Matters
of Importance in Latin America and the Caribbean ALBA: 16 Years of Life - Ángel
Guerra Cabrera - 
The
Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-Peoples' Trade
Agreement (ALBA-TCP) held its XVIII ordinary Summit virtually this time
on December 14, with the President of Venezuela Nicolás
Maduro as moderator. The meeting commemorated the organization's
founding in Havana, exactly 16 years earlier, by the presidents of
Cuba, Fidel Castro, and Venezuela, Hugo Chávez who conceived
of it as an anti-neoliberal, supportive, non-competitive and popular
alternative to the absolute predominance of profit and the market
promoted by the United States through the Free Trade Area of the
Americas (FTAA). The FTAA was defeated the following year, in 2005, at
the Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata, by the joint action of
Presidents Chávez, Kirchner, Lula, Tabaré
Vázquez and Duarte Frutos, backed by popular mobilization.
ALBA has benefited from important achievements such as
Operation Miracle, which brought eye operations to improve the sight of
more than 8 million low-income Latin Americans and Caribbean people;
the eradication of illiteracy in Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua and
its appreciable decrease in other States of the Alliance, and the
genetic-social clinical study of the population in six member
countries. Of particular importance was the creation in Cuba of the
Latin American School of Medicine and then a counterpart of it in
Venezuela, which have contributed tens of thousands of doctors with
humanistic training to remote places on four continents where they had
never seen a doctor, including black communities in the United States.
Maduro
said that the foreign ministries have been working together on a set of
proposals and documents to greet the year 2021 with strength and
dynamism. He put great importance on the relaunch of Petrocaribe and
its economic area, which could not be done in 2020 due to the
unyielding U.S. economic blockade under Trump that prevents Venezuela
from exporting oil and the Caribbean states from importing it. The
timing of the summit was a chiaroscuro, taking place under the ominous
weight of the international health and economic crisis caused by
COVID-19, during which the rich countries of the West have shown
unparalleled selfishness, procuring health services just for themselves
at a time when solidarity and cooperation are most necessary. But, at
the same time, when the rebellion of the peoples of Latin America and
the Caribbean against neo-liberal governments is on the rise, as can be
clearly seen in Chile, Peru, Colombia, Guatemala and Haiti.
At
the same time, the Bolivian people have resumed their liberating path
after their resounding victory in the October 18 elections, which
brought Luis Arce and David Choquehuanca to the presidency and
vice-presidency of the country. Together with the return of Evo
Morales, it constitutes an important defeat for imperialism, the
right-wing forces and the Áñez dictatorship. Less
than
two months later, the Venezuelan people spoke in their momentous
elections of December 6, which renewed the National Assembly, granted a
large majority in that body to the Great Patriotic Pole and dealt a
sharp blow to the destabilization strategy of the United States and the
international right against the Bolivarian Revolution. Equally
important was the re-election of Ralph Gonsalves and Timothy Harris as
Prime Ministers of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Saint Kitts and
Nevis, veteran ALBA member states in the Eastern Caribbean. The
summit was mainly dedicated to analyzing the regional political
situation, coordinating efforts among its member states to strengthen
the fight against the pandemic, and assessing the important
reincorporation of Bolivia as a member. The president of Cuba, Miguel
Díaz-Canel, offered to provide epidemiological advice to the
sister governments of the organization, share experiences with them on
tackling COVID-19 and put at their disposal Cuba's successful protocols
for combatting the virus with biotechnological medicines. The
governments of Cuba and Venezuela were put in charge of organizing a
common bank of medications and, mainly, vaccines against the novel
coronavirus. The summit condemned the redoubling of the blockades and
economic harassment of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua by the United
States. In addition to those already mentioned,
some of the main agreements reached related to the reactivation of the
Economic Council of ALBA, and of the Sucre as the exchange currency,
the activation of cryptocurrencies, the strengthening of Petrocaribe
and the ALBA Bank, which offers assistance and financing to member
states. The Summit also agreed to elect as the group's executive
secretary the renowned Bolivian diplomat Sacha Llorenti, who was his
country's representative to the UN.
This article was published in
Volume 50 Number 49 - December 19, 2020
Article Link:
Matters
of Importance in Latin America and the Caribbean: ALBA: 16 Years of Life >
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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