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Fruitful balance in just five years
Nidia Diaz
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JUST five years have passed since the signing of the
Constitutional Agreement of what was then the
Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, laying the
foundations of a new way of exercising solidarity,
an equality of duties and rights and mutual respect
among the sister nations of Latin America and the
Caribbean, liberated from imperial hegemony and
oligarchical dominion.
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Some 7,256 young people
from 45 countries and around 84 indigenous
communities have graduated from the Latin
American School of Medicine. |
Cuba
and Venezuela were the initiators of the innovative
experience. In order to reach that point there had
to be pre-existing emancipation processes to lead
the two nations on paths of sovereignty and dignity,
and which had been undertaken by the Cuban
Revolution and the Bolivarian Revolution. Previous
experience had demonstrated the impossibility of
integration while this was ruled by the dominant
capitalist classes, joined and subordinated in their
profit ambitions to the interests of the United
States.
In
the previous 20 years, neoliberalism had taken over
national economies without approaching the basic
social problems of populations, states had been
stripped via a wave of privatizations of any control
or ownership of the means of production and channels
of distribution. In that context, false processes of
integration were conceived, lacking any genuine
element of cooperation and solidarity, merely
providing a cover for the old objectives of
exploitation and plunder that they were now trying
to give an apparently friendlier face.
That
was what identified the discredited and defeated
Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA),
overwhelmingly rejected by the most aware peoples
and governments of Latin America and the Caribbean,
who clearly observed the crude deception in that
agreement, a swindle that would only intensify
dependency on the United States and neoliberalism in
its crudest form. It would have been a return to
annexation.
When
the ALBA arose as something totally contrary to the
propositions of the FTAA, it became evident that
that was the genuine scheme of integration, of a
new, just and cooperative kind, needed by the
countries of Latin America and the Caribbean.
The
practice of five years of incessant work, fertile
ideas and daring projects undertaken with
intelligence, skill and a sustained internationalist
spirit on the part of all the nations and peoples
that currently make up the Bolivarian Alliance, has
demonstrated the possibility of important concrete
realizations. Together with its member states, the
benefits of ALBA have also reached other Latin
American and Caribbean countries which, in one form
or another, have been associated in projects and
programs that virtually cover the entire region.
In
order to achieve that, since its creation the
Alliance has been based on unalterable guiding
principles that direct and determine its quotidian
action in all aspects, in such a way that those
guiding principles have given rise to the
grannacional (grand-national) concept, which is
being applied to all the projects and programs and
which has a historical foundation, given that it is
based on the Bolivarian vision of a union of Latin
American and Caribbean republics. It contains the
conjoint definition of grand lines of common action
among states sharing one single concept of the
exercise of national and regional sovereignty,
developing their own social and political identity
and, at the same time, overcoming local barriers to
strengthen capacities that will allow them to
confront challenges in a united way.
Hence the grannacional projects and enterprises that
are materializing the social and economic projects
of integration. Not every grannacional project will
become a grannacional enterprise, but every
grannacional enterprise has to respond to a
grannacional project, which must guide its
development.
In
the social and cultural areas, these projects can be
instigated via existing national structures and can
be undertaken in two or more countries, or even in
all the ALBA member countries. In terms of
enterprises, these are inscribed in the new logic of
ALBA unity, within its integrationist strategy, and
can assume diverse forms of shareholding as long as
their productive efficiency is guaranteed, as laid
down in documents signed to that effect.
Synthesizing the successes of ALBA in a few lines is
no easy task. Operation Miracle, promoted by Cuba
and Venezuela, was the first of the grand social
actions undertaken conjointly, and later extended to
other countries to liberate those peoples from
visual disorders and whose beneficiaries are in the
millions today.
That
was followed by Cuba's grand educational missions in
Venezuela, in conjunction with Venezuelan educators
and teachers, such as the Mission Robinson (I and
II), Mission Sucre, Mission Rivas and Mission
Vuelvan Caras, all of which gave rise to an
educational revolution in the land of the liberator,
Simón Bolívar.
