Honduras Joins ALBA

Honduras has recently joined ALBA (Alternativa Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América). An interesting development, as Honduras is probably the biggest mess in Central America, which is saying a lot given their neighbours. The biggest pull seems to be the fact that the IMF severely restricted foreign loans to the country and the increase of oil prices, which has caused significant inflation. This is coupled with the failure of the CAFTA-US (Central American Free Trade Agreement) to deliver because of the recession in the US economy.

ALBA provides for these three areas - the political alliance with Venezuela brings in lower interest loans and oil is traded to other ALBA members in return for services and products instead of currency, allowing countries with poor access to US dollars (or other trade-able currencies) to trade what they do have (and what Venezuela does want - food and services).

It will be interesting to see how developed this trade network can become. In Honduras, as the article talks about, it has to overcome a very corrupt political system and a very poorly developed political, social and economic infrastructure. Unlike in Bolivia, where ALBA has also come with political reforms of the Morales government, in Honduras the President is part of one of the two traditional parties and therefore is not accompaning wider political reforms... reforms that both Nicaragua (under the Sandanistas in the 80s) and Cuba have undergone in the past. Honduras' problems will be an interesting challenge to the future of ALBA. But if FMLN wins the election in El Salvador, there will be 3 Central American countries part of ALBA, directly challenging US economic hegemony in the region and hopefully encourage regional friendships. Guatemala, the largest country and economy in the region, would also be increasingly interested in ALBA and has a government that is at least partially interested in presenting a centre-left image.

These kinds of 'real' gains made by Latin American leftist governments go underreported in comparison to all the challenges they have faced by the rightwing and the fascist opposition. They however are clearer steps of progress for Chavez and his goal of creating interregional relationships outside of the sphere of US influence. The biggest threat the US now holds over these countries is restricting their largest source of foreign capital - remittances from undocumented workers.

HONDURAS: Joining ALBA ‘A Step Towards the Centre-Left,’ Says President

By Thelma Mejía

TEGUCIGALPA, Aug 26 (IPS) — Honduras has joined the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), amid criticism from the business community and right-wing political sectors.

Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, who took office in 2006, and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez signed the membership document Monday in the presence of Presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, and Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage.

Chávez initially promoted ALBA, which now has six members — Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Honduras, Nicaragua and Venezuela — to counteract the U.S.- led plan to create a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), which has now collapsed.

ALBA was launched at the People’s Summit held in parallel to the official meeting of heads of state at the Fourth Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata, Argentina in 2005, as an alternative to the "neoliberal" (free market) model, embodying cooperation, solidarity and complementarity and committed to fighting poverty, inequality and unequal terms of trade, according to its founding document.

Chávez highlighted Zelaya’s "courage, because in spite of the demonisation of ALBA, he has not hesitated to join a Latin American integration project based on the thinking and spirit of our foremost heroes."

"Today we are signing not only a fraternal pact of solidarity, but also an integration project for Latin America that stands out as an alternative to imperial hegemony and integrates progressive governments that are proposing a way out of oppressive imperialism," Chávez said.
...

Honduras’ entry into ALBA is "an act of freedom, because we are a free and sovereign people," Zelaya said. "This is a heroic act of independence and we need no one’s permission to sign this commitment. Today we are taking a step towards becoming a government of the centre-left, and if anyone dislikes this, well just remove the word ‘centre’ and keep the second one."
...

http://www.bilaterals.org/article.php3?id_article=13046

Final comment on the Colombia-Ecuador incident

Fearing that I have put an early emphasis on this one issue, hopefully I will write on something else soon, but I wanted to just get in this last word taken from a comment I made over at Latin American News Review.

The attack on FARC was for international consumption as much as it was for Colombian - Uribe's support within Colombia is (rightly or wrongly) fairly strong and killing a FARC leader was not necessary to maintain a tough on FARC image.

