Dear Friends,
We may feel hoodwinked by the big US banks, but the Latin Americans are striking back!
On Sept. 26, seven presidents signed the document officially starting the Bank of the South. Opening with $7 billion in capital that is expected to grow to $20 billion in coming months, the bank’s objective is to finance development projects in agriculture, energy, and health care for member nations and to boost trade throughout the hemisphere.
To a large degree this bank will replace the World Bank, IMF, USAID, and other “development” organizations that have been used by economic hit men to enrich the corporatocracy and gain control over Third World resources.
The presidents of Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela signed the document during the historic Africa-South America Summit held in Venezuela following the 2009 meetings opening the United Nations in New York.
“This is historic for the true independence of Latin America,” Ecuador’s president Correa said. “We’re done depending on the North for, on the one hand, kneeling down to ask for some dollars and, on the other, sending billions of dollars to them. We’ve had enough of that contradiction.”
As detailed in HOODWINKED, a wave is sweeping Latin America. People who have been exploited for centuries are rising up and demanding that their resources be used to lift them out of poverty. During the Africa-South America Summit, the wave spread across the Atlantic.
Now it is time for us in the US to also surf that wave!
