Ken Cole: The process of ALBA 02/12/08
The Bolivarian alternative for the Americas and the Caribbean: The institution and process of 'ALBA'
Dr Ken Cole
Honorary Research Fellow,
International Insitute for the Study of Cuba
Tuesday 2 December 2008
Dr Ken Cole, formerly the head of the Masters Programme at the School of Development Studies at the Univeristy of Anglia and author of six books, gave this seminar at the IISC on 2 December 2008. More than 30 people attended including the Vice Chancellor Brian Roper and His exceelency Rene Mujica, the Cuban Ambassador to London.
Dr Cole started by explaining how in 1990, the "Enterprise for the Americas", a proposal of U.S. President George H Bush aimed to create a free market zone from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. The first step in this process was the inauguration of the North American Free Trade Association [NAFTA] between Canada, the United States and Mexico in 1994. Also in that year negotiations began to create the Free Trade Area of the Americas [FTAA] in Miami.
He went to explain that the omen of the FTAA was the institutionalization of United States dominion over the Americas, a threat delegates at the Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata (Argentina) in 2005 could not politically countenance. The Summit, intended to initiate the FTAA, ended without agreement.
In response, Presidents Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez put forward The Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas and the Caribbean - ALBA/alba.
As an institution "ALBA" is intended to coordinate the diverse interests of the sovereign nations of Latin America to counter U.S. hegemony; as a cultural process "ALBA" is a process of conscientization of the people's of the continent, to create a society based upon need and dignity rather than greed and exploitation.
Dr Cole argued that as the embodiment of the (19th century) revolutionary ideals of Simón Bolívar and Jose Martí, ALBA is an epoch defining initiative whose time has come in the post-1970s globalized world.
Independently, nation states are powerless to resist the exigencies of international finance and competitive exchange, and in this regard The Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas and the Caribbean can be seen as the most important political initiative in Latin America since the Cuban revolution of January 1st 1959.
The powerpoint that Dr Cole used is available by clicking on the icon below:
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Ken Cole ppt 02/12/08 |
Ken Cole:
Before joining the IISC as a visiting fellow in 2008, Ken was Senior Lecturer and Director of the M.A. in Development Studies at the School of Development Studies in the University of East Anglia. He has a wide experience of teaching and writing about development issues, and has also acted as an advisor/consultant in Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Swaziland, South Africa, Palestine and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Although for many years he has had a fascination for the development enigma that is Cuba, he did not visit the island until 1996 when he was invited to offer a short course on economic theory and policy at the Ministry of Finance and Prices in Havana.
Since then he has been a frequent visitor, collaborating with Cuban colleagues in conferences and seminars.
