Latin America
El fracaso de Bretton Woods y los tres pilares de la Nueva Arquitectura Financiera Regional
Documento borrador para discusión. El fracaso de Bretton Woods y los tres pilares de la Nueva Arquitectura Financiera Regional. Por: Equipo Técnico Nueva Arquitectura Financiera Regional –Banco del Sur. Ecuador Septiembre 22 de 2009 1. El Fondo Monetario Internacional y el Banco Mundial: s...
Videos - Perspectives on Regional Integration from Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe
This series of interviews presents the perspectives of activists from Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe on the issue of regional integration. All interviews were filmed by TNI at the International Conference of Governments and Social Movements - “Regional Integration: an opportunity to face ...
VIDEO: Perspectives on Regional Integration - Edilberto Saucedo
Edilberto Saucedo (Central Nacional de Organizaciones Campesinas, Indigenas y Populares, Paraguay) talks about regional integration and the factors that should be considered when developing new forms of cooperation. He argues that integration must involve the region´s resources being used for the p...
VIDEO: Perspectives on Regional Integration - Francisca Rodriguez
Francisca Rodriguez (ANAMURI/CLOC, Chile) discusses regional integration. It is not just a way out of the crisis, she argues, but is part of the construction of a new society. Interview filmed at the International Conference of Governments and Social Movements “Regional Integration: an opportunity...
VIDEO: Perspectives on Regional Integration - Graciela Rodriguez
Graciela Rodriguez (IGTN/REBRIP, Brazil) discusses regional integration and the opportunities emerging from the current crises. She argues that the financial crisis represents a crisis in the mode of production. This is an important moment for the southern countries, she says, as it creates the poss...
VIDEO: Perspectives on Regional Integration - Juan Gonzalez
Juan Gonzalez (Central de Trabajadores Argentinos CTA, Argentina) gives his perspective on regional integration in the South, outlining the important role of the People's Summit in constructing alternatives. The people, he says, must have sovereignty over their territory, energy, resources and their...
VIDEO: Perspectives on Regional Integration - Maria Elena Saludas
Maria Elena Saludas (ATTAC, Argentina) discusses regional integration in the context of the current crisis. She argues that we now face a profound crisis of capitalism, from which countries cannot escape alone. Interview filmed at the International Conference of Governments and Social Movements “R...
VIDEO: Perspectives on Regional Integration - Nalu Faria
Nalu Faria (Marcha Mundial de las Mujeres, Brazil) discusses integration in Latin America and new forms of development for the region. She argues that a more autonomous continent is required in which the people control what is produced, and how it is produced, for their own benefit. It is imperative...
VIDEO: Perspectives on Regional Integration - Narciso Castillo
Narciso Castillo (Central Nacional de Trabajadores, Paraguay) discusses regional integration and the kind of integration and development his organisation is working towards in Latin America. He argues for a development model without the IMF and World Bank that aims to help the majority of the popula...
VIDEO: Perspectives on Regional Integration - Natalia Carrau
Natalia Carrau (REDES - Amigos de la Tierra, Uruguay) gives her perspective on regional integration, alternative forms of production and the role of social movements. Natalia argues that a new mode of production is reguired, one that does not only benefit transnational corporations and consumption i...
VIDEO: Perspectives on Regional Integration - Pablo Bertinat
Pablo Bertinat (Cono Sur Sustenable, Argentina) gives his perspective on regional integration and outlines some key elements that should form part of a new development/integration model. Pablo argues that an exit from the crisis requires people working together, focusing on many issues and aspects o...
VIDEO: Perspectives on Regional Integration - Roberto Colman
Roberto Colman (Sindicato de Trabajadores de la ANDE/Coordinadora Soberania Energetica, Paraguay) talks about regional integration, development and the role of energy. He argues for a connected form of integration and a development model that, as in the present case, does not just benefit capital. E...
VIDEO: Perspectives on Regional Integration - Ximena Cetellas
Ximena Cetellas (Directora General de Gestion Publica, Viceministerio de Coordinacion y Gestion Gubernamental, Bolivia) discusses regional responses to the current crisis. Ximena argues that integration is now more than a principle, it's an obligation. The crisis, she says, presents people with an o...
