The fifth Summit of the Americas, bringing together all the nations of the Americas except Cuba, occurred in Trinidad and Tobago over April 17-19. In the lead up, a meeting was held in Caracas of the nations that make up the Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas (ALBA — Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Honduras and Dominica).
As a bloc, ALBA, initiated by Venezuela and Cuba to promote pro-people regional integration, refused to sign the document produced by the summit. Instead, the ALBA nations issued their own joint statement on April 17, which rejected attempts to resolve the global economic crisis within the framework of capitalism and demanded an end the US-enforced isolation of Cuba.
In Australia as a guest to the April 10-12 World at a Crossroads conference in Sydney, hosted by Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, Luis Bilbao, editor of the monthly magazine America XXI and an advisor to the Venezuelan government, described the statement as "profound" and "historic".
"We have governments speaking in language that used to be the reserve of left parties", Bilbao said.
"Gone is diplomatic language to discuss the political and economic situation facing Latin America and the Caribbean and their relation with the United States.
"Instead, we read that the draft statement of the Summit of the Americas is considered 'inadequate and unacceptable'. The ALBA countries declare that an entirely different approach to the world's problems is required.
"In opposition to the summit statement is a radical and far-reaching declaration of anti-capitalism and socialism. This is something that left-wing parties globally must make known to the peoples of the world."
Originally translated by GLW's Federico Fuentes, this is abridged from the version published by Socialist Voice,
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The ALBA governments consider the proposed declaration of the fifth Summit of the Americas is insufficient and unacceptable for the following reasons:
• It offers no answers to the global economic crisis, despite the fact that this constitutes the largest challenge faced by humanity the wellbeing of our peoples; and
• it unjustifiably excludes Cuba in a criminal manner, despite the consensus that exists in the region against the US economic blockade and the isolation attempts, which the region's peoples and governments have incessantly objected to.
The member countries of ALBA consider there is not the consensus to adopt the proposed declaration. We propose a thoroughgoing debate over the following issues:
1) Capitalism is destroying humanity and the planet. We face a global crisis of a systemic and structural character, not just one more cyclical crisis. Those who think this crisis will be resolved with an injection of money and some regulation are very mistaken.
The financial system is in crisis because it is quoting the value of financial paper at six times the real value of the goods and services produced globally. This is not a "failure of regulation" but a fundamental part of the capitalist system, which speculates with all goods to obtain the maximum profit possible.
The economic crisis has created 100 million more starving people and more than 50 million new unemployed. These figures are increasing.
2) Capitalism has provoked an ecological crisis by subordinating the necessary conditions for life on this planet to the domination of the market and profit. Each year, the world consumes a third more than what the planet is capable of regenerating.
At this rate of wastage, we will need two planets by 2030.
3) The global economic, climate change, food and energy crises are products of the decadence of capitalism and threaten to end life on Earth. To avoid this, we must develop an alternative model to capitalism.. We need a system based on:
• Solidarity, not competition;
• harmony with Mother Earth, rather than the looting of natural resources;
• cultural diversity, not the crushing of cultures, and the imposition of cultural values and lifestyles:
• peace based on social justice, not imperialist wars and policies; and
• restoring the human condition, rather than reducing humans to simple consumers or commodities.
4) An expression of the new reality is that Latin American and Caribbean countries have begun to build our own institutions, whose roots lie in the common history that goes back to our independence revolutions.
These are instruments for deepening the processes of social, economic and cultural transformation to consolidate our sovereignty.
The ALBA-TCP [ Peoples Trade Agreement], Petrocaribe [providing discounted Venezuelan oil to Caribbean countries] and the Union of South American Nations (Unasur), to only cite the most recently created ones, are mechanisms for a solidarity-based union forged in the heat of these transformations, with the intention of strengthening the efforts of our peoples towards liberation.
In order to confront the grave effects of the global economic crisis, the ALBA countries have taken innovative measures that seek real alternatives to the deficient international economic order, rather than strengthening failed institutions.
That is why we will establish a new currency — the Single System of Regional Compensation, or Sucre.
We have promoted the creation of grand national companies to satisfy the necessities of our peoples, based on just and complementary trade, which leave aside the absurd logic of unrestrained competition.
