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Venezuela and Cuba have a duty to resist
•
Raúl and Chávez agree
at the closing session of the
10th Inter-Governmental Commission
Aida
Calviac Mora
• "VENEZUELA and Cuba have a
duty to resist; that is a commitment to our history,
to Bolívar and Martí, to the peoples of our America,"
affirmed General of the Army Raúl Castro Ruz,
president of the Councils of State and Ministers,
who headed, with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez,
the closing session of the 10th Inter-Governmental
Commission between the two countries.
 "We are approaching a decade
of joint construction in which Cuba and Venezuela
have raised, with the will of their governments and
the efforts of our finest sons and daughters, an
example of humane integration in solidarity," stated
Raúl during the event at the capital’s International
Conference Center.
The South American nation is
currently the island’s first trade partner," he
noted, a result that has been made possible on
account of the role of the social missions, which he
described as an unprecedented model of social
justice in favor of the most dispossessed.
For his part, Chávez
commented that the changes coming about today in
Latin America are not a second independence. "It is
the same thing, which has not ended. It befalls us
to crown a 200-year process and we shall do so,
nobody can avert that," he confirmed.
"Fidel never tires of
reiterating to me that if the Bolivarian Revolution
should fail, the whole of this continent would once
again fall into the hands of the yanki empire, and I
feel obliged to contribute to that phrase from the
most profound truth: the Venezuelan Revolution would
not have existed without the Cuban one; thus, we are
obliged to work for our revolutions because, in
essence, they are the same, we cannot fail," he
stated.
 Chávez also noted that this
meeting has produced results unprecedented in the
history of integration, in allusion to the 285
projects to be executed by 52 institutions in the
two countries for the benefit of their peoples.
The two leaders agreed that
bilateral links have grown qualitatively and
quantitatively on a basis of altruistic cooperation
and mutual benefit.
As a result of the Joint
Commission, the 11 technical tables that met on
December 11 and 12, drew up and approved the working
program for 2010, which takes in, among others, the
health, education, sports, culture, energy,
agriculture, informatics and communications, mining,
and heavy iron and steel sectors, and the
pharmaceutical and sugar industries.
The delegations stressed the
need to take into account the intensification of the
current economic crisis, which is particularly
affecting the Third World nations, victims of
neoliberal policies.
Ricardo Cabrisas, vice
president of the Council of Ministers, on the Cuban
side, and Vice President Rafael Ramírez Carreño,
minister of People’s Power for energy and oil, on
the Venezuelan side, signed the final minutes of the
10th Session of the Inter-Governmental Commission.
During the meeting its
elevated symbolism was highlighted, given that it
coincided with the 15th anniversary of Chávez’ first
visit to the island, during which he met with the
leader of the Revolution, Fidel Castro; and the
fifth anniversary of the adoption of the political
declaration signed by the two leaders on December
14, 2004, a text that became the founding document
of the ALBA. •
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