Latin American Economic System
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The Latin American and the Caribbean Economic System, officially known as Sistema Económico Latinoamericano y del Caribe (SELA), is an organization founded in 1975 to promote
economic An economy is an area of the Production (economics), production, Distribution (economics), distribution and trade, as well as Consumption (economics), consumption of Goods (economics), goods and Service (economics), services. In general, it is ...
cooperation and social development between
Latin American Latin Americans (; ) are the citizenship, citizens of Latin American countries (or people with cultural, ancestral or national origins in Latin America). Latin American countries and their Latin American diaspora, diasporas are Metroethnicity, ...
and the
Caribbean The Caribbean ( , ; ; ; ) is a region in the middle of the Americas centered around the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, mostly overlapping with the West Indies. Bordered by North America to the north, Central America ...
countries. In the early 1990s, its representatives consisted of members from 28 countries and took part in the
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is a legal agreement between many countries, whose overall purpose was to promote international trade by reducing or eliminating trade barriers such as tariffs or quotas. According to its p ...
(GATT) negotiations, which led to a new global agreement on restrictions on trade and established the
World Trade Organization The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an intergovernmental organization headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland that regulates and facilitates international trade. Governments use the organization to establish, revise, and enforce the rules that g ...
(WTO). The Latin American Council represents SELA's policy-making body and meets once a year. The main administrative body is the secretariat, located in
Caracas Caracas ( , ), officially Santiago de León de Caracas (CCS), is the capital and largest city of Venezuela, and the center of the Metropolitan Region of Caracas (or Greater Caracas). Caracas is located along the Guaire River in the northern p ...
,
Venezuela Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many Federal Dependencies of Venezuela, islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. It com ...
.


Objectives

International relations scholar Sheldon Liss, in ''Diplomacy and Dependency: Venezuela, the United States, and the Americas'' (1978) described the initial objectives of SELA:
SELA, composed of twenty-five member states, and to which Venezuela contributes the largest share (17 per cent) of the budget, hopes to: restructure international commerce in basic commodities in order to raise developing states' export values, improve trade conditions, stimulate industrial development, control foreign-based transnational corporations, create Latin American multinational companies which will use to better advantage the human, technological, and financial resources of the area, sponsor organizations to process and market raw materials, improve the negotiating power of the member states, and plan joint economic strategies. SELA members deem it likely that Venezuelan oil wealth will permit them easy access to petrodollars for use as finance capital. (pp 271, 2.)


Member countries


See also

*
Andean Community The Andean Community (, CAN) is a free trade area with the objective of creating a customs union comprising the South American countries (Andean states) of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. The trade bloc was called the Andean Pact until 1 ...
*
Association of Caribbean States The Association of Caribbean States (ACS; ; ) is an advisory association of nations centered on the Caribbean Basin. It was formed with the aim of promoting consultation, cooperation, and concerted action among all the countries of the Caribbe ...
*
Caribbean Community The Caribbean Community (abbreviated as CARICOM or CC) is an intergovernmental organisation that is a Political association, political and economic union of 15 member states (14 nation-states and one dependency) and five associated members thro ...
*
Central American Integration System The Central American Integration System (, or SICA) has been the economic and political organization of Central American states since 1 February 1993. On 13 December 1991, the ODECA countries (Spanish: ''Organización de Estados Centroamericano ...
*
Community of Latin American and Caribbean States The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) is a bloc of Latin American and Caribbean states, consisting of 33 countries, and has five official working languages. It is seen as an alternative to the Organization of American Stat ...
* Latin American economy *
Latin American Integration Association The Latin American Integration Association / Asociación Latinoamericana de Integración / Associação Latino-Americana de Integração (LAIA / ALADI) is an international and regional scope organization. It was created on 12 August 1980 by t ...
*
Latin American Parliament The Latin American and Caribbean Parliament (''Parlatino'') is a regional, permanent organisation bringing together parliamentarians from Latin America and the Caribbean. It is a consultative assembly made up of national parliamentarians, simil ...
*
Mercosur The Southern Common Market (commonly known by abbreviation ''Mercosur'' in Spanish and ''Mercosul'' in Portuguese) is a South American trade bloc established by the Treaty of Asunción in 1991 and Protocol of Ouro Preto in 1994. Its full me ...
*
Pacific Alliance The Pacific Alliance () is a Latin American trade bloc, formed by Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, which all border the Pacific Ocean. The alliance was formed with the express purpose of improving regional integration and moving toward complet ...
*
Union of South American Nations The Union of South American Nations (USAN), sometimes also referred to as the South American Union, abbreviated in Spanish as UNASUR and in Portuguese as UNASUL, is an intergovernmental regional organization. It was set up by Hugo Chavez to ...


External links


Latin American Economic System – Official Website
Organisations based in the Caribbean Organizations based in Latin America United Nations General Assembly observers {{government-stub