7 Years on from the Creation of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America’s Trade Agreement for the People (ALBA-TCP)

7 Years on from the Creation of the ALBA -TCP



By Tahina Ojeda Medina - Ciudad CSS

What initially started as an alternative aimed at stopping the advance of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) has been transformed into an alliance in favour of Latin American and Caribbean integration.  I am referring to the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America’s Trade Agreement for the People (ALBA-TCP).

It is important to remember the solitary beginnings of ALBA-TCP.  The main goal of the 2001 Summit of the Americas in Quebec was to create the FTAA, and like the majority of hemispheric meetings, the decision to implement a free trade area had already been taken prior to it being “democratically approved”.

The FTAA claimed to create a structure for free trade relations within the framework of the free market, without taking into account economic asymmetries, much less social ones.  This aforementioned structure is evident in the 6th point of discussion for business and investment in the summit’s “plan of action”: countries will “ensure that the negotiations for the FTAA conclude before January 2005 at the latest, so that the agreement might be put into effect as soon as possible, no later than December 2005...”

The only vote against the plan came from the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela; although the plan was published as having been approved unanimously.

Once they had analysed the kind of injustices that the application of the FTAA would bring to Latin America and the Caribbean, Cuba and Venezuela stepped forward and agreed on a plan to put the brakes on this situation.  This is where the idea of the ALBA emerged, against the 2001 FTAA, before it was formally established in 2004 in Havana, Cuba.

The next step to stop the advance of the FTAA was taken at the Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata, Argentina, in 2005.  The final declaration of this summit read “the necessary conditions to implement a balanced and equal free trade agreement still do not exist, (conditions which ensure) the effective access to markets free of subsidies and distortive business practices, which take into account the needs and sensitivities of all business partners, including in their levels of development and the size of their economies”.  This summit represented a definitive break with the FTAA.

Furthermore, Latin America and the Caribbean’s political map had changed since the FTAA was proposed.  Cuba and Venezuela were no longer alone.  From 2004, the following countries joined the ALBA: Bolivia (2006), Nicaragua (2008), Dominica (2008), Honduras (2008-2010), Ecuador (2009), St. Vincent and the Grenadine Islands (2009) and Antigua and Barbuda (2009).  The subcontinent turned to the left, and this turn was met with various destabilisation attempts.  An attempt to create war in 2008 in Bolivia, a state coup in Honduras in 2009, a failed state coup in Ecuador in 2012, amongst other international pressures toward the rest of the region.

Whilst the South was negotiating the various political difficulties arising from setting into motion the mechanisms designed to fight for the protection of the people, the “developed world” sunk into an unprecedented economic crisis created by the “invisible hand of the market”.  These events are not isolated from the political and theoretical debate on contemporary international relations.  When a project like the ALBA-TCP is analysed at an academic level, inevitable questions emerge, such as; is it a scheme aimed at integration?  Is it aiming to construct a regional politics or an intra-regional free-trade agreement?  Is the ALBA-TCP a formula to confront the negative effects of globalisation, or is it a strategy to enter into this process but from a stronger position?

All these questions have answers, which are still vague and somewhat open to debate, if we analyse the process of ALBA’s creation and consolidation from the perspective of theories on new “postliberal” regionalisms in Latin America and their relationship to globalisation.  It is evident that ALBA-TCP was not conceived of as a scheme for regional integration, but rather as a political alliance to put a stop to FTAA which was progressively transformed into a collaborative mechanism which helped to strengthen real cooperation between countries in the regional South.

It is too soon to predict what a final regional integration project in South America would look like, but what we can confirm is that the ALBA has allowed for the creation of new forms of exchange and communication between countries that were once isolated; a first step in exploring a political agenda for integration.  In this sense, ALBA-TCP is a formula for resistance to the project of globalisation.  It is impossible to deny that globalisation is a concrete reality, but it doesn’t mean that countries have to throw themselves into its choppy seas without a lifejacket; the consolidation of strong regions is needed in order to confront the contradictions of the world system in which we live.

The ALBA-TCP, as Maria del Carmen Almendras Camargo defined it in the celebrations for the alliance’s 7th anniversary in Madrid, February 2012, is a “regional integration bloc made up of 8 countries with a population of 71 million inhabitants and a GDP of 498 billion dollars.  It is the second largest trading bloc in the Latin American and Caribbean region after Mercosur, which has enormous human and natural resource potential.”

