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 This month's controversial knife-edge win for the conservative Partido de Acción Nacional candidate, Filipe Calderon, in the Mexican elections is yet another sign that two political spheres exist in Latin America. In Mexico, Central America and Colombia, Washington's hegemony remains strong and the region's politics align accordingly. Meanwhile, in South America increasing autonomy is leading to the formation of a political community based loosely around a Brazilian-Argentinean axis.
Formed in 1991, Mercosur (the Southern Common Market) is one of two long-standing integration projects on the sub-continent. It now has five permanent members - Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and, as from this month, Venezuela - and represents 75% of South America's GDP. The other bloc, the Andean Community, includes Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia with Venezuela in the process of leaving in protest at Bogotá and Lima signing bilateral free trade agreements with Washington. A Brazilian plan to fuse Mercosur and the Andean community, to form the Community of South American Nations, has yet to get off the ground. A third group, the ALBA - Alternativa Bolivariana para las Americas - was launched by Venezuela and Cuba in 2005, with Bolivia joining earlier this year. This is not technically a South American project as its stated aim is to unify the whole of Latin America and the Caribbean in opposition to Washington's proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas. While the interchange of Cuban medics for Venezuelan oil is undeniable attractive, most conventional governments are put off the ALBA by the pervasive revolutionary and anti-American rhetoric. The limited appeal of the ALBA and the apparent crumbling of the Andean Community leaves Mercosur as the only serious framework for South American integration. But there is dispute as to how solid Mercosur is. While advocates see a nascent common market and political alliance, most western analysts describe Mercosur as, at best, an imperfect customs union and free trade zone. Several internal disputes since the last presidential summit in Montevideo, last December, have not helped the bloc's image. Argentina and Uruguay have been involved in a protracted quarrel over the construction of two pulp mills in the Uruguayan city of Fray Bentos on the Uruguay River which separates the two countries. Argentina - claiming that the mills will pollute the common waterway and damage the area's tourism and agriculture - has filed against Uruguay in the international court of justice in The Hague. A second front opened up on May 1, when the Bolivian President, Evo Morales, nationalized the country's gas reserves to the detriment of Brazil's Petrobras which controlled around 40% of Bolivia's gas fields. The technical and financial support lent to Morales by Venezuela's Hugo Chavez angered many Brazilians and led to charges in the region's conservative press that Chavez was challenging Brazil's regional leadership. Indeed, press coverage of Mercosur has become almost universally negative, particularly since Venezuela's membership was confirmed. In a widely circulated newspaper column that reflected the dominant line, the Peruvian author and political commentator Mario Vargas Llosa wrote: "Chavez, having scuppered the Andean Community, is now set to wreak Mercosur". Somos Mercosur Despite such dire predictions there is a positive mood ahead of today's summit which marks the handover of Mercosur's six month rotating presidency from Buenos Aires to Brasília. Relations between the senior partners, Brazil and Argentina, are said to be in excellent shape with Argentina's President Kirchner openly backing Lula da Silva's re-election in Brazil next October, and both men intent on deepening the integration process. All the full member states and most of the associate members - Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia - have confirmed their leaders' attendance. Fidel Castro is also making a guest appearance. Points on the agenda include: fixing a common position in the WTO's Doha round negotiations; the formal launch of a Mercosur parliament; the adoption of a new Common Customs Code; the finalization of two, somewhat controversial, free trade agreement with Cuba and Israel; and Venezuela's ascension with full voting rights by 2010. An official parallel summit - Meeting for a Social and Productive Mercosur - will be held by Somos Mercosur (we are Mercosur) an umbrella coalition of unions, small businesses, farmers, universities and NGOs, whose aim is to promote citizen participation in the integration project. So is South American integration doomed, as much of the press reports? Or is there steady progress towards wider and deeper union, as the agenda of the Cordoba summit suggests? I put these questions to one of Brazil's leading historians and political scientists, Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira. Author of over twenty books, Moniz Bandeira was named Brazilian intellectual of the year, 2005, for his book Formação do Império Americano - Da Guerra contra a Espanha à Guerra no Iraque (Formation of the American Empire - From the War Against Spain to the War in Iraq). He is widely regarded as a foremost authority on Brazilian and South American diplomatic relations. I first asked whether Venezuela's withdrawal from the Andean Community was a step forwards or backwards on the path to regional union. "I think it's a positive move. The free trade treaties Colombia and Peru are signing with the US basically annul the bloc," replied