Alberto Fernández: “The OAS was a kind of gendarmerie squad to advance popular governments” | The president’s speech at the Puebla group meeting

Severely criticizing the OAS, its Secretary General Luis Almagro and the administration of Donald Trump at the head of the North American government, President Alberto Fernández raised with the Puebla group the need to deepen regional unity through instruments such as the Commonwealth of States. Latin America and the Caribbean (CELAC). The head of state called for strengthening the institutionality of progressivism in Latin America and for making a voice heard against the economic blockades against Cuba and Venezuela.

Fernández spoke online at the meeting for the second anniversary of the Puebla Group, under the title “Democracy, integration and social justice in Latin America”. He reviewed the state of progressivism in Latin America over the years when it lost place in the governments of the region, while “conservatism” gained ground. “Trump imposed his policy on Latin America and that explains a lot of things that happened; This explains the OAS we have, the IDB we have, the division we have, the birth of the Lima Group, the Prosur Forum, all the mechanisms that have served Trump’s policy and have not served the Latin American unity, or development. nor to the progress of Latin Americans, ”he reflected.

“The OAS as it is is not useful,” he said, and pointed out that “the first who has to do his mea culpa is its secretary general (Luis) Almagro for the amount of things he did, and also the institutional framework of the United States for proposing and supporting a man like Almagro. “Fernández felt that” the Trump years “made the OAS” not a meeting place for the Latin America “but rather” a kind of gendarmerie squad to advance on popular governments “.

“What the OAS has done in Bolivia must necessarily be investigated and must necessarily be judged, because now there is no longer any doubt about what happened, ”he declared after recalling how the consecration of Evo Morales was prevented and the coup d’état was consummated.

The Puebla Group “contributes to a very substantial debate” in order to “find alternative paths” so that Latin America can “move forward” and lift the “sad stigma” of being the “most unequal” continent of the world. “The policies of recent years have compounded this inequality and the pandemic has also arrived and become more evident,” said Fernández, who claimed “the importance of the state” and the value of supporting the public character of the health and education. “It is essential that education be public and free for the progress of our societies,” he noted. The pandemic taught the importance of the State “because” it is the greatest guarantor of solidarity “, he recalled, and graphically:” If the State does not arbitrate and it puts the ‘equality where there is no equality, no market promotes equality ”.

The president described the regional context to renew his certainty that countries must “unite” to achieve better renegotiations of their “debts”, an issue that will have an impact globally, he predicted. “In the post-pandemic world, the IMF has decided to make $ 50 billion available to meet the needs of the world’s poorest countries; he lent 57 billion to Macri’s Argentina, which exempts me from any comment as to why the Trump administration supported the Fund to grant this loan, “he warned.” In our country, they say that Trump paid for the most expensive election campaign in the world, “he quipped.

In another order, he said that Latin America has the “Moral obligation” and “ethical duty” to rise up against the economic blockades hanging over Cuba and Venezuela. “The lockdowns should embarrass those who promote them and in Latin America there are two lockdowns that are maintained in the midst of the pandemic, which deprive people of not only food, not only inputs for industry to produce, but inputs, doctors, respirators and essentials to deal with the pandemic; on the humanitarian level, we cannot remain silent, ”he said.

Fernández asked to raise “ideas, convictions” to bring these debates “to all societies” in the region. “Being progressive is not just about distributing wealth more evenly; yes, but it also means guaranteeing gender equality, putting an end to all forms of discrimination, promoting the unity of the continent at a time when the world is regionalizing; these are all debts that we have in our societies, ”he concluded.