| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
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Originally launched in 2004 as the Bolivarian Alternative, ALBA began as a framework of cooperative agreements between Venezuela and Cuba that was presented as an alternative to the U.S.-sponsored Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). With the fundamental political shifts to the left in key Latin American countries in recent years, the organization has grown to include eight members (Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Dominica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Antigua and Barbuda), even as its perceived nemesis, the FTAA, has drifted into oblivion (Honduras was a member of ALBA for two years until it withdrew in 2010). In addition to its participation in ALBA and its projects of energy exchange and social solidarity, Cuba is also a founding member of the Bank of the South project that is spearheaded by Venezuela and includes both Argentina and Brazil. The new organization is designed to provide development assistance to member states free from the conditionality of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB), and the Interamerican Development Bank (IDB). Its launch in 2007 coincided with historic lows in new loans to the region from the aforementioned international financial institutions (IFIs).
As Jaime Preciado details in chapter 4, Cuba has been intimately involved in a variety of the initiatives that are motivated by a Latin American desire for a reformed inter-American system that reduces the dominance of the United States. In addition to ALBA and the Bank of the South, these initiatives include Telesur (the alternative TV network), the Latin American Economic System (SELA), the Rio Group, and the newly established Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). All of these efforts are designed to replace the old inter-American system that is dominated by the U.S.-led triumvirate of the Organization of American States (OAS), the Interamerican Development Bank (IDB), and the Interamerican Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR).
This book will also analyze the current conjuncture of U.S.–Latin American relations at a moment when the United States’ influence in the region, especially in South America, may be at a historic low. The theme of reduced U.S. influence in Latin America and the belief that the trend