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 News from Around the Americas | May 2006 
Leftist Leaders Reject US Trade Plan
 Associated Press
| | Bolivian President Evo Morales announced the renationalization of Bolivian natural gas on Monday. He is requiring all foreign-owned companies to relinquish their natural gas fields to the state immediately and has ordered their occupation by the military. The banner calls him Bolivia's "liberator." (Noah Friedman-Rudovsky/NYTimes) |
Havana, Cuba - Bolivia's new left-leaning president signed a pact with Cuba and Venezuela on Saturday that rejects U.S.-backed free trade and promises a socialist version of regional commerce and cooperation.
With Cuba's Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez seated nearby, President Evo Morales signed an updated version of the so-called Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, adding Bolivia as a third member.
"In Cuba and Venezuela we find unconditional solidarity," Morales said. "They are the best allies for changing Bolivia."
The document signed included the same language of the political declaration signed last year by Castro and Chavez. That pact contained much leftist rhetoric and few specifics, but was followed by closer economic ties and boosted trade between the two vehemently anti-U.S. governments.
After Bolivia was joined in the earlier agreement on Saturday, the three presidents signed a second document with more concrete proposals.
Cuba promised to send Bolivia doctors to provide medical care to poor people, and teachers to conduct literacy campaigns. Venezuela will send gasoline to the Andean nation and set up a $100 million (€80 million) fund for development programs and a $30 million (€24 million) fund for other social projects.
Cuba and Venezuela also agreed to buy all of Bolivia's soybeans, recently left without markets after Colombia signed a free trade pact with the United States.
Dressed in his typical olive green uniform, Castro, who turns 80 in August, said sharing the spotlight with two younger, like-minded leaders "makes me the happiest man in the world."
Afterward, the three presidents were greeted by tens of thousands of cheering people gathered in the broad Plaza of the Revolution to celebrate the signing.
The agreement is "a clever mixture of politics and economics, weighted toward the politics," said Gary Hufbauer, an economist at the Institute for International Economics, a Washington think tank.
Venezuela-Cuba trade is expected to reach more than $3.5 billion (€2.9 billion) this year - about 40 percent higher than in 2005.
The deal signed between Chavez and Castro has Venezuela - the world's fifth largest oil exporter and a major supplier to the United States - selling 90,000 barrels a day of crude to the communist-run island at international market prices, but in exchange for agricultural products and other services instead of cash.
The addition of Bolivia will beef up the grouping's economic potential with the Andean nation's vast natural gas reserves.
Morales, a union leader who was swept to power on a leftist platform and has railed against American economic and drug policies, vowed during his campaign to be "the nightmare of the U.S. government."
He, like Chavez, has tried to maintain a vibrant private sector while claiming an ever-larger state role in managing the economy. He has also toned down his rhetoric since taking office in January.
The Cuba-Venezuela deal - known by its Spanish acronym ALBA, also the word for dawn - provided a framework for the leaders to blast Washington's efforts to expand its free trade with Latin American countries.
The U.S.-backed Free Trade Area of the Americas hemispheric trade pact stalled last year, but Washington since has signed nine free-trade agreements with Latin American countries.
The three presidents called the FTAA a U.S. effort to "annex" Latin America. Chavez and Morales have warned they could pull their countries from the Andean Community economic bloc if members Colombia, Peru and Ecuador go through with trade pacts with the United States.
Colombia and Peru have reached such agreements with Washington. Negotiations between the United States and Ecuador were suspended after nearly two weeks of street protests in March by indigenous groups in Ecuador opposed to such a pact.
"According to any reasonable definition of the term, this is not a trade agreement," Michael Shifter, a political analyst with the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, said of last year's ALBA deal. "It's an attempt to pose a real counterweight to the U.S. role and agenda in Latin America."
Shifter predicted few other Latin America nations would join ALBA, instead preferring trade agreements with the United States.
But he said Chavez is likely eyeing Peru as a potential ALBA member if nationalist Ollanta Humala prevails in a presidential runoff expected for May 28 or June 4. Humala was the front-runner in the April election.
Their leaders' embrace of the socialist-tinged ALBA has rattled Bolivian and Venezuelan business leaders.
"The government should reach out more to the business sector and create a common agenda, figure out what markets interest us, where there are possibilities and separate the ideological and political from trade and economy," said Gary Rodriguez, general manager of the Bolivian Foreign Trade Institute.
Cuba ranks 88 among countries that Bolivia exports to, shipping just $5,291 (€4,220) in goods to the Caribbean nation last year, according to the institute. Venezuela is Bolivia's fifth most important export market, accounting for $167 million (€133.2 million) of its $2.7 billion (€2.15 billion) in exports. |
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