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THIRD WORLD RESURGENCE

Out of the backyard

The establishment of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), a new regional bloc that excludes both the US and Canada, is a truly historic development, says Benjamin Dangl.

RAIN clouds ringed the lush hillsides and poor neighbourhoods cradling Caracas, Venezuela as dozens of Latin American and Caribbean heads of state trickled out of the airport and into motorcades and hotel rooms. They were gathering for the foundational summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), a new regional bloc aimed at self-determination outside the scope of Washington's power.

Notably absent were the presidents of the US and Canada - they were not invited to participate. 'It's the death sentence for the Monroe Doctrine,' Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said of the creation of CELAC, referring to a US policy developed in 1823 that has served as a pretext for Washington's interventions in the region. Indeed, CELAC has been put forth by many participating presidents as an organisation to replace the US-dominated Organisation of American States (OAS), empower Latin American and Caribbean unity, and create a more equal and just society on the region's own terms.

New reality

The CELAC meeting comes at a time when Washington's presence in the region is waning. Following the nightmarish decades of the Cold War, in which Washington propped up dictators and waged wars on Latin American nations, a new era has opened up; in the past decade a wave of leftist presidents have taken office on socialist and anti-imperialist platforms.

The creation of CELAC reflected this new reality, and is one of various recent developments aimed at unifying Latin America and the Caribbean as a progressive alternative to US domination. Other such regional blocs include the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), which has successfully resolved diplomatic crises without pressure from Washington, the Bank of the South, which is aimed at providing alternatives to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), which was created as an alternative to the Free Trade Area of the Americas, a deal which would have expanded the North American Free Trade Agreement throughout Latin America, but failed due to regional opposition.

The global economic crisis was on many of the leaders' minds during the 2-3 December CELAC conference. 'It seems it's a terminal, structural crisis of capitalism,' Bolivian President Evo Morales said in a speech at the gathering. 'I feel we're meeting at a good moment to debate ... the great unity of the countries of America, without the United States.'

The 33 nations comprising CELAC make up some 600 million people, and together are the number one food exporter on the planet. The combined GDP of the bloc is around $6 trillion, and in a time of global economic woes, the region now has its lowest poverty rate in 20 years; the growth rate in 2010 was over 6% - more than twice that of the US. These numbers reflect the success of the region's social programmes and anti-poverty initiatives.

In an interview with Telesur, Evo Morales said the space opened by CELAC provides a great opportunity to expand the commerce of Latin America and the Caribbean in a way that does not depend on the precarious markets of the US and Europe. In this respect he saw a central goal of CELAC as being to 'implement politics of solidarity, with complementary instead of competitive commerce to resolve social problems.'

While the US is the leading trading partner for most Latin American and Caribbean countries, China is making enormous inroads as well, becoming the main trade ally of the economic powerhouses of Brazil and Chile. This shift was underlined by the fact that Chinese President Hu Jintao sent a letter of congratulations to the leaders forming CELAC. The letter, which was read out loud to the summit participants by their host, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, congratulated the heads of state on creating CELAC, and promised that Hu would work toward expanding relations with the region's new organisation.

The US, for its part, did not send a word of congratulations. Indeed, Washington's official take on the CELAC meeting downplayed the new group's significance and reinforced US commitment to the OAS. Commenting on CELAC, US Department of State spokesman Mark Toner said, 'There [are] many sub-regional organisations in the hemisphere, some of which we belong to. Others, such as this, we don't. We continue, obviously, to work through the OAS as the preeminent multilateral organisation speaking for the hemisphere.'

Many heads of state actually saw the CELAC meeting as the beginning of the end for the OAS in the region. This position, held most passionately by leaders from Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, was best articulated by Chavez. 'As the years pass, CELAC will leave behind the old OAS,' Chavez said at the summit. 'The OAS is far from the spirit of our peoples and integration in Latin America. CELAC is born with a new spirit; it is a platform for people's economic, political and social development, which is very different from the OAS.' He later told reporters, 'There have been many coup d'‚tats with total support from the OAS, and it won't be this way with CELAC.'

Variances

However, the presidents involved in CELAC vary widely in political ideology and foreign policy, and there were differing opinions with regard to relations with the OAS. Some saw CELAC as something that could work alongside the OAS. As Mexican chancellor Patricia Espinosa said, the OAS and CELAC are 'complementary forces of cooperation and dialogue'.

A test of CELAC will be how it overcomes such differences and makes concrete steps toward developing regional integration, combating poverty, upholding human rights, protecting the environment and building peace, among other goals. The final agreements of the two-day meeting touched upon expanding South-to- South business and trade deals, combating climate change and building better social programmes across the region to impact marginalised communities. In addition, the CELAC participants backed the legalisation of coca leaves (widely used as a medicine and for cultural purposes in the Andes), condemned the criminalisation of immigrants and migrants, and criticised the US for its embargo against Cuba.

