Venezuela´s Hugo Chavez said that he has been preparing for the big occasion marked by three important meetings, as he referred to the Summit of Latin American and Caribbean States, to take place December 2 and 3; the Summits of PetroCaribe and the Union of South American nations, UNASUR.

During a meeting of the Venezuelan Council of Ministers on Sunday, Chavez said “nobody can imagine how much work the materialization of this summit has demanded.” He recalled that the PetroCaribe summit has been pending since last June, while the meeting of UNASUR was cancelled after it did not count on the attendance by the majority of presidents of the region.

The Community of Latin American and Caribbean Nations (CELAC) will definitely be founded during the summit, said Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro.

In February 2010, presidents and heads of state agreed to advance towards the setting up of the CELAC; the founding summit of this regional organization will be attended by 33 countries of this part of the world, Maduro said.

With the CELAC, we are taking a huge step forwards the establishment of an organization that will help design the future of our region, said the foreign minister, who stressed that Latin American nations count on the major grounds to develop their integration in all aspects of social, economic and political life.

The Community, a Historic Background

The birth of a regional bloc made up of Latin American and Caribbean countries—without the United States—reorganizes hemispheric order. The global scenario rocked by the Capitalist political and economic crisis, now finds its counterpart in the continent to the South of the Rio Bravo.

The Community of Latin American and Caribbean Countries will become a political mechanism with capacity to take action in the face of neo-liberal globalization boosted by US imperialism.

As early as September 1815, the Letter of Jamaica—a document in which Simon Bolivar states his huge continental project for the unity of the states that rose in the context of independence struggle—announced the principles and grounds of an organization like the CELAC: “More than anybody else, I wish to see the setting up in Latin America of the largest nation of the world, not because of its huge richness, but for its freedom and glory…”

In 1961, Cuban-Argentinean guerrilla fighter Ernesto Che Guevara gave a speech in Punta del Este, just before Cuba was expelled from the Organization of American States (OAS) in which he again evidenced the need for a Latin American and Caribbean organization, with fairer and independent performance.

“Imperialism needs to secure its rearguard because the battle takes place everywhere in a moment of deep tensions. This is the picture of today´s world…and with this in mind, we attend this conference so that our nations keep their way towards a happy future marked by harmonic development or otherwise turn into appendixes of imperialism. Let´s help the growth of the economies of all member countries with the Organization of Latin American States. Let´s help them grow so that they consume their own products and do not become the source that feeds US monopolies.”

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