Spotlight: Summit of Americas becomes home court for LatAm diplomacy

Cuba and Venezuela jointly stole the show of the 7th Summit of Americas here on Friday, transforming the forum into a home court for Latin American countries' diplomacy and shaking the United States' 21-year-long predominance on the hemispheric policies.

Elaborating the agenda, Bolivian President Evo Morales told teleSUR that "Mr.(U.S. President Barack) Obama has to be clear that we're no more the U.S. backyard. If you want to win the respect of the Latin Americans, you have to first respect the Latin Americans."

Since the first summit in 1994 when former U.S. President Bill Clinton proposed jump-starting the Free Trade Area of Americas (FTAA) in the name of revitalizing the Latin American economy, the countries in the region have seldom seen their expectations fulfilled, but instead endured the humiliation of serving U.S. geopolitical purposes and ravaged industrial and financial situations.

But at this year's summit which began in Panama City on Friday, things were different. Cuba emerged after a 21-year absence, disappointing the U.S. by putting off the plan to re-open embassies in their respective capitals before the leaders of both countries attended the opening ceremony.

Prior to the two-day summit, Russia, the European Union (EU), the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and Vietnam had sent senior delegates to Havana to back up the island country in its tough wrestle with the U.S. to guarantee a fair deal and protect its own interests.

Venezuela came to the gathering armed with new media savvy and a petition signed by over 10 million people calling on Washington to lift the latest sanctions against its government officials and to revoke a decree labelling the South American country as a "national security threat".

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro delivered a televised speech on Thursday in Caracas, saying "President Obama has made the worst mistake of his six-year presidency in foreign policy towards Latin America."

He told Washington that "the region isn't its backyard anymore."

Before and during the summit, countries and organizations in the region, like the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), the Bolivian Alliance of the People of Our Americas (ALBA) and the Non-Aligned Movement, have successively thrown weight behind Venezuela in its pursuit of independence and national sovereignty.

All of these efforts culminated at the summit, allowing the major Latin American members of the Organization of American States (OAS) to negotiate regional issues with the U.S. and Canada as a group, under the banner of "Prosperity with Equality".

Obama kept a low profile on Friday when he attended the sideline CEO Summit with his Panamanian, Brazilian and Mexican counterparts, delivering a key-note speech at a dialogue forum and standing still on the rostrum of the opening ceremony with regional heads of states, including Maduro and Cuban President Raul Castro.

The summit has provided the region's Latin American countries with an opportunity to express their solidarity and autonomy, to break with the idea that they were merely the U.S. backyard, and show that they have awakened and evolved into an independent regional force.

The days of the Americas belonging only to the U.S. are gone. The Americas belong to all the regional nations. This is one of the main non-agenda consensuses reached at the summit.

Such awareness arose from the disillusion about the propaganda that the region could flourish only if it succumbed to the U.S. and relied on it politically and economically.

The reality is that the U.S. power has been shrinking, sometimes to a degree that it could spare nothing substantial to put its "backyard" in order as it expected.

To veer away from the Monroe Doctrine -- established by the U.S. in 1823 to keep European influence out of the region and safeguard U.S. hegemony and interests in Latin America -- and stop the voracious exploitation of its non-renewable natural resources, the Latin American countries had walked a long way and finally took action in 2011.

The Community of Latin American and Caribbean Countries (CELAC) was founded that year to unite the nations throughout the Americas except the U.S. and Canada to serve as an alternative to the Washington-dominated OAS.

It was widely viewed as a manifestation of Latin American multilateralism and the start of a race for independent development, and a termination of the long history of U.S. interference, from support for past military regimes to endeavors to topple leftist governments.

Once and for all, CELAC received impetus from the outside world. The First CELAC-EU summit in 2013 hammered out a dialogue mechanism between both sides for further trade and economic exchanges. A similar cooperation system was later fathomed and erected between CELAC and Russia.

In January 2015 as the China-CELAC Forum was opened in Beijing, China vowed that 250 billion U.S. dollars of investment for the next decade.

A rosy picture has been drawn for Latinos. As their reliance on the world's largest economy dwindles, their ties and trade with other economies are on the rise. The change of pattern has not only enhanced CELAC's status as an independent and sovereign body, but also improved the geopolitical and economic landscape.

The change presents a dependable future for the over 600 million people in Latin America. The Summit of the Americas is no longer the only inter-continental forum for cooperation, but also another tool for pursuing prosperity with equality.

From here on, Latin America will no longer need to loiter in the ideological "backyard". It can go forward and take the center stage. Endi