Amid Global Uncertainty, ALBA Movements Forges Unity and Hope
April 24, 2022
Zoe Alexandra — Apr 22, 2022
The continental platform of social movements will hold its third continental assembly in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to analyze the current situation and define strategies for the next period.
The continental platform, ALBA Movements, will hold its third continental assembly in Buenos Aires, Argentina from April 27 to May 1. The platform, composed of people’s movements from across the Americas, will welcome more than 200 delegates to discuss the current political moment in the region and the world, evaluate the work of the last period, and analyze the urgent tasks of the platform.
During the five days of work, the delegates will participate in cultural events, panels on the international and regional situation, work in commissions, and attend a people’s market.
The last assembly of ALBA took place in 2016 in Bogota, Colombia. Since then the situation in the world has changed drastically. The crisis of capitalism has become more acute with tens of millions suffering from economic instability, hunger, and unemployment, and new existential challenges have appeared such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
At the same time, progressive sectors in Latin America and the Caribbean have made great advances with electoral victories in Peru, Honduras, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
For ALBA Movements, this scenario of increased global instability only reaffirms the need to strengthen unity among the people, not only of the region, but of the world. To understand more about the expectations of this historic assembly, Peoples Dispatch spoke with Gonzalo Armúa and Laura Capote, members of the Operational Secretariat of ALBA Movements.
Peoples Dispatch: We are on the eve of the Third Continental Assembly. Tell us a little about your expectations for this Assembly after two years of the pandemic and years without face-to-face meetings.
Gonzalo Armúa: Well, in the first place, there are high expectations because we are coming from a pandemic that due to public health measures forced us to work together virtually at a distance. So, we are looking forward to comrades – those who have been building movements in each territory, in each country – finally coming together and meeting
And on the other hand, there are many expectations because we are living in a moment of uncertainty and changes at the international and regional level. At the international level, our analysis is that we are heading rapidly towards a process of geopolitical transition or at least towards an opening for a multipolar world, which brings challenges, but also brings many possibilities.
In Latin America, a series of electoral victories have allowed for the arrival of new governments of a popular, progressive nature or for at least a break with the neoliberal hegemony in those countries which we can say remained steeped in neoliberalism during the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century. We are talking about Chile and Peru. We also have the recovery of democracy in Bolivia after the coup d’état and we have a series of upcoming elections in Brazil and Colombia, where there are also possibilities of new forces coming to power. To this we must also add the victory in Honduras [of Xiomara Castro], which defeated the coup d’état that had removed Zelaya.
Related Content: Barely One Week Into Her Presidency, Xiomara Castro Brings Hope and Joy to Hondurans
At the same time, within the realm of people’s movements, there have been new struggles and we have seen new sectors that have taken to the streets before and during the pandemic, because the States did not respond to the basic demands related to health, food, decent work, etc. There is an expectation that in the Assembly, we can process all these new events that took place in a short period of time, one after the other or simultaneously. We need this meeting to be able to process, to be able to plan, and also to be able to meet with comrades who have been working for years, who have been fighting in each territory, so that we can continue forging Latin American unity from the movements.
PD: ALBA Movements organizes its work along six guiding principles: 1. Unity of Our America and internationalism; 2. Ideological-cultural battle and decolonization; 3. Defense of mother earth and people’s sovereignty; 4. Economy for good living; 5. Democratization and building people’s power; 6. People’s feminism. Can you talk a little about the importance and relevance of these principles in this context?
Laura Capote: This is precisely the question that we are interested in working on together with the comrades in the assembly. The elaboration of the six principles or the political program of ALBA was one of the main tasks that came out of the second Assembly in Colombia in 2016. Then, in the political coordination and in the Secretariat, we worked with the comrades from different countries in the different meetings and instances to be able to elaborate and expand on the principles.
Something that happens to us a lot in the social and people’s movements in Latin America, which is one of our great weaknesses in our opinion, is that many times we look at the problems of each of the sectors, of the different ages, of the generations and we do not find in some way transversal elements that allow us to carry forward a united struggle of women, youth, peasants, indigenous women, etc. We divide ourselves by sectors, which obviously weakens us in terms of the power with which we can respond to the enemy.
Within this framework, we elaborated these six principles to serve as a big umbrella that could include the majority of the struggles carried out by our organizations. During the Assembly, we have a full day to work on these six principles, to see what elements are missing, and what other new perspectives there are as well.
