5 things to watch when Biden, Harris attend the Summit of the Americas

The Summit of the Americas begins Monday in Los Angeles, the first gathering of leaders from North, Central and South America in nine years. 

President Biden and Vice President Harris will both attend the week’s events, but the White House has offered few details about the agenda or even who will be invited in the days leading up to the summit. 

Here are five things to watch for at the gathering: 

Who attends 

The White House has not finalized list of attendees to share even though the event is just days away.  

The U.S. had not said whether it would invite Juan Guaidó, the officially recognized acting president of Venezuela. Some Latin American officials have taken issue with the United States’ expected exclusion of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela’s government under Nicolás Maduro from the guest list. Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said Wednesday that he would not attend. 

The Biden administration faced internal pressure from Democrats and Republicans alike not to invite the three heads of state that either don’t recognize or openly share disdain for the Inter-American Democratic Charter. But Latin American and Caribbean leaders pressed the U.S. to host a fully inclusive summit. 

Santiago Canton, director of the Peter D. Bell Rule of Law Program at the Inter-American Dialogue, said Summit organizers should ask themselves whether the presence of Cuban, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan leaders would lead to democratic and human rights breakthroughs. 

“Better to invite them [or] not invite them in order to get improvements on human rights and democracy? That’s the main issue. If we can get political prisoners freed in Venezuela and Nicaragua and Cuba and we can get some compromise that democracy is important and they will call for elections, I will be the first one to say ‘invite them.'” 

“That didn’t happen,” Canton added. “So we should not invite them because by inviting them we are giving them an award for violating human rights and for breaking democracy.” 

“I know, there’s always questions about the invite … but we also should talk about and focus on what the purpose of this meeting is. And that’s also critical and important,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters at a press briefing. 

“But I have to tell you: A week away, that’s a lifetime,” she added. 

Complicated dynamic with Mexico 

While several Latin American and Caribbean leaders warned they might not attend if Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua were not invited, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is the most likely guest to follow through on the threat. 

López Obrador was expected to be a key guest at the event, with U.S. officials even informally inviting him to catch a Dodgers game in Los Angeles.  

But he is also a transactional politician who saw in the Biden administration’s hemming and hawing over inviting the three openly nondemocratic governments as an opportunity to raise his regional profile. 

López Obrador’s absence could overshadow attempts to project unity and collaboration.  

“I see the administration coming out trying to level the playing field with at least a certain number of partners: Costa Rica, Panama, Dominican Republic, Canada, Chile, Uruguay and Colombia,” said Manuel Orozco, director of the Migration, Remittances, and Development Program at the Inter-American Dialogue. 

“And with that bloc, I hope, to include Mexico into the mix, possibly Lopez Obrador will decide six hours before that he will attend the summit,” added Orozco. 

The tension with López Obrador goes far beyond summit attendance — the current Mexican administration has quietly butted heads with the U.S. over energy policy, climate change, labor, foreign investment and security issues. 

For many observers, the most concerning of López Obrador’s policies is his backtracking on construction of democratic institutions that over three decades turned Mexico from a one-party state into a competitive, if flawed, democracy. 

“The assaults on democracy that we’ve seen by López Obrador are serious. And one of the things that I have been watching is to see if the Biden administration has anything to say about it,” said Rebecca Bill Chavez, a former deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Western Hemisphere affairs. 

Biden’s meeting with Bolsonaro 

The White House has yet to release a schedule for Biden, but it is already expected he will meet one-on-one with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. 

It will mark the first time the leaders have met in person since Biden took office in January 2021. Bolsonaro, a right-wing figure and outspoken supporter of former President Trump, previously confirmed he would attend and planned to meet with Biden. 

“There is a very long list of issues that are going to be up for discussion,” Juan Gonzalez, a Biden adviser on national security issues in Latin America, said in a conference call previewing the summit. 

Food security, the pandemic and climate change are likely to be among the topics. White House officials have danced around questions on whether Biden plans to confront Bolsonaro about his attempts to cast doubt on Brazilian elections ahead of his reelection bid in October. 

Opinion polls have shown Bolsonaro is trailing leftist candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. 

“The issue of the Brazilian elections is really up for the Brazilians to decide, and the United States does have confidence in Brazil’s electoral institutions, which have proved robust,” Gonzalez told reporters on Wednesday. 

What’s on the agenda 

Unlike previous summits, the 2022 Summit of the Americas is unlikely to yield major announcements, but experts say it could be an opportunity for the U.S. to fund programs on issues that the hemisphere’s nations already agree on. 

“The worst-case scenario is that the Biden administration holds this kind of, ‘So we did it. We don’t have to engage again until the next summit,'” said Chavez.  

The event’s original intent was largely accomplished after the inaugural 1994 summit in Miami, as most of the countries in the hemisphere declared their commitment to democracy and free trade. 

That declaration led to the so-called golden decade of the 1990s, in large part a response to the military dictatorships, electoral fraud and civil wars that plagued the region in the mid 20th century. 

Since then, however, the neoliberal governments that pushed aside anti-U.S. sentiment and embraced technocratic rule have for the most part themselves been pushed aside by the region’s voters. 

Waves of populist sentiment have undone democratic governments in Nicaragua and Venezuela and openly threatened democratic institutions in a handful of countries, including Mexico and Colombia, the United States’ closest allies in the region. 

By hosting the summit, the Biden administration is seeking to quell the region’s antidemocratic pressures, particularly after they were egged on by the Trump administration’s overtly transactional, migration-centric approach to the region. 

Leaders will discuss climate change, trade and migration, but the White House has been careful not to outline any specific deliverables. 

“As host of the summit, the United States has an excellent opportunity to outline a clear vision for the hemisphere,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Western Hemisphere subcommittee. 

“There are serious challenges that affect every nation in the region. … Addressing these issues requires U.S. commitment and leadership in the region,” added Kaine. 

Harris’s focus 

Vice President Harris will play a key role at the summit, attending events on reproductive rights, promoting business opportunities for Latinas and delivering remarks to the gathering. 

But much of the attention will be on whether she acknowledges the issue of migration, something that President Biden made a central part of her policy portfolio last summer. 

Harris’s portfolio includes addressing the root cases of migration from the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.  

She has announced millions of dollars in private-sector investments in those countries to try and stem the flow of people fleeing for better opportunities elsewhere.  

When Harris took on the task, her office aggressively fought back against Republican attempts to tie the border to her migration agenda. 

Although she’s been generally quiet on the issue, Harris has taken two trips to the region with wildly different results. 

Her first trip to Guatemala and Mexico is mostly remembered for her blunt delivery of an appeal to migrants: “Do not come.” 

Harris’s second trip was a politician’s ideal scenario, as a stadium full of Hondurans celebrating President Xiomara Castro’s inauguration gave the U.S. vice president a standing ovation. 

This week’s summit gives Harris a platform to tout her work on the issue, which will likely be a point of attack for Republicans heading into the midterm elections. 

White House officials said Biden will sign a migration declaration on the sidelines of the summit with other leaders pledging to address the crisis.