Fernández slams ‘fascist right wing’ in opening CELAC remarks
President Alberto Fernandez warned democracy is at risk and slammed the region’s “recalcitrant and fascist right wing” on Tuesday as he formally opened the seventh summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) bloc.
“We have to work to guarantee and strengthen the institutions of our region,” warned the president in a tough speech.
“Democracy is definitely at risk. After the pandemic we have seen how far-right sectors have stood up and threatened each of our peoples,” declared the Peronist leader, who mistakenly called the event the “Summit of the Americas” in his opening before correcting himself.
“We must not allow this recalcitrant and fascist right wing to put the institutionalism of the peoples at risk,” he said, referencing the recent riots in Brasilia by supporters of Brazilian farright ex-president Jair Bolsonaro that attacked the seats of power.
Fernández also highlighted recent unrest in Bolivia and the assassination attempt against Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, his own vice-president, last year.
The Frente de Todos leader went on to ask those present for a round of applause for Brazil’s recently inaugurated President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, whose presence at the CELAC summit marked his nation’s return to the bloc after Bolsonaro ordered Brazil’s withdrawal.
“A CELAC without Brazil is an empty CELAC,” declared Fernández.
In 2020, Bolsonaro – a harsh critic of the left and Argentina’s government in particular – suspended Brazil’s participation on the grounds that the CELAC bloc “gave prominence to nondemocratic regimes such as those of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua.” As a result, Brazil did not participate in the sixth summit, which took place in 2021 in Mexico.
Addressing Cuba and Venezuela directly, Fernández called for “an end to blockades” in his speech, which he described “a perverse method of sanction, not against governments but against peoples.”
“Cuba has been under a blockade for more than six decades, and Venezuela for the same,” he added, under the watchful eye of Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-canel.
The president made no reference to human rights violations allegedly perpetrated by the governments of Venezuela and Cuba in their respective countries, nor criticisms over their electoral process – a fact remarked upon by Uruguayan leader Luis Lacalle Pou, among others.
Closing his speech, Fernández asked the leaders present to help make “integration a reality.”
“I urge you to understand once and for all that alone we are of little value, but that united we can have an overwhelming force and that the time has come for the Caribbean and Latin America to become a single region, defending the same interests for the progress of our peoples,” he concluded.