5) We question the G20's decision to triple the resources for the International Monetary Fund. What is necessary is to create a new world economic order that includes the total transformation of the IMF, the World Bank and World Trade Organisation (WTO) — whose neoliberal policies have contributed to the current crisis.
6) The solutions to the global economic crisis and the nature of a new international financial architecture should be adopted with the participation of the 192 countries that, between June 1 and 3, will meet at a United Nations conference.
7) Developed countries have an ecological debt to the world, because they are responsible for 70% of historic emissions of carbon accumulated in the atmosphere since 1750.
The developed countries, in debt to humanity and the planet, should contribute significant resources towards a fund so the countries seeking development can undertake a model of growth that is not destructive in the same way as capitalist industrialisation.
8) The solutions to the energy, food and climate crises have to be interdependent. We cannot resolve a problem by creating others in areas fundamental to life. For example, generalising the use of agrofuels [turning food into fuel] can only impact negatively on the price of food and in the utilisation of essential resources such as water, land and forests.
9) We condemn discrimination against migrants in all its forms. Migration is a human right, not a crime.
Therefore, we demand an urgent reform to the migration policies of the US government. There must be a halt to raids and deportations, and allowing of reunification of families. We demand the elimination of the wall [on the US's border with Mexico] that divides, rather than unites us.
We demand the repeal of the Cuban Adjustment Act and the elimination of the policies of wetbacks-drybacks [whereby the US grants only a small number of visas for Cubans to emigrate to the US legally, but encourages illegal immigration by granting Cuban citizens who travel to the US on rafts automatic citizenship if they survive].
This has a discriminatory and selective character, and causes the loss of human lives.
Those who are truly to blame for the financial crisis are the bankers that steal money and resources, not migrant workers. Human rights come first, particularly the human rights of the most unprotected and marginalised sectors of our society — like undocumented workers.
For there to be integration there must be free movement of people and equal human rights for all, regardless of migratory status. The "brain drain" is a form of looting of qualified human resources by the rich countries.
10) Basic services such as education, health, water, energy and telecommunications have to be declared human rights and cannot be owned privately nor be commodified by the WTO. These services should be universally accessible public services.
11) We want a world where all countries, big and small, have the same rights and empires do not exist. We oppose intervention.
We must strengthen mutual respect between governments, under the principal of non-interference of one state over another — and the inviolability of sovereignty and self-determinationof peoples.
We demand that the new US government, which has generated global expectations, put an end to the long tradition of interventionism and aggression.
We demand the US eliminate interventionist practices, such as covert operations, parallel diplomacy, media wars aimed at destabilising states and governments, and the financing of destabilising groups.
It is essential that we construct a world in which a diversity of economic, political, social and cultural approaches are respected.
12) Regarding the US blockade against Cuba, and its exclusion from the Summit of the Americas, the ALBA countries reiterates the position of ending the economic, trade and financial blockade imposed by the US government against Cuba.
We believe that the attempt to isolate Cuba, which today is an integral part of the Latin American and Caribbean region, carries out a policy of cooperation and solidarity with the people of the region, and promotes the full integration of the Latin American and Caribbean peoples, has failed.
No reason exists to justify Cuba's exclusion from the Summit of the Americas.
13) The developed countries have allocated no less than US$8 trillion towards rescuing the collapsed financial structure. They are the same ones that do not comply with spending a small sum to reach the UN Millennium Goals, 0.7% of GDP, for official development aid.
Never before have we seen so nakedly the hypocrisy of the rich countries.
Cooperation has to be established without conditions and adjusted to the agendas of the receiving countries. Procedures must be simplified, making resources accessible with a priority towards social inclusion.
14) The legitimate struggle against narco-trafficking and organised crime should not be used as excuses for carrying out acts of interference or intervention against our countries.
15) We are firmly convinced that change, which all the world is hoping for, can only come about through the organisation, mobilisation and unity of our peoples.
As the Liberator [Simon Bolivar, who led the struggle that freed much of South America from Spanish rule in the 19th century] said: "The unity of our peoples is not simply the chimera of men, but an inexorable fate."