As ALBA begins to consolidate independently as a definite regional integration scheme, it is mutating and fusing with other integration strategies such as UNASUR and CELAC.  On its 7th anniversary there are a whole host of reasons to celebrate; it has demonstrated that it is possible to say NO to the great global powers and design an independent and sovereign politics which can pave the way to a multi-polar world.  Like the maestro Simón Rodriguez even said himself, we invent or we err.

Tahina Ojeda Medina is a researcher at the Development and Cooperation Institute at the Complutense University in Madrid ((IUDC-UCM), graduate in International Relations and a lawyer from the Central University of Venezuela, M.S in International Cooperation, Masters in Contemporary Latin American Studies and Doctorate in Political Science at the Complutense University in Madrid.

Translated by Rachael Boothroyd for Venezuelanalysis.com

Source: Ciudad CCS

May 7th 2012

The assault of anti-Americanism in Latin America

By Rebecca Theodore


Amidst a surge of anti-American sentiment in Latin America, the US now begins to feel the billowing crest of the flood as it has reached a particularly high peak. Far from the backed up dams, tidal waves still break away in some kind of slaughter and just when it is thought that they have impounded it safe, let alone behind new barrier walls, China accompanies the EU in positioning itself to supply its ever growing oil thirst with Latin American oil at the expense of the United States. To state it simply, America has lost control of Latin America. The surge cannot be contained.

While French scholars imply that anti-Americanism is only fully justified if it implies systematic opposition, a sort of allergic reaction to America as a whole, US political scientists on the other hand view anti-Americanism as a term that cannot be isolated as a consistent phenomenon. Whatever the implication or the precise definition of what the sentiment entails, it is certain that Latin American states are presently demonstrating their inexorable critical impulses toward American social, economic, and political institutions, traditions, and values.

It is the contention of many that anti Americanism in Latin America stemmed from imperialism and globalization and from economic and social frustrations perpetrated by the US. However, it is not without its advantages as anti-Americanism serves the goals of opportunistic politicians and organizations as well.

While Americans remain focused on events in the Middle East, the EU has been working zealously to establish itself as the top trading partner and investor in Latin America, taking advantage of the region’s economic and political weakness. The role that the cessation of the Cold War played to rid the church in Latin America of the liberalism that had penetrated it under Communist influence is now uniting it in commerce and trade. Dominated by the single universal religion of Roman Catholicism, the EU and Latin America are more than just a trade duo. They are a religious, commercial and political partnership.

It cannot be disputed that the EU and China are creating a dominant cross-Atlantic power bloc in Latin America linked by trade, mutual economic interest, and social, political and religious affinity. With plans of building an oil refinery in Venezuela and implementation of ways to secure a way to economically ship Venezuelan oil across the Pacific to its own shores, China’s dream of building a 138-mile-long railway across Colombia from the Gulf of Uraba on the Atlantic coast to the port of Cupica on the Pacific coast will see large shipments of Venezuelan crude and Colombian coal to China.

This is the new technology that all eyes in America and the world should be focused on. The completion of this railroad already being hailed as a land-based Panama Canal could transform the oil politics of Latin America overnight, making China a prime recipient of this oil. Hence, America walks blindly into a situation where 10 percent of its oil imports are being redirected to Asia due to a lack of influence over the Panama Canal and Colombian railways.

Moreover, with silver from Mexico and Peru, tin from Bolivia and iron ore from Venezuela and Brazil, steady supplies of raw materials which Latin America readily provides in abundance, South and Latin America is an eye-catching mélange for resource-hungry Europeans and Chinese. Unfortunately, President Obama’s visit comes a little too late, for the waters keep rising and the rains continue in unrelenting fury.

According to recent published reports, European Union trade with Latin America is at an all -time high. With the Wiki Leaks disclosure that the United States now considers the Latin American Mercosur trade bloc an anti-American organization, Mercosur gradually transforms from an imperfect customs union to a more obstructive and anti-American organization. The EU is currently Mercosur’s main trading partner.

With German corporate giants such as Krupp, Siemens, Bayer, Volkswagen, I.G. Farben and Deutsche Bank steadily becoming household names across the Central American isthmus using the cheap labour force to create competition for the US, and with an established office in Cuba, right on the back doorstep of the US, the EU armed in its Machiavellian ambition phases its infiltration of Latin America as an economically unified, politically stable Latino bloc necessary to ensure constant delivery of goods and services.

It is clear that the United States is left out in the chilling cold waters of this torrential flood as Latin America merges with Europe and China and begins calling the shots in world commerce.

March 23, 2011

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