A more active cooperation in the implementation of the integration mechanisms is essential to make progress in this battle, the prime minister told Prensa Latina.

“We have good frameworks in the Association of Caribbean States, the Caribbean Community, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, the ALBA; the principles are set out in documents, what we have to do is to implement them more regularly,” Gonsalves recommended.

Of course, this is easier said than done because “the imperialism is always very active in creating divisions and dissidence, challenges and difficulties,” pointed out the prime minister, who traveled to Cuba to attend the Summit of the Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Our America-People’s Trade Treaty.

For example, he added, the blockade not only harms Cuba, it affects other countries as well; the unilateral sanctions that are illegal under the international laws against Venezuela generate difficulties, for example, for the PetroCaribe Agreement.

The Energy Cooperation Agreement is an oil alliance between several Caribbean countries and Venezuela, so that they can purchase the Venezuelan crude oil under preferential payment conditions.

It emerged as a political initiative based on the rational use of the non-renewable and exhaustible energy resources, to lever open the integration and the sustained development of the peoples of the region, on the basis of complementarity, solidarity and social co-responsibility.

The signatory nations of PetroCaribe are: Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Belize, Cuba, Dominica, El Salvador, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname and Venezuela.

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