The second day of the Summit of the Americas takes place in Los Angeles, with the promise of three announcements of investment by US private companies in Central America. The largest is for USD 1.9 billion and its objective is clear: to create economic opportunities to curb the causes of migration to the United States. The Summit takes place in the midst of the absence of leaders -such as that of Mexico- in rejection of the United States’ veto against Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.
Three US investment projects will arrive in Central America. The Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, in charge of tackling the main causes of the migration crisis on the border with Mexico, will announce this Tuesday, June 7, on the second day of the IX Summit of the Americas, new commitments of private investment.
It will do so while two parallel meetings of the public and private sectors are held with the American Ministers of Trade and Foreign Affairs and the CEOs of some of the most important companies on the continent.
Harris’ first announcement will be $1.9 billion in private investment by 10 companies. It includes a $700 million expansion of cellular networks in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador by Miami-based Millicom; a $270 million commitment from Visa to promote digital payments; and an investment close to 150 million dollars by Gap. Inc. which could see up to 5,000 jobs created.
According to a US government source consulted by the EFE agency, this proposal is part of Harris’ plan known as the Call to Action to tackle the economic and social causes of migration to the United States and to discourage young Central Americans from leaving their homes.
This announcement is in addition to the one made by the Vice Presidency 6 months ago for a value of USD 1,200 million in commitments from the private sector, in which PepsiCo, Microsoft, Nespresso and MasterCard participate.
In fact, Harris’ greatest achievement in the region to date is helping secure commitments from US companies to invest that $1.2 billion in Central America, where hundreds of thousands of young adults flee violence each year. of gangs and poverty without pause.
Two other investment projects announced by Kamala Harris
The second investment announcement that Harris will make -in a parallel event to the Summit- together with companies in the sector is towards the economic empowerment of women in Latin America, especially those who reside in the north of Central America. Her program called “In Her Hands” is a private sector initiative to empower, train and protect women throughout the Western Hemisphere.
The program includes training more than 500,000 women and girls in basic job skills and agribusiness, promoting gender parity, and connecting more than 1.4 million women to the financial system and the digital economy.
Finally, Harris’s third announcement will be the presentation of the Central American Service Corps (CASC), a $50 million initiative to be administered by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) with in order to give young people from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras a job path.
Harris’ management in Mexico and Central America
However, Harris’s leadership is questioned. While Harris assumes the task of addressing the causes of migration -with little effect so far-, the region knows little about it, which for experts consulted by the AP news agency is a symptom “of greater negligence of the US in the region.”
Indeed, the only three leaders Harris has met on her two quick trips to the region are precisely those from the three countries that decided not to attend the Summit: Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras.
For Brian Winter, vice president of the Council of the Americas, Harris started off on the wrong foot as the point person for addressing the causes that drive migrants to the US.
Furthermore, the Joe Biden Administration’s biggest policy proposal in the region – a $4 billion aid package for Central America – has stalled in Congress with little apparent effort to revive it. Meanwhile, the number of migrants at the US border with Mexico has risen to its highest levels in decades.
The rejection of the excluded to the Summit of the Americas
Despite constant criticism from several countries, the United States formally ruled out inviting the representatives of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela on the first day of the Summit, alleging that they do not meet democratic standards. Havana responded this Monday, June 6, saying that Washington maintains a “discriminatory and unacceptable” position as well as “anti-democratic and arbitrary.”
And he appreciated the shows of support, especially those of important political allies such as the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who did not attend because these three countries had not been invited. He also thanked two absentees: Bolivia and Honduras and the members of the Caribbean Community.
After being excluded from this regional meeting, the president of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel, has said that the People’s Summit -a forum parallel to the Summit of the Americas- “will be a truly transcendental political event for our peoples.” , highlighted this Tuesday on his Twitter account.
Various political and social movements from Latin America and a broad participation from different sectors in the United States will meet in Los Angeles, California to celebrate the #SummitOfThePeoples. That will be the true transcendental political event for our peoples. pic.twitter.com/0AsUB7dNNJ
– Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez (@DiazCanelB) June 7, 2022
More than 150 organizations from the United States and Latin America will participate in the alternate meeting from June 8 to 10 in rejection of the absence of immigration and minority issues at the Summit of the Americas.
