Regional leaders this week ensured that they are not going gentle into the close of the year, with a mind-spinning round of summitry in Costa do Sauípe in the Brazilian state of Salvador.
Twenty-nine heads of state and government, including our President, from 33 Latin American and Caribbean countries participated in up to four summits in one − those of the Southern Cone (MERCOSUR), the Rio Group and the South American Union (UNASUR), within the framework of the overarching Latin American and Caribbean Integration and Development Summit. Guyana participated in all except the MERCOSUR meeting.
The overlapping membership of the various regional groupings in the context of what is being called “multiple regionalisms,” and the vision of President Lula of Brazil, the common driving force of all the groups, made this possible.
Cuba was invited to the jamboree. Canada and the USA were excluded. An implicit distinction is therefore being drawn between this Latin American and Caribbean summit and the next Summit of the Americas to be held in Trinidad in April, to which Cuba is not expected to be invited.
This was a big meeting for Cuba on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the revolution. In a short but momentous ceremony, the Rio Group formalized the membership of the communist state after foreign ministers had approved its admission last month in Mexico. And President Lula made a resounding call for President-elect Obama to lift the US embargo on Cuba, echoing, or perhaps magnifying the message of last week’s Caricom-Cuba Summit.
Cuba’s membership of the Rio Group is being hailed as one of the most significant diplomatic developments in the region in years, all the more so as the Rio Group has long been regarded as a club of (more or less) democratic nations.
The signal being sent north is clear: Cuba is being re-integrated into the Latin American and Caribbean family and the region can and will determine its own destiny, thank you.
There were other encouraging signs of a growing regional consensus. UNASUR approved the creation of the South American Defence Council and a South American Health Council. The objective of the former is to coordinate action in the areas of natural disasters, humanitarian assistance, peace missions and to combat cross-border organized crime, all with a view to strengthening security in the region. In this respect, the proposal of President Alvaro Colom of Guatemala to create a multinational force to fight narco-trafficking amongst other security problems will be considered by the council.
There was unanimous backing for the findings of the enquiry into the massacre of some 20 peasants in the Pando region of Bolivia by political opponents of President Evo Morales and UNASUR will also send observers to the Bolivian referendum in January.
And even where there was disagreement, there was compromise. UNASUR managed to stave off its possible demise over the vexed question of the candidacy of former Argentine president, Néstor Kirchner, to be the grouping’s first secretary general. Because of a bitter, four year-old dispute with Argentina over a paper pulp mill on a border river, Uruguay is opposed to Mr Kirchner and is threatening to withdraw if attempts are made to elect him by a majority vote. The election of the secretary general was postponed to April, allowing time for a diplomatic solution.
Perhaps most impressively, all this action in the UNASUR configuration took place in about an hour on Tuesday, in between the closing of the MERCOSUR meeting and the beginning of the main event. But a lot of feverish diplomatic activity would have been taking place behind the scenes.
At the time of writing, even without knowing the results of the Latin American and Caribbean Summit, one thing is already certain: the whole extravaganza was a major diplomatic triumph for President Lula and Brazil. The incoming US administration had better take note.
Without a doubt, Brazil has been flexing its political and economic muscles this past year and President Lula and his Foreign Minister Celso Amorim have been tireless in their regional diplomacy, as they have positioned Brazil to fill the vacuum left by the Bush administration. They started promoting this summit of summits over a year ago, and it would appear that Mr Lula was already thinking that, whoever the new American president was, the hiatus between the election and the inauguration would provide the ideal moment for Brazil to convene the countries of the region to establish a certain degree of regional autonomy vis-à-vis the USA and its new government.
Mr Lula can be successful in his efforts to establish Brazil as the regional leader in Latin America and the Caribbean, but it cannot be in Brazil’s interests or those of Latin America and the Caribbean for that matter, in seeking to end Cuba’s isolation to isolate the USA instead and to exclude the USA completely from the region. There are too many mutual interests at stake. As far as Brazil’s national and hemispheric energy agenda is concerned, for example, Brazil still needs American support.
Certainly, the Latin American and Caribbean Summit does not appear to have ever threatened to degenerate into the Bush-baiting, Yankee-bashing affair that Hugo Chávez tried to make of the 2005 Summit of the Americas in Argentina. President Lula and Mr Amorim are too clever for that.
Indeed, according to Larry Birns, Director of the Washington-based Council of Hemispheric Affairs, “Lula is a leader who practises the politics of the bear hug, by thinking all problems can be solved by a warm embrace.” It is only a matter of time before his embrace reaches out to Mr Obama.
