The importance of CELAC

Arnold August

12/10/2011

Opinión

^-A ⁺A

Intervention by Arnold August at the First "Foro Nuestra América", Ottawa, Canada, Saturday, October 8, 2011

On December 2 a historic summit will take place in Caracas. Thirty-two heads of states will be converging on the Venezuelan capital to establish CELAC. This is the Spanish acronym for Comunidad de Estados de América Latina y el Caribe, or Community of Latin American and Caribbean Nations). CELAC is a major regional integration project; it is a new beginning of a dream held by nineteenth-century Latin American and Caribbean thinkers and revolutionaries José Martí and Simon Bolívar. It is taking place after about two years of preparation. CELAC integrates all of the countries situated in the area extending from the Rio Grande on the border between Mexico and the USA to Tierra del Fuego, the very southern tip of South America; in other words the entire continent except the U.S.A. and Canada.

There are many regional blocks contributing to CELAC, such as CARICOM (Caribbean countries), the RIO Group and UNASUR (South America). I would like to highlight one: ALBA (Spanish Acronym for Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra America,The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America; ALBA also translates as "dawn of day"). ALBA was initially established following an agreement between Cuba and Venezuela in Havana on December 14, 2004; this event had as its background the first meeting between Chávez and Fidel Castro in 1998 in Caracas. With ALBA's initial creation, it began to blossom to include Bolivia, Nicaragua, Dominica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Ecuador and Antigua and Barbuda. Honduras was also a member, however following the coup against democratically-elected President Zelaya on June 28, 2009, the US-backed golpista regime withdrew from ALBA.

The ALBA countries constitute a driving force behind the establishment of CELAC. It is important for people in Canada of Latin American and Caribbean origins as well as the entire people and the Canadian Government to fully support CELAC.

https://www.alainet.org/en/articulo/153261