We have been seeing new problems with this new context in the continent, for example with the return of an increasingly fascist or neo-fascist right-wing, with a more violent, anti-rights, and regressive nature. We have to think of new ways to respond to that. We must find new ways with which we can advance in this offensive, from the perspective of the people and from the perspective of building a project of unity, of life, and of respect.
Related Content: ALBA-TCP Repudiates US Report on Human Rights
This new context implies that in the case of our six principles, that there will be new perspectives, new principles, new lines within these same areas of work, and it also means that we have to make the necessary revisions.
We have also been reiterating the importance of reevaluating in what way some may be more of a priority than others, in terms of urgency. And also those that imply the unity of the organizations within the framework of ALBA, or in some way to advance in our coordination as an entity and also because we see that we have been one of the few platforms that despite the pandemic continued working very hard.
PS: In this moment of global uncertainty, Latin America has been a beacon of hope, of joy and of the possibility of change. In this context, what does a platform of movements represent, what are the key tasks that lie ahead, and how do you intend to take up the challenge of continuing to build?
GA: Well, a central task that is fundamental to the movements and that today is more valid than ever, has to do with the unity of the people throughout the region, because we see that capitalism at this stage is above all global, it is worldwide and the people of the world and in particular of Latin America, face different forms of oppression, exploitation and plundering but it obeys the same pattern that characterizes a system.
Therefore, the need for unity goes beyond making declarations. It has to do with a historical necessity, because none of the countries, none of the nation states can carry out a process of liberation, a process of equality, a process of expansion of rights, if it does not unite with the different countries, with the different people.
We are seeing that the Nation State as it was formed in the 19th and 20th centuries cannot provide answers to the demand to expand rights, and no national process can solve the structural problems that currently exist for all the people of the world. We are talking about a moment where the rate of inequality among the richest 1% of the planet is worse than ever before. We are talking about a moment where Mother Earth, nature, is reaching its limit in terms of the sustainability of human life and life in general. And in addition, we are also seeing that the social degradation generated by this system is leading to increasingly obscene levels of violence.
The need for continental unity is about facing a common enemy of the people, it has to do with retaking processes of organizational struggle in terms of popular economy, in terms of solidarity, in terms of processes of liberation. Perhaps the reason Latin America is a constant source of alternatives to the system is that when it was liberated in the process of independence in the 19th century, it happened as a whole, when there were still no limits, the borders we know today, and this is also what brought forth the defeat of the largest empire of that time, the Spanish colony.
From these historical experiences, from a continuous process of struggles that goes back even to the conquest itself, the people of Latin America have not ceased to fight against the different forms of imperialism, of colonialism, and this is also expressed today.
There is an accumulation of experiences of struggle, an accumulation of organizational experiences that we need to turn into continental experiences, that must become regional experiences and that at the same time can be expanded to other continents in unity with other people.
That is why ALBA has the challenge of continental unity. But at the same time, this assembly is going to address the challenge of unity with the people of the global South, together with comrades from Africa, from Asia, from the people who, within the so-called first world, are also being oppressed within Europe, within the United States. As I said at the beginning, the system is increasingly destroying everything that remains outside of that 1% that keeps the wealth, keeps the goods and above all, is thinking of a project for fewer and fewer human beings on this planet.
The challenge is enormous, but we trust in the historical projects that we inherited and also in the struggles of our people of Latin America and of other people of the world.
LC: There is also an important element that we have discussed many times, which that there is a tremendous lack of horizons, of possibilities and utopias to carry forward. It is as if we have already been defeated.
As ALBA, we carry a very important responsibility. It was born from the heart of two of the greatest contemporary revolutionaries, who not only had a revolutionary vision for their countries, but also a revolutionary vision at the regional level.
When Fidel and Chávez thought of ALBA, they initially thought of it to unite the governments. When Chávez advances in the proposal towards the unity of the movements in ALBA, it was precisely taking into account that it is really the coming together of the people that will allow that coordination at continental level, which also inherits the Bolivarian vision of transformation in unity and with an American power that would counter the model of the Monroe Doctrine and the model that the United States wanted for our continent.
We also have the responsibility in this third assembly to rejuvenate the desire to continue fighting and to continue building in the different countries, and also to believe that it is possible, to believe that we can see the end of capitalism, and not as we are told the end of the world. And precisely what we want is to show is that we are already seeing the end of capitalism, we are living through this process and the answer is whether or not it is going to be chaos or it is going to be something else.
