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By Roberto Morejón

In its eagerness to bow to US foreign policy, the Argentine government delegation set out to dynamite the 19th Ibero-American Summit, held in the Ecuadorian city of Cuenca.

Attacks on Cuba were prominent on the agenda of the South American country's delegation, as a sign of an aggressive, isolationist foreign policy that was at odds with the consensus reached in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Due to the obtuse approach ordered from Buenos Aires by the ultra-right-wing President Javier Milei, the Ibero-American Summit was unable to reach a final declaration that addressed important concepts.

The same government that had just voted alone in the UN General Assembly against a resolution promoting the elimination of digital violence against women and girls, ordered its representation in Cuenca to obstruct a statement in the final declaration against the U.S. blockade of Cuba.

No country supported the Argentine diplomats, and as evidence of their isolation, it is enough to point out that the remaining nations issued a special declaration demanding an end to the siege of the Caribbean archipelago.

They also expressed their support for the removal of the largest of the Antilles from Washington's list of state sponsors of terrorism.

But in compliance with the instructions of the tenants of the Casa Rosada, the Argentine delegation was also caustic on other issues.

It did so by trying to erase from the final documents the defense of gender equality and the rights of indigenous peoples and trying to impose the bizarre position that climate change does not exist.

This perspective of Argentina's ultra-conservative government coincides with that of Donald Trump.

Upon the electoral triumph of the real estate magnate, Milei was the first to congratulate him and later traveled to Florida to personally congratulate him.

As pointed out by Cuban diplomat Rodolfo Benítez, head of the Cuban delegation at the Ibero-American summit in Cuenca, Argentina arrived at that meeting with the instruction to weaken and fracture one of the multilateral forums.

They tried to conceal that purpose in Cuenca when the Argentine ambassador in Ecuador, Eduardo Acevedo, covered his speech at the summit with an aggressive garb against Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, the latter country he labeled for what he described as violation of human rights.

Such hypocrisy was notorious, since Milei's current government does transgress citizens' prerogatives, by driving the population into poverty, unemployment, lowering salaries and pensions and judicially persecuting the political opposition.