Cuba's National Assembly of People's Power, on its last day of debates this Wednesday, will have a moment dedicated to the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-People's Trade Agreement (ALBA-TCP).
 
The extraordinary session will commemorate the 18th anniversary of the creation of the regional mechanism, as well as the years of cooperation, solidarity, and Latin American and Caribbean integration among the countries of the bloc.
 
ALBA-TCP was created on December 14, 2004, through an agreement signed in Havana between the then presidents of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, and Cuba, Fidel Castro, as a response to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), promoted by the United States and finally rejected by Latin America in Mar del Plata, Argentina, in 2005.
 
Since its creation, it has maintained solidarity,  justice, and cooperation as fundamental principles of the existing relations between member states.
 
It is also a political, economic, and social alliance in defense of the independence, self-determination, and identity of the people, by its precepts.
 
Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Dominica, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Lucia, Saint Kitts, Nevis, Grenada, and Cuba are members of this political coordination mechanism.