Hugo Chavez during The Fifth Summit of the Americas 2009 held in T&T
Trinicenter Reporters
March 05, 2013
Vice President of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro announced on Venezuela’s television that Hugo Chavez passed away on Tuesday afternoon at around 4:25 p.m. after a two year battle with cancer. He was 58.
Since coming into power 14 years ago, Chavez embarked on a socialistic revolution that saw sweeping changes across Venezuela.
Continue reading Hugo Chavez dies after battle with cancer
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega arrives for the opening
ceremony of the Fifth Summit of the Americas – April 17, 2009
Speech by His Excellency Honourable Daniel Ortega Saavedra, President of Nicaragua, on April 17 2009, during the Opening Ceremonies of the Fifth Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago.
Continue reading President Ortega’s Opening Statement at the Fifth Summit of the Americas
By Sean Douglas
Thursday, April 30 2009
PRIME Minister Patrick Manning said the Fifth Summit of the Americas is earning TT and Caricom more respect and foreign investment. Addressing the 20th anniversary celebration ceremony of the Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU) on Tuesday, at the Diplomatic Centre, he boasted: “There can be no doubt about the gains to our country and the region from this undertaking. Tourist arrivals will increase and it will certainly be much easier to market our region as a single tourism destination.”
Continue reading PM again boasts of Summit
THE EDITOR: Well, the summit has come and gone. The naked emperor has worshipped at the altar of his own egoism. But at what cost? The next circus is going to be the reckoning of what costs are to be attributed to the summit and what costs are not. It’s all downhill from here. The naked emperor has shot his bolt. There are no more cards up his sleeve. Our monocrop, jazzed up plantation economy is well and truly busted. Health, education, local government services, social welfare and mek wuk employment are being severely cut back. Jobs are disappearing by the thousands and will continue to do so over the near term. Trillion dollar bonds are being floated to make up the budget deficit.
Continue reading Life After the Summit
By Raffique Shah
Sunday, April 26th 2009
PRIME Minister Patrick Manning seems surprised that so many people are angry over this country hosting the Fifth Summit of the Americas. I wrote a few weeks ago that having committed the country to the summit when he did, he no doubt thought that we could afford that $500 million or whatever the real cost was.
He must have felt, too, that just having all hemispheric Heads of Government here would boost his image as a the premier Caribbean leader. I do not dispute his reasoning that the country would benefit from world recognition, only because it was billed as the battleground between Presidents Obama and Chavez.
Continue reading Caring too much about image
By Stephen Kangal
April 24, 2009
The hosting of the recently concluded Fifth Summit of the Americas was portrayed as a CARICOM initiative and, as usual, T&T bore the full costs involved.
I am very disturbed that T&T/CARICOM did not act collectively in an effective manner to maximize returns on T&T’s huge and staggering investment. The CARICOM meeting that was scheduled for Thursday 16 April was not held. No effort was made to concretize a CARICOM strategy at the Inter-Sessional Meeting of the Heads of Government held in Belize prior to the Summit.
Continue reading Lack of a CARICOM Strategy at the Fifth Summit
This interview has been transcribed from a translation during a press briefing featuring Bolivian President Evo Morales at the Fifth Summit of the Americas – April 18, 2009
PRESIDENT MORALES: Thank you my friends from the press. For those of you that don’t know me, I am Evo Morales Ayma, President of the nation of Bolivia. I would like to take this opportunity, first to thank you for your presence, and also to engage in a political and ideological debate that is taking place at the Summit of the Americas.
Continue reading Press Briefing with Evo Morales at the 5th Summit of the Americas
By Fidel Castro Ruz
April 22, 2009 – granma.cu
Some of the things that Daniel told me would be hard to believe if it was not him who told me them and it was not at a Summit of the Americas where they occurred.
The unusual thing is that there was no such consensus on the final document. The ALBA group did not sign it; that was confirmed in the last exchange with Obama in the presence of Manning and the other leaders in the morning of April 19.
Continue reading The Summit and the lie
Eduardo Galeano’s important earlier book, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent (1973) is crucial not only for an understanding of the economics of colonialism in America, but by extension makes explicit the mechanism of colonialism/imperialism worldwide.
Continue reading Open Veins of Latin America
Dr. Kwame Nantambu
April 23, 2009
The Fifth Summit of the Americas 17-19 April 2009 in Trinidad and Tobago has come and gone; its final Declaration of Port-of-Spain was not ‘signed, sealed and delivered’ by all thirty-four participating heads of government but most importantly, hemispheric leaders totally misunderstood, misread and miscalculated the formulation of US foreign policy toward the region.
Continue reading Post-mortem on Fifth Summit of the Americas