The Pacific Alliance summit, scheduled for November 25 in Mexico City, has been postponed. The four countries that are part of this assembly – Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Chile – have not yet decided on the new date and place for its holding, although everything seems to indicate that it will be in Lima and possibly in December, as indicated by the Mexican president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. The president, the current interim chair of the group, declared that it did not seem appropriate for it to take place without the presence of his Peruvian counterpart, Pedro Castillo. The South American leader should head the coalition, but his country’s Congress has not authorized him to travel to Mexico.

Pacific Alliance leaders meet once a year to reaffirm regional cooperation and hand over the baton. In this year, the seventeenth, one of its heroes was missing. Alternately, it was Pedro Castillo’s turn to lead this league starting in January. However, last week the legislature prevented him from leaving the country to attend the meeting. The relationship between the president and Congress, where the government does not have a majority, is increasingly tense. This is the fourth time that deputies have voted against allowing Castillo to take an international trip.

Given the impossibility of Castillo attending, López Obrador ruled Monday in favor of adjourning it. “I am the interim or interim president of that alliance and it is up to the President of Peru to take over the presidency. If he does not come, who do I hand him over to?” One of the options considered by the Mexican president is to hold the meeting in Peru to avoid problems for Castillo.

López Obrador has publicly supported the Peruvian leader on several occasions in the face of attacks from Congress, who recently admitted a complaint from the attorney general’s office against the president for corruption. He recently said of the opposition: “They consider it mountainous, and racism is added to it, so they don’t want it.” a year ago, López Obrador sent an economic support mission to Peru to help Castillo “the president who emerged from a popular movement”, in the words of the Mexican.

Despite the cancellation of the summit, the Mexican president is scheduled to meet with some of the leaders who have already confirmed their attendance, among them Chilean Gabriel Boric and Colombian Gustavo Petro. The presidents of Costa Rica and Honduras, who are not part of the organization, are also expected to visit. The Pacific Alliance was created in 2011 by four large countries in Latin America with access to the ocean and currently has working groups on trade, the environment and small and medium-sized businesses, among others.

Subscribe here to me the news From EL PAÍS México and receive all the essential information about current affairs in this country