THE U.S. government is concerned. It has been so engrossed in unleashing wars and fomenting conflict throughout the world that it has been minimizing the importance of what was happening in its back yard where its fanatic insistence on imposing neoliberalism has provoked not only the unmanageability of the model but also the formation – by majority decision in most of our countries – of new and viable alternatives with which to close the door on centuries of dependence and domination. Just a few days ago, in Asunción, a meeting took place between the heads of state of Bolivia and Uruguay, Evo Morales and Tabaré Vazquez, respectively, who, together with their host Nicanor Duarte Frutos, sent a special invitation to Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela, to be part of a new integration project: the construction of a 800-kilometer gas pipeline from Bolivia to Paraguay and Uruguay, to the benefit of their peoples.

The energy network project would be joined – at the appropriate moment and after necessary adjustments – of the mega-project Gas del Sur (Southern Gas), already signed by Hugo Chávez; President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil and President Néstor Kirchner of Argentina, which the Bolivarian leader defined as the beginning of a dream: to form a South American gas alliance which Peru and other countries could also join.

The convention, signed April 20, consists of a Memorandum of Understanding in which the signatories commit via a tri-national commission to undertake feasibility studies for the construction of the gas pipeline. The negotiation and signing of the Energy Integration Agreement should be ready before the end of the year.

Venezuela will contribute technical and financial assistance.

Equally important was the decision of Paraguayan President Nicanor Duarte to offer his Bolivian counterpart the port of Casado to exploit in usufruct and utilize as a duty free zone to eventually construct a refinery for the sales of hydrocarbons. Bolivia has the second largest gas reserves in South America.

Beyond their regional origins and the energy deficiencies of some and the support of others, Gasoducto del Sur, Megasoducto, Arco de Gas Sudamericano, Petrosur and Petrocaribe are the components of a new Latin American integration project that opens the doors to, and could in time forge the ALBA – the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas.

The ALBA is a model of international relations based on solidarity, respect for asymmetrical structures, collaboration instead of competition, and inclusion ruled by equality and cooperation when negotiating and signing conventions in which human beings, not the market, are important. A model which banishes forever the fallacy of free trade.

The meeting in Asunción, aimed in this direction, is foundational and demonstrates that the old regional integration pacts have no future, because they are the deformed spawn of the capitalist model and its neoliberal phase.

It is not by chance that political scientists and observers, defenders of free trade and the market, have initiated a campaign against these new paths of integration.

They are intentionally raising political and ideological fears in order to anesthetize the liberating projects inspired by the Bolivarian Venezuela of Hugo Chávez and the socialist Cuba of Fidel Castro, leaders with a clear vision of the future and a proven vocation of solidarity and cooperation.

What defense can be made now, for example, of the Community of Andean Nations (CAN) after two of its member states, Colombia and Peru, signed the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the United States and Ecuador is about to do the same due to pressure from Washington to the detriment of others, such as Bolivia, which loses its soy market within this agreement, to cite one example?

What defense can be made when, by signing the FTA with the United States, Peruvians and Colombians can no longer produce generic medicines, less costly to the national economy and releasing them from dependence on transnational pharmaceutical corporations?

What defense can be made when from now on, Peruvians and Colombians will have to accept U.S. certification of meat arriving from that territory, thus exposing them to risks of possible or related diseases that no Third World country wants to run.

It is no secret to anyone that having failed to impose the original FTAA, the U.S. government has resorted to FTAs as a tool of its traditional policy of divide and conquer, to prevent Latin America from uniting in a accord that would defend their national interests.

Faced with this reality, on April 22, the Venezuelan president gave instructions to Foreign Minister Alí Rodríguez to withdraw from the Community of Andean Nations, stating: "It is an authority that only serves the elite, the transnationals, and not our people, the indigenous, the poor" and because it is gravely and dangerously modifying the original principals on which it was founded in l969.

He emphasized that "the Community of Andean Nations is mortally wounded, and today, I can state that it is dead. They killed it. It doesn’t exist. Venezuela is leaving the Andean Community."

The U.S. signing of the FTA with the CAN nations means that this potential market of 120 million individuals will be controlled by U.S. transnationals to the detriment of national enterprises, which do not receive state subsidies and whose exports will be decimated, while domestically, they will not be able to compete with U.S. products.

In the case of Venezuela, just as Chávez charged, the country would be inundated with U.S. products that, once inside Colombia, would be re-exported to neighboring countries, benefiting from the advantages that the Community members enjoy among themselves.

Uruguayan President Tabaré Vázquez agreed with his Venezuelan counterpart, stating: "we want a greater and better MERCOSUR, but not as it is now, plagued with problems that are fundamentally affecting the smaller countries within the block."

"We want," he said, "to be the builders of our destiny, our future; we want to be workers, builders of a new South America that is more united, more fraternal, just, egalitarian and respectful of the wealth of our people."