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It is an Integration Platform focused on the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean that emphasizes the fight against poverty and social exclusion based on doctrines of the left.

It is concretized as a project of collaboration and political, social and economic complementarity between Latin American and Caribbean countries, initially promoted by Cuba and Venezuela and as counterpart to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (ALCA), promoted by U.S.

The ALBA is based on the creation of mechanisms that take advantage of the cooperation between the different member nations to compensate for the asymmetries between those countries.

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A guerrilla organization whose declared objective is "to end social, political and economic inequalities, US military and capital intervention in Colombia through the establishment of a Marxist-Leninist and Bolivarian state."

It has an essentially rural organization but also has urban cells, especially in cities where poverty and marginalization reign. Their actions consist of guerrilla warfare and conventional regular combat.

They are considered a terrorist group by Colombia, another 31 countries in the world, including the members of the European Union as well as the countries of Chile, Peru, the United States, and Canada. Other governments consider it an internal matter of Colombia, reason why they are described as irregular group or belligerent.

Officially, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, began their activities as a movement in 1966, the year in which Guillermo León Valencia Muñoz, a conservative lawyer, served as president of Colombia.

However, the formation of this guerrilla organization is the fruit of a series of transformations of groups that arose as a consequence of the social struggles between the popular and bourgeois sectors, the abandonment and violation of the rights of the peasants by the State.

The roots of groups called subversive, illegal or illegal, are plunged into agrarian struggles that occurred in the first decades of the last century. The violation of the rights of the peasants by the state motivated them to defend themselves and to do justice on their own, and that was how the formation of so-called self-defense groups took place.

The formation of these agrarian organizations had an important ingredient for its consolidation and to arrive at what are known as guerrillas; At that time, the communist thought raised by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels began to spread throughout Europe and already had its cells scattered throughout Latin America.

Colombia was a key country for this thought to have acceptance, considering that the country had the optimum qualities that were in line with communist philosophy: one of the main was anti-American sentiment, which had intensified after Panama separated from Colombia in 1903 for motivation of the United States.

Other of the fundamental conditions that the country lived and promoted the expansion of this ideology were social inequality, poverty and corruption, motivated in large part by the same State.

Movements with communist thought were gaining more and more adherents, however, within these organizations there were problems that led to the division and creation of other groups. In spite of the internal fragmentation, they did not lose the ideological bases; That of seeking social equality by means of struggle.

On March 29, 2000, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army (FARC-EP) launched the Speech of the Bolivarian Movement for New Colombia, in which Commander Alfonso Cano was the National Chief of movement.

Ovidio Ricardo Palmera Pineda ("Simón Trinidad"), member of the Secretariat and head of finance of the FARC, is captured in Quito, Ecuador on January 2, 2004, and was extradited to the United States on December 31, 2004 and convicted in that country on January 28, 2007 for the kidnapping of three Americans.

On February 10, 2004, Nayibe Rojas Valderrama, alias "Sonia" and who fought for 14 years in the FARC, is arrested and extradited on March 10, 2005 to the United States. On December 15, 2004, Erminso Cabrera Cuevas, alias "Mincho", was captured in the city of Ibagué (southwest).

Giovanni David Santamaria, alias "Ruben" or "Popeye", who participated in the abduction and death of the governor of Antioquia, Juan Guillermo Gaviria, and former Defense Minister Gilberto Echeverri, died in a clash with the army on February 17, 2006.

On June 15, 2007, Milton Sierra ("Jota Jota"), leader of the urban front Manuel Cepeda of the FARC in Cali, was killed and was accused of participating in the takeover of the Valle del Cauca Assembly on April 11, 2002, in which 12 regional deputies were abducted, 11 of which were finalized on 18 June 2007.

The guerrilla Tomás Medina Caracas, alias "The Negro Acacio", head of the front 16, died in a clash with the Army in the region of Vichada (east) on September 1, 2007.

Gustavo Rueda Díaz ("Martin Caballero"), head of the FARC on the Colombian Caribbean coast and who kidnapped former Foreign Minister Fernando Araújo, was killed on October 25, 2007 by the military along with 19 other guerrillas in the Montes Maria (north).

In a Colombian military operation against a FARC camp in Ecuador, Luis Edgar Devia, alias "Raúl Reyes", and 25 others died on March 1, 2008.

"Iván Ríos", alias of Manuel Jesus Muñoz or José Juvenal Velandia, member of the FARC's central command, was assassinated on March 7, 2008 by his security chief, Pedro Pablo Montoya Cortés ("Rojas"), who Test the Army the right hand of the rebel and a computer.

