THE crisis of neoliberal economic theory and practice is only proving that an economic and financial system based on the logic of deregulated profit maximization cannot go on. But is it just enough to reform or “redesign” neoliberal capitalism? Those who think that it can be saved by mere bailouts of big business failures by governments will be disappointed.
As the world reels from the crisis of neoliberal capitalism, an exciting process is happening in Latin America led by Venezuela and Cuba. It is a process that is emerging as an alternative to profit-oriented neoliberal economics and a foreign policy subservient to the United States, the IMF-World Bank and the World Trade Organization. It symbolizes the new solidarity and internationalism that draws inspiration from the integration of initiatives from popular organizations and progressive states.
In Latin America, taking concrete shape right in the backyard of the US Empire, there has emerged the Bolivarian Alternative to the Americas (Alba), which is an alternative form of regional integration that is not based on trade liberalization. If not on US-sponsored free trade agreements, what is it based on then? It is based on the vision and idea of social welfare and equity, advocating a socially oriented trade bloc. It is a regional solidarity whose purpose is to eradicate the poverty of the most dispossessed sectors of society. Its linchpin is to allow the economically weakest countries to gain more favorable terms in trade negotiations, thereby undercutting the prerogatives of profit-driven transnational corporations. But it is more than a new and alternative trade agreement. A brainchild of Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia and other emerging progressive states in Latin America, Alba’s projects which are being implemented for Latin America include the following:
Prioritizing people’s needs and interests. This is being achieved through food self-sufficiency in agriculture before focusing on profit-making processes. Internal production must be protected and states should have the ability to design and implement policies in the defense of their people’s right to have access to essential and high-quality services at fair prices. In effect, public services have to be oriented toward fulfilling the people’s needs, not those of big businesses which have accumulated more private profit through deregulation, liberalization and privatization.
Strengthening the infrastructure of public services especially in education, health care and housing. Foremost of these is “Operation Miracle,” which provides free eye operations, plus transportation and accommodation, to almost 600,000 Latin American citizens each year. One beneficiary of this was the Bolivian soldier who was ordered to shoot the guerrilla leader Che Guevarra in 1967. Regional exchanges of cheap Venezuelan oil for Cuban doctors and health care expertise sent to the poorest provinces have also been initiated and a Latin American school of medicine has been organized to train more doctors and health workers from all over South America.
Mutual exchanges in technical expertise and markets. One good example is the case of Bolivia, where doctors, engineers and teachers from Cuba, which has the best social services among developing countries, were sent to the countryside to share their technical expertise, especially in managing its hydrocarbon extraction sector. Bolivia also gained a regional market for its soy beans while its contribution is mainly in the form of its natural gas reserves. A continental oil and gas pipeline is being constructed to benefit most Latin American countries.
A cooperative bank of the South. Otherwise also known as a “compensatory fund for structural convergence,” this bank becomes an alternative to the World Bank and IMF regime which, over the past decades, has only further impoverished many developing nations which have been losing control over their economic planning and fiscal policies.
TeleSUR, a regional TV and radio network presenting a Latin American people’s perspective. TeleSUR, a pan-Latin American network financed by the governments of Venezuela, Argentina, Cuba and Uruguay and supported by Brazil is now in a way serving as the Al Jazeera for South America. It is emerging as the alternative voice of Latin American peoples to the Western viewpoint monopolizing global television through CNN, Univision and BBC.
Alba, in effect, is a far cry from the kind of “free trade model of integration” which the United States has long dictated to gain economic, political and military hegemony over the region and other parts of the world.
But the scope of the Alba vision and project is even more ambitious. It is a regional anti-poverty project that focuses on upgrading basic social services and developing local economies. Its core objective is to promote the social side of development, the eradication of poverty and provision of the best social services which have for so long excluded the vast majority of the people. It is firmly grounded on popular participation, that is, the solidarity and cooperation not only of governments, but also of their peoples’ movements such as workers’ movements and indigenous peoples’ movements.
It represents a new form of international relations that is worth watching.
Roland G. Simbulan is professor in Development Studies and Political Economy at the University of the Philippines.
