ALBA-TCP Summit to Take Place in Cuba on Friday

By Orlando Oramas León on May 24, 2022

The XXI Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America-People’s Trade Agreement (ALBA-TCP) will take place this week on Friday in Havana according to the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs on its web page.

At the forum, the nations that make up the alliance “will share common development strategies and analyze the regional political situation”, the announcement said.

The meeting will be attended by leaders of Latin American and Caribbean countries that are members of the group that was founded in 2004 at the initiative of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, then presidents of Cuba and Venezuela, as a response to the neoliberal project that Washington intended to impose on the continent.

The integration bloc also includes Nicaragua, Bolivia, Suriname, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, Dominica, Antigua and Barbuda, St. Kitts and Nevis and St. Lucia.

ALBA-TCP emphasizes the fight against social exclusion through mechanisms of solidarity, collaboration and mutual respect.

ALBA has many significant projects that it initiated In that spirit including the almost five million people who became literate through ALBA-TCP programs, and more than 3.642 million people who recovered their sight through the Miracle Mission.

Medical cooperation among the nations in the ALBA members stands out, particularly in the face of the Covid-19 epidemic, with the dispatch of medical brigades, vaccines and medical supplies.

The summit in Havana will take place just days before the IX Summit of the Americas begins in Los Angeles, California, whose host, the United States government, excluded Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

This unilateral decision was rejected by the governments of the hemisphere, which demanded that the Summit of the Americas be inclusive of all the countries of the hemisphere.

Some leaders, such as the presidents of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and Bolivia, Luis Arce, announced that they will be absent from the Californian meeting if the exclusion of third nations is confirmed.

The significance of ALBA type formations during this period could not be timelier as the US continues to try to order the countries into line using its bribes and threats of the past.

Source: Cuba en Resumen