On Wednesday, November 24, the US State Department published a list of countries invited to participate in the Democracy Summit, which does not include Guatemala.

Previously, it was known, through a column written by journalist Andres Oppenheimer in the El Nuevo Herald, that eight Latin American countries would not be invited to the activity, including Guatemala, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, El Salvador, Honduras and Haiti. .

The activity will address the issue of democracy challenges, and will actually take place between December 9-10, 2021.

As pointed out by Oppenheimer, the The guest list published on Wednesday does not include the countries indicated, including Guatemala.

When the possibility of Guatemala’s non-participation was known, the Presidency’s Social Communications Secretariat indicated that the Ministry of Foreign Relations had not received any official invitation, and therefore had not issued a position.

The reasons for President Biden’s exclusion of Guatemala and other countries are unknown.

Other reactions:

Russia accuses the United States of “dividing” with the democracy summit

Russia today accused the United States of trying to draw new dividing lines between countries through the virtual democracy summit called by US President Joe Biden on the next two days, 9 and 10 December.

“We certainly have a negative attitude towards this event. It is nothing more than an attempt to draw new dividing lines,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in his daily press conference.

The US president invited about 110 countries to the virtual summit, including neither Russia nor China.

Peskov noted that in the early 1990s, Moscow and Washington struggled to “reduce and eliminate these dividing lines.”

“Now, unfortunately, the United States prefers to create a new dividing line, dividing countries into good and bad according to their own criteria,” he stressed.

He accused the United States of trying to “privatize the word ‘democracy'”, adding that for Washington democracy is only what corresponds to its understanding of it.

“It is clear that this should not and cannot be,” the Russian presidential spokesman stressed.

He added that this American approach does not correspond to the feelings and moods of the world, because “more and more countries prefer to decide for themselves how to live.”

The December summit will be the first of two summits on democracy held by Biden with the stated aim of achieving “democratic renewal” by defending against authoritarianism, fighting corruption or respecting human rights.

*With information from EFE