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AMERICAS:
Integration
Remains an Elusive Concept
Analysis by
Diana Cariboni
MONTEVIDEO, (IPS) - If the
fourth Summit of the Americas
left anything clear, it is the
difficulty of reaching agreement
on a concept of integration in
the region.
The Friday and Saturday summit
in Mar del Plata, Argentina took
place in the midst of bilateral
tensions and disputes between
various countries, the
stagnation of proposals for
Latin American integration, and
differences that have emerged
even between countries governed
by like-minded political forces.
The ever-present tension between
Washington and Caracas was on
clear display in the resort town
in eastern Argentina. While
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez
attended the summit, he also
took part in the massive march
to protest the presence of U.S.
President George W. Bush, with
whom he posed later for the
customary "official" photo-op.
The traditionally warm ties
between Argentina and Uruguay,
meanwhile, had been tested by
the most serious diplomatic
incident in years shortly before
the summit, with both countries
calling in their ambassadors for
consultation after a provincial
governor in Argentina criticised
Uruguay’s plans to build two
pulp mills on a river forming
part of the border between the
two countries.
No meeting was held in Mar del
Plata to smooth things over.
Chile and Peru have also found
themselves in the middle of a
new dispute over the demarcation
of their sea border, while Chile
still has no diplomatic ties
with Bolivia, which were broken
off in 1978, and continues to
refuse to discuss a solution to
the demand for an outlet to the
Pacific Ocean by that country,
left landlocked after it was
defeated by Chile in the
1879-1883 War of the Pacific.
While the leftist Chávez evoked
a gallery of historic figures –
from Rosa Luxembourg to Mao
Zedong and Juan Domingo Perón –
in Mar del Plata to lash out at
Bush, Uruguay’s socialist
President Tabaré Vázquez shook
hands with the U.S. leader after
the two governments signed a
bilateral investment protection
treaty.
One definition of integration
refers to the process of
incorporating parts into a
whole. But it seems some "parts"
are always left out in this
hemisphere.
There has been one glaring
absence at the Summits of the
Americas, which began to be held
in 1994 in Miami, Florida: Cuba,
excluded from the Organisation
of American States in 1962 for
ideological reasons that
eventually became political as
well, as democratic governments
became the norm.
The 19th century struggles for
independence from European
colonialism in Latin America
were also marked by dreams of
regional integration.
But the integration envisioned
at the Summits of the Americas,
a hemisphere-wide free trade
zone, would be created in a
complex scenario, given that one
of the parties is the world's
sole superpower, the United
States, while the diverse
countries of Latin America and
the Caribbean are united by one
common denominator:
underdevelopment.
Nevertheless, in the 1990s, the
majority of the nations of Latin
America embraced, with varying
degrees of enthusiasm, the idea
of a Free Trade Area of the
Americas (FTAA), just as they
embraced the neoliberal concepts
of privatisation, the opening up
of trade, and the dismantling of
the state.
In what was clearly a backlash,
the political changes seen in
recent years in South America
gave rise to the election of a
number of "progressive"
governments - to use a label
under which it would be possible
to group the administrations
currently governing Brazil,
Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela
and Chile.
In the meantime, organised civil
society has been growing in size
and influence in this region as
in the rest of the world. Last
week, the "counter-summit" held
in Mar del Plata said "no" to
the FTAA and held marches,
forums and workshops towards
that end.
With Brazil at the head, the
progressive South American
governments are seeking to
revive old concepts of
integration "among ourselves,"
which would leave out the United
States, at least until it is
possible to negotiate on a more
equal footing.
As a launching platform, Brazil
proposed regional integration
based on Mercosur – the Southern
Common Market, made up of
Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and
Uruguay – which has gradually
accepted most of the rest of
South America as associate
members, while the South
American Community of Nations
was founded last year.
But so far, these efforts have
gone no further than meetings,
declarations and documents. The
Mercosur trade bloc has failed
to resolve problems that are
crucial to reaching the most
basic form of trade integration,
and is plagued by continuous
disputes and demands from
different productive sectors in
each member country, while there
has been little progress in
agreeing on dispute settlement
mechanisms.
The two largest partners,
Argentina and Brazil, are
constantly sparring over what
one perceives in the other as a
competitive threat, and the
smaller members, Paraguay and
Uruguay, reap few benefits from
the partnership.
In the meantime, many heads of
state and government skipped the
last South American Community of
Nations summit, held in Brasilia
in late September, and the
participants produced little of
note.
The "idea" of South American
integration remains elusive. But
that has not done anything to
favour the FTAA. Despite the
tensions within Mercosur, the
bloc stood firmly this weekend
by its resistance to the
U.S.-promoted initiative, with
the staunch support of
Venezuela. And for the first
time, a Summit of the Americas
ended without any agreement on
the question.
Chávez went so far as to declare
that the FTAA had been "buried"
in Mar del Plata.
Actually, the funeral had begun
in the special summit held in
January 2004 in Monterrey,
Mexico, when expectations were
slimmed down to an agreement
widely known as "FTAA lite",
which emphasised bilateral
accords and included no clear
timetable.
No FTAA talks have been held for
23 months, although Washington
has continued to push for
bilateral agreements, signing a
free trade deal with five
Central American countries and
the Dominican Republic, and
negotiating a similar pact with
Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.
With the FTAA frozen or buried,
attention has turned to the
World Trade Organisation (WTO).
The Doha Round of multilateral
talks are in the final stretch,
which requires a more in-depth
debate on the protectionist
agricultural policies maintained
by powerful industrialised
nations - one of the clearest
obstacles to progress towards an
Americas-wide free trade zone.
Something else happened in Mar
del Plata: the thousands of
Latin American activists taking
part in the third Peoples’
Summit celebrated the death of
the FTAA and claimed they had
killed it. They also called for
an alternative kind of
integration, one that is still
waiting for its moment to
emerge. |
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