“Talking with people who think the same as you is not true dialogue”, wrote Zygmunt Bauman. The etymology of the word indicates that, on the contrary, dialogue implies the search for a reason (logos) from two or more different reasons and even opposite.
Precisely, The richness of an international summit is that rulers from different positions and realities sit at the same table to exchange views and proposals on situations that affect everyone.
The world of the 21st century it is a scenario of global dangers that can only be faced with prospects of success by all the existing political actors. The threats of this time are, for the first time in history, global threats. Therefore, they must be faced globally.
Climate change and the era of pandemics that covid-19 inaugurated attack all human beings, without stopping at borders. Consequently, they cannot be faced from borders, but from the totality of the threatened species. world order in force does not serve to preserve humanity from the threats it faces.
However, the first global pandemic has shown that the existing powers cling to a useless order, putting it above the need to effectively confront existing threats. The same goes for climate change.
The states, the borders and the competition between countries and leaderships are not useful to face these challenges, but they put their interests before the interests of the whole.
Taking this to a continental scale, the same counterproductive tare is perceived. Political and economic interests, banal fads and leadership mediocrities take over the scenarios and render them useless.
The Summit of the Americas It was one more example of a lost opportunity due to that persistent error. The only important proposal linked to the prevailing world situation is the one he made Joe Biden: form an OPEC of food between Canada, United States, Brazil and Argentina. The other great proposal could have been formulated Alberto Fernandezbut remained in a watered-down version of what he raised Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in defense of the Cuban, Venezuelan and Nicaraguan regimes.
At least, the Argentine president refrained from talking about “excluded peoples”, the fallacious concept that the Mexican president has been using to refer to those who have not been invited to the summit meeting held in The Angels.
By saying that those excluded from this summit were the “peoples” of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, instead of pointing out that the excluded ones were the regimes that rule over them by force, which makes López Obrador is to validate those authoritarian powers as legitimate representatives of the societies they subdue through censorship, repression and political persecution.
The only thing that can legitimize a government is voting in pluralist and transparent elections, while the aforementioned regimes carry out electoral farces, in the case of Venezuela and Nicaragua, or they self-justify through ideological dogmas and manipulated versions of history.
Having questioned the economic sanctions applied to those regimes is debatable, but not unreasonable. In short, the historical reality shows that the systems of isolation and sanctions never weaken the dictatorships in the region, but instead strengthen them while aggravating the suffering of the peoples they subject.
What the Mexican president did accompanied by a choir in which Alberto Fernandez he did not go out of tune, although he expressed himself in a more presentable way, was to defend authoritarian regimes and not the peoples who suffer from them. A hypocritical act that falsely occupied the place that should have had an essential debate: the urgencies of this time impose the generation of forums in which all the prevailing powers participate and not only democratic governments.
On the agenda of the Summit of the Americas there was the drama of migrations. How can an effective approach be made to this problem if the ruling powers are not present precisely in the countries that cause these migratory waves?
Threats like climate change and the era of pandemics that has begun cannot be dealt with by democratic governments alone. The nature of these snares makes it absurd to limit the search for joint solutions to certain types of government. For the debate to be effective and for mechanisms to contain these phenomena to be established, all the prevailing powers are needed, including dictatorships.
But that was not what he defended Lopez Obrador nor the other presidents who supported his position. What they did was legitimize authoritarian regimes as representatives of their peoples, to liquefy the criminal repressions they have perpetrated with impunity.
If they had not had that objective, they would have used other terms instead of claiming that there are no “peoples” and “countries” excluded.
The debate in Los Angeles would have been enriching if it had been discussed which spaces should be only for democracies and which should also include dictatorships. If the Summits of the Americas become clubs of democracies, another arena should be created to exclusively address issues like climate change and the pandemic. In the same way, if it is decided that the Summits of the Americas should be the place to address the threats that nature is posing to humanity and therefore should include in the debates all the powers that rule over territories and societies, then another exclusive forum should be created for democracies, such as the integration process in Europe.
To enter the Common Market, which later became the Economic Community and, through the Maastricht Treaty, led to the current European Union, democracy has been and is an essential requirement.
Salazarist Portugal and Francoist Spain they were only able to enter when they were democratized.
The same should be created in the Americas: a community of democracies linked by cooperation for economic and social development, establishing as a requirement for entry the full validity of the rule of law and pluralist democracy with transparent electoral processes.
The right to exclude authoritarianism would be irreproachable if there were another area for all prevailing leaderships to face natural threats.
