At last weekâs conference in LA, the real activity was outside on the streets
The more political summits I attend, the more convinced I am that the best place to be when covering them is not inside in the conference halls, but outside on the streets.
Last weekâs Summit of the Americas was no exception.
The gathering of leaders from across the Americas is held every three or four years. This year, it took place in the cavernous Los Angeles Convention Center, among the eclectic jumble of residential and commercial buildings that makes up downtown LA. The venue was largely empty. Many people who had initially planned to attend â policymakers, journalists, even presidents â skipped it, figuring they could just as easily follow events online, and that it would probably yield very little anyway. They were mostly right.
Of the Americasâ 35 presidents and prime ministers, a third were absent. Three did not receive an invite: Cubaâs Miguel DĂaz-Canel, Nicaraguaâs Daniel Ortega and Venezuelaâs NicolĂĄs Maduro were declared personae non gratae by a US government that regards them as dictators.
Some Latin American leaders, including Mexicoâs AndrĂ©s Manuel LĂłpez Obrador, stayed away in protest at that decision. The presidents of El Salvador and Guatemala missed it for other reasons. Uruguayâs president was out of action with Covid.
It all made for a subdued event. There was an agreement to tackle immigration and combat climate change in the Caribbean, but very little in the way of major initiatives to bolster the economies of hard-pressed Latin American nations.
Outside the building, however, things were more heated.
As delegates arrived at the Microsoft Theatre for the opening ceremony, they were confronted by a small but noisy group of Latin Americans with grievances to air. Maggie, a Mexican migrant, held up a placard in homage to her countryâs president, known almost universally by his initials, AMLO. âAMLO No Estas Soloâ (AMLO youâre not alone), it read.
âIâm proud of him for saying that the other nations, the Cubans, the Nicaraguans, the Venezuelans, should be invited,â Maggie said. âItâs not fair that some nations are invited and some arenât. Weâre all Americans.â
Meanwhile Alex HenrĂquez, a 55-year-old El Salvadoran migrant, held aloft a photo of his brother. âBukele is holding my brother prisonerâ read the words printed on his placard â a reference to the Central American countryâs authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele.
âThe government accuses my brother of collaborating with criminal gangs,â HenrĂquez told me. âItâs rubbish, heâs innocent! He sells tomatoes and onions in a local market! I have no problem with Bukele putting gang members in jail, but heâs jailing innocent people too.â
Elsewhere Honduran migrants demanded the right to remain in the US, and Nicaraguans protested against Ortega. There were also Guatemalans, Colombians and Panamanians, all trying to make their voices heard.
Directly outside the venue, two Ethiopian-American women held up a huge black and yellow banner, billowing in the West Coast breeze. â500 Days Of #Tigray Genocideâ read the poster, in reference to the conflict in northern Ethiopia.
Itâs easy to be cynical about these big set-piece political summits, with their bland, carefully worded closing statements and promises of action that invariably come to nothing. Itâs easy to forget that behind the scenes, delegates and diplomats work hard to reach agreement on complex issues â and that they sometimes succeed. At the LA summit, 20 countries signed a joint declaration on how to tackle migration, one of the hemisphereâs pressing issues.
But still, this gathering â more than most â raised the question of how useful such meetings are, and whether they are worth the time and expense. The Los Angeles Police Department said last month it expected to spend nearly $16mn on policing it. Add on the cost of hotels, flights and staging, and the bill runs to many millions more.
âIâd like to think all the cash spent on bringing these leaders here from around the Americas was worth it and that one day weâll see the benefits of these announcements theyâve made,â said Gloria, a 36-year-old Mexican migrant protesting outside the centre. âBut Iâll be honest â I have my doubts.â