T
here is a shift in the prevailing
winds coming from the South, above all in South America and the
Caribbean. The transformations in progress can be difficult to understand
because they are different in each country—the revolution in
Venezuela is not the same as the changes in Argentina, which are
not the same as that in Brazil, Uruguay, or Bolivia.
Changes are also occurring at different levels, with grassroots
demands for more participation and control over what governs their
lives interacting with new types of leaders or party structures
that attempt to respond through their own particular culture and
perspective. These leaders and infrastructures must also respond
to the “keepers”—the WTO, IMF, and the like.
ALBA, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (Alternativa Bolivariana
por las Américas in Spanish), is emblematic of the transformation
occurring in Latin America and it offers a way for the U.S. to get
a handle on “what these people want.” The brainchild of
Venezuelan President Hugo Chav- ez, it is an alternative to the
U.S.- backed Free Trade of the Americas (FTAA) treaty that is deservedly
dying a slow death as it does not mean free or fair trade.
Rather, it would be a death sentence for agriculture. For many countries
in Latin America and the Caribbean, agriculture is more than fundamental
to the survival of those nations, it is a way of life and culture,
determining ways of relating with nature, as well as providing food
security. Real free trade in agriculture means eliminating U.S.
subsidies and corralling other practices that have the equivalent
effect on food exports—something the U.S. is loath to do.
Another sensitive topic in the FTAA is that of intellectual property,
most particularly the 13 giant drug transnationals that control
80 percent of the patents, as well as the 5 agrochemical corporations
that control the global seed market. The FTAA would give an advantage
to the mammoth (U.S.) transnationals and leave the South without
its advantages of genetic diversity and the traditional knowledge
of the indigenous people. It would do this because, without patents
on pharmaceutical products, domestic markets have been able to offer
generic medicines at prices much below those offered by companies
with patents.
In response, the World Trade Organization now requires that medicines
be patented.
Countries such as India and Egypt, which have acceded to this demand
for intellectual property rights, have seen the giant pharmaceutical
corporations first eliminate competition and then raise prices out
of the reach of ordinary folk. Since the patent system does not
recognize the knowledge and resources of local people, the transnationals
can appropriate natural products used free or at low cost for centuries
and sell them back at exorbitant prices. This also has the important
effect of reducing genetic variety of many of the principal food
crops by using exclusively genetically manipulated seeds as well
as agrochemicals, thus drastically reducing auto-adaptation and
regeneration of ecological systems.
Another area of contention is the essential services that many people
(not in the U.S.) consider rights. Such necessary services as health
care, education, drinking water, transportation, mail, as well as
labor legislation and consumer protection, would pass to private
hands under FTAA. Those countries that have privatized such basics
have had transnationals enter and transform citizens into consumers,
very many of whom can then no longer afford the services at all.
A
lthough Venezuelan President
Chavez (and other Latin American leaders) recognize the importance
of more trade and support to development in the hemisphere, he is
no dummy, and seeing the road to FTAA paved with more poverty, unemployment,
and sparse development, he has proposed an alternative that would
encourage trade negotiations in sub-regional blocs to support growth,
balance asymmetries, and promote economic and social development.
ALBA is symbolic of the growing cooperation between nations, not
limited to the economic. One important example is the strengthening
of cooperative ties in different sectors in MERCOSUR (the Southern
Common Market) that encompasses Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and
Uruguay—soon to add oil-rich Venezuela, plus Chile and Bolivia,
as associate members.
To balance asymmetries among countries and to construct ALBA, Venezuela
proposes Compensatory Funds or Structural Convergence Funds to significantly
reduce the lopsidedness between nations and productive sectors.
ALBA proposes that the nations in the region jointly identify the
criteria to be used to judge disequilibrium and give a clear definition
of what is a “smaller economy”—using such measures
as population, resources, production, composition of exports, level
of industrial development, per capita income, and levels of poverty.
With those criteria recognized, resources would be directed to intra-national
sectors to improve efficiency and transparency. In contrast to the
FTAA, ALBA proposes that elimination of poverty and social marginality
take precedence, including human, labor, and gender rights, as well
as defense of the environment and integration.
Thus far under ALBA Venezuela has signed contracts with Caribbean
countries to supply oil under very favorable conditions of payment
and, in some cases (such as Cuba), part of the oil payment has been
literacy teachers and medical teams for the Venezuelan poor. Another
important ALBA program, co-sponsored with Cuba, is Operation Miracle,
permitting thousands of poor people—initially just from Venezuela,
but now from Guatemala, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Panama—to come
to Cuba for eye surgery for cataracts and other severe ocular diseases.
The program now has surgical centers in Bolivia and Venezuela as
well.
These certainly don’t sound like programs and treaties that
have come before. This is because ALBA embodies a new kind of unity
based on positive values.
Carolina
Cositore (Sitrin) is a translator and journalist in Havana, Cuba where
she has lived since 1998. A life-long progressive, she is a mother
of five, grandmother of six, and has been a teacher and social worker.
