Cuba dictator and CELAC President Raul Castro with heir of Hugo
Chavez, Venezuela President
Nicolas Maduro, at the second annual
summit of CELAC - the Community of Latin
American and Caribbean
States. The
organization excludes the United States and Canada.
Washington Be Damned, CELAC Makes Real
'Our America' (Opera Mundi, Brazil)
"Not a miracle - but almost a miracle: Hugo Chávez, and those that accompanied him in this
patriotic endeavor, had to overcome all kinds of obstacles: the withdrawal of
some governments, the wavering of others, the skepticism of those farthest away,
and Washington's systematic opposition. Galileo would have said eppur si muove[and yet it moves] in contemplating the co-creation of this Bolivarian project - which includes, for the first time, all Latin America and Caribbean nations, with the exception of Puerto Rico - for now!"
Argentina President Kristina Kirchner visits with an ageing Fidel Castro in Havana. Castro has been holding court with visiting heads of state, in town for the second summit of CELAC - the Community of Latin American
and Caribbean States.
Not
a miracle - but almost a miracle: Against all odds, CELAC
(the Community of Latin American
and Caribbean States) has been consolidating as an “our America”
institution, and holding its second summit of presidents in Havana [January
28-29]. We say “miracle” because who could have imagined, just five years ago,
that Hugo Chávez’ Bolivarian dream - founded on an impeccable diagnosis of
global geopolitics - of building a regional body without the presence of the
United States and Canada, would bear fruit?
Chávez,
and those that accompanied him in this patriotic endeavor, had to overcome all kinds
of obstacles: the withdrawal of some governments, the wavering of others, the
skepticism of those farthest away, and Washington's systematic opposition. Galileo
would have said eppursimuove [and yet it moves]
in contemplating the co-creation of this Bolivarian project - which includes, for
the first time, all Latin America and Caribbean nations, with the exception of Puerto
Rico - for now! Without a doubt, the strengthening of CELAC
- as with UNASUR
(Union of South American Nations) in South America - is very good news for the cause
of emancipating our Great Homeland.
The
White House first tried to stop the launch of CELAC,
in December of 2011 in Caracas, attended by its most tireless promoter and
mentor [Hugo Chavez], who was already under attack from the cancer that cost
him his life. When the empire lost its bid, it mobilized its regional allies to
abort the initiative - or at least postpone it indefinitely. That also didn't
work. Its next strategy was the use of some of its unconditional regional pawns
as Trojan horses, to spoil the project from within.
A dour-looking Jose
Miguel Insulza, secretary general of what remains
the preeminent hemisphere-wide
organization, the Washington-based
Organization of American States, attends the Community
of Latin
American and Caribbean States' opening ceremony, in
Havana, Jan. 28.
That
didn't get very far - but it did get the first government to hold CELAC's pro tempore presidency, SebastiánPińera’s Chile, to declare in 2012, through its
spokesperson, Chilean Foreign Minister Alfredo Moreno, that “CELAC will be a forum, not an organization, and will not
have a headquarters, secretariat, bureaucracy, or anything like that.”
A
forum! Meaning, an amiable and meeting of inconsequential leaders, diplomats,
and specialists, that would go nowhere near the issue of imperialist domination
of Latin America and the Caribbean.
And
through the militant activism of its friends in the Pacific Alliance:
Mexico, Colombia and Chile, the White House was also able to make it so all CELAC decisions must be adopted unanimously. It seems that “majority
rule” - so dear to the U.S. political tradition - only works when it's convenient
for it. When it is not, the U.S. imposes
criteria that in fact give veto power to any one of the organization's 33 members.
But
this is a double-edged sword: Panama and Honduras could veto a resolution that
demands an end to Puerto Rico’s colonial status, but Bolivia, Ecuador and
Venezuela could do the same with another resolution that proposes the
collaboration of the United States Southern Command in fighting drug
trafficking.
