Havana, Cuba.-December is a month of particular significance for Latin American and Caribbean integration, as the legacy of regional unity from Commanders Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez will be highlighted, the Venezuelan ambassador here, Rafael Ramirez, said on Wednesday.

In an interview with Prensa Latina, the diplomat recalled the birth of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our Americas (ALBA) in December 2004, and the foundational summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in Caracas seven years later.

‘ALBA was the vanguard of that objective, a creation by Fidel and Chavez; they conceived it and designed it, and thus we pointed to the Alliance’, noted the Venezuelan permanent representative at the United Nations, an exceptional witness of the efforts made by the late revolutionary leaders to achieve regional integration.

According to Ramirez, that seed germinated, and it was followed by Petrocaribe in 2005, the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) in 2007, and CELAC in 2011. Undoubtedly, Commanders Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez were the two great architects of a new relationship among the countries of the region, which went beyond integration to build unity, he underlined.

The diplomat commented that the fruits of the two leaders’ dreams and efforts, inspired in national heroes like Simon Bolivar and Jose Marti, are very present.

Millions of Latin American and Caribbean people have seen the benefits in the fields of health care, like Operation Miracle to regain vision, and literacy.

Ramirez noted the defeat of the Free Trade Area for the Americas (FTAA) in November 2005 in Mar del Plata, where Presidents Chavez, Nestor Kirchner and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva led the battle ‘to prevent the imposition by the United States of that mechanism of perverse domination, which would have devastated our economies.’

We also have the effective response from UNASUR to the coup attempts in Bolivia in 2008 and Ecuador two years lager; and the protection by Petrocaribe of the brother Caribbean countries against the asymmetries of the world oil market, above all in a period when prices were very high, he said.

For the Venezuelan ambassador here, the regional integration fostered by Fidel and Chavez is a response from Latin America and the Caribbean to the need to build a multipolar world based on common problems, challenges and interests.