Latin America No Longer for Sale: the New CELAC Poles Apart from the OAS

“Haha, Ortega doesn’t know what he’s talking about, neither does Evo, they don’t know anything about crime, there are reports out there that know more,” said a journalist from Bloomberg to his colleague. The journalist was sitting next to me in the press tent set up outside the CELAC plenary sessions in the Patio de Honor of the Bolivarian Militia University of Venezuela. He was watching Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega on one of the various large screens broadcasting the summit live, working at one of 60 laptops provided by the Venezuelan government...

...Reuters dismissed CELAC, saying it was just another bunch of “initials” and criticising it for having “no budget nor a permanent secretary”, writing that “analysts” (who the article doesn’t bother to name) are “sceptical” about the bloc and suggesting that historical differences and different national agendas have always got in the way. Another Reuters article, this one in English, reduced the importance of CELAC to a “test” of Chavez’s health and wrote (lied) “The CELAC summit will give the theatrical but authoritarian 57-year-old a much-loved opportunity to grandstand at a big event, and bash the United States at the same time.”

Americas Society also used unnamed “detractors” who “question the usefulness of a potentially redundant forum in a region already plagued by a history of hobbled attempts at integration” and the Wall Street Journal followed what seems to be a private media trend, quoting more unnamed “analysts” that while the US should note the “latest indication of growing Latin American autonomy”, different strains of government could hamper the Community’s effectiveness.

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