Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel attended the final session of the 18th Political Council of the Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Our America– Peoples´ Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP), which run in Havana.

At the opening of the meeting, Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla, Cuba´s Foreign Affairs Minister, said that the event takes place at a moment of return of US interventionism with the imposition of the Monroe Doctrine, neoliberalism and McCarthyism, so this integration mechanism is and will be of resistance against the ultra-rightist wave unleashed against the region.

In his speech, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza, urged United States to solve differences through diplomacy, to cease the military threat and the blockade against Cuba, Nicaragua and his country, threats to which it is pertinent to alert peoples and governments.

His Bolivian counterpart Diego Pary Rodriguez called for the defense of multilateralism and international law in the face of the threat from the imperial powers, while Carlos Castaneda, Salvadoran Foreign Minister, said that the region has in its hands the instruments of regional integration to face the current challenges, including the declaration of Latin America and the Caribbean as Peace Zone.

David Choquehuanca, ALBA-TCP Executive Secretary, pointed out that this mechanism has to rise with its own identity and with a decolonizing thought, and stressed the importance of strengthening its own cultural codes to put an end to individualism and self-centeredness, and return to the path of integration.

The 18th ALBA-TCP Political Council was attended by ministers and representatives of Cuba, Venezuela, El Salvador, Bolivia and leaders of the rest of the member states, who met with the aim of arranging strategies for the defense of peace and the integration of the region.