Oil exporter Venezuela drew closer to Cuba last night by establishing subsidiaries of its state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela and a government bank on the island.
Presidents Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, who are seeking to build an alternative to the US-backed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) - from which Cuba is excluded - attended the launchings in an upbeat mood.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his Cuban counterpart Fidel Castro talk during the visit to a Venezuelan trade show in Havana
"We are very pleased. This is a historic day," said Mr Castro (78), dressed in his customary military uniform.
"We have been building this brick by brick, like a house," Mr Chavez added.
The left-wing leaders tasted sardines and chocolate at a fair where Venezuelan businesses sold $412 million in products to Cuba with the help of Venezuelan export credits. The goods - including toys, car tyres, clothes, shoes, sports equipment and building materials - will enter Cuba tariff-free.
Mr Castro declared the FTAA dead in a three-hour speech in which he said the US proposal for a single free-trade bloc of the Americas was an "anexionist plan" aimed at plundering Latin American resources.
"What's left of the FTAA is just pieces, bilateral agreements," Mr Castro said of the hemispheric free-trade plan, which has met with growing resistance in Latin American societies disillusioned with the promises of free-market capitalism.
In the last five years, Venezuela has become a vital economic lifeline for Cuba's cash-starved government, partly filling the void left by the Soviet Union's collapse with vital supplies of oil on very favorable terms.
Cuba is paying for the estimated $1 billion a year oil bill with medical and educational services. Officials said 30,000 Cuban doctors and medical personnel are working in Venezuela.
The partnership is viewed with suspicion in Washington where Bush administration officials see a conspiracy against US interests in Latin America. Venezuela, the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, is a major source of energy for the United States.