CELAC's second presidential runoff, in 2013,
was in Cuba, and President Raúl Castro Ruz has taken important steps to thwart the Chilean foreign
minister: the institutionalization of CELAC moved
forward and a seed was planted for an organization that for this upcoming summit
has been able to draw up 26 working papers - something that no forum is able to
do. Some of the proposals, such as the declaration of Latin America and the
Caribbean as a “zone of peace” will be the object of a muted debate, because it
is not just about preventing the presence of nuclear weapons in the region -
how would we know whether they exist at the base in Mount Pleasant on our Malvinas
Islands [Falkland Islands]? - but also about the resort to force in resolving
domestic conflicts.
This
topic makes subliminal allusion to Washington’s interventionist tradition in
Latin America and the presence of 77 military bases in the region, the purpose
of which is precisely this: to intervene with U.S. military forces into the domestic
politics of the region’s countries whenever conditions suit it, complementing
the open non-military intervention that Washington already carries out in all
of them.
Remember,
to cite a very didactic example, the decisive role of the “embassy” in determining
the winner of the recent presidential election in Honduras. This theme, as you
can see, will be one of the most stinging and divisive, because there are
governments - and not just a few - like Colombia, Peru and Panama, which not
only tolerate the presence of these North American military bases, but demand
them.
Another
potentially disruptive issue is the approval of the Venezuelan proposal to include
Puerto Rico in CELAC - which is absolutely logical
when taking into account the history and the current situation in that country,
as well as its culture, languages and traditions. That, however, will likely
raise reservations with the governments closest to Washington, for whom Puerto
Rico is a non-negotiable spoil of war - a war the victory of which was seized
from Cuba's patriots. Thanks to the appropriation of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the
Philippines, the American Rome initiated the transition from republic to
empire.
In
exchange, however, there is unanimous support for Argentina's claim to the
Falkland Islands, the lifting of the blockade against Cuba, and other proposals
aimed at reinforcing commercial, political, and cultural ties. You know that
Ecuador will propose a repudiation of the espionage carried out by the U.S.,
and the development of a new communication network on the Internet that bans Washington.
We are also likely to see concrete proposals for reducing poverty and an examination
of alternatives for consolidating the Bank of the South, and eventually, for creating
a major Latin American oil company - an item that President Chávez insisted on
several times.
The
international geopolitical transition now underway, manifested by the
dislocation of the global economy's center of gravity to Asia-Pacific; the
decline of the global influence of the United States; the irreparable collapse
of the European project; and the continuing economic crisis that began at the end
of 2007 which only seems to snowball as time passes. The permanent nature
of a global economic “order” that concentrates wealth, marginalizes nations,
and deepens the depredations of the environment, have all acted as powerful
incentives for removing any initial suspicion that many governments had
regarding CELAC.
The
deal agreed to in Caracas in 2011 established that in the first three years, a
troika would take over the presidency: it began with Chile, then Cuba (confirming
the continent-wide repudiation of the U.S. blockade and its goal of isolating the
Cuban Revolution), and at the end of this summit, the presidency will be passed
to Costa Rica. That country, an unconditional ally of Washington, will hold crucial
elections on February 2, when for the first time in decades, the political
hegemony of the Costa Rican neocolonial right will be threatened by the rise of
a new and surprising political actor: the FrenteAmpla (Broad Front).
Posted By Worldmeets.US
Costa
Rica's current president, Laura Chinchilla, for
many years an employee of USAID, guarantees the
official nature of the “domestication” of CELAC, and a
return to the plans minted by [Chile President] SebastiánPińera, and expressed with complete impudence by his
chancellor. However, all the polls show that there will certainly be second round,
at which time the Bolivarian discourse and proposals from FrenteAmpla candidate José M. Villata
may catapult him to the Costa Rica presidency.
Surely,
as occurred a few months ago with the presidential elections in neighboring
Honduras, Washington has already put its entire apparatus of intelligence,
media manipulation, and funding of friendly parties into action. For them, a
defeat of the Costa Rican neocolonial right would be a setback with tremendous
regional repercussions. If that happens, CELAC could
take another step toward its definitive institutionalization - something that
Latin America and the Caribbean definitively needs.
*AtilioBorón is the director of
the Latin American Program for Long Distance Education in the Social Sciences (PLED),
Buenos Aires, Argentina. He is winner of the 2013 Liberator's Prize for
Critical Thought.