On March 28, 2008, Tirofijo died, 78 years old and considered the "oldest guerrilla in the world".

"Karina", alias of Nelly Ávila Moreno, leader of the front 47 and unique woman in the history of the FARC with charge of commander, was delivered on May 18, 2008 in the region of Antioquia to military troops and to the Administrative Department of Security (DAS).

On May 25, 2008, the FARC leadership confirmed in a video delivered to the Telesur international channel that Pedro Antonio Marín, alias "Manuel Marulanda Vélez" or "Tirofijo", founder and chief of that guerrilla group, died on March 26, from a heart attack. The news had been announced by the then Defense Minister and now President Juan Manuel Santos.

Presidential Ex-President Ingrid Betancourt, three Americans and 11 soldiers and police were released by the Colombian Army on July 2, 2008.

On October 26, 2008, former senator Óscar Tulio Lizcano, accompanied by his jailor, alias "Isaza", fled the guerrilla group that had kidnapped him since August 5, 2000.

On March 17, 2009, the Swedish engineer Roland Larsson, the last foreigner held captive by the FARC, was released.

On March 30, 2010, the military officers Pablo Emilio Moncayo and Josué Daniel Calvo were released, following the mediation of Senator Piedad Córdoba, the Catholic Church, the International Red Cross and several foreign governments.

"Operation Camaleón" culminates on June 13, 2010 with the rescue in the forests of Guaviare (south) of General Luis Mendieta Police, Colonel Enrique Murillo, Colonel William Donato Gomez and Army Sergeant Arbey Delgado Argote, Which remained for some twelve years in the hands of the FARC.

On August 23, 2010, the FARC asked the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) to convene an assembly to present its vision of the armed conflict, but it was rejected by the Government of Juan Manuel Santos.

After several bombings on September 20, 2010, 27 guerrillas died in the department of Putumayo (south), among them alias "Domingo Biojó", important leader and political leader of the South Block of the FARC, and in charge of the actions at the border With Ecuador. It was the first major coup of the government of Juan Manuel Santos, who assumed the presidency on August 7, and also ended the life of María Victoria Hinojosa, alias "Lucero Palmera", responsible for the FARC's Voice of Resistance, And sentimental companion of "Simon Trinidad".

On September 23, 2010, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos confirmed the death of the FARC guerrilla leader, the guerrilla Jorge Briceño - known as the "Mono Jojoy" - in a joint operation of the Army, The Air Force and the Police in the region of La Macarena, in the Colombian department of Meta (center).

On November 4, 2011, a military operation ends with the life of the head of the organization, "Alfonso Cano" and on November 15, 2011, Rodrigo Londoño Echeverri, alias "Timochenko" or "Timoleón Jiménez" Of the FARC.

Following its formation as a guerrilla group in the 1960s, the FARC began to use the dialogues and expectations of the negotiations as part of its now-political tactics.

The efforts to reach an agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), arose from the decade of the eighties, specifically in the government of Belisario Betancourt (1982-1986) and later with the mandates of Virgilio Barco (1986-1990) , César Gaviria (1990-1994), Ernesto Samper (1994-1998), Andrés Pastrana (1998-2002) and Juan Manuel Santos (2012).

The history of these sums two decades. The lack of continuity between leaders and the short-term vision of the governments themselves have been some of the factors that have hampered the progress of a real negotiation.

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It refers to the regions of America where Latin languages are spoken, specifically Spanish, French and Portuguese. The region comprises more than 20 million square kilometers of surface area, corresponding to approximately 13.5% of the surface area of the planet.

Due to its extension, Latin America presents a great geographical and biological diversity. In it are practically all the climates of the world and is home to numerous animal and vegetable species. It also has some of the largest rivers in the world and important food, energy and mineral resources, among which are its oil, copper, lithium and silver deposits.

The term was used for the first time in Paris in 1856 in a conference of the Chilean philosopher Francisco Bilbao and, the same year, by the Colombian writer Jose Maria Torres Caicedo in his poem The Two Americas.

From Mexico to Argentina the Latin American countries form a community of nations, often twinned by the same language, Spanish, common cultural traditions and a convergent historical evolution. But, beyond language, history has forged a common destiny even for those areas that, like Brazil and the Francophone Antilles, speak Latin languages other than Spanish. The American emancipation process spread, without knowing frontiers, by the new world, not only with the ideal of independence from the distant and oppressive European metropolis, but also with the dream of forging a new nation. However, various factors converged in the failure of the Bolivarian ideal of union on the equal footing of all peoples.

