Venezuela and Mexico are reportedly spearheading a group of countries in the hemisphere to establish an alternative to the Organiza-tion of American States (OAS), a move that comes in response to claims that Washington’s economic and political influence on the region is compromising the independence of countries. Membership of the body will not be extended to the United States,
Though the new hemispheric body is yet to take shape the Presidents of both Mexico and Venezuela have been ‘talking up’ the initiative heralding it as a new economic and political body for the hemisphere.
Speaking at the Rio Summit in Mexico City recently Mexican President Felipe Calderon said that “It’s time to realize the unity of Latin America and the Caribbean,” while Venezue-lan President Hugo Chavez who has continually clashed with the US administration quipped that “the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean are trying to retake the path of our own republics and we are taking the path taken by Simon Bolivar.”
Talk of an alternative grouping to the OAS reportedly surfaced among Latin American and Caribbean heads during discourses prior to last April’s Port-of-Spain engagement with US President Barack Obama. Some countries in the region have since blamed links between the economies of the United States and the hemisphere, including the region’s dependence on tourists from the US and on US markets for goods manufactured in the region for the impact which the global economic crisis has had on the Caribbean.
How far the Caribbean will go in following the more economically independent Latin American countries down a road that the US is bound to frown upon is uncertain. The BBC Caribbean Report stated that some Caribbean leaders including Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit and Antigua’s Baldwin Spencer were at the Mexico City meeting though it did not say what position the two CARICOM Heads took on the issue.
The BBC Caribbean Report quotes “a US State Department official” as saying that he did not see the proposed new body as a threat to the OAS though Professor Larry Birns of the Council for Hemispheric Affairs says that the discourses on the creation of a new hemispheric body are being closely monitored by the Washington administration.
The moves towards the creation of a new hemispheric body that excludes the United States are taking place even as CARICOM states prepare for upcoming talks with Canada that will deepen economic relations between the US’s neighbour and the Caribbean.