In
parallel, another prioritized area of attention was
public health, made concrete via the Barrio Adentro
program and in Venezuelan hospitals and diagnostic
centers by a Cuban medical mission, alongside
instructors from the Sports and Culture Barrio
Adentro missions. That included the training in both
countries of thousands of young Venezuelans for
medical careers in study centers organized by Cuban
teachers.
Here, the creation of Cuban medical missions
organized to detect genetic diseases in the ALBA
countries and their location - even in the remotest
parts of their geography - merits a special mention.
That is going ahead via the Moto Méndez mission in
Bolivia, the Manuel Espejo in Ecuador and the Todos
con Voz in Nicaragua, a similar undertaking having
been completed in Venezuela.
The
cooperative integration of the ALBA countries is not
confined to the aid, socioeconomic or commercial
spheres, but goes much further to include the
important sphere of culture and the development of
the most diverse forms of expression in art and
literature via the ALBA-Cultural program, which
sponsors annual ALBA prizes in Arts and Literature.
The
highly accredited multinational television network
Telesur has become a point of reference for Latin
American and international opinion, steadily
increasing its audience and informative prestige,
and it is soon to be followed by a Radio Sur
channel.
Within the Trade Treaty of the Peoples (TCP) a
number of grannacional agreements and projects have
been approved in the area of fair trade, made
concrete in enterprises such as industrial
suppliers, import and export agencies, ALBA stores,
an ALBA fair and training centers to improve
productive capacity, design and technological
innovations.
Agreements established within ALBA-Financial are
highly important- these include the Cooperation and
Investment Fund, the Bank of ALBA and ALBA Vouchers
of up to one billion dollars. For its part, the
ALBA-Alimentation has strategic characteristics,
given that it is directed at attaining shared food
self-sufficiency and the guarantee of food security,
and includes a Food Bank and a grannacional food
production enterprise.
In
the areas of telecommunications and tourism, joint
endeavors are also being developed that are relative
to its expansion and a grannacional
telecommunications enterprise has been created,
alongside a plan for social tourism and the ALBA
University of Tourism.
Other tremendously significant projects are being
planned in the areas of mining, industry and energy,
with the creation of aluminum, geological-mining,
cement and timber companies. With respect to heavy
and light industry, agreements have been signed to
create steel enterprises and companies focusing on
so-called "white goods" in association with Belarus,
Iran and China.
The
most significant projects for the ALBA countries are
those in the field of energy, linked to the bloc's
Energy Treaty, which contemplates the establishment
of a grannacional energy company to cover the oil
and gas sectors, refineries and petrochemicals,
transport and storage, electricity, alternative
energy and maritime transport.
In
this context, there are currently five projects
corresponding to Bolivia, two in Nicaragua, two in
Cuba and three in Haiti, which include refineries,
electricity plants, re-gasification and asphalt.
Returning to the area of finance, which contributes
to guaranteeing the projects, agreements and
treaties signed by the Alliance, it is necessary to
emphasize the constitution of the Bank of ALBA - an
economic entity based in Caracas that will have
branches in all the member countries - responsible
for financing the projects, awarding credits and
resolving disputes of an economic nature. The bank
has an initial capital of one billion dollars which
has been provided by the member countries according
to their particular abilities.
Also
significant in the economic field was the creation
of the SUCRE (Single Regional Payment Compensation
System) that in its initial stage will act as a
virtual currency until it becomes a real currency
within the approved united monetary zone, and the
establishment of a Payment Compensation Chamber and
a reserve fund created with contributions from the
member countries.
A
cursory examination of the most important actions on
the part of ALBA in the short space of five years
demonstrates, first, the liberating political will
of the countries that make up this flourishing
alliance, whose governments and peoples have known
how to cement, in such a short space of time, a
solid and sustainable response to the pretensions of
the empire, outlined in the moribund but still
unburied FTAA.
The
climate of transformations and sovereignty that
Latin America and the Caribbean is beginning to
experience has contributed to the creation of these
conditions and ensured that the Bolivarian Alliance
for the Peoples of Our America, which embodies and
promotes the ideals of Bolívar and Martí, is a
tangible fact that it is indeed possible to work on
behalf of the peoples despite the difficulties
imposed by a world in which egotism and
individualism are the trump cards wielded by the
empire in order to maintain its hegemony. •
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