Representatives of pro-government Cuban civil society, such as the journalist Cristina Escobar, the scientist Tania Crombet and the musician Israel Rojas, will participate in the alternate meeting. Meanwhile, the Cuban activist Saily González denounced that the authorities of her country did not allow her to travel to the United States to attend the civil society forum of the Summit.
Venezuela has also not spared in rejecting its exclusion from the Summit guests. In a press release, the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) said that this decision “reiterates the meddling, interventionist and exclusionary policy of US imperialism.”
The PCV applauded the fact that various countries expressed their solidarity with those excluded, including the willingness of some not to participate as a sign of protest, such as the president of Mexico. “We strongly condemn this new aggression against our peoples that violates the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of the countries,” the group emphasized.
For his part, Nicolás Maduro asked his Argentine counterpart, Alberto Fernández, on Monday to organize, “sooner rather than later”, a meeting of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), with President Joe Biden as a guest, before the exclusion of the three countries from the summit.
The agenda of the Mexican foreign minister at the Summit
In the absence of the President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), the Secretary of Foreign Affairs of Mexico, Marcelo Ebrard, announced the topics that he will bring to the Summit. The main one is migration.
“I would hope, and we are going to insist, that they decide to invest on the scale of the size of their (the US) economy. We are investing more or less 100 million dollars (in Central America),” said the secretary at a press conference and assured that the neighboring country could invest between 2,000 and 3,000 million dollars.
I share an interview with Miguel Angel Velazquez, published today in the newspaper La Jornada, about the Summit of the Americas and Mexico’s position. Good day!! pic.twitter.com/L7spXNr41M
– Marcelo Ebrard C. (@m_ebrard) June 7, 2022
The other issue that Ebrard will present at the Summit is the need for unity among the countries that make up the region, given the White House’s veto to invite Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, which is why AMLO did not attend the event.
“What the President of the Republic has been pointing out is that we have to move towards a new type of organization in the Americas based on mutual respect and the inclusion of all,” Ebrard emphasized.
The president of Ecuador and his topics for the Summit
The intention of the president of Ecuador, Guillermo Lasso, is to address security in this Summit to combat drug trafficking, migration and the environment.
“… We require international support for an even more effective fight against drug trafficking,” said the president before embarking on his trip to Los Angeles.
Lasso once again called for international cooperation in the fight against drug trafficking and pointed out that this work “cannot be a fight in which he is alone.”
Regarding migration, Lasso will meet with the director general of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Antonio Vitorino, and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Filippo Grandi, to discuss the recent adoption of a migration regularization plan in Ecuador.
“Ecuador has taken a very important step in terms of regularizing the largest migration we have in the country, that of Venezuela, and this causes a positive impact in the international field,” he added.
The other issue that Lasso has to deal with at the Summit is the environment. “Ecuador is one of the most mega-diverse countries in the world, with more species per square kilometer and we only emit 0.18% of global pollution,” explained the Minister of the Environment, Water and Ecological Transition, Gustavo Manrique, who is also attending the Summit.
What comes on the agenda of the Summit of the Americas
The hemispheric meeting began this Monday, June 6, in Los Angeles, California, with the civil society forum, which denounced the democratic and environmental setbacks in the Region.
This Tuesday the forum “A path to self-sufficiency: Advancing in the integration of Venezuelan refugees in the Americas” is also scheduled.
On Wednesday, June 8, will be the opening ceremony of the Summit of the Americas and there will be, among other meetings, one with businessmen in a meeting called “Like minded” (who share the same ideas) between the leaders of Ecuador, Canada, Barbados, Belize, Chile and Panama.
There will also be a panel discussion on “Democratic Governance and the Rule of Law” with the presidents of the Dominican Republic, Panama and Costa Rica. And a meeting of the High Level Business Council of the Alliance for Development in Democracy.
Thursday will be the sixth Youth Forum of the Americas and there will be bilateral meetings between the attending leaders. And on Friday will be the plenary sessions of heads of state of the Summit of the Americas.
With AP and EFE
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