South America throws down the trade gauntlet

Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez rallied thousands of leftist sympathisers after a South American trade summit at Cordoba, in Argentina, railing against the US-backed free market policies they blame for many of Latin America’s woes.

Addressing 15,000 people including students decades younger late yesterday, the 79-year-old Castro joined Chavez in an anti-American rally praising Venezuela for its entry into the South American trade bloc Mercosur – a move that gave that group a hard push to the left.

“Ole! Ole! Fidel!” the crowd chanted as some waved red flags emblazoned with the image of Argentine-born revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, who spent several boyhood years in Cordoba before joining Cuba’s revolution.

“Mercosur once was just four countries. Now it is improved and is expanding,” Castro declared during his three-hour speech from a stage beneath a banner reading: ”Integration is our flag.” Cuban, Venezuelan and Argentine flags flapped nearby.

Leftist labour and student groups took part in the rally, a rare chance for Argentines to see the Cuban leader who last visited in May 2003 for the inauguration of moderate leftist President Nestor Kirchner.

Also attending were leaders of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, the famously kerchiefed human rights activists whose sons and daughters went missing during Argentina’s 1976-83 dictatorship.

Castro vowed his communist nation would continue to survive a more than four-decade-old US trade embargo.

He added that “in the neoliberal world everyone is talking about globalization, about the globalization of goods and services. But nobody is talking about the globalization of solidarity” among nations.

He lauded Chavez for emulating Cuba’s own programmes to send doctors and teachers to poor people throughout Latin America.

Cordoba holds special significance for Castro because of Guevara’s ties here. But the Cuban leader dashed some local hopes he might visit Alta Gracia, a nearby community that was Guevara's boyhood home. Born in Argentina, Guevara fought in Cuba’s revolution and was killed in 1967 while directing a guerrilla movement in Bolivia.

Earlier yesterday, Kirchner welcomed the “historic” addition of oil-rich Venezuela, the continent’s No. 3 economy after Brazil and Argentina, into the once-sleepy customs union called Mercosur.

Chavez, who admires Castro as his leftist ally and political mentor, urged Mercosur to put aside internal squabbles and stand against the US-backed free-market policies he says enslaved the region.

He told last night’s rally that a Free Trade Area of the Americas, or FTAA, proposed in 1994 amid lofty goals of uniting the hemisphere in one tariff-free zone, was now dead.

“FTAA be damned!” Chavez declared to applause.

Chavez said Mercosur would be the engine for Latin American growth, adding he hoped leftist President Evo Morales of Bolivia, who took office in January, along with Cuba, would become full members of the trade bloc.

“Latin America has all it needs to become a great world power. Let’s not put any limits on our dreams. Let’s make them reality,” Chavez said.

The addition of Venezuela gives Mercosur a combined market of 250 million people and a combined output of 1 trillion dollars in goods and services annually, said Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva during Friday’s summit.

NAFTA, combining the markets of the US, Canada and Mexico, has 450 million consumers and a combined gross product of about $14 trillion (€11 trillion).

Alejandra Lopez, a 57-year-old Argentine who watched Castro from the crowd, said she hopes that a region where millions are still in poverty will be transformed.

“We are all fighting for the liberation of Latin America,” said Lopez, whose brother was a leftist militant killed in Argentina’s last dictatorship.

But critics said the new Mercosur marked a worrisome decline in US influence in the region.

Michael Shifter, an analyst at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, said Venezuela’s entry should be a “wake-up call” for US officials distracted by the conflict in the Middle East.

“Mercosur seems to have less and less to do with free trade and more to do with politics,” he said.

Once confined to the Southern Cone nations of Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, Mercosur now ranges north to Venezuela’s Caribbean coast.