SOUTH AMERICA: Brazil’s Lula Throws Argentina a Lifeline

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Dec 2 2002 (IPS) - Brazilian president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva highlighted the ”strategic relations” between his country and Argentina Monday, on his first trip abroad since his landslide victory in the Oct 27 runoff election in Brazil.

”The fate of Latin America will depend heavily on these ties,” said Lula in the Olivos presidential residency, standing alongside Argentine President Eduardo Duhalde.

Lula had promised that Buenos Aires would be his first destination as president-elect, in order to reaffirm Brazil’s commitment to the Mercosur (Southern Common Market) trade bloc – also made up of Paraguay and Uruguay – at a time when Argentina is in the midst of its worst economic crisis ever and Latin America’s biggest trade bloc has come to a virtual standstill.

In the past few months, many Latin American leaders have worked hard at marking the differences between their countries and Argentina, which underscores the importance of Lula’s gesture.

The president-elect, who takes office on Jan 1 in the region’s largest country, with the backing of more than 61 percent of voters, will travel on to Chile Tuesday.

Brazil’s leftist Workers’ Party, which was founded by Lula, a former steelworker, is seeking ”to make the Mercosur a space that does not exclusively involve trade, but also has political objectives,” Alberto Ferrari Etcheberry, director of the Institute of Brazilian Studies at the Tres de Febrero University in Argentina, told IPS.

”Brazil with Lula will be the locomotive of this new era in Latin America, and I feel proud that he has decided to visit our country first of all,” said the secretary-general of the ‘Central de Trabajadores Argentinos’ trade union confederation, Víctor de Genaro, a personal friend of the visiting president-elect.

Lula arrived in Buenos Aires late Sunday, accompanied by several of his closest associates. He met Monday with Duhalde, government ministers and parliamentarians, before being declared an ”illustrious visitor” to the city by Mayor Aníbal Ibarra.

Marco Aurelio García, Lula’s chief advisor on foreign affairs and one of the candidates for the post of foreign minister, stated prior to the visit that Brazil cannot implement a national strategy without a strong regional framework.

”For that reason the question of the Mercosur is key; we want to transform it into a sphere of convergence of shared political visions,” said García.

Never before have Argentina and Brazil had such closely aligned agendas, since both countries have devalued their currencies and are putting the accent on agricultural and industrial development, reducing poverty, bolstering exports, and generating employment, he added.

Lula, referring to Argentina and Brazil, said ”We have broad potential, globally competitive agriculture and industry, natural resources, and sources of energy.” He also stressed the quality of the two countries’ human resources.

”In recent years, misguided economic and political options led us to successive crises” he stated. ”How many times in the past two decades have we seen the economy of the region upset by inflation or submerged in recession with painful social effects?”

Heavy dependency on foreign capital has left both nations ”at the mercy of international speculators who often do not even know where our countries are located.” But ”that era must be left behind, we must regain control of our destiny, build our future,” Lula underlined.

The president-elect said his visit must be seen as ”an expression of the will of the future government of Brazil to give a decisive boost to the reconstruction of the Mercosur.

”I received from my people the mandate of guiding this stage of development hand in hand with our brothers and sisters of South America, and especially of the Mercosur, which is paralysed today.”

Lula said there was an ”urgent” need to ”deepen” the trade bloc, while he defended the ideals of the 1980s, when Argentina and Brazil signed political and strategic integration accords that led to the creation of the Mercosur in 1991.

But over the past 11 years, the bloc has put almost exclusive emphasis on trade relations, and has been shaken by rivalries between private sector groups.

”The Mercosur must become not only a customs union, but also a space for developing active industrial and farm policies – true integration along the lines of the European Union,” with the construction of ”common infrastructure” and discussion of ”unified social policies,” said Lula.

”I strongly believe that political issues must be on the agenda of the Mercosur. We need more convincing common institutions that make our administrative secretariat more solid and effective, and we need to make progress on the creation of dispute settlement mechanisms,” he said, after referring to his ”dream” of a regional parliament.

The president-elect drew a vision of a bloc in which Bolivia and Chile – which are now Mercosur associates – as well as the rest of South America would eventually form part.

That would comprise the basis, he said, of a common foreign policy and coordinated actions vis-a-vis the multilateral lending institutions, the United States or the European Union, in defence of South America’s regional interests.

Lastly, Lula underlined that Argentina and Brazil are ”two great countries” whose greatest wealth is their people, who are prepared to make sacrifices and determined to bring about profound changes, like the ones he said Brazilians have asked him to make.

SOUTH AMERICA: Brazil’s Lula Throws Argentina a Lifeline

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Dec 2 2002 (IPS) - Brazilian president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva highlighted the “strategic relations” between his country and Argentina Monday, on his first trip abroad since his landslide victory in the Oct 27 runoff election in Brazil.
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