Lula brings South American presidents together to ‘revive commitment to regional integration’

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12 leaders of the region meet in Brasilia in ‘a more challenging context than it was in the past’

Invited by Lula, presidents of South American countries meet this Tuesday (30) in Brasília to discuss cooperation and regional integration – Ricardo Stuckert

All 12 countries of South America are meeting in Brasília this Tuesday (30) in a meeting invited by the Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers’ Party). With that, Lula resumes efforts to create spaces and possible mechanisms to strengthen integration in the region, hampered in the recent past by ideological polarizations and breakdowns in diplomatic relations.

Lula receives presidents Alberto Fernández (Argentina), Luís Arce (Bolivia), Gabriel Boric (Chile), Gustavo Petro (Colombia), Guillermo Lasso (Ecuador), Irfaan Ali (Guyana), Mário Abdo Benítez (Paraguay), Chan Santokhi ( Suriname), Luís Lacalle Pou (Uruguay) and Nicolás Maduro (Venezuela) for a meeting at the Itamaraty Palace, in Brasília. The only absent representative is Dina Boluarte (Peru), who faces constitutional impediments and will be represented by the president of the Council of Ministers, Alberto Otárola.

It is necessary to act fast

Brazil wants to resume the integration process quickly to take advantage of the favorable situation with the fact that there is a significant number of presidents from the progressive field in the region, such as Lula, Alberto Fernández, Luís Arce and Gabriel Boric. In the view of the Brazilian government, who opted to interrupt the integration process – and even ideologized the issue – was the right-wing, by dismantling the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) and creating the Forum for the Progress of South America (Prosul), founded in 2019, during the government of Jair Bolsonaro.

“In Brazil, a denialist government attacked the rights of its own population, broke with the principles that govern our foreign policy and closed our doors to historical partners. Our country opted for isolation from the world and isolation from its own neighbors,” Lula said at the opening of the event.

For the Brazilian president, “this posture was decisive for the country’s detachment from the great themes that marked the daily lives of our neighbors. In the region, we let ideologies divide us and interrupt the integration effort. We abandoned dialogue channels and cooperation mechanisms and, with that, we all lost.”

Today, according to the assessment of the Brazilian government, there is a self-criticism in countries that were recently governed by the right that integration has to be perennial, persisting through political cycles. This is because socioeconomic conditions have worsened, evidencing the losses of not having a consistent integration mechanism. Therefore, the conditions would now be in place to institutionalize this process of deepening integration, with a view to forming a South American identity.

Created in 2008, at a time when the left was on the rise in the region, Unasur had 12 countries as members. The alliance frayed as the ideological pendulum swung more to the right a decade later. Between 2018 and 2019, Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Paraguay left the bloc. Last month, however, Lula signed a decree officializing Brazil’s return to the organization.

Brazil returned to Unasur because it considers it to be the best-finished forum for integration, with convergence of interests, elaborated from a lot of technical and programmatic work. But the summit called by Lula will serve to hear the opinion of the five countries of the subcontinent that are outside: Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, Colombia and Ecuador.

“The idea is to resume dialogue and cooperation with South American countries. Identify common denominators. The region has capacities that will be key in the future of humanity, such as natural resources, water, minerals and areas for food production. A concrete cooperation agenda can be started immediately,” said Ambassador Gisela Figueiredo Padovan, Secretary for Latin America and the Caribbean at the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, during the preview of the meeting at Itamaraty.

Crisis everywhere

The summit meeting takes place at a time of strong regional instability. Peruvian Dina Boluarte is involved in an impeachment process and will not be able to be in Brasilia. In Ecuador, Guillermo Lasso also underwent an impeachment attempt, to which he reacted by decreeing the dissolution of Parliament and bringing forward elections.

In Colombia, Gustavo Petro a few weeks ago denounced that opponents were plotting a coup against him. In Chile, there is a strong clash over the drafting of the new Constitution, a process that started driven by popular movements and ended up “kidnapped” by the far-right.

In Argentina, the economic crisis reaches dramatic proportions, with a lack of international currencies, and there are presidential elections on the horizon, permeated by uncertainty about who will be the names in dispute. These are situations that can reinforce the Brazilian point of view that integration is the best way to strengthen the countries in the region. Now, it remains to be seen how this point of view will reverberate during the summit.

Edited by: Nicolau Soares e Flávia Chacon