First, the geographic diversity of this great continent in which they are present, as a mosaic all the climates, vegetation and landscapes that can be found on our planet. On the other hand, we cannot forget the ethnic plurality and cultural richness that characterized pre-Columbian America, nor the strength that particularisms were taking after the processes of emancipation in each country, especially due to the rise of military regimes that wielded a Staunch nationalism as a standard of legitimacy.

Today, however, on the frontiers of the millennium, the generalization of democratic forms throughout most of the continent, as well as the willingness to confront the challenges posed by an economic system increasingly functioning as a single market at the Global, not to mention the growing sense of continental solidarity, are unmistakable signs that Latin America has to own its future.

The term "Latin America" has a sense of supra-nationality with respect to nation-states. This supra-national sense converges in different common initiatives that tend to the formation of political organisms that articulate it, like the South American Community of Nations currently constituted in UNASUR / UNASUR and in the process of approval at treaty level by the respective congresses. The Latin American Unity is a political-cultural concept extended by Latin America previous to the times of the independence, and that must be distinguished clearly of the Panamericanismo.

Political parties, social sectors, intellectuals and artists from the most diverse extractions have repeatedly expressed their adhesion to the most diverse forms of Latin American unity, from supranational organizations such as the Latin American Integration Association (ALADI) to instances of political coordination such as the Permanent Conference of Political Parties of Latin America (COPPAL), cultural as the Union of Universities of Latin America and the Caribbean (UDUAL) or sectoral that take the form of Latin American unions.

The historical and cultural similarities of the Latin American peoples have led to the creation of the idea of Latin America as a common great homeland. The plan for the regularization of immigrants from frontier countries initiated by Argentina in 2006 is named, precisely, Patria Grande.

In February 2010, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) was born without the presence of the United States or Canada, as the realization of a long-cherished dream.

Derived from the generic idea of Latin American unity, political projects and instances of integration of the Latin American nations have been developed. These projects have taken shape mainly in ALADI, but also in various projects of physical, logistic and cultural integration and have been expressed in a particular theoretical body about the integration process.

In the context of Latin American integration, more or less successful experiences of subregional integration, such as Mercosur, the Andean Community, the Central American Integration System (SICA) and the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of America (ALBA) have also been developed, Which has led to the theory of Latin American integration to support different models of interrelation between subregional, Latin American and continental integration processes.

In North America, Mexico is the only Latin American member of NAFTA and is an observer in the three main Latin American groups in Central and South America.

In recent years, especially in the last decade, the leaders of Latin American countries have taken firm steps and have spoken out in favor of acceleration in regional integration.

The majority of the population in Latin America is made up of young people under the age of 25. Although the average life expectancy varies between 70 and 80 years of age in most countries, Argentina, Chile, Cuba and Uruguay are exceptions, including also the Canadian province of Quebec and the French overseas territory of Saint Pierre and Miquelon , where adults outnumber the youth population.

Aging is progressive in other countries depending on the improvement of economic conditions. This high rate of youth population is due to the high birth rate due to early marriage and the low diffusion of contraceptive methods.

Latin America is one of the most urbanized areas in the world, where about 78% of the population live in urban contexts, particularly in countries such as Argentina, Uruguay and Chile, with about 90% of the urban population.

However, it is important to consider that the criteria for determining the urban area differ from one country to another, for example, while in Venezuela and Mexico it is considered urban to any agglomeration of population with 2,500 or more inhabitants, in countries such as Argentina, Colombia or Bolivia is considered an urban population of 2,000 inhabitants; In Ecuador and Costa Rica, administrative centers in the provinces and cantons are considered urban, and in agglomerations of 1,000 inhabitants, provided they have urban characteristics such as electricity and commerce.

The urban population of Latin America is characterized by large metropolitan areas such as São Paulo, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Bogotá, Lima, and Santiago, Chile, which have experienced large migratory flows from rural areas and From the smaller cities, at least since the beginning of the 20th century. In contrast, in some countries, such as Guatemala, Honduras or Haiti, more than half of the population is rural.

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It is an organization for consultation, cooperation and concerted action, with a current focus on trade, transport, sustainable tourism and natural disasters, besides a great interest in the preservation of the Caribbean Sea, seen as the main patrimony of the countries of that extensive zone. The Association of Caribbean States (ACS) was formed on July 24th, 1994 in Cartagena de Indias (Colombia) and took office on August 17th of the following year at the first summit of heads of State and Government, based in Trinidad and Tobago.