the seventy year old professor. "Furthermore, Venezuela's admittance into Mercosur is strategically important due to its position between the Amazon basin and the Caribbean and its huge reserves of oil and gas. Any viable integration project must revolve around Brazil and Argentina, that's to say, Mercosur." But wasn't there a risk that the outspoken Hugo Chavez, and his apparent challenge to Lula da Silva's authority, will be a destabilizing factor within the bloc? "There is no rivalry between Lula and Chávez," was the categorical reply. "Brazil is territorially, economically, industrially, and demographically the major power in the region. Chávez can conduct his own foreign policy and lead the more radical left, that's fine. Lula doesn't need to exert authority; Brazil's regional leadership is a fact due to her size and power." A South American Maastricht? Describing western media representation of South America as often "distorted, stereotypical and biased", Moniz Bandeira says the coverage given to the Uruguay-Argentina feud and the hullabaloo over Bolivia's gas nationalization has been disproportionate. "The problems over the pulp mills in Uruguay and the nationalization of Bolivia's gas are not going to cause war," he says wearily. "On the contrary, the two disputes are being resolved diplomatically (...). The media, both nationally and internationally, likes these kinds of conflicts because they make good headlines, sell newspapers and boost television ratings." Okay, I couldn't argue with that, but wasn't he being unduly sanguine about Mercosur's prospects? The Uruguay and Bolivian issues aside, the bloc shows little signs of moving towards macroeconomic convergence and infra-bloc trade has actually fallen following the 2001 Argentinean crisis. I reminded the professor of an interview he gave in 2004 when he said that Mercosur was moving towards a common currency and the free movement of goods, services and labor within a supranational framework. He had concluded saying: "We will get to our own Maastricht treaty, and soon." Given all the problems facing Mercosur today, wasn't this overly optimistic? "It's not about optimism," Moniz Bandeira replied. "Integration is a historic process and it will not be achieved quickly or easily. Look at the process of European unification which began in 1948/49. Look how many decades it took to get to Maastricht. "Look at all the fights there were between France and Germany; the empty chair crisis in the 60s; the row over Iraq; the constitutional crisis; the Kosovo war; the Basque and Northern Ireland questions; and to this day countries like Britain, Denmark and Sweden still haven't joined the common currency. "To understand contemporary South America, and above all the moves towards greater union, you have to study the region's historic processes in perspective and not just focus on the day to day politics," he concluded. I conceded the point; the European integration process has rarely been smooth or predictable. But then Europe never had the convergence of progressive governments that appears to exist in South America today. "The emergence of progressive governments in South America was inevitable after the failure of the Washington Consensus," says the professor. "But the region is not uniform and there are diverse, and often contradictory, interests. Many of the region's leaders don't have a strategic vision and often follow their short term interests and pamper their own national interest groups." Integrating a region with dire income inequality, poor internal infrastructure, widespread corruption and shaky political institutions, is clearly a challenge. But Moniz Bandeira is confident that the region's leading power, Brazil, remains focused on greater union as a strategic objective. "The Itamaraty (Brazil's foreign office) is very aware of the need to form a Community of South American Nations, and follow a similar path to that of the EU," he says. "It's not about transforming Brazil, it's about transforming the whole of South America into a political and economic world power." Justin Vogler works as a freelance journalist in Chile. He writes regularly in the Santiago Times. He can be reached at j.vogler@yahoo.co.uk.
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Just read what Brazil is saying about the 54 cents of taxes the U.S. is charging for Brazilian ethanol. This represents only 13,5 cents per liter but Brazil is trying tol hjave the USA cancels this tax, of course not providing something else in return for reciprocity !
Look at Morales, the leftist and anti "neo liberalist" who wants to talk to the USA because Bolivia has goods to sell !!!!
The sad reality is that all S.A.countries are anti neo liberalists ONLY on their imports, but wishes that the neo liberalists be even more neo liberalists when it concerns Their exports. This is also exactly what is happening at the WTO !!!!
And it is EVEN MORE STRANGE BECAUSE ALL S.A.countries ALREADY HAVE A HUGE TRADE SURPLUS WITH EVERY DEVELOPED NATIONS !!!!!!
BUT.....THIS IS NOT ENOUGH FOR THEM ! THEY EXPECT DEVELOPED NATIONS TO HAVE EVEN LARGER AND LARGER TRADE DEFICITS. They expect developed nations to make the investments for industries to be created in their developping nations so that they could export to the developed nations !!!!! At no cost....of course, and no reciprocity....but just more critics !!!!
Brazil is in negotiation already for years with the EU for a FTA with them, but guess what they want ! One way trade is on their mind.
A joke and full of lies those who pretend to be against a FTA or the FTAA !!!
They are simply crooks using populist arguments.