In a Buenos Aires full of traffic jams and a lot of police, the president of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, inaugurated, this Tuesday morning (24) the seventh edition of the CELAC Summit (Summit of Latin American and Caribbean States )—although he mistakenly called it the “Summit of the Americas”.
The event takes place the day after the meeting between Fernández and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT), in which both presidents renewed their vows for rapprochement between Brazil and Argentina and claimed to have advanced in projects such as a single currency for bilateral trade and, eventually, regionally, and the possibility that Brazil will once again finance engineering works in the neighboring country.
Under Lula, Brazil returns to Celac, a forum inaugurated in 2011, in Chile, and made up of 33 countries from Latin America and the Caribbean, but abandoned by former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL).
The summit has already started marked by a controversy involving the dictator of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro. With a bilateral meeting scheduled with Lula, the Venezuelan changed his plans and did not travel to Argentina. According to the regime, his absence was due to an international “neo-fascist plot”. Argentine government sources said Maduro feared an arrest warrant could be issued.
In recent days, Venezuelan exiles have demonstrated in the Argentine capital against Maduro’s presence. Opposition leaders also protested — Fernández said Maduro was welcome at the summit. The president of the right-wing PRO party, Patricia Bullrich, said that if the Venezuelan went to Buenos Aires, she would request an international arrest warrant from the Argentine justice system due to the allegations of human rights abuses registered in the Caribbean country by various human rights organizations, such as the United Nations and Human Rights Watch.
The CELAC Summit also brings together leaders from Uruguay, Luis Lacalle Pou; from Paraguay, Mario Abdo Benítez; from Chile, Gabriel Boric; from Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel; and from Colombia, Gustavo Petro, among others.
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