Unlike other parts of the world, Latin America is free of war. However, it is a region plagued by inequality, crime, corruption, drug trafficking and social unrest. Political stability and strong democratic institutions are the exception rather than the rule.
South America, in particular, seems to never stop moving from one extreme to the other, moving from the political left to the right and back again, without attending to the social and economic demands responsible for moving the pendulum
This instability has made it difficult for the continent to form an influential bloc, despite estimates that it collectively represents the world’s fifth-largest economy.
Earlier this week, the 12 South American countries, represented by 11 presidents and Peru’s prime minister, met in Brasilia to strike another blow at the elusive goal of continental integration. Brazil’s president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, led the effort.
“What he is trying to achieve is the unity of South America,” Lula’s chief adviser, former foreign minister Celso Amorim, told me.
“I think it’s always been important, but now it’s even more important in a world that is progressively divided into blocs. I think that in a world like this, even a country like Brazil, which is very populated and has a huge economy, is not big enough on its own.”
But while Lula is still considered the most influential leader in the region, many at Tuesday’s summit were unwilling to take his advice.
Lula had hoped to revive UNASUR, the South American bloc he had helped create 15 years earlier during his first two terms as president. But ideological disputes ended up convincing more than half of the member countries to leave the organization.
“It’s better not to start from scratch,” Lula said at this week’s summit, while presenting the UNASUR convocation.
But he was unable to convince all his colleagues who, in the end, chose to assemble a group with members from each country to work on a plan for regional integration over the next 120 days.
Lula had called on South American leaders to put aside their ideological differences and focus on common interests, including economic growth, energy production and environmental protection.
But his decision to host Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro the day before the summit drew open criticism. In his statements, Lula had dismissed the image of an “anti-democratic” Venezuela as a “narrative” promoted by Western countries and the media.
But Chilean President Gabriel Boric said that, as a leftist president, he did not agree.
“It is not a narrative construction. It’s a reality. It’s serious,” Boric said. He added that respect for human rights was “basic and important” for Chile, regardless of the ideology of those who violate them.
Milestone for Maduro
For President Maduro, the meeting was an important milestone. For years, he had been isolated from his fellow South Americans — Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Peru and Argentina, for example — after many chose not to recognize his re-election in 2018 and instead opted to support an opposition government.
During hours of closed-door meetings at this week’s summit, Maduro has faced direct criticism of his human rights record from at least two presidents, but he did not take the gauntlet.
“We have no problem sitting down to talk with any political force or president in a respectful and tolerant dialogue of unity in diversity. This is what we had here,” Maduro said as the meeting ended.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro, his Argentinian counterpart Alberto Fernández and Chile’s Boric — all left-wing figures — were among the majority who agreed that at no time in history has South America shown such potential economic potential .
It is home to the largest reserves of copper and the highly sought-after lithium used in rechargeable batteries. The region also has the potential to become the largest producer of green hydrogen and other sustainable energy sources. And it has huge reserves of fresh water, rainforests and an increasingly, if not enough, educated population.
But South America’s economic and political disparities have thwarted decades of attempts to create regional unions. UNASUR was not the only block that was discovered. MERCOSUR, a union of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, has also struggled amid internal disputes.
What is needed is more pragmatism, according to some experts. And the current immigration crisis in South America could help spur it.
More than seven million Venezuelans have left their homeland since 2015, according to the United Nations. If countries like Chile, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia want to repatriate undocumented Venezuelans and institute an orderly system of legal migration, some observers believe they will need Maduro’s cooperation.
Boric referred to cooperation with Venezuela to resolve the crisis on the Chilean-Peruvian border.
“Together, with the governments of Peru and Venezuela, through a dialogue with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Venezuela, we were able to resolve this crisis and allow a Venezuelan plane to return the citizens of that country to their homeland,” he said Boric.
Following the EU model?
Amorim, an adviser to Lula, pointed to the European Union as a model of how South American nations can proceed to build a new bloc, even with a diversity of political opinions.
“You have several political positions in Europe. You have centre-right governments. You have governments that you could say are even more right than the centre-right. And you have the centre-left governments,” Amorim said. “And yet, at least on some issues, they are able to speak, if not with one voice, at least in a coherent way.”
Lula’s dream of a united South America, however, is still a long way from success. But politicians like Amorim see hope in the example of Europe. The 12 countries of South America are, after all, much more similar culturally and linguistically than the members of the European Union.
“Of course there will be different opinions,” Amorim said of a possible South American bloc. “But we have common interests in many aspects. We must work for our interests in a unified way. Because that way we have more strength.”
There is much to gain and no time to lose, Lula explained at the summit, as he referred to South America’s long history of being under the shadow of powerful economic and political powers, which dates back in the early days of colonialism.
“We cannot wait another 500 years on the sidelines,” he warned.
