CELAC-EU Summit

There is no shortage of straight talk from the CELAC leaders at the EU summit.  They demand sanctions on Venezuela and Nicaragua to cease, and the blockade on Cuba to be lifted.

The Honduran president was forceful in her address to the meeting, calling these measures straight-out piracy.

President Xiomara Castro: “The CELAC-EU summit must approve a resolution demanding the end of the blockade against Cuba,” she said, making implicit reference to the sanctions promoted by the United States and its allies against the Cuban revolution.  “The United Nations rejected this blockade as an arbitrary and obsolete measure, which condemns to sacrifice a people who could achieve a high standard of living.  It is necessary to end piracy and the confiscation of goods because we are all exposed to one day finding that our monetary reserves have been frozen in foreign banks or we do not have the possibility of chartering transport for the goods that our peoples need.”

She said that her administration “suffers daily sabotage, a fierce media smear campaign, and even a lobby against her emanating from Washington’s most conservative groups.  The far-right renews threats on social media. However, our people are organized to resist and know that a new coup is materially impossible,” Castro pointed out.  I do hope she is right because if LAC is now inured against coups, they could conceivably use the coup fighting time as development time.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro presented his main government proposals one of which is very interesting.  These are: the achievement of total peace, the use of clean energy, the fight against poverty, and a debt swap for climate action.  In this he may be solving the conundrum that the LAC countries are lagging in terms of development, but not lagging in terms of imposed debt.  I like what he has come up with and will seek out the detail of this proposal.

The absolute best illustration of ‘idiot-think’ is in this photo.  This is the leadership of the EU with Venezuelan VP Delcy Rodríguez.  These leaders just a few months ago, recognized Guaidó as President of Venezuela and now they beg to speak to Delcy!  What comes to mind is the meme:  ‘Assad must go’ and every leader that voices that meme leaves long before Assad. 

And to crown that, Delcy said in her speech:  “… that empires have a “moral, ethical and economic debt” towards Latin America. Nothing like laying out a few truths to the imperial hosts. 

The flavor of this meeting is one of “Your chickens are coming home to roost EU, and you owe us for your dirty deeds!  Ralph Gonsalves, the prime minister of Saint Vincent & the Grenadines and pro-tempore president of CELAC, emphasized that European and Latin American countries must seek mechanisms to build a better world.  He proposed that the CELAC-UE Summit address the issue of historical reparation for the consequences of European colonialism in Latin America and the Caribbean.  It is this colonialism that clearly was the cork in the bottle refusing any development or even any development opportunity in the region.  It is the same for Africa.

The harsh words are well placed, well deserved and the time is right.  What I find most interesting though is the very large grass-roots groupings being built around CELAC. From the International Peoples’ Assembly Summit being held at the same time as CELAC, Rodrigo Suñe stated:  “The Peoples’ Summit will be the example of how we build balanced, fair relations, based on full respect for national sovereignty and the principle of self-determination of peoples.”  Is that not solidarity and multipolarity in a nutshell?  (Move over Russia! There are new kids in town!)