The rulers of South America meet on Tuesday in Brasilia in which the government of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva It is presented as a “retreat” to reactivate the integration of a region with ideological breakdowns and internal crises.
(We recommend reading: Venezuela: Asset Protection Law would allow the expropriation of opponents’ assets).
With the exception of the Peruvian president, Dina Boluarte, all the leaders, ten in total, confirmed their attendance and began to arrive in the Brazilian capital for this first regional meeting of the highest level in almost a decade.
The President of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, landed this sunday night in Brazil, according to a video broadcast on Venezuelan state television, after being ignored by the far-right ex-president Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022). “I appreciate the warm welcome with which we were received in Brasilia,” he posted on Twitter.
Ripe. “We will be developing in the next few hours a diplomatic agenda” to “strengthen the union,” he added. However, the Brazilian government still did not announce if Lula will hold a bilateral meeting with Maduro or with one of the other invited leaders.
The event will take place mainly in the Itamaraty Palace, architectural jewel surrounded by water designed by Oscar Niemeyer and headquarters of the chancellery. After being received one by one by Lula, the presidents will meet in two sessions -first with individual pronouncements and then for an informal debate-, followed by a dinner at the Alvorada, official residence of the Brazilian president.
All discussions will be behind closed doors and still a statement is not guaranteed end with a common position. Without a pre-established agenda and with a reduced format -only the presidents, their foreign ministers and some advisors will be in the room-, the idea of the “withdrawal” proposed by Lula is that the countries can candidly discuss common problems.
It will give the meeting a “bare” air, “with as much conversation as possible,” a foreign ministry source told AFP.
According to Gisela Maria Figuereido, Brazilian Secretary for Latin America and the Caribbean, The meeting will have three objectives. The first two are “resuming the dialogue” to seek a “common vision” and agree on a cooperation agenda on issues such as health, infrastructure, energy, the environment and combating organized crime.
For example, last week Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira gave impetus to the so-called “bioceanic corridor”, an initiative to move cargo between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and they’ve been arguing for years Peru, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia. The third goal seems more complicated: finding a way for a new South American integration mechanism.
Beyond Unasur
A meeting between South American leaders It had not happened since 2014 in Quito, during the Unasur summit, the instance created six years earlier by Lula (2003-2010) and the Venezuelan Hugo Chavez during the first wave of leftist governments.
But after a conservative turn at the polls, a Brazil under political instability after the “impeachment” of Dilma Rousseff in 2016 and the disagreements between countries over the Venezuelan crisis, the regional block was practically paralyzed, without a budget and without a headquarters.
At the moment only seven of the twelve members of Unasur are still in the organization (Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname, Venezuela and Peru -who never abandoned it-, in addition to
Brazil and Argentina, who returned this year). The Brazilian government does not rule out, however, that the new entity is built from scratch.
We hope to start a dialogue among all to once again have an inclusive, effective and permanent consultation mechanism.
“We hope to start a dialogue among all to once again have an inclusive, effective and permanent agreement mechanism that can be above the guidelines of the governments in power,” Vieira said this week.
For Jason Marczakof the Atlantic Council in Washington, the appointment “is potentially a first attempt by Lula to see what can be achieved” in South American integration.
“Lula is looking for how to make” his third presidency serve to “insert Brazil even more as a leading and advance a wide variety of global issues,” he told the AFP.
(We recommend reading: ‘We cannot normalize relations with the Maduro dictatorship’: Juan Guaidó from Miami).
But without prior technical discussions between the countries, the meeting will be “merely symbolic,” says Eduardo Mello, an internationalist with the Getulio Vargas Foundation.
“There are structural problems, The region has been going through political and economic crises for more than a decade, and the main South American economic development projects have failed (…) They are structural factors that cannot be resolved with will, by talking,” he told the AFP.
More news in EL TIEMPO
#Nicolás #Maduró #arrived #Brazil #invited #Lula #meeting #leaders