LATIN AMERICA: Integration and Future Democracy

By Estrella Gutiérrez Reprint | | Print |

Estrella Gutierrez

CARACAS, Feb 25 1997 (IPS) - The integration process in Latin America is essential for the region to be able to overcome the widespread problem of increasing poverty, says the president of the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino), Juan Adolfo Singer.

Singer believes that only through a broad, long-term integration process can Latin American countries respond to the demands of a world in transformation, and avoid becoming the “pariahs” of globalisation.

Singer spoke with IPS following a three-day seminar last week on “Integration and the Democracy of the Future in Latin America”, attended by former presidents, academics and representatives of regional bodies.

Integration is a new ideology that updates the “Bolivarian utopia” that for 150 years aimed for a “republic of nations,” he said. But today, no country in Latin America “no matter how large” can face the challeneges posed by globalisation with an inward- facing policy.

“Without integration, it will be impossible for Latin America to face its growing problem of poverty,” Singer says.

He was critical of some governments who focussed only on the commercial aspect of integration and said the process would have only a short life if all countries failed to expand their vision.

He pointed to the words of Lester Thurow, Dean of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and one of the “gurus” of new economic thinking. In his book “The Future of Capitalism”, Thurow predicted a short life for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) linking Canada, Mexico and the United States, if it did not take on a political dimension.

For the same reason, Thurow criticises the idea of a Free Trade Area linking all the Americas (FTAA) to be negotiated by the year 2005, and calls the ambitious Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum – a bloc that includes Mexico and Chile – a “fantasy.” It proposes liberalisation of trade by the year 2025, “when few of us will still be around.”

According to Singer, the task at hand is to give integration in Latin America a political, cultural and social dimension through the participation of civil society as a whole, in order to make the process felt by all people in the region.

A Latin American identity is not a future aim, he maintains, but a profound reality underlying the people of the region, as described by Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes in his book “The Buried Mirror” – which he said “highlights why we Latin Americans are a true nation due to our cultural identity.”

The Parlatino, comprised of lawmakers from 22 countries, has taken on the task of promoting such a Latin American identity, said Singer, which it does through fostering alliances with churches, universities and non-governmental organisations.

While the costs of integration – inevitable and admittedly large – are amply discussed, the even greater costs of failing to integrate are ignored, Singer complained. Resistance to integration based on outdated concepts of sovereignty was a “joke,” because globalisation meant loss of power for nation states – even the United States.

For example, “not even Washington is able to dominate financial flows, which have become an uncontrollable de facto informal authority, regulated only by the World Trade Organisation,” he said.

Singer quoted Felipe Herrera, the first president of the Inter- American Development Bank, who declared that integration “is not an end of sovereignty, but the application in a broader setting.” That which is exercised in a strictly national setting becomes a “suffocated sovereignty.”

Commenting on the growth of regional integration blocs, Singer highlighted the Southern Cone Common Market (MERCOSUR) – Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay – as a growing “pole of attraction” due to its rapid expansion and relative weight.

Chile and Bolivia have signed association accords with the bloc, something Venezuela will undoubtedly do this year, he said, meaning the MERCOSUR will soon represent three-fourths of the gross domestic product and population of South America.

But Singer stresses that the attraction of the MERCOSUR does not compromise the importance of other sub-regional integration processes, which are “complementary efforts that will eventually have to converge, because they are parts of a single process.”