CELAC & Puebla Group Demand an Inclusive Summit of the Americas

On Monday, the Puebla Group and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) called for a Summit of the Americas without excluding any nation.

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“The Puebla Group invites the U.S. President Joe Biden's administration to hold the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles in June, without excluding the governments of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua”, the Latin American leftist leaders said.

Leaving countries that have suffered "the social costs of the predatory impact of the COVID-19" out of the Summit makes no sense, given that the central theme of such international event will be precisely the regional management of the pandemic and climate change.

"All Latin American countries require international cooperation and economic exchange to be able to bear the pandemic-related social costs and attend to the economic reactivation," the Puebla Group recalled

"Some of them, like Cuba, could even contribute a lot in new experiences for the prevention and eradication of the virus and its possible new variations," said the Puebla Group, which is made up of politicians such as former presidents Dilma Rousseff (Brazil), Ernesto Samper (Colombia), Rafael Correa (Ecuador), Fernando Lugo (Paraguay), and Martin Torrijos (Panama).

Besides recalling that previous summits included all countries, those leftist leaders pointed out that the exclusion of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela would show discrimination for ideological reasons, which would affect the possibilities of regional cooperation to overcome the coming crises.

"The 9th Summit of the Americas represents a great opportunity to build a meeting space in which all the countries of the hemisphere participate in an open and inclusive manner, under the unifying objective of concerting joint actions," CELAC said, adding that "it is essential that we overcome ideological divisions and focus on finding common ground."