34 The Americas The Economist May 21st 2022
W
hen theUnited States hosted the
first Summit of the Americas, in
Miami in 1994, the occasion had a ring of
celebrity. Democracy had spread across
Latin America and with it economic
liberalisation. At the request of the Latin
Americans, the 33 countries present—all
except Communist Cuba—agreed to
work on a Free Trade Area of the Amer
icas (ftaa). As Joe Biden prepares to host
the ninth summit in Los Angeles next
month, the picture looks very different.
This time the gettogether seems certain
to highlight Latin America’s internal
disagreements and its partial retreat
from democracy and free trade.
To start with, it is not clear who will
be there. Mr Biden’s team say that they
intend to invite only countries with
democratically elected leaders, which
excludes the leftist dictatorships in
Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Cuba,
which was invited to the past two sum
mits, held in Panama and Lima, is cam
paigning against its exclusion. In re
sponse, Bolivia and Honduras have said
they will not attend. So has Mexico’s
president, Andrés Manuel López Obra
dor, though he added that his foreign
minister would go. For different reasons,
Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s rightwing leader,
seems unlikely to attend. A fan of Donald
Trump, he has not spoken to Mr Biden.
Others, such as Argentina and Chile, say
they want all countries to be present but
that they will nevertheless turn up.
Since Brazil and Mexico are the sec
ond and thirdmostpopulous countries
in the Americas, the absences of Mr
Bolsonaro and Mr López Obrador would
hurt. The latter especially, since Mr
Biden’s team wants to forge a deal to
manage migration at the summit. The
postcovid surge in migrants at Mexico’s
border with the United States is a nightmare for the White House. But migration
is a headache for many Latin American
countries, too: some 6m Venezuelans have
left home, as have more than 100,000
Cubans in recent months. That is chiefly a
result of their own governments’ econom
ic mismanagement, but some Latin Amer
icans blame American sanctions.
American diplomats are quietly coun
tering the prospective boycotts. The Eng
lishspeaking Caribbean, which has
friendly ties to both Cuba and Venezuela,
seems likely to reverse a previous decision
to stay away. And Mr López Obrador, who
received American envoys this week, may
also change his mind. On May 16th the
Biden administration announced that it
would ease some of Mr Trump’s restric
tions on remittances, travel and flights to
Cuba. In March American officials held
talks in Caracas with Nicolás Maduro,
Venezuela’s ruler, in which they offered to
soften sanctions if he agreed to a return to
democracy. To ease talks between the
government and the opposition, this week
the administration allowed Chevron, an
American oil firm, to renegotiate its operating licence in Venezuela.
In Los Angeles Mr Biden will say that
“the region’s democratic selfdetermina
tion is something we see as fundamen
tal...regardless of countries’ ideological
preferences,” according to an adminis
tration official. Yet some leftist govern
ments in the region don’t see democracy
as a dividing line. “We should focus on
economic development and try to reach a
new political understanding with the
United States,” says a Mexican official.
In 2001, on the day of the terrorist
attack on the World Trade Centre, foreign
ministers from the Americas signed a
charter pledging to defend democracy
where it is under attack. Yet this kind of
evangelising for democracy is a recent
development. An older tradition is re
emerging, which invokes noninterven
tion in domestic affairs.
That is driven, in part, by what some
see as the United States’ selective sup
port for democracy. Its diminishing
influence in Latin America, a function of
China’s growing presence and its own
political dysfunction, does not help. A
dozen ambassadorial posts in the region
are vacant, with some nominees blocked
by Senate Republicans. Moreover Mr
Trump’s grandstanding against Cuba,
Nicaragua and Venezuela failed to weak
en, let alone dislodge, their regimes.
There are pragmatic reasons to think that
talking works better than ostracism.
Staying away from the summit would
not just fall into the same trap, and reveal
the Latin American left’s double stan
dards on democracy. It would also send
the message that an economically stag
nant region, which scotched the idea of
the ftaayears ago, has nothing to dis
cuss with what is still the world’s biggest
market. That would be a declaration of
parochialism and failure.Latin America is split on the importance of defending democracyBelloDistant neighbours
even though 56% claim African descent. In
2021 91% of religious hate crimes reported
in Rio de Janeiro were against adherents of
AfroBrazilian religions, who comprise
just 2% of the state’s population.
Brazil’s first shellthrowers arrived
among the 5m slaves who survived the hor
ror of being shipped across the Atlantic
from west Africa. The practice continued,
mixed with Catholicism, among commu
nities of freed Yoruba. Despite centuries of
repression, it still dictates the rhythm of
life within the terreirosor temples of Can
domblé. No big decision is taken withoutfirst consulting the shells.
But shellreading has become “de
tached from religion”, says Augusto Waga,
a divination scholar at the Federal Univer
sity of Rio de Janeiro. Baba King, an Ifá
priest who runs a temple in São Paulo,
reckons 70% of the 40,000 clients he has
seen over the years did not share his faith.
The pandemic has made shellreading
more secular, and digital. As society shut
down, the internet offered virtual divina
tion stalls that could compete with the
temple. On one website, a fortune teller
who specialises in difficult love affairs offers búzios, and other readings, for 100 reais
($20) a pop. (Her most solicited service is
“rival’s removal”.) For Mãe Carmem, such
upstarts insult her training. You can’t train
to be a doctor for three days and then dish
out advice on the internet, she says.
But that does not mean tradition
trumps opportunity. On New Year’s Eve, a
busy time for fortunetellers, videos of
Mãe Carmem’s readings appear on You
Tube. She takes live radio callins. The hu
man connection with the orixásendures.
The mediums by which theiranswers are
revealed change with the times.n