Washington, DC — This past weekend, a delegation of US Congress members — Representatives Greg Casar (D-TX), Jesús “Chuy” García (D-IL), and Delia Ramirez (D-IL) — traveled to Bogotá, Colombia to participate in the inaugural gathering of the Panamerican Congress, a gathering of progressive legislators from North, Central, and South America to address challenges facing the Western Hemisphere. The Panamerican Congress focused on three main areas of hemispheric cooperation: democracy, the climate crisis, and peace. Delegates presented a diversity of perspectives and discussed common principles to advance the agenda in each area. The Congress also provided a space for parliamentarians to share best practices and successful policy strategies in their respective legislatures.
The US delegation, which also included Nydia Velazquez’s (D-NY) legislative director, Renata Beca-Barragán, was joined by close to 40 lawmakers from Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico, as well as special guests from Barbados, Bolivia, and Costa Rica. Senior Colombian government officials were present at the Congress, including Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo and Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development Susana Muhamad.
“During the Panamerican Congress, legislators from around the region engaged in a remarkable exchange of ideas on how to cooperate and seek common solutions to the shared challenges of the climate crisis, threats to democracy, and the many violent conflicts still raging in the hemisphere, often fueled by the drug war and US weapons,” said Alex Main, Director of International Policy for the Center for Economic and Policy Research, which sponsored the Congress.
Participating legislators represented parties including Brazil’s governing Workers’ Party (PT) and Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL); Canada’s New Democratic Party and Liberal Party;
Chile’s Broad Front Coalition, Socialist Party, and Party for Democracy; Colombia’s Pacto Histórico, Liberal Party, and Green Alliance Party; Guatemala’s Semilla and WINAQ parties; Honduras’s Liberty and Refoundation Party and Savior Party of Honduras; and Mexico’s MORENA party, among others.
The Congress, and US House members’ participation in it, builds on relationships developed during a congressional delegation to South America a year ago, and on ideas lawmakers have exchanged with President Gustavo Petro and other Latin American leaders.
Congressman Jesús “Chuy” García (D-IL) spoke on the climate crisis, saying, in part: “The man-made climate and environmental crisis has always been a regional challenge. And it demands our urgent response. We’ve seen unprecedented mobilization around the world driven by young people, fighting for a planet they can live on and for the major policy shift that gets us there.
“It’s their timeline we are playing with when governments refuse to act,” García added. “And as powerful corporations use right-wing allies to block meaningful reform, their advocacy is deeply entwined to the themes of democracy and peace.”
Congressman Greg Casar (D-TX) addressed the theme of peace at the Congress: “My colleagues and I are committed to doing what we can to push US policy in a direction that helps foster peace in the region. That means pushing for reforms to our own gun laws and ensuring it’s harder to traffick these guns across the border. It also means changing current and past US policies that have helped fuel violence across the region.”
Casar added: “In the US, we must reckon with the legacy of the Monroe Doctrine and the violence that resulted from it. The War on Drugs, the heavily militarized response to drug production and trafficking, launched over 50 years ago, led to the expansion of the drug trade and an explosion of violence that affects our citizens and also those in Latin America.”
Congresswoman Delia C. Ramirez (D-IL) spoke toward the end of the Congress, expressing optimism for its future: “The goal of this Congress is not merely to exchange ideas — it is to begin to forge a new relationship between our nations. A relationship based on respect, sovereign equality, and cooperation to take on common challenges. As representatives from the United States, it is not lost on us that many of the challenges discussed here are connected, in some way, to our nation’s troubling record of treating this hemisphere as our own ‘backyard’ — often with devastating consequences for the peoples of this region.
“We in the US delegation return to Washington with a renewed sense of urgency — on the need to make the United States a ‘good neighbor’ to its brothers and sisters across the Americas,” Ramirez added.
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