VIDEO: Perspectives on Regional Integration - Hector de la Cueva
Hector de la Cueva (Red Mexicana de Accion Frente al Libre Comercio, Mexico) gives his perspective on regional integration, a new model of development in Latin America, and the role of social movements. He highlights the need for the region to move away from a subordinary relationship with North Ame...
VIDEO: Perspectives on Regional Integration - Enrique Daza
Enrique Daza (Secretario Ejecutivo, Alianza Social Continental, Colombia) discusses regional integration, social movements and alternative forms of production and development in Latin America. Interview filmed at the International Conference of Governments and Social Movements “Regional Integratio...
VIDEO: Perspectives on Regional Integration - Gonzalo Berron
Gonzalo Berron (Confederacion Sindical de las Americas/Alianza Social Continental, Brasil) discusses regional integration, the climate, energy and the role of the public in the future of development. Interview filmed at the International Conference of Governments and Social Movements “Regional Int...
VIDEO: Perspectives on Regional Integration - Edgardo Lander
Edgardo Lander (Universidad Central de Venezuela/Consejo Hemisferico del Foro Social Mundial, Venezuela) discusses regional integration and the current economic model in Latin America. Interview filmed at the International Conference of Governments and Social Movements 'Regional Integration: an oppo...
Summary report of the World Social Forum (01/09) and ASEAN Peoples' Forum (02/09); "Global Crises-Regional Responses: the inter-linkages between climate change, trade and regional integration"
This report compiles the exchanges of analysis on the role of Europe in a globalized world over three interconnected issues: climate change, trade and regional integration held during two debates which took place in Belem during the World Social Forum (January 2009), and in Bangkok, Thailand during ...
South American Nations Agree on Technical Rules for Bank of the South
On May 31, 2009, seven South American Finance ministers agreed on the basis for establishing the Bank of the South and on September 28, seven South American presidents finally signed the founding agreement. The motivation for forming the new development bank is the belief that keeping Latin Am...
South American Trade and Currency Volatility
Tony Phillips Latin America has of some of the world's largest countries, in terms of land area, but the continent has no large global economy, and only two medium-sized economies: Brazil and Mexico. The region also lacks a local hard currency as a basis for international, and especially in...
South American countries sign Articles of Agreement of BANCOSUR
Oscar Ugarteche Twenty months after signing the founding charter of the Bank of the South in Buenos Aires, South American presidents signed the Articles of Agreement of BANCOSUR in Porlamar, Margarita Island, on Monday, 28 September 2009. The agreement contains rules that were negotiated by committ...
Learning from ALBA and the Bank of the South: Challenges and Possibilities
by Martin Hart-Landsberg (Monthly Review) The current period is marked by three overlapping developments: the failure of neoliberalism, the crisis of the East Asian export-led growth model, and South American efforts to advance an alternative regional development strategy. The combination has ...
THE CONSTRUCTION OF A NEW REGIONAL FINANCIAL ARCHITECTURE IN UNASUR
By Graciela Rodríguez. (International Gender and Trade Network Bulletin Vol. 9 No.3) In September, the Ministry for Coordination of Economic Policy and the Technical Committee for the creation of a New Financial Architecture of the Ecuadorian Presidency organized the "Latin American Summit o...
Bolivia Prescribes Solidarity: Health Care Reform under Evo Morales
Jason Tockman The first time Mario Terán faced a doctor from Cuba, he killed him. He heard Che Guevara utter his famous last words: "Shoot, coward; you are only going to kill a man," and in October of 1967, in a small schoolhouse in rural Bolivia, Sergeant Terán fired a round of bullets into the ...
Why is it necessary to integrate Latin America?
At the moment, the countries of South America formally have sovereignty, but little real autonomy: they depend on international markets to sell their basic products, lending institutions define their economic policies and foreign stockmarkets fix the prices of primary commodities. To gain real auton...
What is ALBA?
Ministro de Estado para la Integración y Comercio Exterior The Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) is based, fundamentally, upon a model of politic, economic and social integration of countries, as the Caribbean and Latin American, which share geographic spaces, historical and cultura...
