tuesday, june 7 , 2022. the washington post EZ RE A
BY CLEVE R. WOOTSON JR.
Mexican President Andrés
Manuel López Obrador said on
Monday that he will not attend
this week’s Summit of the Ameri-
cas in Los Angeles, after Presi-
dent Biden declined to extend
invitations to three authoritarian
countries in the Western Hemi-
sphere — Cuba, Venezuela and
Nicaragua.
The snub by America’s south-
ern neighbor, two days before
Biden lands in California, is a
blow to Biden’s effort to assert
regional leadership and address
issues ranging from climate
change to immigration. While the
announcement was not a com-
plete surprise, the White House
had been hoping López Obrador,
one of the region’s most promi-
nent leaders, would attend the
gathering.
White House press secretary
Karine Jean-Pierre said officials
have been speaking to López
Obrador and other Latin Ameri-
can leaders for more than a
month and the administration
was not caught off guard by the
announcement. But she said
Biden nonetheless felt compelled
to take a “principled stand” on
the human rights abuses of the
three countries.
López Obrador’s move reflects
the challenges of Biden’s oft-stat-
ed view that the world is facing a
broad confrontation between de-
mocracies and dictatorships.
In an effort to offset the an-
nouncement, Jean-Pierre said
López Obrador would visit Wash-
ington in July to meet with Biden
directly. She also praised Mexico’s
contributions to this week’s sum-
mit — which focuses on issues
such as democracy, clean energy,
politics, migration and recovery
from the coronavirus pandemic
— and noted that the country’s
foreign minister would attend.
“It is important to acknowl-
edge that there are a range of
views on this question in our
hemisphere, as there are in the
United States,” Jean-Pierre said.
“The president’s principled posi-
tion is that we do not believe that
dictators should be invited,
which is the reason that the
[Mexican] president has decided
not to attend.”
During the summit, which offi-
cially started Monday, leaders
and others from North, Central
and South America, and the Ca-
ribbean plan to explore economic
and general goals for the Western
Hemisphere. But the meeting is
also a test of U.S. influence in the
region, particularly as Biden’s
foreign policy has been largely
focused on Europe and Asia.
He has devoted much of his
attention to Ukraine, which is
struggling to defend itself against
the Russian invasion. And he
visited Japan and South Korea
last month in an effort to blunt
the growing economic and mili-
tary might of China.
Biden has sought to stress that
his presidency marks a step away
from “America First” polices un-
der President Donald Trump that
treated relationships, particular-
ly in Latin America, as moretransactional. He has sought to
strengthen ties with countries
that share American values.
Still, that can be a tricky cri-
terion. Biden held a “Summit for
Democracy” in December, for ex-
ample, but invited some coun-
tries like Pakistan and the Philip-
pines that hardly seemed to qual-
ify.
The United States is hosting
the Summit of the Americas for
the first time since its inception
in 1994 and, as host, has wide
leeway over the official invitees.
But the summit has exposed both
regional disputes and bilateral
tensions.
Several Latin American lead-
ers had already opted to not
attend, including the leaders of
Guatemala and Honduras, north-
ern triangle countries that havebeen at the center of the adminis-
tration’s efforts to stem illegal
immigration. Honduras is send-
ing a lower-level delegation in
protest of the exclusion.
Jean-Pierre said 68 delega-
tions and at least 23 heads of
government would be represent-
ed at the summit, allowing partic-
ipants to engage in conversations
about matters of regional impor-
tance. “Our attendance is going to
be on par with what we’ve had in
the past,” she said. “Yes, we’re
going to have these couple of
countries that are not attending,
but [Biden] believes that he
needs to stick by his principles.”
Yet the decision to not invite
the trio of authoritarian coun-
tries has opened up the United
States to criticism over which
countries in labels as totalitarianpariahs.
Chilean President Gabriel Bo-
ric said Monday that while he
would never stop using his voice
“to defend human rights,” the
United States’ exclusion of Nica-
ragua, Cuba and Venezuela was
“not the right path.”
“We think it’s an error, a mis-
take,” he told reporters in Ottawa
at a news conference with Cana-
dian Prime Minister Justin
Trudeau, “and we’re going to say
that during the summit.”
He added that the snub might
be counterproductive, allowing
the excluded leaders to cite it as
evidence of the United States’
hostility. “When the United
States claims to exclude certain
countries from the summit,
they’re actually then reinforcing
the position that these othercountries take in their own coun-
tries,” Boric said.
Trudeau added that it’s “ex-
tremely important that we have
an opportunity to engage with
our fellow hemispheric partners
— some like-minded, some less
like-minded.” He did not say ex-
plicitly whether he agreed with
the exclusion of the three coun-
tries, but noted that Ottawa has
long had an approach to Cuba
that differs from Washington’s.
At Wednesday’s press briefing,
Jean-Pierre faced questions
about why the United States con-
tinues to deal with oil-rich Saudi
Arabia, whose crown prince is
accused of being the architect of
the murder and dismemberment
of Washington Post journalist Ja-
mal Khashoggi in 2018. Saudi
dissidents have been angered by
reports that Biden is planning a
presidential trip to Saudi Arabia
without demanding accountabil-
ity for Khashoggi’s killing or im-
provements in human rights.
In March, the Biden White
House sent a delegation to dis-
cuss energy sanctions with Ven-
ezuela, another country with sig-
nificant oil reserves. The meeting
happened weeks after Russia in-
vaded Ukraine, as the adminis-
tration sought to blunt the politi-
cal and economic impact of soar-
ing gas prices. The regime of
Venezuelan President Nicolás
Maduro is being investigated by
an international criminal court
for crimes against humanity.
Sen. Robert Menendez
(D-N.J.), chairman of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee,
said he was pleased that the
administration was excluding
“authoritarian thugs,” but that
López Obrador’s absence “will
unfortunately set back efforts to
continue repairing the relation-
ship and to cooperate on issues
pertinent to the well-being of
both our nations.”
He accused López Obrador of
choosing to stand “with dictators
and despots over representing
the interests of the Mexican peo-
ple in a summit with his partners
from across the hemisphere.”
But Jean-Pierre stressed that
the United States’ relationship
with Mexico was unaltered, say-
ing, “We see them as a friend.”Amanda Coletta contributed to this
report.Mexico’s president snubs Biden’s invitation to summit
Yamil Lage/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, center, in Havana on May 8. López Obrador declined to attend the Summit of the
Americas this year because the United States refused to invite three authoritarian countries — Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.Tuesday, June 7 at 12:30 p.m.
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