situation of the country (economic, political, and social), can give way to the plain and simple consolidation of a single-party fascist regime. (1)

On the other hand, the economic situation is marked by the extension of poverty and a violent escalation of prices, especially of energy and food, unleashed by the absurd economic sanctions directed against Russia that triggered a "boomerang effect" that is plunging the economies of most of the world into an inflationary nightmare. The inability to guarantee formula milk for millions of children - something only conceivable that could happen in an underdeveloped country - accentuates the economic malaise, which is reflected in a weak 39% approval of the presidential management according to the most recent poll of the Associated Press. (2) 

Doubts about his mental capacity to continue in office; a disastrous foreign policy that instead of seeking a diplomatic settlement of the crisis in Ukraine fuels the escalation of the conflict (for the benefit of the thugs of the military-industrial complex); the insane incoherence of the policy toward China, warned a few weeks ago nothing less than by Henry Kissinger and the worries of the leaders of his party in the face of what they fear may announce the return of a "Recharged Trump", against whom there is no alternative leadership among the Democrats, all this, we say, constitutes the ominous backdrop for the Summit of the Americas.

Why would a President beset by such formidable problems call a meeting like the Los Angeles summit? Because of the simplistic reading that US governments have of what is going on in this part of the world, which they intend to control as they did for much of the 20th century. They do not have the faintest idea of ​​the changes that have taken place in the region from the arrival of Chavez onwards, and which have transformed - drastically in several countries - the perception of the governments of the area about the United States; recognizing that its decline as a hegemonic power is irreversible; that we are witnessing the dawn of a new geopolitical era; that Washington has always “stayed on words” and never kept its promises; and that it only sought to benefit the business of companies in its country and nothing more. 

This is a constant from the Quebec Summit (2001) until today. From the clumsy reading of the diplomatic establishment of that country, it was thought convenient to convene a meeting, with the irritating exclusion of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, to try to align the governments of Latin America and the Caribbean in the wars of the empire: in the current one, against Russia and the one to come, according to the mediocre Secretary of State Antony Blinken, against China. A meaningful detail escaped to them, nothing minor by the way: that the Asian giant is the first or second commercial and financial partner of almost all the countries in the area, and that even governments very inclined to follow Washington's directives their submission does not reach as much as to bite the hand of China, which is the one who feeds them.

That is why, as President Nicolás Maduro said in a recent interview, the Summit has no agenda, no plans, no projects, nothing! (3) Its only goal is to perpetuate the exclusion of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, and nothing else. It goes without saying that there will be no joint declaration and, probably, a very serious discussion will arise on issues that afflict our peoples. In any case, it can be assumed that the CELAC countries demand new definitions and that it may be Alberto Fernández, president pro tempore of CELAC, who will be in charge of saying what so many people and so many governments think of our relationship with the United States, including, for example, that Washington must put an end to its odious practice of intervention and destabilization in the countries of the area, something ratified a thousand times in the declassified documents of the United States government. 

The list would be endless and is known to all. Another issue: to put an end to Washington's scandalous double talk on human rights, because, how can one explain that the United States (as well as  Canada) is not a party to the American Convention on Human Rights, or that it ignores the jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights based in San José, Costa Rica and of the International Criminal Court. How is it possible that the self-proclaimed champion of human rights on a global level commits such flagrant contradictions?

Even more: Latin America and the Caribbean have defined themselves as a “Zone of Peace.” How to explain the existence of 76 military bases that, according to the Southern Command, have been established in our countries? Bases to fight against whom, where is the enemy army of the United States that justifies the presence of so many bases? There are no armed forces of any extra-continental country in the region: no Russian troops, no Chinese troops, no Iranian troops. So, if there are no rival forces, could it be that these bases have been installed to guarantee exclusive access to our natural resources or to control and subdue the peoples of the region in case they decide to march in a direction that is incompatible with American interests? 

The successive summits did not fail to demand that our countries open trade while extolling the virtues of free trade without subsidies or unfair commercial practices. However, the US economy is, in many trade items, strongly protectionist, with tariff and non-tariff barriers and "import quotas" used as disciplining instruments for smaller countries. But when, starting in the 1990s, the countries of the area adopted the precepts of the Washington Consensus, the results of which were a social holocaust of enormous proportions. President Joe Biden himself has repeated over and over again that the “trickle down theory” does not work and that even in the US, it obscenely concentrated wealth, increased the numbers of the poor, and made its economy lose competitiveness. Why do they keep asking us to apply a recipe that is a total failure? The Argentine experience with the government of Mauricio Macri once again demonstrated the devastating effects of the policies of liberalization, privatization, and indiscriminate opening of our economies. We must not go down that road again.

Finally, it should be demanded right now, without any delay, to put an end to the criminal blockade decreed against Cuba, the longest in universal history. Not even the Mongol empires, or that of the Han Dynasty, the Byzantine, the Roman, the Persian, and the Athenian empires ever subjected a small rebellious country to a sixty-two-year blockade like the one imposed on Cuba for having taken over her destiny in her hands. The blockade is a crime against humanity and must be ended without further delay. Instead, it intensified during the pandemic, adding new doses of immorality and cruelty to the policies of the empire. The same can be said of the blockades and permanent aggressions launched against Venezuela and Nicaragua. Blockades and commercial sanctions cause suffering in the attacked populations but they also corrode the moral foundations of the political order within the empire. That is why Jason Stanley, quoted above, sees approaching the terrifying specter of fascism in America. The crime of the blockade becomes, dialectically, a poison that corrodes and destroys the soul of the nation and the governments that perpetrates this crime.

References:

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/22/america-fascism-legal-phase

[2] https://news.gallup.com/poll/329384/presidential-approval-ratings-joe-biden.aspx

[3] https://youtu.be/M1wqhVNuhgg