A wave of boycotts against the upcoming US-hosted Summit of the Americas (SOA) is the latest demonstration of the rising anti-US feeling in Latin America, as more countries, including Mexico, have increasingly realized how they have been the victims of aggressions from the US, the biggest troublemaker and democracy spoiler in the region, Heinz Dieterich, a world renowned German sociologist and political analyst residing in Mexico, told the Global Times in an exclusive interview.

While several Latin American and Caribbean leaders warned they might not attend if Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua were not invited, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is the most likely guest to follow through on the threat, US news outlet The Hill commented on Monday.

The significant downgrading of Latin American presidential participation in Los Angeles indicates an increasing trend for change against neoliberal regimes and US-backed despots in the subcontinent, said Dieterich.

He claimed that the US' decision of not inviting Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua to the summit is a clear indication that the ruling power elites in Washington are totally out of touch with today´s reality and are "delusional."

The US is trying to exclude some so-called "non-democratic leaders." However, the historic truth is that "no other state in the hemisphere that has destroyed more democratic governments and institutions in the hemisphere and globally than Anglo-American imperialism: the US and the UK, through direct interventions, color revolutions, economic sanctions, blockades," Dieterich argued.

The Article 19 of the Inter-American Democracy Charter proclaimed by the Organization of American States (OAS) meeting in Lima, 2001 states 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."

"Thus, any logic would dictate that the first country to be prohibited to participate in these summits must be the US," Dieterich said.

Observers from the region told the Global Times that they see an obvious trend of US-led organisations becoming less popular among states in the region.

The OAS was never popular in Latin America and the Caribbean because it was never more than a neocolonial interventionist instrument of US' exploitation and domination in the hemisphere directed against any attempt of self-government and national sovereignty of the Latin American people and progressive governments, Dieterich suggested.

On a global scale, the OAS Summit is a marginal event compared to others. It has nothing substantial to offer because its center of power, the US, is a shadow of strength compared to what it was even a decade ago, Dieterich noted.

The unpopularity of the OAS has a long history, but it was deepened with the crisis of neoliberalism and the emergence of progressive governments, Arturo Laguado Duca, professor of the Latin American Academy of Social Sciences (FLACSO) at the Argentina University told the Global Times. "One could even say that more than unpopular, the OAS became inconsequential when it was already obvious that it was only serving as a coordination mechanism to impose US policies with very few benefits for the rest of the countries. Without a doubt, this marks a weakening of US hegemony in the region," Laguado said.

Dieterich said that the theme of the upcoming OAS, "Building a Sustainable, Resilient, and Equitable Future," is nothing more than an empty slogan with no real power or the US interest to back it up.

"The United States is a shadow of the imperial power it once was, with incompetent leadership-elites and no strategic clue to what its role in the future multipolar world is and can be. The Empire is a status quo with no potential for elaborating a progressive role for a world community with shared interests," Dieterich stated.

"What projection of power, leadership and economic development can such a country exercise in its own backyard, the Western hemisphere, where of course, the China-led Belt and Road Initiative with increasingly important trade, investment and financial participations produce an ever-better road of development than Western neoliberal imperialism?" Dieterich asked.

China, as a viable economic and political partner and a possible strategic alternative to the US in the governance of the new multipolar world system, has provided the anti-imperialist Latin American experience and attitude with a viable material underpinning for the construction of the future and the renegotiation of Mexico's close relationship with the US, the scholar said.

Dieterich tagged the Organization of American States a "neocolonial instrument of the Cold War and a constant imperialist interventionist in internal affairs of Latin American states," citing the latest example of the coup d'état in 2021 against Evo Morales, Bolivia's first Indigenous president and one of Latin America's most prominent leftists, which was organized by the US and the UK because of Bolivia´s lithium reserves and the long democratic and economic development achieved under the Morales' government.

The OAS played a fundamental role in that destabilization and coup d'état against Morales' government.

Mexican Foreign Minister, Marcelo Ebrard , slammed the secretary general of the OAS Luis Almagro on June 4, 2021, for his "very dubious and questionable actions to intervene in internal processes such as the case of Bolivia, which was opprobrious because they practically facilitated a coup in a country that had an uninterrupted democratic life in recent years."

Mexico, for 200 years, has been the victim of US aggressions, having lost almost half of its territory because of Washington´s expansionism in the 19th century, Dieterich mentioned.

"These centuries-long aggressions, extorsions, bullying and discrimination have left a strong anti-American feeling in the Mexican population. The US intervention in the Mexican Revolution, including the assassination of the democratic president Francisco Madero, the exclusion of Cuba from the Inter American system (1962) and the US war against its revolution, the coup d'état against the democratically elected Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973, and the US criminal war of aggression against Nicaragua´s Sandinista government. All these imperialist interventions in Latin America and México kept the popular anti-American sentiment of the Mexican people alive," Dieterich told the Global Times.

The dramatic decrease of Washington´s imperial power in the hemisphere and, on a global level vis-a-vis China, Russia, India and the Middle East, inevitably means an increase of the relative power of the Latin American states, Dieterich concluded.

With the probable electoral triumphs of Lula da Silva in Brazil and Gustavo Petro in Colombia, this year, a new more powerful anti-neoliberal configuration of social-democratic governments may be emerging in Latin America and the Caribbean, he noted.