Unification remains elusive at Mercosur
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil, Jan. 20, 2007
Unification Remains Elusive at Mercosur
South American unification elusive at summit; Chavez threatens to ’decontaminate’ trade bloc
By MICHAEL ASTOR Associated Press Writer
South American leaders agree continentwide integration is a worthy goal. Now, if they could only agree on how to get there.
Discord at the two-day Mercosur summit that ended Friday left many to wonder about the future of a trade bloc that has never lived up to its promise of integrating much of South America into an influential body like the European Union.
Brazil’s business-friendly President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva closed the summit proclaiming that "there has never been such a promising political climate for the integration of Mercosur."
But Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela — Mercosur’s newest member — stole the show from the moment he arrived by threatening to "decontaminate" the trade bloc of its free-market impulses.
Bolivia’s President Evo Morales, another ardent leftist, joined his Venezuelan ally in saying Mercosur needs "profound reforms" — even while requesting full membership into the bloc.
The Southern Cone Common Market, or Mercosur, unites some 250 million people with a gross domestic product of $1 trillion, or about 76 percent of the total for South America.
Made up of Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela, the trade bloc has long suffered from internal bickering over matters as mundane as trade in pork and appliances.
But this time, leaders such as Chavez and Silva vowed to reform and expand Mercosur so it can finally come through on promises to ease a long-standing South American divide between rich and poor.
"Our union is necessary, not even the strongest among us will be capable of resolving alone the contradictions that our countries are immersed in," Silva said.
While the Brazilian hosts declared the meeting a success for attracting an impressive array of leaders from outside the bloc — 11 of the continent’s 12 presidents attended — the nonmembers mostly served to heighten the confusion.
Morales went on to criticize Brazil — home to the continent’s largest economy — for paying too little for Bolivian natural gas.
He also attacked Colombia for accepting anti-drug aid from the United States, generating a stern response from Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.
The leaders of Paraguay and Uruguay — Mercosur’s smallest economies — chafed at what they said was a patronizing attitude on the part of Argentina and Brazil, even though one of the few concrete measures to emerge from the meeting included $50 million in loans to help them boost their economies.
None of this, however, seemed to bother the Brazilians.
Silva pointed out that trade among the Mercosur nations has grown to $30 billion in 2006 from $4 billion in 1990, the year before the bloc was formed.
The Brazilian leader also spoke of expansion, welcoming his "Bolivian brothers" as a future full member along with any other South American nation that wants to join. Bolivia is an associate member of Mercosur.
Cheered like a rock star wherever he went, Chavez lashed out against multinational corporations he said are actively seeking to foster South America’s "disintegration."
Building on new promises this month to nationalize Venezuela’s telecommunications and electricity sectors, Chavez advocated greater state participation in the region’s economy as the best solution to the continent’s woes.
The bloc’s expansion to include nations ruled from the far left has caused many analysts to question whether Mercosur is losing its identity as a trade bloc and turning into a political organization.
"Mercosur already was in very serious trouble," said Michael Shifter, a Latin America analyst at the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington. "It just seems to be in great danger of turning into a political forum for bashing the market economy."
Brazil’s Foreign Minister Celso Amorim insisted that Mercosur has always been a political forum, albeit one that used trade to foster regional integration. As for the infighting, Amorim downplayed the differences during a news conference after the summit.
"It would be better if Mercosur had already developed more," Amorim said. "It would be better if we had a policy of competition like the European Union. But the European Union is already established, we’ve only had 10 or 15 years to build ourselves up."
