I Would Be Worried Too: The X Summit of the Americas and the Art of Negotiating with Complexity

Thirty-eight days before the Summit of Presidents in Punta Cana (December 4–5), the preparatory process faces a reality that diplomatic sciences recognize well. The Summit will be preceded by the Civil Society Forum (December 1–2 in La Romana), the CEO Summit (December 3–4), the Multisectoral Dialogue (December 3), and the SIRG Ministerial Meeting (December 3 in Punta Cana). This intricate choreography of meetings confronts an irreconcilable tension: the gap between thematic ambition and operational consensus that has characterized hemispheric negotiations since 1994.

The Historical Precedent: Non-Exceptional Structural Fragmentations

The history of previous summits offers a fundamental methodological lesson. Mar del Plata (2005) concluded without a final declaration, trapped between incompatible visions about the FTAA. Port of Spain (2009) produced a “Declaration of Commitment” technically adopted by consensus, but with explicit reservations from some countries that refused to sign it, interpreting the document as insufficient to address the economic crisis and Cuba’s exclusion. Cartagena (2012) was the third consecutive summit without a final declaration, fracturing over Cuba and the Malvinas.

Dilma Rousseff’s presence in Cartagena 2012 is particularly instructive for understanding the present. The Brazilian president not only declared that it should be “the last summit without Cuba,” but canceled her bilateral meeting with Juan Manuel Santos and withdrew prematurely from the event as a manifestation of political discontent. This was not a rhetorical decision: it represented an assessment that the added value of presidential participation was negative compared to the limitations of an agreement that did not reflect her priorities.

This historical context is relevant because it warns: the fragmentations we observe in the latest version of the Punta Cana Declaration (October 2025) are not anomalies but expressions of structural tensions in hemispheric multilateralism.

The Latest Version of the Declaration: Anatomy of Negotiating Complexities

The “Draft Declaration of Punta Cana,” submitted to SIRG III on October 17 in its sixth version, presents brackets in at least four critical dimensions:

1. Semantic battle over “sustainability”: What began as advancing negotiations deteriorated when key actors moved to omit “equity,” “sustainable development,” and “climate change” from previously negotiated text. This shift represents more than editorial preference — it signals a fundamental rupture in negotiating dynamics. Some delegations request completely eliminating these terms; others defend “sustainable development”; still others propose “integral development.” For Caribbean states, whose very existence depends on climate action, the potential removal of previously agreed language on equity and climate change constitutes existential erasure. Each concept anchors different subsequent commitments on just transition, differentiated responsibilities, and climate financing. The irony deepens: while negotiators debate terminology, Caribbean islands face rising seas that recognize no brackets.

2. Water security and sovereignty: Brazil, with its robust National Water Resources Strategy 2022–2040 and water diplomacy experience, has requested the reformulation or suppression of the chapter. It is not obstructionism: it is protection of sovereignty over transboundary resources. Guatemala expresses similar concerns about supranational schemes. The irony is palpable — 166 million lack drinking water but there is no consensus on basic cooperation — but it should not obscure the legitimacy of concerns about supranational authority.

3. Migration as a conceptual category: The U.S. proposes “illegal”; multiple delegations reject it, proposing “irregular and risky.” Again, the dispute transcends words: each term generates differentiated legal consequences for the 8–18 million people in movement in the region. The paragraph on sargassum — which costs the Caribbean 120 million dollars annually in cleanup and requires coordinated regional action — has been on the verge of remaining unfinished: although the document reflects intention to articulate joint financing, divergences on mechanisms have left the wording without definitive agreement.

4. Institutional articulation: Brazil questioned the possible duplication between the “Hemispheric Platform for Action for Citizen Security” and existing structures. The OAS Hemispheric Security Commission has operated since 2003. MISPA VIII was held in July 2025. This concern, as noted in April, is not organizational pedantry but institutional and budgetary rationality. The goal is avoiding new funds dispersing in duplicate channels when operational frameworks already exist.

An Analytical Shift: From Limitations to Possibilities

However, maintaining only critical diagnosis would be incomplete. Several consensuses have indeed advanced significantly:

Food Security: The chapter shows real progress in access to healthy diets, cooperativism, fisheries management, school programs, and support for the Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty. It is not perfect — agricultural biotechnology faces legitimate resistance from those defending traditional agriculture — but it has reached iterations close to agreement. This is significant in a context where 43 million people live with hunger in Latin America.

