In December 2001, in the framework of the III Summit of Heads of State and Governments of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS), held on Isla Margarita, Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez conceived the ALBA as a metaphor for the new dawn for the region, organization founded on December 14, 2004.
Also in front of the Caribbean Sea, almost two hundred years before, Simón Bolívar wrote the “Carta de Jamaica” (Letter of Jamaica), a monumental document where he outlined the idea of unity and independence that today represents the best political analysis of those times.
The Antilles became the West Indies, as Columbus understood that he had arrived in Cipango or India. The Caribbean people were the first barrier that with determination and heroism resisted the European invasion.
The peoples of the Caribbean have shared a common history, marked by several factors. Three of them are of great importance: plantation economies; the sociocultural syncretism of the traditions of the original populations, the African slaves, the European settlers and the presence of the Asian component, mainly Hindu; more the commercial and political rivalry between the European and American powers.
The plantation economy prevailed throughout the Caribbean region. Linked to international trade since its birth, it brought together in the same productive unit the most advanced of rising capitalism, like the modern machines of its time, with the exploitation of the most abject labor, slavery. From the plantations came the link with the world market, but a deep culture of resistance, rebellion and independence was born: the maroons.
As Carpentier affirmed, it was in the Caribbean that the idea of independence was associated with that of social justice. This revolutionary fusion had its origin in the struggle for total emancipation, fully expressed in the Haitian Revolution. It was not the concept of liberal bourgeois independence of the Encyclopedia of Diderot and d’Alembert, but a new concept, that of Bolivar in the Speech of Angostura, that of the Haitian insurgents, that of Martí, Betances, Luperón, Caamaño, Garvey, Bishop, Fidel, Chávez.
The ALBA is the necessary tool to achieve the objective of the unit in the face of threats of disintegration, where the Caribbean countries have been able to cope with the pressures exerted by the great powers.
And, if «the unit is underwater,» as Brathwaite used to say, 14 years ago ALBA began to emerge, which already records concrete achievements for its people in the cultural, social, economic and political spheres.
Juan Bosch pointed out that the Caribbean was – and still is – the «imperial border», a space in dispute between the great powers. The USA operates as the main imperialist force and there is still a strong presence of their European counterparts. Faced with the experience of looting and plunder, in the Caribbean germinates, once again, the construction of unity and emancipation. Hope is reborn and the people look five centuries ago to conquer the future by flying the heroic banners of their history.
Fernando Ramón Bossi
Director of Portal AlBA