Americas Program Americas Program Report: A New Financial Architecture for Latin America, Part 2
South American Trade and Currency Volatility by Tony Phillips Latin America has of some of the world's largest countries, in terms of land area, but the continent has no large global economy: and only two medium-sized economies, Brazil and Mexico. The region also lacks a local hard c...
Americas Program Report: A New Financial Architecture for Latin America, Part 1
South American Nations Agree on Technical Rules for Bank of the South by Tony Phillips Seven Latin American Finance Ministers have agreed on the basis for establishing the Bank of the South. The motivation for forming the new development bank is based on the belief that keeping Latin...
Latin America: Return to the IMF or reinforce alternatives?
Maria Jose Romero Today Latin American countries are faced with the option of returning to international and regional financial institutions - IMF, World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) - or rejecting the failed recipes of the 1990s in order to build and reinforce alternatives that...
The European Union: promoter of regional integration in Latin America? Rhetoric and Reality
By Alberto Arroyo Picard, Graciela Rodríguez, Norma Castañeda Bustamante The European Union (EU) presents itself as a supportive partner of Latin America (LA), rather than as a competitor. In recent years, the EU has been stressing that its primary interest in negotiating Association...
Democratising Trade Politics in the Americas: Insights from the Women’s, Environmental and Labour Movements
Rosalba Icaza, Peter Newell and Marcelo Saguier The latest wave of trade integration schemes promoted in the Americas since the 1990s has been subject to mounting criticism about the social and environmental costs trade liberalisation brings in its wake. Opposition to neo-liberal models of region...
Financing and mega projects: An interpretation of the regional South American dynamic
By Ricardo Verdum (INESC) This publication is focused on the South American financial architecture and its relationship with the execution of large physical infrastructure projects being implemented in the region. It has been conceived as a result of the perception that we are facing a key moment...
Halifaz Initiative Issue Brief: The Bank of the South
"What is the Bank of the South? On December 9th, 2007, representatives from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Paraguay,Uruguay, and Venezuela met in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to launch “el Banco del Sur” or theBank of the South (BoS). With the creation of the Bank, the leaders of Latin Amer...
Whose Prosperity and Security? Women Citizenships in age of Neo-liberal Regionalisms
Rosalba Icaza - (Institute of Social Studies, The Netherlands) This contribution seeks to understand how changing patterns of power and governance affect the meanings and practices of citizenship in a globalising world. It does so by looking into local manifestations of regionalization and thei...
Latin America: In support of regional integration and a partial delinking from the world capitalist market
By Eric Toussaint, translated by Federico Fuentes The economic and financial crisis, whose epicentre is found in the United States, has to be utilised by Latin American countries to build an integration favourable to the peoples and at the same initiate a partial delinking from the world capita...
Endogenous development and a South American Financial Architecture
Marcos Arruda Taking into account the current financial earthquake that is shaking the US financial system, Marcos Arruda summarizes some of the main arguments related to the creation of a new financial architecture for South America. Contents Note on Methodology Prem...
Latin American Unity
VII Social Summit for Latin American and Caribbean Unity By Noam Chomsky During the past decade, Latin America has become the most exciting region of the world. The dynamic has very largely flowed from right where you are meeting, in Caracas, with the election of a leftist pre...
An Introduction to Regional Financial Institutions in Latin America
Eduardo Gudynas For many years now particular attention has been paid to the large International Financial Institutions (IFIs), such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Their repercussions in Latin America as in other regions are notorious, ranging from financing vari...
Alternative Financing for Development: Venezuela and ALBA
Alejandro Bendana* If the goal is development -- best defined as sovereign democratic social transformation -- then we must not speak of making the present "aid" modalities more effective, but of substituting present day aid and the system in which it unfolds. One begins by questioning the very n...
South Bank: 90 days of silence
Gabriel Strautman* At the launching event for the Southern Bank, held in Buenos Aires on December 9, 2007, the presidents of Bank member countries set a 60-day deadline to define the structure and guidelines of the new South American multilateral financial institution. In practice, the idea w...
