TO be uneasy is one of the human sensations that they have possibly never experienced given how difficult it is to battle with. So much the master of all situations and so sure of having control over everything human and divine, the empire’s representatives feel as if something is squirming beneath their feet and burning them. It is there, south of the Rio Grande, in that up until now enormous, folkloric, apathetic and servile place that they made theirs by blood and fire and where, with the exception of the irredeemable Cuba, nobody who dared to defy them – and there were more than a few – did so successfully.

However, the 21st century is witness to how the politics of divisiveness, discredit and subversion via which Washington has managed to dominate Latin America to date, are coming up against the will and awareness of entire peoples who have decided to assume their own destiny and have found in solidarity and integration the finest arms to reverse centuries of domination and colonization which have left them with a dramatic social debt.

It is no coincidence that, like the devil the cross, the Republican administration of George W. Bush fears the integrationist efforts that, headed by Bolivarian Venezuela, are taking place on the continent.

It is not hard to imagine the face of the U.S. president and his closest collaborators every morning on receiving a briefing as to how the world is doing, when this is the news being repeated with some frequency in their former backyard.

They cannot understand how even strategic allies – Colombia, for example – are committing themselves to these efforts that are the expression of an undying need to fulfill popular will and defend a position of sovereignty.

In this context, news agencies cables announced that on July 8, Colombia and Venezuela are to begin the construction of a 230-kilometer gas pipeline to extend from La Guajira to Maracaibo, with a solid aspiration to reach Panama, a country with which, moreover, President Hugo Chávez signed a letter of intent for the construction on Panamanian soil of large fuel storage deposits.

Central America, China and other Asian nations will be able to buy Venezuelan gas once the works are completed in May 2007.

In the same spirit, the Venezuelan and Ecuadorian ministers of energy have signed two oil agreements sealing a strategic alliance that will allow PDVSA to participate in the upgrading of Ecuador’s Esmeraldas refinery. It also anticipates the exchange of Ecuadorian crude for Venezuelan derivatives for as long as the former’s refineries do not cover the domestic need for diesel, lubricants and gasoline.

Plans likewise include the refining in Venezuela of Ecuadorian crude, precisely that extracted from Block 15, formerly operated for profit by the U.S. Oxy transnational.

Integration efforts that are taking place between Venezuela and other countries and these countries among themselves, as is the case of the energy agreements signed a few days ago by the presidents of Argentina and Bolivia, Néstor Kirchner and Evo Morales, respectively, and which had a moment of special significance on July 4 in Caracas, when the leaders of Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay met to make effective the inclusion of the nation of Bolívar as a full member of MERCOSUR.

And we are not talking here of protocol agreements, of a simple number and multiplication of documents, but that the letter and spirit of each one of them is based on a new concept that has humans and not the market as its principal beneficiary.

It is a new kind of integration model; it is cooperation on just and equitable bases that take into account not only the asymmetries of the economies within it, but economic complementation. We are talking of Petrocaribe, of Petrosur, of the Grand Gas Pipeline of the South, of Operation Miracle in the field of public health, of the educational "Yes, I Can Do It" program via which millions of Latin Americans are becoming literate. We are talking of those efforts that make us invincible because they have human beings, their needs and hopes at the heart of their objectives.

It is this union currently being constructed without conditions, pressure or masters that is feared by the empire and against which all their worn out maneuvers are beginning to be dashed.

Integration is advancing and with that the support of the people for the leaders who are making it and will make it possible.

As I write these lines, opinion polls are giving Hugo Chávez an unbeatable popular support of 79.6% of the vote, while the opposition has lost its first opportunity to agree on a sole candidate with a view to the presidential elections on December 3. In Andean Bolivia, Evo Morales ‘ Movement Toward Socialism gained the majority of seats in the new Constituent Assembly which is to re-found the country with a new Constitution, and autonomist aspirations were buried by No-votes at the ballot booths. In Argentina, Menemism with all its load of submission and servility to neoliberalism and to Washington has suffered a new defeat by losing La Rioja – its last bastion – in Party elections, and in Brazil, no adversary would obtain more votes than President Lula if elections were to take place now.