LatAm Integration: Pending Subject
How to deal with neoliberal formulas and Latin American integration re-emerge Wednesday as pending subjects for the 8th International Meeting on Globalization and Development in Havana in February 6-10.

The forum will try to answer how and why integration processes can be reformed and which would be their bases according to global welfare.

On this matter, Cuban researcher Osvaldo Martinez, head of the center for World Economy Studies, discusses rejection of the model that wealthy nations aspire to impose.

For Martinez, who is chairman of Cuba´s Parliament Commission on Economy, today´s pressures relate with initiatives such the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), designed to consolidate US hegemony.

He believes that integration has been slow as there are palpable distances between possibly economic-politically united Latin American nations, many still tricked at the OAS.

Besides, the expert said the idea of trade as a race to export to the US and Europe or the so-called Latin American insertion in the global economy, where national or regional markets have became marginal sub-products without attractions.

He also criticized the mass privatization of public companies, causing foreign integration but domestic disintegration.

However, the parliamentarian pointed out that projects such as Venezuela/Cuba-boosted Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America and the Caribbean would pave the way for a better world.

“That plan favors integration of peoples and not of capitals,” he stressed.

The Havana meeting, to be attended by delegates from 50 nations, challenges hegemonic positions of economic powers led by the US.