By: EFE Updated 19 Jan 2022, 3: am EST
Los Angeles will host the IX Summit of the Americas in June of this year with the aim of building a better future for the American continent, the President of the United States, Joe Biden, announced this Tuesday in a statement.
The previous meeting, which brings together the leaders of the American continent, was held in Lima, Peru, in 2017.
“The national interests of the United States are inextricably linked to the fate of our closest neighbors in the Americas,” said the US president in a statement.
Biden affirmed that one of the objectives of the meeting will be to “close the gap” between what the continent’s democracies promise and what that they carry out, something that depends on the actions that are taken together, according to what he said.
For this reason, the summit will revolve around the idea of “building a sustainable, resilient and equitable future” for to the continent, the president explained.
It will be the first time that the United States organizes this summit, which is held every three or four years, since the original edition in Miami in 1994.
The specific place or places have not yet been disclosed where the summit will be held in Los Angeles.
The previous Summits of the Americas
So far, eight ordinary summits have been held: the one in Miami (1994), Santiago de Chile (2001), Québec (Canada, 2001), Mar del Plata (Argentina, 2005), Port of Spain (Trinidad and Tobago, 2009), Cartagena de Indias (Colombia, 2012), Panama (2015) and Lima (Peru, 2018).
However, Only at the summit held in Panama City in 2015 were all the leaders of the 35 countries that make up the Organization of American States (OAS) and to which Cuba also joined.
The appointment in Lima in 2018 was marked by the absence of Venezuela, to which Peru, the host country, withdrew the invitation, considering that his Government is responsible for the political and social crisis that is being experienced in that nation.
Furthermore, in 2017, for the first time the US president did not attend, because the then president, Donald Trump (2017-2022), delegated his representation at the meeting to Vice President Mike Pence.
Read more: Biden and AMLO agree on the presence of Mexican agents in the US against organized crime