Last week, El Salvador´s Minister of Foreign Relations Hugo Martínez along with other representatives of El Salvador's government participated in the founding summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), a new regional bloc to which the United States and Canada were notably not invited to participate. Our friend Ben Dangl wrote a great article "Out of the Backyard: New Latin American and Caribbean Bloc Defies Washington" about the incredible amount of hope the initiative brings to create regional policies to benefit the people of the region and also the challenges it will face. Check it out here, along with this insightful analysis from Alex Main at the Center for Economic Policy Research, "CELAC: Speaking for Latin America and the Caribbean."