LatAm summit in Cuba focus on poverty, inequality
LatAm summit in Cuba focus on poverty, inequality
7:26 AM Monday Jan 27, 2014
HAVANA (AP) Leaders from Latin America and the Caribbean are arriving in Havana this weekend for a summit of a fledgling regional bloc that was conceived as a force for integration and a counterbalance to their most powerful neighbor, the United States.
The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, or CELAC for its initials in Spanish, was formed in 2011 and comprises every nation in the Western Hemisphere except the U.S. and Canada. By Sunday, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez and several foreign ministers were already in Havana for the summit. Lower-level officials began meeting over the weekend and foreign ministers are taking the stage Monday. The formal meetings of heads of state begin Tuesday.
Nobody was a bigger advocate for the bloc than the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, an outspoken critic of Washington seen by many as the standard-bearer for the region's political left before he succumbed to cancer in March.
"It is the first summit after the death of Hugo Chavez, the great driving force" behind CELAC, said Eduardo Bueno, a professor of Latin American studies at Iberoamericana University in Mexico. "I think they are going to be measuring their possibilities for the future."
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