It also depends on the people and on what we decide to do. I believe that the possibility of new horizons and new utopias that we build with our own hands, is also a responsibility of ALBA because it is a composition of movements, of people who never thought only as individuals but in the collective and who seek, through their links with social organizations and their grassroots work, to transform the conditions of this continent.
We have the potential and an enormous responsibility to carry the name of ALBA with us, a historic name that brings with it the goals and objectives that Fidel and Chavez set us and that rest on our shoulders and we want all of us in the assembly to take on.
That is why this third assembly is so important, especially at a time when, after the pandemic, it seems that the triumph of individualism is even more evident. And where we want to respond to that with a collective body that fights for socialism, that believes in socialism as a project, a socialism of our own, a socialism with an Indigenous, Black, women’s, feminist and peasant face. It is the responsibility to be up to the needs of the historical moment and the project that we want.
https://orinocotribune.com/amid-global- ... -and-hope/
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In the wake of the expulsion of the Organization of the American States from Nicaragua, we need to revisit one of its major crime scenes: Haiti.
On April 24, 2022, Nicaragua’s Sandinista government officially booted the Organization of American States (OAS) out of their country. Foreign minister Denis Moncada called the OAS a “deceitful agency of the State Department of yankee imperialism” and in an official statement, the Nicaraguans proclaimed that they “will not recognize this Instrument of Colonial Administration, which does not represent at any time, the Sovereign Union of Our Latin and Caribbean America, and that…violate[s] Rights and Independences, sponsoring and promoting interventions and invasions, [and] legitimizing coups.”
In response to Nicaragua’s break with the OAS, many in the imperialist west will undoubtedly speak self-righteously about the Central American republic’s lack of “democracy.” Others, on the left, will correctly point to the OAS’s long-standing role in undermining democracy – to the support the organization has given to regime change in Bolivia, Honduras, and, especially, Venezuela, where the OAS recognized unelected stooge Juan Guaido as president.
However, to really understand the undemocratic, demagogic, and racist history of the OAS, we need to return to one of its major crime scenes: Haiti.
In no small part because of the OAS, Haiti is currently a de facto colony administered and controlled by foreign, white rulers: the U.S., France, Canada, and the European Union. With an outsized involvement in Haiti’s political bureaucracy, it has had a clear and incontrovertible role as a tool of western imperialism and white supremacy. A brief review of the past two decades reveals its meddling in Haiti’s politics and democratic processes, all to support US interests while undercutting Haitian self-determination and sovereignty.
In 2010, in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in Haiti, with hundreds of thousands dead or displaced, many counseled against holding national elections. Yet the US, France, and Canada forced Haiti to carry on with the vote, pumping $29 million dollars into the country for logistical support. But, in the run up to the elections, Haiti’s partisan electoral provisional council (CEP) banned the most powerful political party - Fanmi Lavalas, founded by former president, Jean Bertrand Aristide. The first round of the elections was notably flawed (because of the exclusion of Fanmi Lavalas, voter turnout was low, with 71% of registered voters staying away from the polls). Those displaced because of the earthquake were disenfranchised. Moreover, of those votes cast, a high percentage were irregular. Nevertheless, the first round of elections saw the first place go to conservative candidate Mirlande Manigat, and second place to Jude Celestin (who was endorsed by sitting president Rene Preval). US-backed, neo-Duvalierist Michel Martelly, of the new PHTK party, came in third place. Members of the Haitian political and activist community called for the cancellation of the elections. However, according to Wikileaks , the US demanded that Martelly replace Celestin in the run-off despite his third place position.
For this to work, however, the white rulers mobilized the OAS. The OAS was the first organization to affirm the integrity of the flawed and dubious election of 2010. It put together an “Expert Electoral Verification Team, ” composed of seven members, six of which came from three western countries - US, France, Canada - and one from Jamaica. It must be remembered that it was these same three western countries that were behind the 2004 coup d'etat that overthrew Haiti’s democratically elected president, ushering in the subsequent UN military occupation, which was ongoing at the time of this presidential selection. These countries are also key members, along with the OAS and the European Union, of the Core Group (of foreigners) that continues to be Haiti’s colonial master. The OAS “Verification Team” discarded some votes and changed the results to ensure that Martelly came in second place, affirming his position on the run-off ballots, thus ensuring two right wing candidates as finalists in the election. Haitian officials at first refused to accept the OAS recommendation. However, the US and other Core Group countries threatened to withhold post-earthquake relief. To consolidate this position, Barack Obama’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton , flew down to Haiti and threatened Preval with exile if his government did not change the results of the election to allow Martelly on the run-off ballot.
