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NEWS & LETTERS, March-April 2010
World in View
New Latin American and Caribbean organization
Meeting in the Mexican Caribbean, 32 Latin American and Caribbean nations formed a new organization in the Western Hemisphere with the deliberate exclusion of the U.S. and Canada.
The new organization, which includes Cuba and excludes the coup-founded Honduras government, reflects a new reality. First, in recent decades there have been powerful social movements in Latin America which opened the way for more populist governments, and a movement away from militarism. This needs to be seen with many caveats, as witnessed with the coup in Honduras, and the right-wing authoritarian-militaristic governments in Colombia and Mexico, as well as the return of the right in Chile.
Second, the new organization reflects the rise of Brazil as a growing regional capitalist power. Despite all the anti-U.S. rhetoric from Venezuela's Chavez and Bolivia's Morales, the separation from the colossus of the North does not mean a movement away from capitalism, only from U.S.-dominated neoliberalism. As refreshing as this may be, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States is only a limited first step to the kind of radical separation from U.S. hegemony that is needed.
--E. W.
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