The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) was held in Caracas between December 2nd and 3rd, 2011 as part of the III. Latin America and the Caribbean Summit on Integration and Development (CALC) and the XXII. established at the Rio Group Summit. The meeting took place as part of the commemoration of the bicentenary of the beginning of the independence processes of the countries in the region. And since President Hugo Chávez was the one who convened it, the date cannot have been chosen at random. On December 2, 1823, in Washington, James Monroe, the fifth President of the United States, in his annual address to the Union Congress, announced the doctrine that would bear his name. One hundred and eighty-eight years later, on the same day, CELAC was born, one of the most important strategic initiatives of the peoples and governments of the region.
But the story doesn’t begin with Monroe’s speech. Earlier, Thomas Jefferson, in his capacity as the third President of the United States, had stated that his country “needed a hemisphere” to stabilize, prosper and ensure its greatness. And this hemisphere, a phenomenal center of natural resources, as Alí Rodríguez said, is the one inhabited by Latin American and Caribbean peoples and where they fight and dream.
From the beginning, it was not easy to reach consensus on some key issues for the emerging community. Following the establishment of the First Summit of Presidents and Heads of State, it met on January 27-28, 2013 in Santiago, Chile. The host was Sebastián Piñera, and during the conclave’s deliberations, the Chilean President insisted on the idea that CELAC should be a forum and not just another regional organization. But the founding idea of Chávez, Fidel, Raúl and the Latin American left in general was exactly the opposite: to make CELAC a real and effective alternative to the OAS, which would never cease to be the “colonial ministry” of the OAS United States, united, as history was to prove.
At the II Summit (Havana, January 28 and 29, 2014), the host, Raúl Castro Ruz, insisted on the idea of ”institutionalizing” CELAC, but the changing political winds sweeping the region (the rise of Macrismo in Argentina in 2015, the sacking of Dilma Rousseff in 2016, the triumph and betrayal of Lenín Moreno in Ecuador, the stabilization of right-wing regimes in Central America and the rise of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States in early 2017) suspended CELAC in a kind of political limbo .
One of its factors was the renewed belligerence of North American imperialism, which is having a very strong impact on the countries of the region. Of the thirty-three CELAC members, there are at least fifteen who are extremely vulnerable to decisions Washington might make regarding remittances from immigrants to their places of origin. In countries like El Salvador, Honduras, Jamaica and Haiti they account for at least 20% of GDP, in others it’s close to numbers.
In the case of Mexico, its impact on GDP is much smaller, but its volume is very significant: in 2021, Mexicans living in the United States remitted their country no less than $51.6 billion, a figure higher than the scandalous one IMF loan to Macri government.
But Washington’s control of remittances is not the only means it has to prevent the strengthening of CELAC and the development of a vital strategy for collective regional action, which is crucial to countering the troubled waters of the international scene. The various forms of pressure, if not the open blockade, as practiced against Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, are elements that also have a negative impact on this project of continental unity.
In Argentina, the two main (or perhaps only) companies selling aviation fuel, Shell and YPF, are being prevented from supplying the Venezuelan company EMTRASUR’s plane, which was hijacked in that country, because they vetoed access to the shares would appeal to Wall Street. Thus, even in a country where the issue of money transfers is irrelevant, sovereign decision-making is severely limited when the United States arrogantly asserts the illegal and illegitimate extraterritoriality of its laws.
Hopefully this summit meeting in Buenos Aires will succeed in consolidating CELAC as an institution. That with its work teams, its experts and researchers, it can become a true Latin American and Caribbean regional organization; that they can, for example, develop a regional protocol for the rational and environmentally friendly exploitation of gold, lithium or copper; or for the care of our waters threatened by irreversible contamination from pesticides or the minerals used in gold extraction; or that can facilitate the creation of multinational public companies that use good judgment to manage the use of our region’s fabulous commons.
Growing US interference in our countries’ internal affairs has reached scandalous proportions, hence the need for a robust CELAC to curb such imperial arrogance. Only concerted action between our countries will be able to prevent the brutal recolonization of Latin America and the Caribbean, based on a radical and violent right that is promoted, advised and funded from Washington through multiple channels.
In a deeply shaken world system, with the United States grappling with the inexorable weakening of its international appeal, the temptation to seize territory and wealth south of the Rio Grande becomes a passion as irresistible as it is insane. This is repeatedly emphasized by the head of Southern Command, Laura Richardson, when she asserts that “Americans and the other peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean have coexisted harmoniously (sic!) in our neighborhood for two centuries.” It expresses Jefferson’s early aspirations two centuries later. And “our neighborhood,” adds Ms Richardson, must keep out invaders like Russia, China and Iran who want to take what is ours.
Obviously impossible. “America for (North) Americans” is the ever-valid Monroe Doctrine. That’s why CELAC is more necessary than ever. Hopefully the Buenos Aires Summit can be remembered as the one that restored the original project that gave birth to it in 2011.
(Taken from Telesurtv.net)