CARACAS, June 10 (Xinhua) -- This week's ninth Summit of the Americas has thrown into relief the U.S. waning influence in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to Venezuelan political observers.
Key regional leaders did not attend the summit held from June 6 to 10 in the U.S. city of Los Angeles, mainly to protest the exclusion of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, noted researcher and political analyst Diego Sequera.
And the event culminated in a series of lackluster proposals not expected to have much of an impact on the continent, Sequera told Xinhua in an interview Friday.
The United States, he believes, no longer enjoys the level of credibility and sincerity that it may have in the past, a factor that prevented it from reaching the goals it set out at the start of the summit.
"Not having achieved the objectives it set is a failure. The fact that consensus was not established, by hook or by crook, also makes this summit a failure, and that failure is another symptom of the general crisis the United States is undergoing," the analyst said.
U.S. proposals to tackle one of the region's biggest issues, mass immigration, "were just more of the same" strategies that have proven ineffective at stemming the flow of migrants, he said.
The notable absence of regional presidents and protests outside the summit venue also highlighted Washington's lack of convening power and public anger at the U.S. policy toward Latin America, he said.
At one point, a young activist lambasted Luis Almagro, the secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS), which periodically convenes the summit, for his alleged participation in the coup that ousted Bolivia's government in 2019.
"It is not easy to say what is in store, but the decline of Washington is now an unquestionable factor in our region," said the analyst.
A researcher in international relations, Luis Ricardo Delgado told Xinhua that discord, rather than consensus, marked the 2022 summit.
"More than consensus, there were significant disagreements between the participating countries," said Delgado.
The initiatives proposed at the summit are invariably mere formalities without real substance, said the professor of social sciences at the University of Carabobo.
Washington proposed an economic recovery plan called the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity to be developed only with its most trusted partners, which "distorts the continental character it purports," said Delgado.
The limited scope of the plan is a direct result of the fact that the White House "insists on injecting ideology into its international ties," he said.
As a consequence, the Summit of the Americas "does not substantially modify the current 'status quo' of international relations in the hemisphere," so its impact will be practically "nil," he added.
"Excluding countries such as Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela led to, among other things, the absence of the president of Mexico, the region's main Spanish-speaking country," noted Delgado.
In addition, "various Caribbean, Central American and South American leaders did not attend the summit, which substantially undermined its convening power and its decision-making capacity," he said.
The summit made it increasingly clear that "Latin America and the Caribbean does not accept excluding governments and countries from multilateral forums, regardless of their ideological affiliation," said Delgado. ■
