Cuba & Venezuela:
Dawn of new cooperation
By Berta Joubert-Ceci
While Wall Street and the Pentagon try to
advance their campaign of capitalist exploitation and endless war, bringing
death and devastation worldwide, Cuba and Venezuela have given a lesson of
civilization, dignity and hope by signing an agreement and a joint declaration
to implement the Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas (ALBA). The signing took
place mid-December in La Havana, where Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez
was paying an official two-day visit.
ALBA, which in Spanish means dawn,
is Chavez' proposal to confront U.S. imperialism's neoliberal process, which has
brought extensive misery in the region and has as its main objective the
annexation of Central and South America and the Caribbean through programs of
"free trade" agreements like the Free Trade Area of the Americas--the FTAA, or
ALCA in Spanish.
ALBA is not just a trade agreement. It is an alternative
to the FTAA. ALBA's agenda is integration and cooperation based on respectful
accords and national sovereignty for Latin America and the Caribbean, as was
envisioned by Venezuelan Simón Bolívar and Cuban José
Martí.
This partnership initiates in a concrete way the program
Chavez has raised on many occasions, particularly during Latin American
presidential summits and economic conferences. In this manner, Cuba and
Venezuela will lead the way toward the unification process of the
region.
Less significant but still important developments in the region's
efforts toward integration preceded the Cuba-Venezuelan pact. In early December
in Perú, 12 Latin American countries signed the Cuzco Declaration for the
formation of the South American Community of Nations--a community of 360 million
people. And they immediately announced initiation of 31 projects for the
development of infrastructure.
Also, before the Peru meeting, the Mer
cosur countries--Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay--had signed a trade
agreement with the Andean Com munity of Nations (CAN) formed by Colombia,
Perú, Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela, with Chile as an associate
member.
Both Cuba and Venezuela bring different assets to the equation.
And both countries, knowing full well the aggressive character of their northern
neighbor, are also preparing militarily.
Cuba brings the maturity,
expertise and political strength of a revolution that has developed tremendously
for 46 years in the face of the most criminal blockade by the United States. And
to defend itself, in December Cuba launched Bastión 2004--a thorough
exercise of defense readiness that involved not only the Revolutionary Armed
Forces, but each and every sector of Cuban society.
Venezuela brings a
youthful revolutionary process, strengthened by the August referendum and the
triumph of the pro-revolutionary candidates in the overwhelming majority of the
country's municipalities in the October local elections. These successes have
fueled a dynamic foreign policy. In an attempt to establish new economic
relationships away from the parasitic relations imposed by the United States,
Chavez has already developed important economic agreements especially in the
field of oil and gas exploration and production with many other countries,
particularly China, Russia, Iran, Libya and the European Union.
The
agreements with China extend from technical and economic trade to the
development of the Andean country's infrastructure, including complex networks
of oil pipelines and highways.
To bolster its defense equipment and move
from dependency on U.S. military hardware, Venezuela has bought 40 combat
helicopters and 100,000 assault rifles from Russia. It is also looking at the
possibility of buying 50 MIG-29 fighter planes outfitted with the most
sophisticated state-of-the-art technology.
Closer to home, Venezuela has
significantly increased trade with other Latin American and Caribbean countries,
developing preferential trade agreements with countries without gas or oil.
Chávez has also proposed creating giant joint oil companies--for example
Petrocaribe with Trinidad and Tobago, Petrobras with Brazil, and Petrosur with
the Mercosur countries.
The new year has started with improved Venezuelan
economic indexes. Unem ployment and inflation have decreased. Oil revenues have
increased. This is the background that Venezuela brings to the 13-article ALBA
accord.
The commercial, financial, educational and technological
agreements will be based, as the second article of the accord reads, "in the
principles of solidarity but also to the highest possible degree, on the
exchange of goods and services which best correspond to the social and economic
necessities of both countries."
Article five states: "Both parties will
work together and in coordination with other Latin American countries to
eradicate illiteracy in third countries using methods that can be applied on a
large scale, are proven to be effective, to give swift results and have been
successfully applied in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. They will likewise
cooperate on healthcare programs for third countries."
This document, an
example of human compassion and cooperation between nations, devoid of the
avaricious economic jargon of capitalist accords, signals that a new dawn,
precisely at the very beginning of a year, is possible not only for Latin
America and the Caribbean, but for the rest of the world as well.
Reprinted from the Jan. 13, 2005, issue of Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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