ALBA, Lights In the Face of Global Crisis
CUBA, October 15, 2009. Heads of States from the member countries of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of the Americas (ALBA) will be meeting today and tomorrow in Cochabamba, Bolivia, to analyze the current international situation.
According to media outlets, the meeting’s agenda includes an item related to the unique currency that will be used for commercial exchange among member countries and the creation of an international court for arbitration that could replace the World Bank’s International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes.
“The Dawn of the Peoples,” is the slogan of ALBA, an organization that currently includes Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Honduras, Ecuador, Dominica, and Antigua and Barbuda; there will be guests from other nations.
The Bolivarian Alliance is a demonstration of how it is possible to transform the current world’s disorder caused by ancient capitalist formulas that are unable to solve the problems generated by the world crisis.
ALBA’s foundation program rejects mercantilist fundamentals and selfish interests of entrepreneurial profit to the detriment of other nations. This was jointly stated by Venezuela and Cuba when they first designed the project five years ago.
The Bolivarian Alliance particularly speaks out for a system based on solidarity and complementing relations rather than one based on competition; on harmony rather than on the plundering of natural resources; on diversity and cultural development rather than on the imposition of values.
It also defends a peace system based on social justice and, at the same time, that is able to recover the human condition of our societies and peoples instead of reducing them to simple consumers or goods.
Joining the Cochabamba Summit will be ALBA’s Council for Economic Compensation whose goal is to use surplus exports and import requirements to increase commercial exchange and unite efforts to boost production.
SUCRE (Unique System for Regional Compensation) will be the virtual currency to be used for this commercial exchange. Moreover, it will be used for the creation of monetary areas that will be complemented by enterprises from the member nations.
Evo Morales’s proposal of creating a Trade Treaty for the Peoples will also be discussed in Cochabamba. Undoubtedly, these are lights in the face of the global crisis. (Cubaminrex- ACN)