Energy Integration and Security in Latin America and the Caribbean
Ariela Ruiz Caro The integration of energy markets in Latin America has been discussed for more than three decades. An expression of it was the creation of the regional organizations ARPEL (Association of Petroleum Enterprises of Latin America), CIER (Regional Electrical Integration Commiss...
ALBA: Creating a Regional Alternative to Neo-liberalism?
by Shawn Hattingh Latin America was the first place where the US imposed the most callous economic system ever seen: neo-liberal capitalism. Starting in Chile in 1973, the US used its power, along with its control over the IMF and the World Bank, to force governments across Latin America to...
People's Dialogue on Alternatives for Regional Integration
by CÂNDIDO GRZYBOWSKI Institute of Social and Economic Analysis (IBASE), Brazil In the resistance to the process of globalization, which seeks to submit territories, economies and governments to the interests of accumulation of large economic and financial corporations, schemes of regional and...
Bank of the South: "A People's Perspective of Integration"
What is the South Bank? In February of 2007, Argentina and Venezuela, and soon afterwards Bolivia, Ecuador,and Paraguay, concluded an agreement to create a bank to finance development in andfor the countries of the South: the South Bank. On May 3rd in a meeting between thePresident of Ecuador and ...
The Bank of the South: New South American integration or a new instrument for domination?
Marcus Arruda and Gabriel Strautman At the meeting held on 8 October 2007 in Rio de Janeiro, the ministers of economy and finance of Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela made further progress in negotiations leading to the founding of the Bank of the South. On thi...
Integração Sul-Americana: UNASUL e ALBA – Processos de integração alternativos
Graciela Rodriguez O comércio internacional mudou profundamente na década atual, especialmente depois de fracassada a IV Reunião Ministerial da Organização Mundial do Comércio – OMC, em Cancun - México, em 2003. Essa reunião terminou sem avanços devido fundamentalmente à “revoluçã...
South-American Integration: UNASUR and ALBA – Alternative Integration processes
Graciela Rodriguez International trade has changed profoundly during the current decade, especially after the failure of the 4th Ministerial Meeting of the World Trade Organization – WTO, held in Cancun - Mexico in 2003. The meeting ended with no real progress, fundamentally due to the “revol...
A Bank of Their Own: Latin America Casting Off Washington's Shackles
By Mark Weisbrot "Developing nations must create their own mechanisms of finance instead of suffering under those of the IMF and the World Bank, which are institutions of rich nations . . . it is time to wake up." That was Lula da Silva, the president of Brazil -- not Washington's nemesis, Hu...
Stiglitz praises Banco Sur
The Associated Press CARACAS, Venezuela: Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said Wednesday that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's plan to create a regional lending bank will be beneficial for South America. The former World Bank economist said the Bank of the South, due to be found...
Bank of the South: Toward Financial Autonomy
Raúl Zibechi The launch of the Bank of the South is an ambitious and strategic gambit in regional integration, one that could result in a truly regional development bank. Despite Brazilian concerns, this new institution is ready to be launched. "Positive," Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel La...
The Hemispheric Social Alliance and the Free Trade Area of the Americas Process: The Challenges and Opportunities of Transnational Coalitions against Neo-liberalism
MARCELO I. SAGUIER Facultad Latinoamerica de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO), Argentina The paper analyses the formation of atransnational coalition of civil society organizations coordinated by the Hemispheric Social Alliance to oppose the establishment of a Free Trade Area of...
Bank of the South: Between rhetoric and a historic opportunity
Gabriel Papa* The proposal to fund the Bank of the South has generated enthusiasm but also scepticism among political leaders, civil society representatives and regional analysts. The challenge that this institution will have to face is considerable , even more so when it is to be created with t...
Regional Integration in Latin America: Dawn of an Alternative to Neoliberalism?
Paul Kellogg At the turn of the century, it seemed inevitable that regional integration in Latin America would occur under the rubric of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and US hegemony. But 2005—the year the FTAA was to have been launched—has come and gone, and the whole FTAA proje...
The Bank of the South: a review of what is at stake
Éric Toussaint Two opposite tendencies at play in Latin America On one hand, the United States government and the EU countries make bilateral free-trade agreements with the countries of the region - an arrangement which benefits their own companies. These companies have taken advantage of t...