This is how Haiti came to be under the corrupt and murderous “Parti Haïtien Tèt Kale” (PHTK) neocolonial government.
The OAS would strike again in the effort to help the white rulers keep their PHTK puppets in power. This time, it was during the political and electoral crisis of 2015-2016. As Jake Johnston of the Center for Economic and Policy Research correctly stated, “The brazen intervention, backed up by threats of aid cutoffs and visa sanctions, has inextricably tied the fate of the OAS in Haiti with Martelly and his political party, Parti Haïtien Tèt Kale (PHTK). The 2015/2016 electoral process did little to dispel those concerns.”
Haiti’s “sham elections,” as they were called, occurred in August and October of 2015, after massive public protests forced Martelly to organize legislative, local, and presidential elections. By this time Martelly was running the country by decree - a move that the OAS and Haiti’s other rulers supported - after allowing the terms of the Haitian senate to expire without elections. The result of Martelly’s actions were to leave Haiti without a functioning government. Despite extreme low voter turnout, electoral fraud, violence, and the destruction of ballots, the OAS, along with the UN (and the Core Group), immediately congratulated the country for its peaceful and “well-organized” elections. The OAS would later verify the election of Martelly’s handpicked successor, Jovenel Moïse as he proclaimed victory in a set of fraudulent elections in 2016.
Moïse’s tenure was marked by nonstop protests, both for corruption and theft of PetroCaribe funds, and for refusing to step down at the end of his mandate, which many in Haiti argued was in February 2021. Moïse, whose rule continued the legacy of PHTK’s corrupt and kleptomaniac practices, seems to have received the most direct support from the OAS. His relationship with OAS’s Secretary General, Luis Almagro, helped him survive his lack of legitimacy. The OAS provided cover for Moïse during the PetroCaribe protests, offering to put together an “OAS-sanctioned commission” to investigate claims of corruption. In return, Haiti voted against Venezuela’s democratically elected government of Nicolas Maduro, and in favor of the unelected Juan Guaido.
When the Haitian masses were protesting Moïse’s refusal to step down at the end of his term, on February 7, 2021, Almagro released a statement unilaterally determining that Moïse’s term actually was to end in February 2022. This move went directly against the OAS’s own charter that declares that the organization does not have the power to “intervene in matters that are within the internal jurisdiction of the Member States.” Haitian leaders protested , arguing, “President Moïse cannot determine the duration of his term of office, in the same way that the Secretary General himself could not define his own mandate according to his interpretation of the OAS Charter.” Nevertheless, Moïse stayed in power, ruling by decree, until he was assassinated in July 2021.
The forced elections in Haiti, in 2010/2011 and 2015/2016, are only the most recent in active OAS actions to deny the people their human and political rights.
It must also be remembered that since 2004, Haiti has been under foreign occupation that began as full fledged military control and continues through the political/colonial control of the country by the UN's Core Group. The Core Group , an unelected, self-styled council of foreign western representatives, “plays an active, interventionist role in Haiti’s everyday political affairs.” The OAS is an active member of the Core Group.
Going back slightly further in time, Haiti would not be under western colonial rule by 2004 without the aid of the OAS in 2000, when its representatives interfered in Haiti’s legislative elections under President Aristide. Here, after admitting that the May 2000 elections were, as Yves Engler reported , “a great success for the Haitian population which turn out in large and orderly numbers to choose both their local and national governments,” the OAS did an about face and labeled the elections “deeply flawed.” The reason? Because the US and the other western powers did not like the election results and their clear affirmation of the popularity of the Aristide government. The Haitian opposition and the western powers then used the OAS claims to not only undermine these democratically elected officials, but to also call into question Aristide’s presidential mandate. Anxious to dispense with Aristide, the US imposed an economic embargo on his government, while organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy and USAID funded youth and other “opposition” groups against his government. This led directly to the 2004 coup d’etat, and the full destruction of Haiti’s sovereignty.
When recounting the history of the OAS’s unending assault on Haitian democracy and Haitian people, we see clearly an organization that acts in the service of the US-led white western imperial order. In this sense, we have to understand that the OAS is but one of the many western “international” organizations that uphold an unequal racial and economic order. To the OAS, we can add the UN, the IMF, the ICC, the WTO, NATO, and others.
