South America Summit

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As South America Summit , three summit of 12 South American called President, the matters discussed in the years 2000, 2002 and 2004 took place, political and economic problems of the subcontinent. The South American community of states CSN (Comunidad Sudamericana de Naciones), also Unasur , was founded on the third and in this form probably last summit.

The Declaración del Cusco passed there announced a South American parliament (analogous to the European Parliament ), a common market and also a common currency ( monetary union ).

In football , the country matches between Brazil and Argentina are also referred to as the “South America Summit”.

The three peaks

Third Summit (2004) and CSN

With the founding of the CSN, South America aims to bring the Andean community CAN (Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru and until 2006 Venezuela) and the common South American market Mercosur (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) closer together . Mercosur and CAN are the second and third largest integration areas in America after the North American Free Trade Area NAFTA .
From the union - which the European Union takes as a model - the members expect not only economic impulses but also greater international influence, especially vis-à-vis the USA .

At the end of the summit, the host, Peru's President Alejandro Toledo Manrique, declared : "We are witnessing a historical event with which the dream of the liberator Simon Bolivar begins to become reality after 180 years ... Today we are creating a new country with 361 million inhabitants."

Up until then , the driving force behind political integration was Venezuela's head of state Hugo Chávez , who sees himself as the successor to the freedom hero Bolivar. Since 2005, however, his increasingly left-wing populist policies have become an obstacle to integration (see EU-Latin America Summit 2006 ). Brazil's President Lula da Silva also supported the concept - especially its socio- economic objectives - and is today its strongest sponsor. He also took on the role of mediator in some conflicts in his neighboring countries . On the other hand, Chile , the continent's "model democratic country", was very cautious . Oriented towards global free trade, it does not belong to CAN or Mercosur, but is associated with the latter.

The political-economic integration by CSN was to be followed by the networking of the infrastructure , for which Brazil and Peru agreed as the first project to build a 1,200 kilometer long trunk road " Transoceánica " from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific. Countries that have not yet belonged to Mercosur or CAN should also be able to join the new alliance, such as Guyana and Surinam . Chile was one of the founding members of the CAN in 1969, but left the pact in 1976. Bolivia , Chile and Venezuela are associated with Mercosur. The first meeting of the new international community was set for 2005 in Brazil.

criticism

However, according to critics, the new community has little cohesion. In 2004, four heads of state ( Argentina , Ecuador, Paraguay and Uruguay) were represented by envoys in Peru . Others (e.g. Colombia ) reject the counterweight to regional US domination hoped for by some states (including Brazil) because the new alliance should not become an anti-American movement.

In retrospect, the skeptical voices were largely correct: the soon faltering EU-LAC talks and the Vienna EU-Latin America summit in May 2006 revealed serious discrepancies among South America's heads of state; the engine of integration at the time, Hugo Chavez, became their opponent, while the nationalization of Bolivia's new president Evo Morales irritated industrial investors (including Brazil's Petrobras and Spain's Repsol ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ South American community founded Fischer World Almanac, article from December 10, 2004. Accessed May 22, 2011.