The member States of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America – People’s Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP) categorically reject the statements made by the Head of the Southern Command of the United States of America, General Laura Richardson, who has irresponsibly and cynically made unfounded accusations against some member countries of the Alliance.

These statements demonstrate, once again, the intolerance of U.S. imperialism towards the existence of free and sovereign countries that seek the welfare of their peoples, choose their own political system and do not bow to Washington’s neocolonial interests.

Latin America and the Caribbean has been the victim of a long list of interventions and plundering by the different U.S. Administrations. The continuous attempts by the U.S. to re-impose the Monroe Doctrine, undermine the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace, by keeping a hostile and interfering policy in the internal affairs of our nations, imposing unilateral coercive measures contrary to International Law and threatening the use of force to seize what has never belonged and will never belong to them.

The member countries of the Alliance reiterate our firmest rejection of the unacceptable interference and threats of the United States and its expansionist pretensions over our peaceful, free, sovereign and independent region.