[R-G] ALBA, an Economic Alternative for Latin America

[Richard Menec]

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/28/6666/

ALBA, an Economic Alternative for Latin America

by Medea Benjamin

Published on Monday, January 28, 2008 by CommonDreams.org

The sixth conference of the Latin American alternative trade alliance known 
as ALBA-which stands for the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas and 
means "Dawn" in Spanish-was held in Caracas on January 25-26. The brainchild 
of Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, ALBA was founded by Cuba and Venezuela in 
2004 as a fair trade alternative to US-backed free trade policies and is 
made possible thanks to Venezuela's oil money.

When Evo Morales was elected in Bolivia and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, they 
too joined ALBA, which Chavez has nicknamed the Club of "Chicos Malos", or 
bad boys, because of its opposition to U.S. domination. At this weekend's 
meeting, the Caribbean island of Dominica also joined, and representatives 
attended from Ecuador, Honduras, Uruguay, Haiti and several other Caribbean 
nations.

Chavez opened the session talking about the need for a trade system that 
addresses people's needs, not corporate profits. His railed against the 
"dictatorship of global capitalism", and encouraged Latin American countries 
to withdraw their international reserves from United States banks, warning 
of a looming US economic crisis. "Why does that money have to be in the 
north?", he asked. "We should start to bring our reserves back home."

His thoughts were echoed by Daniel Ortega, who blamed the capitalist system 
for the environmental crisis. "The capitalist model of development is simply 
unsustainable," Ortega declared. "If your economy is controlled by 
speculative capital that only cares about profits, you can't solve the huge 
problems affecting humanity. Once we renounce the free trade model, we can 
begin to address the massive problems of unemployment, poverty and global 
warming."

Bolivia's Evo Morales, who is facing fierce opposition in part because of 
his efforts to nationalize natural gas and oil, insisted that key public 
resources such as land, water and energy should not be for private profit 
but for the common good. He also insisted that Latin America should not look 
to the United States for solutions, since U.S. aid always comes with strings 
designed to increase its hegemony.

"In 1990s, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund imposed their 
disastrous policies, and then the U.S. tried to impose the Free Trade 
Agreement of the Americas-which should really be called the Free Profits 
Agreement of the Americas because it is meant to increase the profits of US 
corporations," said Morales. "But people of the hemisphere rejected that 
agreement, so now the U.S. is trying-country-by-country-to get bilateral 
trade agreements. They are always trying to divide us, but we salute the 
great resistance to empire that we see throughout the hemisphere."

The leaders noted that it was no coincidence that just at the time of the 
ALBA summit, Condoleezza Rice was visiting neighboring Colombia to promote a 
U.S.-Colombia Free Trade pact. Chavez, who recently called Colombia's 
President Urribe a "sad peon of the empire", laughed at U.S. accusations 
that he, Chavez, was facilitating the flow of Colombian cocaine through 
Venezuela.

The talk of drug-smuggling turned into comic relief, however, when Chavez 
launched into a discourse on the benefits of the coca leaf, which, he 
insisted, was very different from cocaine. U.S. officials have long tried to 
eradicate coca cultivation, which has been grown and chewed by Andean 
Indians for centuries.

"Speaking of drugs," Chavez turned to Bolivian President Evo Morales, who is 
himself a former coca farmer and is a strong defender of the coca leaf, 
"where are the coca leaves you used to bring me?"

A Bolivian Indian sitting behind Morales got up and offered up his personal 
stash of coca leaves. Delighted, Chavez took a leaf and put it in his mouth. 
"The sacred leaf of the Inca, the Aymara Indians," he declared. "Thank you, 
brother." Emphasizing the great qualities of coca, Chavez said that he had 
become used to chewing the leaves every morning and invited the other heads 
of states to try some.

The laughter reached new heights when Chavez welcomed Prime Minister Ralph 
Gonzalez of St. Vincent and Grenadines to the Club of the Bad Boys and 
asked, in broken English, "Do you want some coca?" Imagining the headlines 
back home, the Prime Minister politely declined. "I'm a good Catholic boy 
who only occasionally associates with bad boys," he joked.

The meeting turned serious, however, when it came time to sign economic 
agreements. Nicaragua, for example, pledged to help supply milk, corn, beans 
and beef to Venezuela, while Venezuela will sell Nicaragua oil under 
preferential terms to Nicaragua. Cuba has an agreement to send doctors to 
Venezuela in exchange for oil discounts.

The most significant moment of the summit was the announcement of the 
creation of a regional development bank intended to strengthen their 
alliance and promote independence from U.S.-backed lenders like the World 
Bank. The ALBA Bank will be started with $1 billion to $1.5 billion of 
capital. Venezuela, with its plentiful oil earnings, will be the leading 
financier. The funds will go toward joint efforts from farming projects to 
energy ventures, such as hydroelectric energy using Dominica's abundant 
rivers and Nicaraguan technology.

Chavez and the leaders of six other South American countries last month 
launched a similar venture, the Bank of the South, which is projected to 
have as much as $7 billion in startup capital and offer loans with fewer 
strings attached than those given by the World Bank or the International 
Monetary Fund.

A major question about the future of ALBA is whether more countries will 
join to give it more clout. Ecuador and Haiti, for example, would like to 
join but are facing strong internal opposition. Several small Caribbean 
nations attending the meeting mentioned how difficult it is to counter 
attacks by the conservative media. "The principles of ALBA-solidarity, 
non-interference, respect for independence, complementarity instead of 
competition, fair trade-they are like motherhood. You can't be against 
them," Prime Minister Ralph Gonzalez of St. Vincent and Grenadines reasoned. 
"But when you start to add names-Chavez, Castro, Ortega-people get scared. 
So we have to educate our people before we can become full members."

Dominica, a nation that defied elite pressure by joining ALBA, was already 
facing the backlash. "While we are here talking about ways to improve the 
lives of our people, the conservative media is talking about economic ruin, 
communist influence, Iranian takeovers, an end to tourism," tourism minister 
Ian Douglas told me. "We will weather the storm, but it's not going to be 
easy."

One way to get around such government pressure is to allow the participation 
in ALBA of social movements throughout the hemisphere. At last year's 
summit, the ALBA Council of Social Movements was formed with representatives 
from farmers groups, women, environmentalists, unions and other civil 
groups. But there were unresolved questions over how to structure the 
Council, so this year, only the social movements in the four member 
countries were invited. The Council, however, proposed expanding membership.

"The best way to strengthen ALBA is to include social movements from 
throughout the hemisphere," said Joel Suarez of Cuba's Martin Luther King 
Center, one of the five movement reps from Cuba to attend the Summit. 
"Governments may be pressured not to join, but the social movements are 
anxious to be part of an alliance that promotes fair trade over free trade." 
Indeed, the proposal is to even include social movements from the United 
States. Venezuela is already working with U.S. groups and local governments 
to provide discount heating oil to poor U.S. communities.

With ALBA countries, particularly Bolivia and Venezuela, facing strong 
internal opposition, improving the population's economic well-being is 
critical. The future of progressive victories in Latin America rests on 
turning the rhetoric of fair trade and sustainable development into concrete 
gains. This year will be a critical test of whether Venezuela's oil money 
can indeed be used to develop an alternative economic model.

Medea Benjamin (medea at globalexchange.org) , cofounder of Global Exchange 
(www.globalexchange.org) and CODEPINK: Women for Peace 
(www.codepinkalert.org), was an invited guest at the ALBA Summit. Global 
Exchange organized monthly people-to-people delegations to Venezuela and 
other ALBA countries.

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