17th ALBA-TCP Summit in Cuba focuses on regional situation

Havana, Dec 14 (Prensa Latina) The regional situation and the role of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-Peoples' Trade Agreement (ALBA-TCP) will focus debate of the 17th Summit here today.

The leaders and senior political representatives will also celebrate the 15th anniversary of the regional mechanism founded December 14, 2004 by the leaders of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, and Bolivarian Venezuela, Hugo Chávez.

Solidarity, complementarity, justice and cooperation are the principles defended by ALBA-TCP, emerged as an alternative to the hegemony of capital that threatened to expand throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

The instance promotes since its creation an equitable trade between peoples, in opposition to neoliberal formulas.

The eradication of illiteracy through the Cuban method Yes, I Can; and the free eye surgeries with the Miracle Mission, are part of the achievements of this mechanism in the social sphere.

Initially named 'Alternative', it changed its nomenclature in 2009 in an Extraordinary Summit in Venezuela, reflecting its strengthening.

At that time, Chávez clarified that it was not a semantic modification but a change of codes, meaning and substance, since ALBA had passed from theoretical proposal to territorial, geopolitical and power political platform.

The Alliance defends Human Rights and Mother Earth, manifests itself against interventionism and in favor of preservation and restoration of peace, besides supporting the self-determination of peoples.

This 17th Summit takes place one month after the coup d'état in Bolivia against President Evo Morales, popular anti-neoliberal mobilizations in Chile and Colombia, and the increase of US hostility against Cuba.

Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica, Grenada, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Suriname and Saint Lucia make up the ALBA-TCP, whose executive secretary is Bolivian ex-chancellor David Choquehuanca.