Panama OAS summit for dummies

OK, real quick.

The OAS summit, for Venezuela's Maduro regime it was supposed to be the trashing of Obama and the US.

For the US and Cuba it was going to be the start of something and a positive PR for both battered leaders.

The results?

Winners?

No winners. There are never clear winners in an OAS summit because of the nature of the participants there, all prima donne that will always find a way to say that "yes, they did this and that but I told them so" and make this pass as a dramatic victory for home consumption. The saddest part here is that it tends to work....

However there are two winning moments: 1) when Raul Castro says that the US is horrible but whatever happened was not Obama's fault and 2) when they both sat together in front of cameras to chat a little bit. From here to eternity there is a long way, and even from here to get some sort of real agreement there is quite a way as the US Congress will never vote any treaty that does not include a clear improvement of human rights in Cuba. So we cannot call Casto and Obama winners but their moments under the flashes have erased any other "winning" moment at the summit, Better, it made worse the loser moments...

Losers!

Let's start with the minor losers. The tirades of Cristina Kirchener was not even attended by Obama I understand. The ones of Correa and Evo were, well, tired and out of the point considering the momentous tectonic shift further north.  In short the axis of evil-ALBA looked passé and lonely.  Obama had made sure the day before that CARICOM and Central America would remain at the very least neutral. Even Dilma for the first time in a pre summit interview started putting a tiny bit of distance with Maduro.

The loser was, of course, and by far, Maduro and Venezuela. Clearly the least influential country of our hemisphere (even Canada weighs much more by blocking by itself a final declaration without remorse, I understand).

Maduro did not even get to have Obama sit down to listen while he ranted about Miami plots.

Maduro did not get to deliver his 10 million petitions.

Maduro did not get to have the OAS rage at Obama and the US.

Maduro was caught bringing a double for him and his wife. Nobody knows why. Some suggest it was to fake an assassination attempt.

In fact Maduro did not get anything.  Worse, at the very end, it seems that it was Obama, like an afterthought, who in fact sort of cornered Maduro to let him have it. No photo we know of at this point. Of course chavismo is pretending that this is a great victory.  Never mind the ridicule from months of insults to rejoice about 5 minutes in between doors, But even if it were true that Maduro had cornered Obama it would look more like the stalker that finally got after the star victim he had been tracking all day long...

There, I think I got it all.