Title: What is the ALBA? | ALBA INFO
Headings: What is the ALBA?
What is the ALBA?
What is the ALBA and who supports it?
What are the roots of the ALBA?
What have been the practical implications of the ALBA ?
External Opposition
Internal Contradictions
Conclusion and The Literature
References

Content: In many countries governments were thrown out through social uprisings and new anti-neoliberal governments became established. This “pink tide” of new left or centre-left governments, and a revival of militant social movements, is the context in which the ALBA was founded. What have been the practical implications of the ALBA ? In terms of immediate impact the ALBA is often credited as derailing the proposed, and now abandoned, Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA/ALCA). The FTAA was a proposed free trade agreement, spearheaded by the US government, which sought to create a hemispheric wide free trade area. Critics saw this as a move which, as was the case with NAFTA, would only serve to benefit the rich and powerful. Initially the FTAA proposal advanced virtually unopposed. However, as the political terrain of Latin America changed, institutions such as the ALBA and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), which exclude North America, have been founded instead. The ALBA itself can be seen as the FTAA’s antithesis given how it defines itself in direct opposition the free trade ideology which underlies agreements such as the FTAA. Derailment of the FTAA is representative of two broader trends which the ALBA has strengthened: