Articulating the relationships between states is an old topic. In modernity, Kant and others laid the foundations of a supposed order that was configured by reason. Thus, the law took place and began to establish a series of principles that were projected in institutions.
Their action, together with the constant interpretation of increasingly complex decisions, gradually constituted a certain type of order that inevitably coexisted with a reality that was not always defined by the rules. More or less since Westphalia (1648) this has been the case.
American independence almost coincided with the early maturity of this order of ideas, so that the Congress of Panama, convened by Simón Bolívar in 1826, was the genuine representative of a proposed union or confederation of the new American states that, despite an adequate theoretical planning, was doomed to failure.
The story has been well known ever since, with a succession of failed attempts of a very different order. Its varied nature, at times dominated by the sub-region, at others by the economic one, and at times by a simple attempt at thematic coordination, was not an impediment to ensuring the path to success.
The chain of acronyms from the 1960s onwards is abundant: Alalc, Aladi, Sela, Caricom, CACM, Andean Pact (Andean Community), Mercosur, Unasur, Celalc…
These are joined by the Organization of American States (OAS), an organization that has taken on different initiatives and activities since the late 19th century and was established in Bogotá in 1948, when the ninth International Conference of American States signed its founding charter.
Installed at the beginning of the Cold War and under the tutelage of the United States, which offered the city of Washington as its headquarters and committed a succulent part of its budget, the OAS was seen as an unquestionable device of US hegemony over the region.
This aspect was reaffirmed after the success of the Cuban revolution and Cuba’s expulsion from the OAS in 1962, because “the adherence of any member to Marxism-Leninism is incompatible” with the inter-American system itself, and three years later, when the organization white to US military intervention in the Dominican Republic.
The OAS languished for years, but on September 11, 2001, it took a giant step forward by approving the Inter-American Democratic Charter in Lima. Its first article proclaimed the right of the peoples of the Americas to democracy and the obligation of their governments to promote and defend it. This was not a trivial issue, as it required conceptual precision in relation to a complex term.
The third article emphasized commitment, stating as “essential elements of representative democracy, among others, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms; access to power and its exercise subject to the rule of law; the holding of periodic, free and and just, based on universal and secret suffrage as an expression of the sovereignty of the people; the plural regime of political parties and organizations; and the separation and independence of public powers”.
A bet in line with the advances in politics in the region after having left the transitions to democracy behind, as well as a declaration of intentions of what the future was not intended to be.
However, it was at odds with the nuances that from political science were being introduced around a new line of study that advocated the existence of different degrees of “quality” of democracy or even the need to distinguish between “varieties” of democracy.
The Summit of the Americas, to be held June 6-10 in Los Angeles, will provide a new opportunity to rethink the state of the matter.
It originated in Miami in 1994, when Bill Clinton convened the first, which resulted in the tempestuous Free Trade Area of the Americas initiative. It was a time of consolidation of democracy and extension of neoliberalism.
While US sponsorship is paramount, Donald Trump did not attend the 2018 meeting in Lima.
In the period leading up to the current meeting, leaving aside the no less important issue concerning the role of the democratic component of the political regimes of the convened countries, there are at least three types of major questions that have been illuminating the debate.
They answer general questions that are deeply intertwined: who convenes, what are the criteria for being convened, and what is the purpose?
The establishment of an agenda and the definition of the guest list and its classification are always subtle mechanisms of power that occur in any plural summons.
If the principle of not excluding anyone is established, is it not also necessary to define who someone is? If non-interference in internal affairs is claimed, does it mean that there are subjects that are prohibited when setting the agenda?
The casuistry with its implications is always different; no two scenarios are the same due to the weight of the past and the size of the actors. The impact of anti-Castroism, historically embedded in US policy making Cuba a domestic issue, is not the same, and the constraints of the oil sector with respect to the Venezuelan case.
Faced with these two disputes whose importance is notorious, the Nicaraguan issue loses relevance.
The reasons of the Brazilian president, involved in an electoral process in which he could face incarceration, and the disgraceful Guatemalan president, with his permanent manipulation of the justice system, are not similar.
The US president’s concerns are also very different, immersed in a severe economic crisis and with a leadership entangled in the war in Eastern Europe.
As for Mexico, its decades of regional introspection weigh on an immediate past that the current president wants to rebuild with a reborn American vocation.
Faced with previous failures and the murky preamble to the next summit, it is imperative to build a new logic of interaction.
In this sense, it is worth remembering what happened in 2007, within the framework of the Ibero-American Summits, when the very unedifying head of the Spanish state urged the implacable Venezuelan president to shut up.
This one, who was exercising his freedom of expression, had called the previous Spanish head of government a fascist.
The incident had its bright side: free dialogue on a forum from which no one was banned.
If today we are faced with tragic issues related to emigration, environmental disaster and organized crime that demand transnational collaboration, is it not time to open spaces for dialogue in which participants are subject to scrutiny from others?
Translation of Giulia Gaspar
