Venezuelan President, Nicolas Maduro, makes a statement in Havana upon his arrival. December 13, 2021. ACN Photo.

Havana, December 13 (RHC)-- Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro arrived in Cuba on Monday to participate in the 20th Summit of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-People's Trade Agreement (ALBA-TCP).

Cuba's Minister of Higher Education, José Ramón Saborido, received the President at José Martí International Airport, where representatives of nine other nations belonging to the regional mechanism arrived in Havana.

The Head of State recalled that on a day like today, 27 years ago, leader Hugo Chavez arrived for the first time in the Caribbean nation, where then-President Fidel Castro received him.

The founders of ALBA-TCP "embraced each other then and created an era of changes", said Maduro about the emergence of the regional mechanism ten years later, on December 14, 2004.

Regarding this meeting, the Venezuelan president affirmed that it is a Summit of solidarity and brotherhood, an alliance for peace and integration, to build the new world from diversity.

He also acknowledged that in 2021 the countries of the bloc have managed to curb the crisis of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In that sense, he remarked that the event would allow discussing an economic, social, and political plan, a new post-pandemic world.

"Here we are standing, whole and victorious! We are very happy 27 years later, carrying the flag of Bolivar, Marti, Fidel, and Chavez", he concluded.

This XX Summit comes with challenges for the member countries, facing an unjust and unequal world economic order, powers that oppose the yearnings of an independent and integrated Latin America, and the environmental crisis, according to Josefina Vidal, Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs of Cuba.

Among the topics on the agenda of Tuesday's event will be integration, solidarity and political coordination, actions for the 2022 period, and strategies to confront interference in the internal affairs of the nations of the bloc.