BancoSur should be a bank to finance a socialist economy
By Plinio Soares de Arruda The Bank of the South is already a reality. Enthusiasts say it is another integrationist project under way in Latin America. But others are more sceptical and say that the Bank could just turn into a "tit" to feed Latin America's major capital intere...
Bank of the South: An alternative for development finance?
Fabrina Furtado Several Latin American governments as well as civil society organizations and movements are looking for alternatives sources for financing development in the region. The proposal of a Bank of the South is an attempt to fulfill this objective. However, we must ensure that it be a...
ALBA: From Dream to Reality
Emir Sader When Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez launched the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (Spanish acronym ALBA [1]) back in December 2004, such an initiative seemed to be the institutional framework for the agreements Cuba and Venezuela were then developing. It represented a great example...
The Bank of the South, between economics and politics
María José Romero The initiative to create the Bank of the South as a "financial alternative for the economic recovery and integration of South American countries", was originally fuelled by president Hugo Chávez, of Venezuela, and Néstor Kirchner, of Argentina. The presidents of Ecuador, Bo...
Adios, World Bank!
By Nadia Martinez As the controversy around Iraq War architect Paul Wolfowitz’s uncertain future as president of the World Bank intensifies, the financial institution is not only losing supporters. It’s also losing victims. In Latin America, countries are paying off their World Bank loans ear...
Banco del Sur: A reflection of declining IFI relevance in Latin America
by Vince McElhinny Bank Information Center The announcements of the inauguration of the first Latin American office of the planned Bank of the South and the adhesion of three new member countries have come as a direct challenge to the Northern based IFIs struggling to remain relevant to the reg...
Hugo Chavez Wants to Take On His Enemies By Playing Their Old Game
By Garrett St. James When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ended direct US imperial involvement in Latin America with his Good Neighbor policies, the proponents of predatory capitalism needed another means for the continued exploitation of the region. Hence came the formation of the Intern...
Bank of the South: A road towards a new financial architecture
Pablo Dávalos The neo-liberal model shows clear signs of erosion in Latin America. This has been expressed in voter support for candidates who have been critical of neo-liberalism. Moreover, some governments need to keep not only a formal but also a real distance from the IMF, but does not impl...
Chavez exploits oil to lend in Latin America, pushing IMF aside
By Christopher Swann Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is squeezing the International Monetary Fund out of Latin America, the region that once accounted for most of its business. IMF lending in the area has fallen to $50 million, or less than 1 percent of its global portfolio, compared wi...
ALBA: Justice in deeds
Mariela Perez Valenzuela The Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) welcomed Nicaragua as its fourth full member as the FSLN returned to power in that country, while in Ecuador, President Rafael Correa adds new support to the movement for Latin America integration. Granma (Cuba) | 19 J...
ALBA Venezuela’s answer to “free trade”: the Bolivarian alternative for the Americas
Focus on the Global South Ocassional Paper 3 (October 2006) The Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) represents the first attempt at regional integration that is not based primarily on trade liberalization but on a new vision of social welfare and equity. Alternatives are often eith...
Proposal from President Evo Morales: Let's construct with our people a real South American community of nations in order to live well
Fellow Presidents and People of South America, In Cusco, December 2004, the presidents of South America took up the commitment of developing a "South American space, integrated in political, social, economic, environmental and infrastructural spheres" and affirmed that "South American integration i...
Latin America Now: An Interview with Raúl Zibechi
In this interview, Raúl Zibechi discusses the challenges of the Evo Morales administration in Bolivia, the power and role of Bolivian social movements, projects for regional integration such as People’s Trade Agreement and the Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America and the region’s new situat...
Defining the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas - ALBA
Much has been written and theorized about the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) since President Chavez first proposed the idea at Isla Margarita at the III Summit of the Heads of State and the Government of the Association of Caribbean States in December, 2001. >Download the article (...
