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News > Latin America

CELAC Celebrates 10 Years Facing US Interference In LATAM

  • Flags of Latin American countries, 2021.

    Flags of Latin American countries, 2021. | Photo: Sputnik Novosti

Published 2 December 2021
Opinion

From its inception in 2011, CELAC aspired to offer Latin America a permanent mechanism to avoid the U.S. tutelage and meddling.

At the "Unity Summit" held in Mexico in 2010, the heads of state of the Latin American and Caribbean countries decided to create a multilateral institution that truly responds to their economic, political, and cultural interests.

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Fulfilling this common desire on Dec 2, 2011, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) was born in Caracas, where 33 nations met to form a space to promote "solidarity, cooperation, complementarity, and political agreement." Since then, this institution has become a benchmark for unity in defense of common objectives such as the search for justice, social welfare, and happiness for the Latin American peoples.

The rejection of foreign interference unifies the peoples

From its inception, CELAC aspired to offer Latin America a permanent mechanism to avoid the U.S. tutelage and meddling. In the 2010 meeting in Mexico, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez highlighted that the formation of CELAC expressed the return of the unitary spirit of the Latin American independentists of the 19th century.

The first CELAC summit took place in Santiago City in Chile on January 27, 2013. In this first meeting, its member countries discussed mechanisms to improve integration processes and implement concrete actions against hunger, inequality, and deterioration. environmental, and the global economic crisis.

The second CELAC summit began on January 28, 2014 in Havana, where its leaders proclaimed Latin America and the Caribbean as a zone of peace and an area free of nuclear weapons. They also denounced the U.S. economic harrassment against Cuba, supported Argentina's claim to sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands, and supported Puerto Rico's right to free itself from its colonial condition.

CELAC poses counter-hegemonic challenges

In a message to the 2013 CELAC summit, Commander Hugo Chavez recalled that the oligarchies had prevented the unitary project of the Latin American independence heroes. The region still is paying the cost of such betrayal because "what could have been the victory of the Great Homeland, became twenty defeats of small homelands," as the Argentine writer Norberto Galasso once said.

CELAC was born at a time when the Latin American peoples reacted against the designs emanating from Washington by forming popular and democratic governments whose constitutive purpose was to respond to the neoliberal offensive.

To stem this regional awakening, however, the United States and its allies revived the old practices of the Monroe Doctrine and implemented psychological warfare, lawfare, and smear campaigns against revolutionary governments. This imperial counteroffensive weakened various regional integration processes and paved the way for the momentary return of right-wing governments.

The path to triumph is consolidated

During the 6th CELAC summit held in Mexico in Sep. 2021, its members ratified the need to establish a health self-sufficiency plan to solve the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. At that meeting, voices were also raised against the nefarious role of the Organization of American States (OAS), an institution that encouraged the coup in Bolivia in 2019 and responds to the U.S. geopolitical interests. Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) therefore emphasized the need to replace the OAS with another organization that is accountable to the Latin American peoples.

CELAC members also supported the plan proposed by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) to reduce dependence on medicines and vaccines. They also announced their intention to create a "Food Security" plan to solve the situation of 200 million poor people.

Besides rejecting once again the U.S. interference in the internal affairs of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, the CELAC summit made a call to strengthen multilateralism. To advance in this regard, its members proposed the development of a cooperation plan with China and the formation of a CELAC-China Forum, which will allow working on several common projects.

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