Latin America coming of age?: German Chancellor Angela Merkel with
Brazil Prime Minister DilmaRousseff at a summit meeting between the
European Union and the Community of Latin American States, Jan. 26.
CELAC and the E.U.: Sarcasm
in the Press and Winds of Change (El Mostrador,
Chile)
"Let us
get used to the idea that ... it is possible to create wide-ranging hemispheric
forums without the United States and Canada. ... Despite all
the sarcasm in the press, CELAC is quite clearly not
doing such a bad job, particularly when countries like the United States, Japan
and China all call for observer status at its summits. Requests that have ultimately
been rejected, and which demonstrate just how glaring are the winds of change since
the traditionally-weak countries dared to challenge the powerful."
A protester holds a sign with Venezuela President Chavez during a march for the 'People's Summit,' organized by social groups during the second summit of the Community of Latin American, Caribbean States in Santiago, Jan 25. The sign says, 'Keep up together, Keep up the revolution.'
Yes, it's true, no summit will change the world. ... but there is nothing bad about leaders of
different countries holding face-to-face meetings where they can say what needs
to be said beyond the bounds of protocol and good manners.
Santiago de Chile just hosted not one, but two summits. The
second summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (the first
was in Caracas in December 2011) and the CELAC-E.U.
summit, where Europe, which is so far the biggest foreign investor in the
region albeit closely followed by China, sat at the table with the Latin
American and Caribbean Community.
These types of meetings come in for a mixture of disdain and
mockery from media like the Financial
Times, which didn't miss the chance to poke fun at the expense of inconsistencies
which, in the opinion of that newspaper, were present in almost all agenda
items discussed at the two summit meetings.
In an editorial entitled Silly
in Chile, the FT mocked the
fact that Raul Castro was named the group's president pro-tempore, which, the
newspaper noted, "would be comical if it wasn't so tragic," since
Cuba is certainly not the image of a classical-style liberal democracy.
Another reading or perspective on the same subject is offered
by European political leaders like Angela Merkel or Mariano Rajoy,
who would surely not accept the task of crossing the Atlantic for such
irrelevant or rhetorical engagements. This is especially true, considering that
domestically, in the throes of a crisis that is proving hard to tame, they don't
have it easy.
It is curious, indeed, that at its foundational event, an organization like CELAC united two countries with
such divergent foreign policies as Mexico and Venezuela, and low expectation
Brazil - which didn't encouraged CELAC, nor put any
obstacles in its path. And CELAC continues to consolidate.
Let us get used to the idea that, given the above facts, it is possible to
create a wide-ranging hemispheric forum without the United
States and Canada.
At the end, naturally enough, each country addresses its own
game and looks to expand its own possibilities. Thus, the host country's president,
Sebastian Piñera, seeks to achieve in the field of
foreign policy the stature of a statesman that has proven so elusive at home. And
this, despite the strong positive numbers in economic affairs that his finance minister
so proudly displays.
Moreover, along with delivering the post of CELAC president to his counterpart, Cuban communist Raul
Castro, Piñera took the opportunity to deploy a kind
of Plan B in regard to integration called the Pacific Alliance.
Despite his insistent comments that the alliance is mainly economic, it is increasingly
apparent that the Alliance's ideological free market bias is aimed at counterbalancing the
power of UNASUR
[the Union of South American Nations] and therefore, Brazil and the Atlantic
states.
In other matters, Argentina is again agitating for
recognition of its claim over the Malvinas [Falklands]. Bolivia, through Evo Morales, is doing the same with his country, which is landlocked
by Chile, which holds the only solution to Bolivia's confinement. Meanwhile,
Spain stresses the need to ensure "legal security" for investments,
especially after some missteps, and seeks to ensure the return of profits to
banks and phone companies, which would bring relief to their headquarters in
Europe.
Nevertheless, even if CELAC cannot
be called a homogeneous bloc in terms of macroeconomic variables, industrial
policy or development strategies, the unusualness of this bi-regional summit shows
Latin America to be one of the more dynamic and "healthy" in the global
economy. Meanwhile, in stark contrast, the Old World remains anchored to the
effects of a prolonged crisis, which, together with the serial destruction of jobs,
has left European self-esteem pretty bruised.
One thing to watch is how much fruit "Euroscepticism" bears, both on the right and the left.
On the one hand, Britain's Tories are threatening (if Cameron is reelected, which
is uncertain, of course) to entirely disengage from the European Union. And at
the other end of the political spectrum - in Greece and the other PIGS countries
(Portugal, Ireland, Spain) - there is a resistance to the idea of a homogenized
Union led by German banks.
These centrifugal forces, combined with the revival of a more
xenophobic nationalism and an unemployment rate in, for example, Spain, which
in percentage terms is similar to the Weimar Republic that
preceded fascism in Germany,
tend to lead to the perception that the laborious process of building the
European Union could crumble at any time.
In fact, a motley group of intellectuals which includes authorities
such as Umberto Eco, Claudio Magris, Salman Rushdie, Bernard-Henri Levy and Fernando Savater, just published a manifesto
that states firmly that "Europe is not in crisis - it is dying. Europe not
as a territory, of course. But Europe as an idea. Europe as a dream, and as a
project."
It goes on, without mincing words: "They used to say:
socialism or barbarism. Today we must say: political union or barbarism. Or more
precisely: federalism or disintegration, and in the madness of the breakup,
social regression, insecurity, soaring unemployment, and poverty. Or more
precisely: either Europe takes yet another decisive step toward political
integration, or proceeds out of history and into chaos. We no longer have a
choice: It is political union or death."
The prognosis sounds harsh for an integration project that began
with the European
Coal and Steel Community in 1951, and concluded, for the most part, with
the creation of a common currency, the euro, which entered into force on
January 1, 2002.
Next to this pessimistic present, we have a CELAC free of the perennial adjustment policies of the
World Bank and IMF, and with neo-Keynesian countercyclical measures, is able to
incorporate most of the great sectors of consumption. Precisely, it is the
antagonistic version of the prescriptions that apply in Europe, where tax cuts
appear to be additional wounds on an exhausted and dying body.
Despite all the sarcasm in the press, CELAC
is quite clearly not doing such a bad job, particularly when countries like the
United States, Japan and China all call for observer status at its summits. Requests
that have ultimately been rejected, and which demonstrate just how glaring are the winds of change since the traditionally-weak countries dared to challenge the
powerful.
*Carlos Monge is a journalist
and international analyst
