June 10, 2022
The promise coming out of the Summit of the Americas 2022 was heartening. We had Caribbean and Latin American leaders covering all of the major issues in front of the world’s only superpower. We also had the world’s only superpower come down to the level of its neighbours and for the first time in months they weren’t fixated on the Middle East, Asia and Eastern Europe. An American diplomat said years ago that Latin America could fall off of the face of the map and America would not skip a beat. The same is still true to some extent as our economies are still growing slowly and exports are now becoming more valued.
Only one spot was missing from this Summit was the development aid needed for Haiti. It’s as if they keep forgetting that Haiti is a part of the Americas too, but Belize Prime Minister Briceno touched on the support needed to cancel some of this debt incurred during this pandemic, and hopefully that picks up traction and leads into support for Haiti in some way, shape or form.
Issues as hard as climate change down to things like digital transformation were lectured and it is what we need to reset the agenda for this year and moving beyond.
Of course, Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua were disinvited from this year’s events. Hopefully they were able to watch the livestreams. To me, this is not how we do things. How can you expect to foster change if you exclude people? What you do is you enforce their wrongness because they have nothing else to measure their behaviour against.
Did the 50 plus years of the embargo against Cuba help it? Of course not and it would never work. We need inclusion at a time like this, especially after COVID-19 has taught us that we can all be touched by something greater than any one man or country.