Joshua Seemu­n­gal

The pres­ence of lead­ers of CARI­COM mem­ber states and as­so­ciate mem­bers at the Ninth Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as in Los An­ge­les, from June 6th to June 10th 2022, is not guar­an­teed. 

Their at­ten­dance is un­cer­tain be­cause the Unit­ed States’ re­la­tion­ship with two Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries, Cu­ba and Venezuela, re­mains strained - leav­ing the at­ten­dance of Cuban and Venezue­lan lead­ers at the sum­mit un­cer­tain. 

On April 27th, US As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary of State Bri­an Nichols de­scribed Cu­ba, Venezuela and Nicaragua’s at­ten­dance at the Cal­i­forn­ian sum­mit as “un­like­ly.” 

Nichols said that the sum­mit would fo­cus on the West­ern Hemi­sphere’s democ­ra­cies. 

In re­cent months, Cu­ba and the US have squab­bled over a num­ber of is­sues. 

The US is strug­gling to deal with a ris­ing num­ber of un­doc­u­ment­ed mi­grants cross­ing from the Mex­i­co bor­der, in­volv­ing many Cubans, while ten­sions have al­so in­creased over the Cuban gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of do­mes­tic an­ti-gov­ern­ment protests and the US’ con­tin­ued sanc­tions on the is­land. 

Mean­while, US re­la­tions with Venezuela have long been prob­lem­at­ic, with the US con­tin­u­ing harsh sanc­tions on the South Amer­i­can state and fail­ure to rec­og­nize Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro as Venezuela's head of state. 

Ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs Dr Amery Browne, CARI­COM is of the po­si­tion that it must con­tin­ue to ad­vo­cate at all lev­els for the in­clu­sion of the gov­ern­ments of Cu­ba and Venezuela at the Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as. 

Min­is­ter Browne said to Guardian Me­dia, via a mes­sage, that, “Trinidad and To­ba­go has been do­ing its part in that re­gard, led by Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley, and we have raised this is­sue with US Spe­cial Ad­vi­sor for the 9th Sum­mit for­mer Sen­a­tor Chris Dodd and with a range of oth­er con­tacts with­in the US sys­tem.” 

“If up­on is­suance of the in­vi­ta­tions to Heads of Gov­ern­ment of our hemi­sphere, it emerges that the Gov­ern­ments of Cu­ba and Venezuela have been ex­clud­ed, CARI­COM Heads would then make fur­ther pro­nounce­ments on the mat­ter. Our po­si­tion is crys­tal clear that the best de­ci­sion is to con­vene a Sum­mit which is in­clu­sive rather than ex­clu­sion­ary so that the fam­i­ly of na­tions of the Amer­i­c­as can sit at the ta­ble to dis­cuss and work to­geth­er on the key is­sues that con­front all our peo­ple.” 

The theme of the 2022 Sum­mit of Amer­i­c­as is “Build­ing a Sus­tain­able, Re­silient and Eq­ui­table Fu­ture.”