Alberto Fernández met with Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Xi Jinping in Beijing and finally, on an “atypical scale”, in the words of Argentine La Nación, Mia Mottley in Barbados.
She is the Latin American leader who comes from proclaiming the republic in her country, no longer under the British crown. Fernández met with her and others as president of CELAC, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, which Jair Bolsonaro abandoned two years ago.
The tour sparked backlash in London and Washington. Xi supported his demand for the Falklands, and the UK government complained that “China has to respect the sovereignty of the Falklands, part of the british family” Beijing then reiterated its support, as reported by the South China Morning Post, and demanded action from London.
And the Argentine Clarín’s headline was for four American senators, three Republicans and one Democrat, who released statements and presented a bill aimed at “stopping the advance of China and Russia in Latin America.” From one of them, Matt Gaetz, seeing “closer to home a much more significant threat” than in Ukraine:
“Argentina has just joined the Chinese PC in signing the Belt and Road Initiative. At a cost of $23.7 billion, buying influence and infrastructure in Argentina is a direct challenge to the Monroe Doctrine.”
FERNÁNDEZ & MAO
Fernández’s tour was more focused on China, where he was treated with distinction even on the front page of the PC’s People’s Daily — and he returned with a visit to Mao Tse-tung’s mausoleum, as shown by the Guancha portal. The Global Times, also from the PC, highlighted the country’s entry into the Belt and Road as a “great boost for China-Latin America cooperation.”
In Argentina, Clarín and La Nación, both opposition newspapers, also focused on Fernández in China, with economic results such as a Xiaomi factory in Tierra del Fuego and, above all, the destination of US$ 23.7 billion, for agriculture, nuclear energy and 11 other cooperation fronts.
BACK TO MINSK
After the meetings of Frenchman Emmanuel Macron with Putin and German Olaf Scholz with Joe Biden, the two European Union leaders met on Tuesday night in Berlin.
According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, crediting Macron, “both Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart promised to abide by the so-called Minsk accords” signed in 2014/15. And the German chancellor again declared: “Our common objective is to avoid a war in Europe.”
Even the New York Times now asks itself, at home: “What are the Minsk Accords, and can they defuse the crisis in Ukraine?”.
