JORDANA TIMERMAN, NATION - At the culminating event of the march against Bush, Chavez called the stadium in which over 25,000 demonstrators had gathered the "gravesite of the FTAA.". . . Chavez's speech reflected the diplomatic problems encountered in the writing of the Summit of the Americas final text. Venezuela refused to agree to a note, inserted by US representatives, mentioning "the 96 million people who live in extreme poverty," in Latin America and the Caribbean unless there was also mention of the "37 million poor" living in the United States.
ALBA, according to Chavez "must be built from the bottom...It will not be built up from the elites, but from below, from our roots." He listed examples of ALBA in action, citing the sale of Venezuelan petroleum to fourteen Caribbean countries at a 40 percent discount and with an interest rate of one percent over twenty-five years, with the ability to pay off the debt with goods and services instead of cash.
"It was a turning point in Latin American history," claims Marcelo Langieri, academic secretary of the Sociology faculty at the University of Buenos Aires. Langieri, who was one of 160 cultural and political leaders invited to travel the 400 kilometers from Buenos Aires to Mar del Plata on a train dubbed the ALBA Express, emphasized what he considers a paradigm shift in the dialogue. "Not only was the FTAA questioned, but also the neoconservative economic model and capitalism," and by somebody in a position of power such as Chavez's.
From The Nation
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