Specialized Technical Work: MISPA VIII (July 2025) achieved documented advances in cybersecurity and police reform. This demonstrates that at technical levels, where actors are not presidents with competitive political calendars, convergence is possible. The experience suggests that sectoral work architectures can produce consensuses that elude general political forums.

Multi-stakeholder Participation: The Summit’s architecture (Civil Society Forum December 1–2 in La Romana; Business Summit December 3–4; Multisectoral Dialogue December 3) represents institutional learning from previous experiences on inclusivity and political legitimacy. This does not resolve fundamental disagreements, but broadens the base of actors who can contribute to implementation.

Presidential Absences: Complexity Before Failure

This requires nuanced analysis, not simplification:

Mexico: President Sheinbaum announced during her weekly press conference that she will not attend the upcoming Summit of the Americas. She expressed her disagreement with the exclusion of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela from the event and mentioned that due to the emergency caused by intense rains that have left dozens of deaths in central Mexico, her priority is to attend to those national matters. She also stated that she would consider whether someone from the Foreign Ministry would attend on behalf of Mexico.

Colombia: President Gustavo Petro announced on October 15 that he would not attend the Summit, declaring on X: “I will not attend the Summit of the Americas in the Dominican Republic. Dialogue does not begin with exclusions.” Petro revealed he had unsuccessfully proposed to the United States a meeting with the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) “to study the economic integration of a greater America.” His statement that “there was no response and what we have is an aggression in the Caribbean that had been constituted as a zone of peace” directly links his absence to both the exclusions and U.S. military presence in Caribbean waters. This calculated withdrawal transforms non-attendance into a dual protest: against the Summit’s exclusionary architecture and what he perceives as militarization of regional security approaches.

Chile: President Gabriel Boric faces a particularly complex scenario as Chile enters its presidential election cycle, with the first round scheduled for November 16, 2025, and a potential runoff on December 14. His coalition is contending with a resurgent opposition, strengthened by years of criticism over security and migration issues. While Boric could potentially use the Summit to support Michele Bachelet’s candidacy for UN Secretary-General, the likely overlap with a critical electoral period means that his participation in Punta Cana will be weighed against urgent domestic priorities and the imperative to reinforce his coalition’s standing at home.

Brazil: President Lula Da Silva faces a genuine temporal dilemma. COP30 in Belém (with 40,000 delegates and billions of dollars in green financing) directly competes with the hemispheric agenda. This is not a rhetorical distraction, but rather a strategic reordering of global climate priorities; Lula is determined to deliver a substantive COP with tangible results, especially following a COP29 in Baku that left much to be desired among climate advocates. The precedent of Dilma Rousseff in Cartagena 2012 — when she withdrew prematurely from the Summit after declaring it should be “the last without Cuba” — suggests Brazil uses presence and absence at summits as purposeful normative signals in international diplomacy.

Honduras: President Xiomara Castro faces presidential elections scheduled for November 30, a process historically characterized by logistical challenges and questions about integrity in several regions of the country. Despite the context of moderate economic growth and relative stability in 2025, the government remains focused on managing internal affairs and safeguarding the conduct of the elections. Under these circumstances, it is highly unlikely that she would leave the country during this critical period.

Ecuador: Given the current landscape in the country, President Daniel Noboa is unlikely to travel to Punta Cana for the Summit. Ecuador simultaneously faces a critical constitutional referendum scheduled for November 16, soaring violence rates (52 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, 29% higher than in 2024), and a recent social and indigenous crisis that strained governance. The crisis required military intervention on multiple fronts: internal security, operations against illegal mining, and electoral logistics support. With mobilized social movements, international human rights observation, and an opposition questioning his crisis management, Noboa must concentrate on domestic governance and political stability. His international presence remains uncertain in this context.

Bolivia: The country is undergoing a presidential transition following the election of Rodrigo Paz on October 19, set against the backdrop of a multidimensional crisis that encompasses political volatility, economic uncertainties, and persistent social tensions. This delicate context may require the incoming administration to focus almost exclusively on stabilization and domestic priorities, making external travel or engagement particularly challenging during the government’s initial phase.

