Cubas CELAC Summit: Masking the Truth of a Failed Diplomacy

IASW | Tuesday, January 28th, 2014 |

BY- JERRY BREWER

Havana, the capital of the Castro brothers Cuba, will play host to the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) summit this January 28-30. The heads of state and government representatives from 32 Latin American and Caribbean nations are scheduled to attend. Conversely, Cubans who will apparently not be allowed anywhere near the meetings are crying foul, even with strained abilities to communicate to an outside free world. After all, CELAC was created to deepen Latin American integration. Evidently Cuba is disallowing any integration by dissidents, who seek to have a free voice and be heard on their own island, with the leaders of other Latin American nations. Furthermore, it has been claimed by many that some of those who will attend have expressed no intentions to attend any peaceful events organized by the opposition. Is this snubbing of dissidents and removal from the summit areas indicative solely of the Castro family dictatorship? CELAC, it has been said, was created to reduce the once overwhelming influence of the United States on the politics and economics of Latin America. CELAC was seen as an alternative to the Organization of American States (OAS), a regional body organized for the most part by Washington in

1948 as a perceived countermeasure to suspected Soviet influence in the region. It is clear that key leftist dictator-like presidents led the charge for CELAC. In February 2010, at the 23rd Rio Group summit in Mexico, Venezuelas late President Hugo Chavez said, Now here, in Mexico, a document, a commitment, the creation of a body of Latin America and the Caribbean, without the USA, without Canada (). Now we can say from Latin America, from Mexico, (that) we have revived the dream and project of Bolivar. A protg of Chavez, President Evo Morales of Bolivia, said in an interview in 2010, A union of Latin American countries is the weapon against imperialism. It is necessary to create a regional body that excludes the United States and Canada. Where there are U.S. military bases that do not respect democracy, where there is a political empire with blackmailers, with its constraints, there is no development for that country, and especially there is no social peace and, therefore, it is the best time for prime ministers of Latin America and the Caribbean to gestate this great new organization without the United States to free our peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Cuban government must not have received the memo version indicated by Morales to free our peoples in Latin America. As well, the Cuban government has warned that it will not allow the opposition to meet during the CELAC summit. Reports abound that indicate the 32 Latin American and Caribbean heads of state and government representatives scheduled to attend the summit in Havana will skip the international diplomatic practice of meeting with opposition leaders or independent civil society groups. Mexican President Enrique Pea Nieto, who wants to be seen as part of a new generation of leaders of his once authoritarian Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), reportedly has no plans to meet with any member of the peaceful opposition while in Cuba. Mexican Foreign Minister Jose Antonio Meade commented, President Pea Nieto will participate in Cuba in an agenda related to the CELAC summit. He has accepted an official visit, and thats the framework in which it will develop. Dissidents, such as Guillermo Farias, who is one of the Cuban opposition leaders planning to attend a counter-summit in Havana, was quoted recently as saying, Cubas secret police have already paid a visit to several dissidents,

including blogger Yoanni Sanchez, warning them not to hold the opposition summit. Farias statements show the frustrations of Castro regime opponents, in light of what are perceived to be gestures of goodwill by attendees of the summit towards their hosts, which may posture the Cuban government favorably and perhaps strengthen it. Without the opposition in Cuba being welcomed, or even acknowledged, by the attending leaders, and with some dissenters already removed, representatives of free nations in attendance should question at the very least why the Cuban people have not had a chance to vote freely in elections for more than 50 years. President Raul Castro assumed the presidency of CELAC in Santiago, Chile on January 28, 2013. This, obviously, was seen by many as clearly at odds with the organizations stated aims the promotion of democracy, free trade and free speech. At that event, Castro described what he called a common vision for the Latin American and Caribbean homeland. Perhaps this common vision he described falsely labels Cuban dissidents as counterrevolutionaries who are not welcome in the Summits so-called open process. Regardless of diplomatic dialogue and visions of a unified Latin America, the Castro brothers repressive dictatorship has been hard at work preparing for the arrival of those attending the Summit. And, in what appears to be the regimes growing desire to silence dissidents, Jose Daniel Ferrer and Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, who are described as prominent human rights activists and leaders of the opposition movement in Cuba, were arrested last Friday by Cuban State Security officials.
Note: Originally published at MexiData.info. Jerry Brewer is the Chief Executive Officer of Criminal Justice International Associates, a global threat mitigation firm headquartered in northern Virginia. His website is located at www.cjiausa.org. TWITTER: CJIAUSA Jerry Brewer Published Archives