ROSEAU, Dominica, Sep 24 2015 – Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro Wednesday strongly defended the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) and other initiatives used by Caracas to strengthen existing relationships between Latin America and the Caribbean.
Maduro, who arrived here from St. Kitts-Nevis, handed over 300 houses to Dominica battered by Tropical Storm Erika late last month that also killed more than 30 people and left damage estimated at more than EC$600 million.
ALBA as well as the PetroCaribe initiative, an oil alliance of many Caribbean states with Caracas through which they purchase oil on conditions of preferential payment, had been the brainchild of the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez and both Maduro and Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit said they had survived the test of times despite efforts to destroy them.
Maduro said that it was important to build “another world of solidarity and equality” and referred to an earlier statement by Skerrit that the ALBA “is today under fire, it is besieged by the world media, they want to stop us, they want to dismantle us.
“Every day they create new lies, new intrigues in trying to create distrust among us and trying to drive a wedge among us. So as Christians we know that we will be acknowledged based on our work, so beyond the lies we will continue working based on the principles of the truth of solidarity, of love among us.
“PetroCaribe has just celebrated its 10th anniversary and for 10 years after we can say PetroCaribe is the backbone of this region that has enabled the economic, the commercial and the social and energy stability of this region.”
Maduro dismissed suggestions that the initiatives were all about ideology, saying it is more about sentiments “of the right of our people to enjoy justice and equality…and to build a single homeland uniting the whole of Latin America and the Caribbean”.