Agreement for the Application of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America and the Peoples' Trade
Evo Morales, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez Presidents Hugo Chávez Frías, on behalf of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Evo Morales Ayma, on behalf of the Republic of Bolivia and Fidel Castro Ruz, on behalf of the Republic of Cuba, meeting in Havana on April 28 and 29, 2006, have decided to sig...
Bolivia advocates alternative vision for trade and integration
Jason Tockman A cornerstone of Bolivia’s new economy is the People’s Trade Agreement (PTA, or TCP in Spanish), a progressive international trade and integration strategy. Based upon traditional indigenous principles of cooperation, complementarity and solidarity, the PTA is a form of collabo...
Morales, Castro and Chávez, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas and the People’s Trade Agreement for the integration of the Latin American Homeland
Miguel Lora / Translation by Jason Tockman. In the phase of capitalism we are now living through, large and small nations compete under unequal conditions in a fictitious free market controlled by new and influential actors—powerful transnational companies. In imperialism, the nation-states, espe...
IIRSA: Integration Custom-Made for International Markets
Raúl Zibechi The project for Integration of South American Regional Infrastructure (IIRSA, by its initials in Spanish), is swiftly but silently moving forward. IIRSA is the most ambitious and encompassing plan to integrate the region for international trade. If completed in full, the proje...
ALBA: Social Debt and Human Rights: Proposals for the New Social, Economic and Cultural Order
James Petras, Dissidentvoice.org Introduction Under the leadership of President Chavez, and with the backing of the great majority of the Venezuelan people, a process of social transformation is underway which challenges the old neoliberal, imperial-centered, political-economic order. Equa...
Latin America’s Time is Now!
Nidia Díaz, Socialist Worker Bolivia signs agreement to implement the Bolivarian Alternative for the peoples of Our America and the People’s Trade Agreement. On the 1st anniversary of the creation of the ALBA between Cuba and Venezuela, the figures speak for themselves regarding a new int...
Bolivian president calls for creation of Anti-imperialist Community of Nations
By Ernesto Montero and Haraldo Romero, www.trabajadores.co.cu Before an audience of more than 25,000 gathered at Havana’s Revolution Square, which coincided with the signing of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) agreement one year ago between Cuba and Venezuela, Bolivia officially...
Regionalist governance and transnational collective action in Latin America
Jean Grugel New forms of regionalism are now a central element in global governance. It is sometimes suggested that new regionalism represents an opportunity for transnational civil society activism. I explore this argument through a comparison of processes of collective action in two emerging fram...
Breaking Imperial Ties: Venezuela and ALBA
Tim Anderson - Green Left Weekly In late 2005, while war raged in the Middle East and oil prices rose drastically, governments and oil companies repeated the “market forces” mantra, saying there was nothing they could do about oil prices. However, the Venezuelan government-owned US-based petr...
Regional Integration, social inequalities and new policy spaces
Mr. Pierre Sané, Assistant Director-General for Social and Human Sciences Speech at the opening ceremony on the Symposium 'Social dimensions of regional integration’, UNESCO, MERCOSUR, GASPP and UNU-CRIS, Montevideo (Uruguay) - 21 to 23 February 2006 >Download the speech (PDF)
Cuba's foreign policy and the promise of ALBA
Luis Suárez Salazar In his best-known work, Cuban independence hero José Martí called for no less than a “second independence of our América” in the face of American imperialism, or as he termed it, “la Roma Americana” (the American Rome). For Cuba’s revolutionary government, this r...
Venezuela's Bolivarian movement
Stephen Lendman Venezuela today, under its democratically elected President, Hugo Chavez Frias, is imbued with the spirit of Bolivarianism and his Bolivarian Revolution. It's based on the vision of Simon Bolivar, the Caracas born 17th and 18th century general who defeated the Spanish, liberated h...
Regional Integration After the Collapse of FTAA
Raul Zibechi, Upside Down World Although every Latin American government pays lip service to integration, taking the concrete steps needed to attain it is much more difficult than simply issuing declarations. In the wake of the collapse of the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA), Latin Amer...
“Open Regionalism” or Alternative Regional Integration?
Eduardo Gudynas In Latin America, confusion and ambiguity over trade and regional integration continue to be commonplace. Different governments declare their dedication to strengthening relations between countries, but their trade policies indicate otherwise. On this slippery terrain, the concept...
