With Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua excluded from the Summit of the Americas, President Maduro is asking Argentina’s president, Alberto Fernandez, to summon a meeting of the Community of Latin American and the Caribbean States and to invite President Biden as a guest. 

During a press conference, Mr. Maduro said Mr. Fernandez should lead a CELAP summit where leaders of 33 Latin America and the Caribbean countries would discuss topics that he said are of greater importance than what is being covered at the Summit of the Americas. His top priority would be to invite Mr. Biden, “to listen to the dignity of our countries and of our history.”

Mr. Fernandez, who arrived at Los Angeles this morning, said he will be proposing a different integration model at the Americas summit. “We regret the non-presence of countries, but we will try to bring their voice to that forum,” he said before leaving Buenos Aires. 

Mr. Maduro also congratulated Mexico’s president for not participating in the Summit of the Americas. He expressed his “admiration for the clarity and courage” of President Lopez Obrador and was appreciative of the messages the Mexican leader has been communicating in the past weeks. “What the government of the United States is doing is an act of discrimination with three countries, with three governments,” Mr. Maduro said during the press conference. 

He added: “The meeting that is going to occur in Los Angeles, whether the United States government wants it or not, will have the voice of the rebel people of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Our voice will be there, in different forms, in different ways, in the streets as protests, in the meeting salon. ”

Mr. Lopez Obrador refused to participate in the summit because not all countries in the hemisphere were invited. In a summit specially focused on migration, Washington’s biggest ally has abstained from participating. Government officials of other countries, including Guatemala and El Salvador, followed his lead. 

A senior fellow in the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Ryan Berg, criticized Mr. Lopez Obrador, who is known as AMLO, for being “willing to carry the water for the repressive dictatorships when there’s really not much diplomatic benefit … and there’s certainly no benefit for the Mexican people. I don’t see any upsides for the Mexican people, I see only upsides for AMLO as a politician burnishing his left-wing credentials.”

The decision to exclude dictatorship government officials did not come from the United States. During the 2001 Summit of the Americas at Quebec City, the Heads of State and Government of the Americas established a democracy clause that says that “any unconstitutional alteration or interruption of the democratic order in a state of the Hemisphere constitutes an insurmountable obstacle to the participation of that state’s government in the Summits of the Americas process.”

“That, to me, says that the principles for participation are that you’re a democracy and everyone signed on to that document,” Mr. Berg said. 

Later that year, the Inter-American Democratic Charter was signed in Lima, Peru, during a session of the General Assembly of the Organization of the American States. The document’s goal is to strengthen democratic institutions in the hemisphere, specifying what democracy means and how to defend it when it’s under threat. 

In April this year, Mr. Fernandez announced that Argentina would resume diplomatic relationships with Venezuela after President Macri broke them during his presidency in 2015. Whether he will abide by Mr. Maduro’s request is uncertain. On Thursday, he will be giving a speech on behalf of the CELAC members that will clarify whether Mr. Maduro’s and other voices of dictatorship have been represented.