Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez is hosting a new 33-nation summit of a new regional bloc, involving the southern Americas and the Caribbean. The United States and Canada have not been invited to participate.
The main goal of the summit is to strengthen regional ties so as not to succumb to outside influence, countering US presence in Latin America. It is also an attempted catalyst for resolving conflicts across the region and aiding each other with economic development.
The exclusion of North America shows the depleting importance of their presence. “The U.S. has lost an awful lot of space in the American continent, even though it’s still the most important country,” Eduardo Gamarra, a Latin American politics professor at Florida International University in Miami, told CBS.
The summit, which will last two days, is Chávez’s first international event since overcoming cancer. The meeting was originally planned for last July, but was postponed due to his condition.
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