Identifying an Alternative Vision for Regional Integration in the Americas
Draft prepared by Alexandra Spieldoch, Center of Concern/U.S. Gender and Trade Network, for distribution at Trade-Finance Meeting in Lima, Peru October 3-5, 2005 In assessing the different paths to regional integration in the Americas − more specifically the mechanisms for trade-finance linkages i...
The New Configurations of Popular Movements in Latin America
José Seoane*, Emilio Taddei** & Clara Algranati*** The 1990s opened the way to a renewed capitalist globalization in its neoliberal form, whose impact on Latin America has been glaringly noticeable and profound. Extending a process begun in previous decades, promoted now by the so-called “...
The Paths of the South American Community of Nations
Eduardo Gudynas Recently the presidents of South American nations launched a proposal to form a “Community of Nations” that would group twelve countries covering 17 million square kilometers, with 361 million inhabitants, and a GDP of more than $970 billion dollars. >Download the article (PD...
ALBA: Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America and the Caribbean
Teresa Arreaza The ALBA (Alternativa Bolivariana para las Américas), as its Spanish initials indicate, is a proposed alternative to the U.S.-sponsored Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA, ALCA in its Spanish initials), differing from the latter in that it advocates a socially-oriented trade b...
"It's a Strategic Plan" - The Cuban-Venezuelan Accord
Manuel Alberto Ramy - Progreso Weekly There are some human, social and political events that go beyond the necessary, temporary conventions. They are not left behind after the last stroke of the midnight bell on Dec. 31; because of their importance, they refuse to become the past, to become dead ev...
Civil Society and Social Movements: The Dynamics of Intersectoral Alliances and Urban-Rural Linkages in Latin America
Henry Veltmeyer The study of development has always been surrounded by debate about its driving forces, its facilitating and inhibiting conditions, obstacles to its achievement, and the appropriate agents for bringing it about. At the centre of this debate have been questions about structure and ...
Linking Alternative Regionalisms for Equitable & Sustainable Development
Walden Bello and Dot Keet Download PDF Abstract As the crisis of globalisation deepens , there is an urgent need for the articulation of alternatives. This includes add ressing the question of developing alternatives from the perspectives of social movements in Africa, Asia and Latin-America and ...
Multi-Track Strategies of the Major Powers On, and Against, Regional Integration(s)
Dot Keet Alternative Information and Development Centre Regional Briefings 4 The externally oriented motivations for creating stronger regional economic groupings between developing countries, and seeking forms of political cooperation between their governments and between their ...
Regional Programs in the South and New Peoples' Initiatives in the Context of Contrary Internal Governmental Trends and External Interventions
by Dot Keet, TNI Alternative Regionalisms Project It has long been recognised by many governments and civil society organisations in the countries of the South that the regrouping of their countries into larger economic units is an important basis for effective and sustainable development. This...
Witness for Peace: Alternatives for the Americas
"Alternatives for the Americas is a document of guidelines (summarized here) for making the process of hemispheric economic integration more inclusive, democratic, environmentally and culturally sustainable, and equitable. The document proposes development based on democratic citizen participation, ...
The rise and fall of open regionalism? Comparative reflections on regional governance in the Southern Cone of Latin America
NICOLA PHILLIPS This article argues that the original framework of ‘open regionalism’ underpinning the Mercosur is petering out, and consequently the regional governance project in the Southern Cone is undergoing a process of redefinition. The article seeks to understand the nature of this re...
Twelve Lessons from Five Decades of Regional Integration in Latin America and the Caribbean
Enrique V. Iglesias, President of the Inter-American Development Bank The celebration of INTAL’s 35th Anniversary is an opportune time to stop and reflect on where we have been, where we are and where we are going in our processes of regional economic integration in Latin America and the Car...
Dialogues, understandings and misunderstandings: social movements in MERCOSUR
Elizabeth Jelin The current process of globalization is effecting substantial changes in the economic, social and political organization of the world today. Inter- national capital flows, the opening up and deregulation of national economies, the end of the Cold War, and technological expansion a...
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