The ACS is formed by a large number of developing countries - 25 full members and 3 associate members - mostly located in the Caribbean Basin or embedded within the geopolitical dynamics of the region. These countries demonstrate a high degree of heterogeneity in terms of their main geographical, demographic and economic indicators. In addition, it possesses an important cultural baggage encompassing countries of Castilian, French, English and Dutch speaking.

The full members of the ACS are: Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, St. Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela.

Associate members include: Anguilla, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Montserrat, Turks and Caicos Islands, Netherlands Antilles, Aruba, Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana and Bermuda.

The ACS Observer Countries are Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, South Korea, Ecuador, Egypt, Spain, Finland, India, Italy, Morocco, Peru, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine.

All ACS countries are members of the World Trade Organization and therefore subject to the liberalization commitments made in the Uruguay Round.

Purpose and functions

The Association is a consultative, concerted and cooperative organization whose purpose is to identify and promote the implementation of policies and programs aimed at:
Strengthen, use and develop the collective capacities of the Caribbean to achieve sustained cultural, economic, social, scientific and technological development;
Develop the potential of the Caribbean Sea through interaction between the state members with third parties;
To promote an extended economic space for trade and investment that offers opportunities for cooperation and concertation, and to increase the benefits to the peoples of the Caribbean of resources and assets of the region, including the Caribbean Sea;
To establish, consolidate and expand, as appropriate, institutional structures and cooperation agreements that respond to the diversity of cultural identities, development requirements and regulatory systems in the region.

The Association will gradually and progressively promote among its members the following activities:

the economic integration, including trade liberalization, investment, transport and other related areas;
the discussion of common interest matters with a view to facilitating the active and coordinated the participation of the region in multilateral forums;
the formulation and implementation of policies and programs for cooperation;
the preservation of the environment and the conservation of the natural resources of the region, in particular the Caribbean Sea;
the strengthening of friendly relations between the peoples and governments of the Caribbean;
the consultation and cooperation in other areas to be agreed.

Activities

to work in the sustainable tourism area of the Caribbean.
to facilitate language training.
to work on the Caribbean Sea initiative.
to coordinate an annual business forum of the Caribbean Sea
to defend interests and treatment for small economies.
To update building codes.
To strengthen disaster agencies.

General Secretariat of the ACS

It keeps a daily interaction with the state members, the Social Actors, the Founding Observatory Organizations (CARICOM General Secretariat, Latina American Economic System (SELA), Central American Economic Integration System (SICA), Permanent Secretariat of the General Treaty on Central American Economic Integration ( SIECA), the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the Caribbean Tourism Organization (OTC), regional and international organizations, donor agencies and countries, on activities, meetings and fund-raising Related to the Action Plan.

It executes the Program of Work and the Budget Program, performs the Strategic Planning and promotes the ACS.

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Formerly named City of Havana, it is the present capital city of the Republic of Cuba and at the same time one of the fifteen Cuban provinces. Havana is the most crowed city in Cuba and the entire Caribbean island, with a population of more than two million people. The territory of the capital occupies the sixteenth place in extension between the provinces, with 726,75 square kilometers, representing 0.7 percent of the total surface of the country.

Founded in the spring of 1514, further south, under the name San Cristóbal de La Habana, Havana is the main center of political, economic and socio-cultural life of the nation being the headquarters of the government offices and the Cuban Communist Party , As well as the main cultural and scientific institutions of the country.

In 1982, its Historic Center was declared Patrimony of the Humanity by the UNESCO.

According to a law passed in August 2010 by the National Assembly of Cuba, that province retakes the name of Havana, officially eliminating the name of "City", unnecessary after the disappearance of the homonymous province, approved by that same law . The city is divided administratively into 15 municipalities.

The tradition recognizes November 16th, 1519 as the date of foundation, when the Spanish conqueror Diego Velázquez - in name of the kings of Spain - established its third and definitive settlement, the present one.

Raised from an original population nucleus, Havana is the fusion of dissimilar localities. According to data provided by the National Bureau of Statistics (ONE), the province has 49 neighborhoods, 329 distributions and 36 population settlements, for a total of 414 space units or officially recognized localities.

Havana was elected on December 7, 2014 in Dubai, under the initiative New7WondersCities, as one of the seven wonder cities in the world to represent the global diversity of urban society.

The area of the former province of Ciudad de La Habana is located in the western part of the Republic of Cuba between latitudes 2 ° 58 ', 23 ° 10' North latitude and 82 ° 30 ', 82 ° 06' West longitude. It was the smallest of the provinces of Cuba although it constituted the most populated besides possessing the highest indexes of the whole country of density per square kilometer. It is connected to the north with the Strait of Florida, to the east and part of the south with the province of Artemisa and to the southwest and west with the province of Mayabeque.

