Development & Aid, Economy & Trade, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

LATIN AMERICA: Alternative Integration Is Better for People – Experts

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Nov 28 2006 (IPS) - In spite of fierce detractors, the Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas (ALBA) is a broader integration project for responding to the needs of Latin America, the region with the greatest social inequality in the world, than previous proposals, say experts.

“ALBA is about much more than trade integration: it encompasses education, health, culture, complementarity and South-South cooperation,” Ximena de la Barra, a Chilean independent consultant and former United Nations official, told IPS.

De la Barra said that ALBA, the integration process spearheaded by Venezuela and backed by Cuba and Bolivia, is “the mother of all the new integration initiatives.”

In her opinion, one element that distinguishes ALBA from, say, South America’s Mercosur (Southern Common Market) trade bloc is that ALBA’s focus on integration includes cooperation, two concepts which, she argues, are inseparable.

“Everybody thinks that the only support received by ALBA is Venezuela’s oil, but that’s not the case: Cuba has also put its advances in health and education at the service of cooperation. These goods and services give substance to this alternative integration project,” she said.

A harsh critic of the free market policies imposed on Latin America in the 1990s, de la Barra stated that the only positive form of integration “is the integration that results in generalised social progress and that corrects the existing disparities.”

Latin America is marked by extreme inequalities in income distribution. Statistics from a 2004 report by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) indicate that the poorest 40 percent of society receives approximately 13.6 percent of total regional income, while the richest 10 percent gets more than 36 percent.

At the same time, there is a marked gap between those living in extreme poverty (on less than a dollar a day) in cities and in the countryside. Thirteen percent of the urban population is extremely poor, compared to 37 percent in rural areas.

Integration models should address these asymmetries, between countries as well as within them, as a “top priority,” de la Barra said.

“If we do not address the disparities within our countries, we cannot aspire to an integration that reflects more solidarity,” added the co-author of the book “South American Dialogue: Another Integration is Possible”, which was launched on Nov. 16 in Havana at a seminar on sociopolitical processes and regional integration.

But views on ALBA are mixed. In some diplomatic circles, it is not seen as a regional integration scheme at all, but as a foreign policy strategy that Cuba is using as an opportunity to enhance its international presence.

“If you invest in a hospital, it’s a large investment towards a social cause, but it doesn’t contribute to integration,” Marcel Biato, an adviser at the Brazilian Embassy in Cuba, told IPS, after making it clear that his country has nothing against the ALBA initiative.

The diplomat also said that, for ALBA, “everything depends on (Venezuelan) oil,” and on high prices on the international market, so one might ask how the project is going to be sustainable.

In de la Barra’s view, the right strategy to achieve well-founded projects is, precisely, to work together. “The more we stick together, the stronger we will be when it comes to facing risks,” she said.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez launched ALBA as a counter-proposal to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), which was championed by the United States in the mid-1990s and has stagnated since the beginning of this decade, when leftwing and centre-left governments came to power in the region.

But so far, only Cuba and Bolivia have signed agreements under the Caracas initiative.

However, the benefits of cooperation in health and education have crossed Latin American borders in some cases. Over the last two years, free operations to correct eye problems have been performed on nearly 490,000 poor people in 28 countries, as part of a programme for opthalmological care designed within the ALBA framework.

Cuba supported Venezuela’s adult literacy campaign with its teaching method “Yes, I Can!”, which is also being implemented in Bolivia after indigenous leader Evo Morales was sworn in as president in January.

The Cuban literacy teaching methodology has been used, with good results, in a total of 22 countries.

An energy agreement signed with Caracas in 2000 allows Cuba to cover its oil needs, paying for oil imports “in different ways,” Chávez said at the Nov. 16 opening of a health centre in Venezuela built with Cuban cooperation.

The president said that cent for cent, Cuba’s cooperation with Venezuela had a cost and, above all, a value “much higher” than that of the oil Venezuela sends to Cuba.

Edgardo Ramírez, head of the Academic Division of the Venezuelan foreign ministry’s “Pedro Gual” Institute of advanced diplomatic studies, emphasised that ALBA’s philosophy and practices are completely different to those of other regional integration schemes, although it does not exclude them.

He said that the ALBA scheme develops relationships not only between states, but also between local governments, cooperatives and social movements. “It’s a horizontal, transparent, more democratic way of operating. That’s its strength,” Ramírez told IPS.

“I would say that ALBA has raised expectations, and is forcing other integration processes to change,” argued de la Barra, who said that Mercosur is no longer focused only on economic and trade issues, and has begun to listen to the social movements that hold meetings in parallel to the bloc’s summits.

Venezuela joined Mercosur this year, alongside founding members Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. Cuba also signed an economic complementarity agreement with the bloc in July, which will facilitate trade.

For his part, Morales launched his own integration initiative this year, the Peoples’ Trade Agreements (PTA), in opposition to the bilateral Free Trade Agreements (FTA) that the United States is pursuing in the region.

Indeed, it was the negotiation of FTAs by Colombia and Peru with Washington that triggered Venezuela’s withdrawal in April from the Andean Community of Nations (CAN), a bloc also made up of Bolivia and Ecuador. Now Chile is on the way to renewing full membership of this bloc, of which it was a founding member (as the Andean Pact) in 1969.

Including Venezuela, CAN was until April a market of some 125 million people (one-third of South America’s population), with an annual gross product of 260 billion dollars and foreign trade worth 128 billion dollars a year, seven percent of which was between members of the bloc.

Regional integration efforts also include the drive to consolidate the South American Community of Nations, formally constituted in Peru in December 2004, which goes beyond trade considerations to include political, social, infrastructure and energy issues.

Caracas has announced that Chávez will attend the South American Summit to be held in Bolivia on Dec. 8-9, bringing proposals for a new political, institutional and economic architecture for building the South American Community.

Meanwhile, Morales is planning to bring together the summit participants and the people attending the Social Summit for the Integration of the Peoples, organised parallel to the summit by social movements and leftwing parties. The plan is to hold the combined gathering at a Cochabamba football stadium on Dec. 9.