Nicaragua’s decision to kick out the OAS should be saluted. The rest of our people in the region - a region that Joseph Biden arrogantly calls “America’s backyard” - could only be so lucky. Instead we are stuck with an organization that Fidel Castro called a “Ministry of Colonies,” that “has a history that collects all the trash of 60 years of betrayal of the people.”
https://www.blackagendareport.com/oas-o ... y-colonies
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They seek in Peru to reduce the term of office of the Pdte. Castle
The bill presented by the ruling party proposes to reduce President Castillo's term to just two years. | Photo: EFE
The bill was signed by eight parliamentarians from the ruling Peru Libre party from a block of 33 legislators.
Groups of Peruvian congressmen, one of them from the ruling party of Free Peru, presented this Thursday several projects to reform the Constitution that seek to reduce the term of office of President Pedro Castillo and Parliament until 2023, along with early elections for choose successors.
The ruling party group presented a legislative initiative that proposes reducing President Castillo's term to just two years, until July 28, 2023, after having been elected in 2021 for a five-year term.
The bill, whose author is the legislator Pasión Dávila, entered Congress this Thursday and seeks a constitutional reform to modify the term of office of the head of state, the vice president, Diana Boluarte, and the 130 congressmen elected in the elections general last year.
Only three days ago, President Pedro Castillo sent another constitutional reform project to the Legislature to hold a referendum in October of this year to consult the population if it approves the call for a constituent to draft a new Magna Carta.
According to those of the leftist caucus, the interest in reducing the presidential mandate is due to the crisis of legitimacy that exists in the political environment, as they expressed in their statement of reasons for the bill.
In addition, they cited surveys in which 60 percent of the population supports an eventual advancement of the elections, in a way that raises the need to lead to a democratic transition to get out of the political confrontation between the Executive and Legislative.
The supporters of Peru Libre in Congress who presented this initiative assure that the norm will strengthen the Peruvian political and democratic system, since the reduction of the presidential and legislative mandate is a constitutional and democratic solution.
In the same way, they assure that they seek to strengthen the legitimacy in the representation and in the conservation of the positions of the authorities elected by popular vote.
Meanwhile, the opposition legislator Digna Calle also presented this Thursday a constitutional reform project such as Podemos Peru, which seeks to reduce the presidential and parliamentary mandate until July 2023 and proposes advancing the elections to March of that same year.
Calle stressed that the cause of this initiative is the political crisis that the country is going through, the discontent of the people and the convulsion generated by the social protests.
In turn, he added that the proposal for a new ruler and new legislators to assume power in July 2023 would allow a peaceful solution to the political and economic crisis in Peru since Castillo took office.
Castillo, a left-wing school teacher and union leader, has governed amid unprecedented political instability since taking office, passing through four separate Cabinets and surviving two impeachment attempts in just nine months in office.
https://www.telesurtv.net/news/peru-bus ... -0002.html
Ecuador's fourth minister resigns amid political crisis
After seven months in office, since his inauguration in September 2021, Álava leaves the Agriculture portfolio in the midst of a political crisis. | Photo: @PedroAlavaEc
Published April 29, 2022 (5 hours 13 minutes ago)
The banana producers questioned Álava, after the crisis they face in the commercialization of the fruit.
The Minister of Agriculture of Ecuador, Pedro Álava, resigned this Thursday from his post, thus becoming the fourth member of the Ministerial Cabinet of President Guillermo Lasso to present his resignation this week.
"I send you my irrevocable resignation from this State portfolio, in which I deposited all my energy and knowledge to comply with your policy in favor of the small farmer," Álava commented after his decision.
Recently, the official was questioned by leaders and producers of the banana sector, who led strikes and protests due to the lack of policies that support the sector, because due to the conflict in Europe it is impossible to export bananas to Russia.
Before this news was known, the Government issued a statement announcing that it has requested the resignation of the four ministers as part of an "evaluation of his entire Cabinet" to make the changes that are considered pertinent "based on the best execution of the Plan of Creation of Opportunities 2021-2025”.
During this week, the heads of the Defense portfolios, Luis Hernández; of Energy and Mines, Juan Carlos Bermeo; the Secretary of Human Rights, Bernarda Ordóñez, and, finally, the Minister of Agriculture and Livestock.
Prior to these resignations, on March 9, the Minister of Government at that time, Alexandra Vela, also resigned, citing differences with the Executive.
"By not coinciding with the political line established by President Guillermo Lasso to face the crisis exacerbated by the National Assembly, I submitted my resignation," Vela said at the time.
https://www.telesurtv.net/news/renuncia ... -0001.html
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