Abstract
At the turn of the century, it seemed inevitable that regional integration in Latin America would occur under the rubric of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and US hegemony. But 2005—the year the FTAA was to have been launched—has come and gone, and the whole FTAA project is in tatters. This article will examine two regional integration initiatives, which have emerged in its wake—the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA). Both represent a challenge to US-led integration. However, the Venezuelan-centered ALBA is potentially a much more radical challenge to neoliberalism than the Braziliancentered UNASUR.
Author notes
This article is based on a paper—“The Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas: Dawn of an Alternative to Neoliberalism?”—presented to the 2006 conference of the Canadian Political Science Association, York University, Toronto. Nicola Short from York University, discussant for the CPSA panel, made many useful and insightful comments, some of which I have incorporated into this article. The ideas were first developed in discussions inside the Toronto-based Coalitión Venezuela Estamos Contigo (Coalition “Venezuela We Are With You”). Thanks to Phil Cournoyer, John Riddell, Suzanne Weiss and others from the coalition for valuable input and information. Ian Angus (Socialist History Project), Abbie Bakan (Queen’s University, Kingston), Sean W. Burges (Carleton University, Ottawa), Nadine Bussman (Fondación Canadiense para las Américas), Richard Fidler and Heike Schaumberg (University of Manchester) also provided useful comments. In particular, thanks to the very useful comments from the anonymous reviewers for New Political Science.
