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Summit shows how much Yanqui influence had waned
KEEBLE McFARLANE
Saturday, April 21, 2012
THE historic coastal resort city of Cartagena, Colombia, was host last weekend to representatives of 33 countries of the western hemisphere and the usual hordes of advisers, assistants, journalistic observers and protesters.
The event was billed as the 6th Summit of the Americas, and while the discussions were relatively civil, the two-day meeting ended without an agreement. The big items on the agenda were the lucrative and destructive drug trade and how the countries of the entire region could meet while excluding one country - Cuba.
To the host of the summit, President Juan Manuel Santos, it would be "unacceptable" to hold another summit without Cuba's presence. In a frank and hard-hitting speech, he told his guests, "The isolation, the embargo, the indifference, the looking the other way, won't work ... This path is no longer acceptable in today's world. It's an anachronism that keeps us anchored in a Cold War era that was overcome decades ago."
These are not the words of some wild-eyed leftie - these sentiments came from the closest and most reliable US ally in the region and a leader many outsiders regard as a moderate.
The more radical ones actually stayed away. Ecuador, which had pushed for the inclusion of Cuba at this meeting, wasn't there. Nicaragua's president, Daniel Ortega, did not attend, and Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, who is undergoing treatment for cancer, couldn't make it.
Their group - the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas, known in the region as ALBA - is a bloc founded eight years ago at Venezuela's prodding. It is a vocal critic of US policies and its members say they will not take part in any future summit held without Cuba. That resonates with all the other nations except the US and Canada.
Both countries maintain their objection to Cuba because it is the only nation in the hemisphere that doesn't practise democracy - a quite reasonable objection, but one which also provides a fig leaf for the US, which has friendly trade and diplomatic relations with a fairly recent enemy, Vietnam, where thousands of its young men were killed in a brutal war, and such bastions of freedom and democracy as China, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Kuwait.
It's easy for the US to deal with these folks, because they don't have much of a presence in the US. But there is a fairly large contingent of Cuban emigrés in the US, and they constitute a formidable political bloc in American domestic politics. Since the first wave of anti-Castro Cubans flooded into Miami more than half-a-century ago, every politician seeking the presidency has to make a pilgrimage to the Sunshine State to court their support by heaping opprobrium on the Castros and pledging to "liberate" the island.
When the Cubans went, Florida was a relative backwater with a smallish population. However, in the intervening years, large numbers of people from the colder northern states have migrated south and it now has considerable clout in the electoral college. Don't forget - this is an election year - and both Barack Obama and his Republican opponent will be doing everything they can to secure the state's 29 electoral votes.
The democracy argument doesn't impress everybody - the Secretary-General of the Organisation of American States, Jose Miguel Insulza, says, "Democracy is advancing in the Americas and the best way to strengthen it is not with external pressure, impositions or exclusions."
At the insistence of the United States, the OAS threw Cuba out at a hemispheric meeting in Punte del Este, Uruguay, 50 years ago. The grounds were that Cuba was a Marxist state and incompatible with the norms of the region, which, at the time ironically, was full of dictatorships - right-wing ones. The OAS eventually voted in 2009 to lift the exclusion, but Cuba has declined to re-enter the regional body.
Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/colum...#ixzz1sg2dB5Ml
KEEBLE McFARLANE
Saturday, April 21, 2012
THE historic coastal resort city of Cartagena, Colombia, was host last weekend to representatives of 33 countries of the western hemisphere and the usual hordes of advisers, assistants, journalistic observers and protesters.
The event was billed as the 6th Summit of the Americas, and while the discussions were relatively civil, the two-day meeting ended without an agreement. The big items on the agenda were the lucrative and destructive drug trade and how the countries of the entire region could meet while excluding one country - Cuba.
To the host of the summit, President Juan Manuel Santos, it would be "unacceptable" to hold another summit without Cuba's presence. In a frank and hard-hitting speech, he told his guests, "The isolation, the embargo, the indifference, the looking the other way, won't work ... This path is no longer acceptable in today's world. It's an anachronism that keeps us anchored in a Cold War era that was overcome decades ago."
These are not the words of some wild-eyed leftie - these sentiments came from the closest and most reliable US ally in the region and a leader many outsiders regard as a moderate.
The more radical ones actually stayed away. Ecuador, which had pushed for the inclusion of Cuba at this meeting, wasn't there. Nicaragua's president, Daniel Ortega, did not attend, and Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, who is undergoing treatment for cancer, couldn't make it.
Their group - the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas, known in the region as ALBA - is a bloc founded eight years ago at Venezuela's prodding. It is a vocal critic of US policies and its members say they will not take part in any future summit held without Cuba. That resonates with all the other nations except the US and Canada.
Both countries maintain their objection to Cuba because it is the only nation in the hemisphere that doesn't practise democracy - a quite reasonable objection, but one which also provides a fig leaf for the US, which has friendly trade and diplomatic relations with a fairly recent enemy, Vietnam, where thousands of its young men were killed in a brutal war, and such bastions of freedom and democracy as China, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Kuwait.
It's easy for the US to deal with these folks, because they don't have much of a presence in the US. But there is a fairly large contingent of Cuban emigrés in the US, and they constitute a formidable political bloc in American domestic politics. Since the first wave of anti-Castro Cubans flooded into Miami more than half-a-century ago, every politician seeking the presidency has to make a pilgrimage to the Sunshine State to court their support by heaping opprobrium on the Castros and pledging to "liberate" the island.
When the Cubans went, Florida was a relative backwater with a smallish population. However, in the intervening years, large numbers of people from the colder northern states have migrated south and it now has considerable clout in the electoral college. Don't forget - this is an election year - and both Barack Obama and his Republican opponent will be doing everything they can to secure the state's 29 electoral votes.
The democracy argument doesn't impress everybody - the Secretary-General of the Organisation of American States, Jose Miguel Insulza, says, "Democracy is advancing in the Americas and the best way to strengthen it is not with external pressure, impositions or exclusions."
At the insistence of the United States, the OAS threw Cuba out at a hemispheric meeting in Punte del Este, Uruguay, 50 years ago. The grounds were that Cuba was a Marxist state and incompatible with the norms of the region, which, at the time ironically, was full of dictatorships - right-wing ones. The OAS eventually voted in 2009 to lift the exclusion, but Cuba has declined to re-enter the regional body.
Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/colum...#ixzz1sg2dB5Ml
