Many years ago, when Hugo Chávez was a rookie President, he was wont to say that the region’s leaders were going from summit to summit while their people went from abyss to abyss.

Almost a decade later, against a backdrop of common challenges of increasing concern for the citizens of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) – narco-trafficking and violent crime, climate change and environmental sustainability, sustainable development, poverty and inequity, unemployment, migration, food security, energy security, human rights and democratic governance – there seems to be more truth than ever in Mr Chávez’s observation, given the proliferation of regional integration and cooperation processes and the seemingly interminable cycle of summits they have spawned. …..