Alberto Fernández: “Being a host country does not grant the ability to impose a right of admission”

At 7:30 p.m. in Argentina, President Alberto Fernández’s speech began as head pro tempore of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) with a strong speech in rejection of the exclusion of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua “we would have liked another Summit of the Americas,” he said. In addition, he invited the US president, Joe Biden, to the next CELAC meeting; proposed to organize food production worldwide; and called for the restructuring of the Organization of American States (OAS). At the beginning of his speech, Fernández referred to the indebtedness contracted by Latin American and Caribbean countries, after the pandemic, this region being “the most indebted in the developing world” and added: “The external debt exceeds 77% of the regional gross product.” “From the periphery in which we are placed, Latin America and the Caribbean look with pain at the suffering endured by fraternal peoples: Cuba endures a blockade of more than six decades imposed in the years of the Cold War and Venezuela tolerates another, while a pandemic that devastates humanity drags with it millions of lives,” Fernandez highlighted during a speech. As he considered, “with measures of this type it is sought to condition governments, but in fact only the peoples are hurt.” “We definitely would have wanted another Summit of the Americas. The silence of the absent challenges us. So that this does not happen again, I would like to make it clear for the future that the fact of being the host country of the Summit does not grant the ability to impose a ‘right of admission’ on the member countries of the continent. Dialogue on diversity is the best instrument to promote democracy, modernization and the fight against inequality,” he said. In addition, he took aim at the Trump administration and called it “harmful” to the region. Meanwhile, he criticized the use of the OAS to “facilitate the coup d’état” in Bolivia; the “appropriation” of the Inter-American Development Bank; the breakdown of “the relations of rapprochement with Cuba carried out by the government of Barack Obama; and the “intervention” of the IMF to “facilitate unsustainable indebtedness in favor of an Argentine government in decline.” Alberto Fernández invited Joe Biden to participate in the next CELAC meeting and said: “I dream that in a fraternally united America, we commit ourselves to all human beings who inhabit our continent have the right to bread, to the earth, to the roof and to a dignified work.” As for the OAS, Fernández asked to restructure it “immediately removing those who lead it,” if the organization “wants to be respected and return to being the regional political platform for which it was created.” And he stressed that regional development banks “have to return in their governance to Latin America and the Caribbean.” Referring to the consequences on food production, due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he said: “I propose two main objectives: let us organize food and protein production continentally and develop our enormous energy and mineral potential critical to the ecological transition.” In his role as head pro tempore of CELAC, he referred to climate change: “The Caribbean suffers dramatically and there is no time to wait for answers. We are environmental creditors. We provide oxygen to the planet and we are not responsible for emitting the gases that cause the greenhouse effect. The environmental injustice we experience destroys our continent. We must face the ecological transition with sufficient financial aid to mobilize innovation with social justice.” Argentina is a peaceful country. We continue to claim through diplomatic channels the legitimate rights that we have over our Malvinas Islands. We continue to rely on dialogue. After the tragedy of the pandemic, we see wars as the triumph of human insensitivity,” he concluded.

Original source in Spanish