Peru: Recently inaugurated President José Jerí faces one of the region’s most singular security and political crises. He declared a state of emergency in Lima and Callao just days after taking office due to advancing organized crime and mounting social pressure. A wave of homicides has reached historic highs. Sectoral protests and strikes grip the capital. His presidential succession followed Dina Boluarte’s removal after security failures. Fundamental rights have been suspended while Armed Forces patrol the streets. Recent history confirms that congressional authorization for the head of state to leave Peruvian territory is difficult to obtain during internal crises. The relevant question is not just whether Jerí could travel, but whether he would venture to Punta Cana amid this national emergency with congressional approval in doubt.

These absences are not defections from the X Summit, but rather expressions that national political calendars have their own internal logic. Instead of focusing on “why are presidents missing?” it is more productive to consider how hemispheric summits can remain relevant even amid heightened domestic political competition. Notably, President José Raúl Mulino of Panama has already confirmed his attendance, and there are strong expectations that other leaders — such as Rodrigo Chaves of Costa Rica, Bernardo Arévalo of Guatemala, Santiago Peña of Paraguay, and Yamandú Orsi of Uruguay — will also participate. Several prime ministers and heads of state from the Caribbean region, including those from Guyana, Antigua and Barbuda, Jamaica, the Bahamas, and Trinidad and Tobago, are also expected to attend, reinforcing the importance of the Summit as a platform for regional dialogue and cooperation.

However, the potential participation of Javier Milei (Argentina), Mark Carney (Canada), and Nayib Bukele (El Salvador) remains uncertain, especially in the case of Canada, whose prime minister is currently facing an escalation in tensions with the United States due to the imposition of new tariffs and the suspension of trade negotiations — a situation that intensifies the uncertainty and volatility of summit diplomacy in the Americas.

CARICOM’s Fractured Unity: From Los Angeles to Punta Cana

The Caribbean Community arrives at Punta Cana bearing fresh wounds from internal discord and the weight of unfulfilled promises from Los Angeles 2022. Just weeks before the Summit, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar of Trinidad and Tobago shattered CARICOM’s fragile unity by publicly demanding that fellow members absorb Venezuelan migrants and declaring she “did not care” if states withdrew support for Trinidad’s foreign policy ambitions. This occurred merely four days after CARICOM heads reaffirmed the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace amid unilateral U.S. military actions against alleged narco-traffickers off Venezuelan and Colombian coasts.

The episode reveals deeper fissures: at Los Angeles 2022, CARICOM states arrived with unified demands for climate finance, debt relief, and loss-and-damage compensation, only to receive rhetorical acknowledgment without substantive commitments. The U.S. pledged $28 million for food security assistance through the Caribbean Zero Hunger Plan — addressing a crisis affecting 67.5% of the Caribbean population experiencing moderate or severe food insecurity — but offered no concrete mechanisms for the climate finance desperately needed. This figure pales against the 140 billion dollars in climate damages the Caribbean faces by 2050.

Now at Punta Cana, CARICOM confronts a triple bind: internal divisions over security cooperation versus sovereignty, external pressure to align with competing hemispheric powers, and the existential urgency of climate remediation that neither Washington nor other major emitters have adequately addressed. The small island developing states’ call for a 1.5-degree pathway and differentiated treatment in climate finance remains trapped between the U.S. preference for market mechanisms and Latin American demands for historical responsibility. This fragmentation within fragmentation — CARICOM’s internal tensions nested within broader hemispheric divisions — exemplifies why achieving consensus at Punta Cana requires acknowledging not just bilateral disagreements but the multilayered complexities of sub-regional blocs struggling to maintain cohesion while negotiating survival.

The Competition for Presidential Attention: From Multilateral Forums to Global Spectacles

The contemporary international system witnesses an unprecedented competition for the most scarce resource in global politics: presidential time and attention. Where once diplomatic summits held monopolistic claim on heads of state calendars, today they must compete with alternative platforms of soft power projection — sporting mega-events, digital summits, bilateral strategic partnerships, and media spectacles that offer immediate political dividends without the friction of multilateral negotiation.

This structural transformation manifests starkly in President Trump’s scheduling dilemma. Trump announced (August 21) that the 2026 World Cup draw will occur December 5 at noon at the Kennedy Center in Washington, broadcast to more than one billion viewers. In an Oval Office event, Trump described the draw as “probably the biggest event in sports” and compared the World Cup’s 104 matches to “104 Super Bowls,” adding that “some of them are bigger than Super Bowls, actually.”