Located in the area of the Havana-Matanzas Plain, its entire coastline is on the coast, where the bay of Havana is located; to the east are its beaches. Its hydrography is represented by the rivers Almendares, Martín Pérez, Quibú, among others and the reservoirs Bacuranao and Embalse Army Rebelde. Non-urbanized soils are predominant and they are reddish brown fersialitic and red ferralitic, in some coastal sectors there are manifestations of naked carso.

In the same historical area of the city, within the territories of the municipalities of Centro Habana, Habana Vieja, Regla, Guanabacoa and Habana del Este, lies Havana Bay, one of the most important ports of the Caribbean area, former center of organization of the goods that were sent to colonial Spain from the Caribbean colonies. Along its northern coast are located beaches of great beauty, standing out the Playas del Este located in the localities Guanabo, Bacuranao and Santa Maria del Mar in the municipality of Havana. In the south it has some limestone elevations in zones like Guanabacoa, San Miguel del Padrón, Arroyo Naranjo and Boyeros.

The City of Havana meets the definition of megapolis, according to data from the 2002 Census, the province had 2 201 610 people and in 2008 estimates, approximately 2 148 132 million, which is more than 20% of the population of the Republic which equates to a population density of 2 963.8 inhabitants per square kilometer. Currently two municipalities are considered super-populated in terms of absolute population, such as Diez de Octubre and Arroyo Naranjo, so the southern part of the city is home to the largest population. While the coastal municipality of Centro Habana encompasses the highest population density per square kilometer, according to data from the government of that municipality, there are 65 565.2 people per square kilometer, reason why in only 3.42 square kilometers live more than 160 Thousand inhabitants. In addition to these somewhat chilling data, the province has a floating population of over half a million people who, for different reasons, visit or live in it temporarily, which complicates the metropolitan demographic spectrum.

The autochthonous population is higher than the immigrant, more than 2/3: 1 501 368 people, for 68.45%, although residents from other places constitute an important figure: 702 242 inhabitants, for a 31.55 %. Of these, 47.43% come from the eastern region, 25.99 from the central and 25.78% from the western provinces.

Havana is the largest city in the Cuban context and in the Caribbean island area. As its metropolitan environment exceeds two million people and although it does not reach the level of "megacities" such as New York, Tokyo or Mexico City, which exceed ten million and some to twenty, in the Antilles there is no city higher populated than it and also because its dimensions: this capital city with its metropolitan environment although it is only the fourth part of the Isla de la Juventud, is superior in extension to the islands of Lesser Antilles than are constituent nations, with the exception of Trinidad and Tobago, Guadeloupe and Martinique, and even tiny states of the old continent are smaller than this city: Andorra, Luxembourg, San Marino, Vatican and Monaco. Havana is a big city.

Political-administrative organization

The Law 1304 of July 3, 1976, approved by the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Cuba, abolished the political-administrative division that existed, 6 provinces, 68 regions and 407 municipalities and sectional, and established a new one with 14 provinces and 169 municipalities. Havana was recognized then as one of the fourteen provinces of the country.

When we approach the theme of the capital, then we cannot homologate the province of Havana with the capital of the nation, which is Havana. Certainly this city is called the same as the province that is neighboring: Havana.

The present capital city - whose genesis is in the town of San Cristobal de La Habana, settled for the third and final occasion near the Bay of Havana, and that in its uncontrolled growth towards the west, south and east, other settlements were annexed between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries, constitutes a large metropolitan urban nucleus. Some of the territories that integrate it had reached titles of city or town: Marianao, Guanabacoa, Regla. Others were typified as villages, villages or hamlets, remaining united to the city by means of new localities called neighborhoods, distributions or communities.

The Province of Havana is currently constituted by 15 municipalities:

Havana Vieja
Centro Habana
Plaza de la Revolución
Playa
Marianao
10 de Octubre
Cerro
Regla
San Miguel
Cotorro
Arroyo Naranjo
Guanabacoa
Boyeros
Habana del Este
La Lisa

They are interconnected by bus, as well as taxis, trains, etc. Each municipality has peculiarities for example: in Plaza this is the seat of government and fundamental ministries, besides being the financial district of the city, Playa is the embassy area.

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It is one of the 11 municipalities of Mayabeque province, characterized by being an agricultural municipality per excellence but in the last decade of the 1990s there is a modest rise of industrial activity.