President Maduro Opens 23rd ALBA-TCP Summit in Caracas (+ALBA 2030)

The heads of state and governments of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America–Peoples’ Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP) stood alongside the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, in the opening of the 23rd ALBA-TCP Summit at Miraflores Palace in Caracas, launching the ALBA 2030 Agenda proposal.

The meeting took place following the Meeting for a World Social Alternative held last week and organized by the ALBA-TCP, in which grassroots organizations debated problems common to the countries of the world. Before the official opening of the summit this Wednesday, April 24, President Maduro met privately with the heads of states in the Sol del Peru room of Miraflores Palace.

Participating in the summit were the president of Cuba, Miguel Díaz Canel; the president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega; the president of Bolivia, Luis Arce; the prime minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Ralph Gonsalves; the prime minister of Dominica, Roosevelt Skerrit; the prime minister of Saint Lucia, Phillip Pierre; the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Gastón Browne; the foreign minister of Grenada, Joseph Andall; and the ambassador of Saint Kitts and Nevis, Norgen Wilson.

The ALBA-TCP proposes creating a work agenda that adapts to the new challenges of the region, as explained by President Maduro. This proposal, the Venezuelan head of state explained, was presented in a private meeting with the heads of state by the executive secretary of the alliance, Jorge Arreaza.

“We have received the proposal from our executive secretary, to establish an updated agenda, updated for the times we are living in,” said the Venezuelan head of state. “An agenda that allows us to march together, as governments, people, ALBA countries, towards higher objectives in all fields of geopolitics, the economy, finances, health, culture, education, telecommunications, food production.”

#EnVivo 📹 | Jefe de Estado @NicolasMaduro sostiene reunión con los Jefes de Estado y de Gobierno de la ALBA-TCP.https://t.co/gwFpAit1Bn
— Prensa Presidencial (@PresidencialVen) April 24, 2024

President Maduro talked about the need to “move from the integration of our countries, based on concrete projects, to a higher vision, the original vision of the liberators, to the vision of building the union of our region, the union of our people.” This agenda, known as ALBA 2030, has seven lines of work in the short and medium term:

The creation of an ALBA-TCP cooperation and development agency.
Study and approval of the Petrocaribe relaunch plan.
Approval of the ALBA Food plan.
The signing and definitive adoption of the People’s Trade Treaty.
Promotion a special program of shared scientific, cultural, communication and academic development.
Relaunch of the ALBA Health plan.
Creation of an ALBA agency to mitigate the impacts of climate change.

“It’s a pretty comprehensive agenda,” said the Venezuelan head of state. “We have already made progress in the debate on some of its components. There is a starting document for this 2030 agenda to be studied and hopefully approved, as a guide, as a route of action for our governments, countries, and people.”

“This ALBA 2030 agenda is an integrative, unionist, motivating agenda,” he added. “Today, the world is moving in a great civilizational change, there is a great change in geopolitics and human civilization.” During the summit, the Venezuelan president also called on regional leaders to advance in strengthening the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).

“One day we can have the strength, the capacity, the will, the political independence,” he continued, “to go from a powerful Community of Latin American and Caribbean States to a Confederation of peoples, of States, of governments of Latin America and the Caribbean. A new CELAC, where Puerto Rico is a free, sovereign, independent State.”

Emergence of a new world
President Maduro highlighted in his speech the emergence of a new world, where emerging powers are present to change global geopolitics, where nations and relations between them are based on respect for sovereignty and self-determination.

“The BRICS alliance emerges as a great cohesive pole of diversity, of continents and regions. Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and now other countries are joining, and the BRICS are tending to consolidate,” the Venezuelan president emphasized. He added that ALBA-TCP is already “connected with this new world,” explaining, “I believe that ALBA can be assumed as part of the founding countries of the new world that is being born, of the new multipolar order. Let us be aware of who we are, where we come from, of the strength of the people.”

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Resurgence of fascism
The Venezuelan head of state reiterated his warning of the resurgence of fascism in the world, and that it also seeks to affect the countries of the region. “I tell the people of Latin America and the Caribbean, in the face of the crisis of the imperial hegemony of the United States and the West, the card that is being played is war, fascism. We see [Javier] Milei in Argentina. It is the new colonialism. Argentinians already came out yesterday, a million men and women came out to say no to destruction,” he added.

“We trust the Argentinian people to defend their country, to defend the independence of their state, to confront this new colonial model that is being imposed on them,” said President Maduro.

Palestine and Haiti
President Maduro also took care to bring up the situation in Palestine, where the constant bombings and attacks perpetrated by the Israeli settler entity have left 34,000 Palestinians murdered and more than 77,000 injured, most of them being women and children.

“Our deeply humanist and Christian position of solidarity, collaboration, and love for the noble people of Palestine. Palestine lives, fights, and Palestine will prevail in the future,” stated the Venezuelan president.

He also referred to the social crisis that is affecting Haiti, currently immersed in gang violence, generating chaos and anxiety in its population as a result of the neo-colonial occupation of foreign forces led by the United States, Canada, and France.

President Maduro urged the ALBA-TCP countries to design a work plan to accompany the Caribbean nation so that it can rescue “its democracy, its internal peace, and its stability.”

“It is not with military or police interventions that democracy, freedom, peace, and social recovery will come to Haiti. There are 100 years of military interventions, of massacre against the people of Haiti, 100 years of dictatorship. That is the result. Let’s work with Haiti. It is a duty and debt we have,” he added.

(Últimas Noticias) by Ariadna Eljuri with Orinoco Tribune content

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

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