CELAC and OAS

The tale of two opposed regional organizations

     The Seventh Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC for its initials in Spanish) takes place today in Buenos Aires, Argentina.  The Summit will ratify the Declaration of Buenos Aires and eleven special communiques.  I will review and analyze these documents as well as Summit speeches by prominent leaders in my commentary on Friday, January 27.  Today, I place CELAC in the context of the Latin American and Third World struggle for sovereignty against U.S. and Western imperialism.

In the opening ceremony, Alberto Fernández, President of the Argentine Republic, called for making Caribbean and Latin American integration a reality.

     There are a number of factors that contributed to the spectacular U.S. ascent from 1763 to 1965, including: the lucrative trading relation with the slaveholders in the Caribbean during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; the core-peripheral trading relation between the slave South and the manufacturing North in the nin…