There are two contexts that are significantly more important: first the hostage releases and second how international law views the conflict within Colombia. Both of these issues are indeed connected back to Chavez since he has both declared the FARC to be a belligerent rather than "terrorist" group as well as being instrumental in getting hostages released most recently.

The hostage issue was a huge embarrassment for Uribe and had it continued it had the potential to undermine his strong hand tactics and present an alternative path towards peace. Internationally Colombia was facing a lot of pressure to pursue this path, one which Uribe does not want to take because of his commitment to a heavily militarized society and government (rightly or wrongly - another discussion to have).

More importantly, and where the US comes in, is how international law is interpreted. The US has a vision of the world that it can strike anywhere that it wants because it has labeled a group a "terrorist". Colombia was testing this vision of the world out, whether or not the US told or encouraged them to do it does not matter specifically to this point since if successful it would have reinforced the US version of international law. This was a huge failure for Uribe, and it turns out it doesn't matter that the FARC is a "terrorist" group, the region would not tolerate the attack on another country's sovereignty for any reason.

It made Colombia look like a militant state to other countries in the region. Since internally Uribe' popularity couldn't improve much, it may have been a neutral result. Internationally, with the potential interruption of fairly popular hostage releases and the disregard of international laws concerning sovereignty Uribe lost a lot of respect. He was smart enough to back down, and I'll give him credit there.

I do not know enough about Chavez's internal problems and have a hard enough time trying to read through the very strong anti-Chavez bias that permeates the global North's media to comment about the other points. But regionally - if any thing - Chavez's position was validated by his regional neighbours and his ally Correa earned a lot of regional prominence (and I suspect respect), hardly a loss to the "Bolivarian Alternative". And as trade resumes, Colombia realizes that it depends on Venezuela's oil money to buy its legal products, and it may not be such a bad thing that the purchasing power of the lower class Venezuelan has increased the demand for Colombian agricultural and food products. And just to put it out there, Venezuela might be providing an alternative exit to the war on drugs through increased demand for legitimate Colombian exports. A novel idea that probably is worth exploring.

It is really disappointing that the dominant international media fro the global North has not been interested in the impact this incident had on international law or even to investigate the internal civil war within Colombia. More often than not, it was a chance to write about how bad Chavez is doing recently and how Chavez was making the world a less safe place. There has been a great revision of events, issues, and problems to present a narrow vision of Latin America and its regional politics. What has been frightfully lost is any analysis in the Global North on how a peaceful resolution may be reached. If any thing, there is a hopeful sign or message in the conclusion of the conflict: Latin America has strong regional ties committed to regional stability (something we could not have said for the past decade) that transcends the political spectrum. Economic ties that have been increasing across countries in the past decade making regional peace and co-operation extremely important. And as an aside: the economic ties are based upon models of trade designed in Latin American and not by Washington (I am strongly against the FTAA model). Even between Colombia and Venezuela, the polar extremes of Latin American politics, there is a recognition of economic dependence that is breaking down the North-South trade. The increase of Venezuela's economy and purchasing power through the redistribution of oil wealth to lower classes has meant a sharp increase in demand for Colombian products, and the closing of the border while difficult for Venezuela was potentially more disastrous for Colombia. The resolution of the conflict highlighted a silver lining of greater regional integration and the necessity for co-operation. And to get my jab in against the anti-Chavistas, this has been part of the goal of Chavez's Bolivarian Revolution from day one and behind the commentary about Chavez's rhetoric one, there is the reality that Venezuela has played an important role in financing (directly and through trade) and organizing (ALBA, Mercosur, etc.) this regional integration.


NACLA News has an article on the stalled peace negotiations between Colombia and ELN, check it out:
Negotiating Peace in Colombia: A Missed Opportunity?

Handshakes at Rio Group Summit - The Real News

As an aside - it is frightening to hear the Democratic candidates. The citizens of the US have to wake up or we are going to see a return to a more traditional US imperialism in their "backyard". While they are not Bush or Bush disciples, they still come from a political system dominated by economic interests and a reinvigorated left in the region scares multinational corporations in the US and Canada.