The question of whether he will attend Punta Cana (December 4–5) is legitimate but should be contextualized institutionally, not dramatically: It is not anomaly but structural symptom. The competition between sporting events and hemispheric multilateralism for media coverage and presidential allocation decisions reflects transformations in how soft power is built in the 21st century. Soft diplomatic power now competes with sports-media power. This is the reality of the contemporary international system, worthy of analysis but not scandal.

The draw has clear programmatic logic. The 2026 World Cup represents a global impact event with 15 billion dollars in projected economic impact. It involves 104 matches, 48 nations, and 16 venues (11 American, 3 Mexican, 2 Canadian). For an American leader, it offers presidential projection without diplomatic controversies before 1.2 billion simultaneous global viewers. The Summit, by contrast, offers negotiation of controversial topics before a hemispheric audience. The value comparison is not irrational.

The Dominican President has reiterated the invitation formally on multiple occasions: at Pope Francis’s funeral (April), at the 80th UN General Assembly (September), and through continuous diplomatic communications. His Foreign Minister has pointed out that “if President Trump decides to come, it will be irresistible for other leaders not to do so.” That Trump has not formally confirmed 38 days before is data, not scandal. Presidential confirmations typically come 15–20 days before events.

The real question is: what does it reveal about system incentives when leaders calculate that sporting events have legitimate competition with hemispheric summits in their allocation of presidential time and presence? That deserves fundamental institutional analysis, not dramatization. It suggests that hemispheric multilateralism must clarify its value proposition against other uses of presidential time.

A Broader Context: System Resilience

Despite contemporary fragmentations, the Summit system remains a site where actors dialogue without this implying that all converge. Mar del Plata, Port of Spain, and Cartagena were not catastrophic failures of multilateralism but moments when the system revealed its limits and readjusted. Now Punta Cana faces a similar architectural choice: force a declaration that no country subscribes to in writing (Cartagena 2012)? Or design an architecture of partial but authentic results, with clear continuity mechanisms?

The second option is more modest but also more honest and potentially more lasting in its effects.

Complexity as Opportunity

My series of articles — from “From Vision to Action” (September 2024) documenting confidential diplomatic consultations, through “Negotiating the Future of the Americas” (September 2024) recounting the Los Angeles 2022 experience, to “DR Presents Vision” (April 2025) detailing the Dominican positioning at SIRG — has documented the meticulous diplomatic construction that preceded Punta Cana.

The challenge of November 2025 is to translate that diplomatic construction into agreements that are less ambitious in scope but more operational in mechanisms.

This requires analytical maturity: recognizing that fragmentation in negotiation documents is not failure but expression that multilateral democracy has real costs. When 32 countries with divergent interests, competitive electoral calendars, and distinct national priorities negotiate in real time, complete convergences are extremely rare in the history of multilateralism.

The Architecture of Hope: Beyond Institutional Maturity

The question for Punta Cana is not whether we will achieve diplomatic perfection, but whether we possess the courage to recognize that within fragmentation itself lies the seed of a new form of hemispheric cooperation. One that does not pretend impossible uniformity, but builds bridges precisely through recognition of our differences.

The 600 million inhabitants of the Americas do not await grandiose declarations. They await mechanisms that function, verifiable commitments, institutions that respond to their daily urgencies — the mother in Guatemala seeking clean water for her children, the farmer in Haiti confronting climate devastation, the entrepreneur in Jamaica navigating sargassum’s economic impact, the family in Mexico fleeing violence’s shadow.

What emerges from Punta Cana may not be a monument to diplomatic consensus, but it can become something more valuable: a working blueprint for cooperation in an age of complexity. Not the architecture of total convergence, but the architecture of the possible — pragmatic, verifiable, constructed upon firm foundations of mutual respect and the understanding that our destinies, though diverse, remain inexorably intertwined.

The institutional maturity I propose is not resignation. It is the wisdom to recognize that real progress is measured not in forced consensuses but in the capacity to maintain productive dialogue even amid disagreement. It is understanding that partial agreements faithfully implemented surpass total declarations never executed. It is accepting that in a hemisphere where democracy means genuine pluralism, the perfect cannot become the enemy of the good.

History will remember the X Summit of the Americas not for its final declarations, but for whether it inaugurated a new grammar of cooperation adapted to 21st-century realities. A grammar that speaks not in the subjunctive of what should be, but in the indicative of what can be achieved. A grammar that replaces the rhetoric of unanimous triumph with the metrics of incremental progress.

This is not failure. It is evolution. It is the hemisphere learning, finally, to dance with its own complexity.