Venezuela's ALBA in the face of the Global Economic Crisis

[As neoliberalism reveals its fissures and weaknesses, ALBA may be gaining ideological legitimacy as an alternative for poorer Latin American states facing these failures of neoliberalism (past and present). The question remains, however, of how ALBA will gain institutional legitimacy in this economic storm.]

Venezuela's ALBA in the face of the Global Economic Crisis

December 29th 2009, by Jodie Neary - UpsideDownWorld

In response to the G20 Summit in Washington D.C. last month, Chavez established an equivalent, the ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas) Summit in Caracas, Venezuela on November 26th. This 6-member group consisting of Venezuela (2004), Cuba (2004), Bolivia (2006), Nicaragua (2007), Dominica (2008), and its most recent member Honduras (2008), represents an alternative vision to neoliberal economics, one with a socialist agenda in trade relations attempting to re-embed 'the social' back into economic and political relations in the region. This ad hoc meeting was a response to the discontent expressed by many Latin American nations to the lack of representation from poorer nations in the G20 summit. It was also an attempt to confirm the notion that neoliberalism is at its end, a remark expressed by Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega during the Summit, who called the crisis as the 'funeral of Capitalism', naming ALBA as 'an alternative model of development'.[1] As neoliberalism reveals its fissures and weaknesses, ALBA may be gaining ideological legitimacy as an alternative for poorer Latin American states facing these failures of neoliberalism (past and present). The question remains, however, of how ALBA will gain institutional legitimacy in this economic storm. In the context of a global financial crisis, ALBA's institutional consolidation will be even more vital.

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