Leaders of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac) meet this Friday on the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines for their eighth annual summit, marked this time by border tensions between Venezuela and Guyana, and violence in Ecuador and Haiti.
Left-wing presidents such as Brazilian Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Colombian Gustavo Petro, Venezuelan Nicolás Maduro and Cuban Miguel Díaz-Canel attended the meeting, as well as the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres.
Countries governed by the right sent lower-level figures, such as Ecuador, represented by its ambassador in San Salvador.
“Latin America and the Caribbean have shown that unity for peace is possible and makes a difference,” Guterres said in his speech to the plenary assembly.
The UN chief highlighted “l“Joint declaration for dialogue and peace between Guyana and Venezuela”confronted by the sovereignty of the Essequibo territory, rich in oil, and which aroused regional fear last December of an armed conflict.
Maduro and his Guyanese counterpart, Irfaan Ali, committed not to use force or increase tension, in a process in which Celac mediated. “It is another example of the region’s commitment to seeking peaceful solutions, and I commend their efforts,” celebrated Guterres.
The secretary general also warned about violence in Ecuador, embroiled in a war against drug traffickers, and in Haiti.
Regarding the small Caribbean country, he insisted on the importance of achieving a “political solution” and provide a “solid financial support” to stop the current violent spiral, with gangs controlling much of the territory.
No interference
The president of Honduras, Xiomara Castro, joined the call for peace in the region, although she rejected any interference from powers outside the 33 states of Celac.
“Today we must ratify our commitment that a people of Latin America and the Caribbean will never use violence against a brother country”declared Castro, who assumes the ‘pro tempore’ presidency of the regional group created in 2010.
“The differences between the countries of this bloc must be resolved between us, without interference or external pressures, with dialogue as a tool and always thinking about regional well-being and the self-determination of the people.”added the president in a possible allusion to the United States.
The North American giant received less veiled criticism from Petro, who described the war on drugs launched from Washington as “failed.”
“We have experienced a genocide of a million Latin Americans in the last half century,” assured the president of Colombia, who blamed the United States for basing its strategy on “repression” and not in “prevention and public health.”
“The result could not be more dramatic, more unsuccessful,” added the president of Colombia, the country that produces and exports the most cocaine, in Kingstown.
Before his intervention, Petro received support from Guterres regarding his peace negotiations with guerrillas such as the ELN and two dissident groups of the FARC that did not lay down their weapons in 2016.
Petro plans to meet with his Brazilian counterpart, Lula da Silva, to discuss the situation in the Gaza Strip. Both presidents maintain that the Israeli army is exterminating the Palestinians with its military operations.
More than 30,000 people, most of them women and children, have been killed by Israeli military operations in Gaza since October 7, according to Hamas.
That day members of the Islamist group killed about 1,160 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to calculations made by AFP based on official Israeli data.
Source: Gestion
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