Various presidents at the CELAC meeting spoke of how to approach these dominant issues. Nicaragua's Ortega said CELAC should 'monitor and rate' the US anti-drug efforts. As long as the US continues its consumption of drugs, Ortega said, 'all the money, regardless of by how much it's multiplied, and all the blood, no matter how much is spilled', won't end the drug trade.

Yet there are plenty of contradictions within the CELAC organisation itself. The group is for democracy but includes the participation of Porfirio Lobo from Honduras, the president who replaced Manuel Zelaya in unfair elections following a 2009 military coup. CELAC is for environmental protection, yet its largest participant, Brazil, is promoting an ecologically disastrous agricultural model of soy plantations, genetically modified crops and poisonous pesticides that is ruining the countryside and displacing small farmers. The group is for fairer trade networks and peace, yet various participating nations have already signed devastating trade deals with the US, and corrupt politicians at high levels of government across the region are deeply tied to the violence and profits of the transnational drug trade.

These are some of the serious challenges posed to Latin American and Caribbean unity and progress, but they do not cancel out the new bloc's historical and political significance. The creation of CELAC will likely prove to be a significant step toward the deepening of a struggle for independence and unity in the region, a struggle initiated nearly 200 years ago and largely led by Latin American liberator Simon Bolivar, whose legacy was regularly invoked at the CELAC conference.

In 1829, a year before his death, Bolivar famously said, 'The United States appears destined by Providence to plague America with miseries in the name of Freedom.'  Yet with the foundation of CELAC under the clouds of Caracas, the march toward self-determination is still on.                    

Benjamin Dangl, who attended the CELAC conference, is the author of Dancing with Dynamite: Social Movements and States in Latin America (AK Press, 2010) and The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia (AK Press, 2007). He is the editor of˙TowardFreedom.com, from which this article is reproduced. He also edits UpsideDownWorld.org, a website on activism and politics in Latin America.


Correa says OAS should have been disarticulated in 1982 during the Malvinas war

ECUADOREAN President Rafael Correa has again questioned the existence of the Organisation of American States (OAS), which he says should have been disarticulated in 1982 during the Falklands/Malvinas war, and insisted that the region's problems 'should be discussed in the region and not in Washington'.

Correa, who was in Caracas for the CELAC summit, said that the inter-American system has 'many shortcomings, not from the current administration [of OAS Secretary-General Jose Miguel Insulza] but from its own structure', the OAS itself.

He went on to say that in 1982 during the Malvinas war when Argentina and the UK clashed over the South Atlantic islands, 'the OAS should have come to an end because the Inter-American Reciprocal Protection Treaty, TIAR, was violated when Washington did not support a member country, but rather an outer region country'.

'We need deep changes to the current system and [should] build a Latin American model, where we can discuss the problems of the region in the region and not in Washington and according to our own circumstances,' underlined the Ecuadorean president.

Correa pointed out the paradox of the OAS Inter-American Human Rights Commission, CIDH, which was born 'to defend citizens from dictatorships and now those same groups which supported the dictatorships are the ones accusing progressive governments that are changing the previous precarious situation of Latin America'.

Correa was referring to his ongoing dispute with the owners of the Ecuadorean media whom he accuses of manipulating public opinion and has combated with very strict and controversial legislation which has led to appeals to the CIDH.

Finally the Ecuadorean president regretted that the 'OAS historically has served the interests of the United States to the extent that Cuba was expelled because of the Revolution, but nothing of the sort happened in Chile during the bloody coup and dictatorship of General Pinochet'.

Likewise Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez anticipated that CELAC would become a 'pole of power' which with time will leave behind the 'old and worn-out OAS'.

'CELAC must become a political union and on that political union we shall build a great pole of power in the 21st century,' promised Chavez.

Chavez compared the new organisation with the OAS which brings together all the countries of the Americas with the exception of Cuba, kicked out in 1962.

'The OAS is the ancient regime, a space manipulated and dominated by the US, crippled by the old', while CELAC is born 'with a new spirit like a weapon of political, economic and social integration'.

However, he was also cautious, saying that ruling or prevailing ideologies in the region's different countries have nothing to do with CELAC.

'Forget ideologies, CELAC is an independent process, independent from Cuban Socialism, from Venezuelan Socialism or from the ideology that the Brazilian government might be promoting, or the governments from Colombia, Nicaragua.' - MercoPress    

*Third World Resurgence No. 255/256, November/December 2011, pp 53-55             

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