Thread: Latin America disillusioned by free trade

http://rense.com/general64/chaha.htm

Castro, Chavez Relish 'Axis
Of Subversion' Label
By Anthony Boadle
4-30-5

HAVANA (Reuters) - The leaders of Cuba and Venezuela relished their roles as Washington's bad boys in Latin American on Friday and vowed to build a socialist alternative to U.S. policies in the hemisphere.

President Fidel Castro and the younger and equally loquacious Hugo Chavez mocked Bush administration charges that their burgeoning partnership threatens to undermine democracy in Latin America.

"I'm realizing that your friendship is hurting my image," Castro joked to Chavez during a meeting with hundreds of free trade opponents from across the Americas.

The Bush administration's former point man for Latin America, Otto Reich, recently called Havana and Caracas the region's "axis of subversion" and accused Chavez of squandering Venezuelan oil wealth to prop up Castro's 46-year-long rule.

"With the combination of Castro's evil genius, experience in political warfare and economic desperation, and Chavez's unlimited money and recklessness, the peace of this region in peril," Reich wrote in an article.

Castro, 78, read out Reich's words to a delighted audience in Havana's Karl Marx theater.

Among the attendees were Bolivian coca farmer Evo Morales, whose peasant movement helped oust a U.S. ally from the presidency in 2003, and former Salvadoran guerrilla Shafik Handal, leader of the Farabundo Marti Liberation Front.

"If we are speaking of an axis, that axis is spreading in all directions and turning into masses of people that are rising up," said Chavez, who has aligned his oil-exporting nation with Cuba since his election in 1999.

Appealing to poverty-stricken Latin Americans disillusioned with the promises of free-market capitalism, Chavez last year countered the troubled U.S.-backed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) with his Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA, also Spanish for dawn).

DEATH OF THE FTAA

The FTAA was due to come into existence in January, pulling down trade barriers between every country in the Western Hemisphere except Cuba. But talks have been bogged down since 2003 by differences between the United States and Brazil.

"We must congratulate (Secretary of State) Condoleezza Rice for the death of the FTAA. The FTAA is dead, the ALBA is coming," declared Castro, calling her "Condolence" Rice.

Castro called the FTAA a U.S. plan to dominate Latin America and plunder its resources through multinational companies.

The only country that has joined ALBA is Cuba, which has turned to Venezuela for oil to pull up a cash-starved economy crippled by the demise of the Soviet Union.

Experts on Latin America said Chavez's ALBA was little more than a two-man club unlikely to gain ground, even among Latin American nations with left-leaning governments such as Brazil and Argentina, which have other priorities.

"ALBA is mainly a vanity plate for Chavez to help bolster his image as a regional leader," said Daniel Erikson of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington policy group.

"It provides further grist for the Latin American left but does little to offer substantive solutions to the region's economic woes," Erikson said.

Maybe these wack jobs will actually be doing us a favor in the long run

We aren't too wild about it either.

Castro called the FTAA a U.S. plan to dominate Latin America and plunder its resources through multinational companies.

I think Fidel has something in his cigar beside tobacco.
Why should we give a rats tail what those two banana republic jokers say?

Originally Posted by dataman

We aren't too wild about it either.

Castro called the FTAA a U.S. plan to dominate Latin America and plunder its resources through multinational companies.

I think Fidel has something in his cigar beside tobacco.
Why should we give a rats tail what those two banana republic jokers say?

Because no Latin leader wants to be known as anti-Latin as WELL as pro-American.

Castro called the FTAA a U.S. plan to dominate Latin America and plunder its resources through multinational companies.

Maybe these wack jobs will actually be doing us a favor in the long run

I was thinking the same thing as I read the article.

DEATH OF THE FTAA

The FTAA was due to come into existence in January, pulling down trade barriers between every country in the Western Hemisphere except Cuba. But talks have been bogged down since 2003 by differences between the United States and Brazil.

Let them stay bogged down, but keep your eyes open you know how sneaky they can be with these treasonous Trade Deals.

This is a BLESSING in disguise!!

Sometimes the Big One Works in Mysterious Ways!!

And it is Sunday.....