La Guaira, April 16, 2024.- As part of the World Gathering for a Social Alternative, to be held in Caracas on April 18 and 19, there was a meeting with social movements in La Guaira state, in the Venezuelan central-north coast, where the Executive Secretary of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America – People’s Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP), Jorge Arreaza, raised the need to “create this opportunity to listen to each other, to develop a method of permanent interaction between the ALBA governments and the peoples”.

During his speech, the Diplomat highlighted that the world is going through a very dangerous moment, defined as hyper-imperialism which implies the decline of a model, a process difficult to predict, so “it is time to gather (…) as peoples we have the historical duty to put aside our differences and groups and agree on everything we can”.

Arreaza urged to start with a minimum common agenda, a coordinated agenda of the movements and peoples of the world. “This moment forces us, compels us to get the peoples organized and assume the corresponding role at the forefront of the processes,” the Executive Secretary stressed.

During the meeting, Llanisca Lugo, member of the Martin Luther King Center, agreed that this is a historic moment for the movements to strengthen themselves in order to create a common agenda with concrete proposals.

Irene León, a Ecuadorian political analyst, stated that ALBA-TCP should be an “axis for the joint coordination of all our peoples regardless of the countries”, while highlighting the role of Commander Hugo Chávez as a promoter of Latin American integration, not only of the Alliance, but also of the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), which emerged with their own particularities in response to the great challenge of building a multipolar and pluricentric world.

He explained that all integration organizations in the world focus, at their core, on uniting to achieve greater competitiveness, to capitalize, which is why ALBA-TCP is unique, because since its creation it has been proposed as an anti-capitalist alternative, it has the capacity to propose something different from the free trade of the capitalist model, such as the People’s Trade Treaty.

León added that the regional bloc, made up of 10 countries, proposes values contrary to competition, such as solidarity, economic complementarity and reciprocity.

He urged work on a financial structure and a regional financial institution as a condition for the implementation of an alternative model, far from capitalist speculation, that meets the socioeconomic needs of the region.