With Cuba at the helm of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in 2013, there is a new opportunity for social issues in the region, according to ECLAC Executive Secretary Alicia Barcena.
In an interview with Prensa Latina, the chief of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) underlined that Cuba's leadership in the CELAC will contribute to focusing on equality, advancing integration and seeing what we can do not only to exchange goods and services but also capacities.
According to the UN official, after Chile's pro tempore presidency, which boosted investments, with Cuba at the helm of the organization "we will prioritize the issue of social links, the educational issue, literacy, the depth and the exchange of experiences in successful social matters, in health, in social security."
The CELAC was set up at its first summit in Caracas in December 2011 by heads of State and other top representatives from all 33 Latin American and Caribbean countries. The next summit will take place in Santiago, Chile, in late January 2013, when the bloc will also meet with the European Union.
According to Barcena, the creation of the CELAC was great news for the organization she leads, as that space "was needed in the region to unite all States of Latin America and the Caribbean, it is the first time there is such a forum where everyone is included."
The ECLAC executive secretary noted that new and very important spaces of collaboration and cooperation are open in that regional organization to build on existing grounds, "and that is worth noting," she stressed.
The official added that it is not a matter of replacing what is working well, but just strengthening it, creating more spaces for dialogue, for example, between the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and the Central American Integration System (SICA), or the integration mechanisms from Central America and the Caribbean Community.
"I think it is about that, it is about building bridges, like that of the Bolivarian Alliance for the People's of Our America, which is a new geopolitical and economic space of great importance," the ECLAC leader said.
She described the CELAC as a sort of framework that has to accommodate all integration efforts, with the horizon of equality.
"Latin America and the Caribbean is the most unequal region in the world, and it has to have equality as the key horizon, and virtuous structural change, the change of its productive and social fabric as a path to achieve better distribution of revenues, better distribution of the factors of production, better distribution of technology, science and education," she noted.
The UN official pointed out that social policies alone do not solve social issues, as there has to be a change to greater interregional integration.
"We are a poorly integrated region, our interregional integration rate is 19.2 percent, compared to Europe's, which is 66 percent, or Asia-Pacific's, which is 40," she pointed out after admitting that there is room for greater collaboration and cooperation, both economic and social.
Barcena recalled that Chile's pro tempore presidency of the CELAC this year made emphasis on the issue of investments, with positive results, so Latin America and the Caribbean have become very attractive spaces for other regions of the world.
And it is important that "these businesses, these investments, this mobilization toward our region be always implemented in this framework to pursue equality and to pursue equal access to opportunities," she pointed out.
On Tuesday, the ECLAC presented its 2012 Economic Study on Latin America and the Caribbean, which states that the weakness in the world's economy affected negatively the growth of the region, whose expansion will be smaller than in previous periods.
The UN agency pointed out that the slowdown shown by the economies in 2011 continued in the first semester of 2012, thus reducing growth predictions from 3.7 to 3.2 percent.
The drop in foreign demand and a decreasing trend in prices of most basic export goods turned foreign trade into the main channel of transmission of the international crisis to the Latin American and Caribbean economies.
However, the ECLAC considered that the region has accumulated a valuable experience over the past few years, so it will respond appropriately to external turbulences.