Dissent over Venezuela threatens MERCOSUR'S strength.
| Autor | Gaudin, Andres |
The Mercado Comun del Sur (Southern Common Market, MERCOSUR), an integrated customs agreement, is experiencing its most trying moment since its creation in 1991 (NotiSur, Jan. 14, 1993, March 3, 2000, and Jan. 24, 2014). Although the organization's presidency fell to Venezuela as of Aug. 1, the governments of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay, three of MERCOSUR's five full members, made the surprise announcement that they would oppose President Nicolas Maduro's installation. Speaking in nearly identical terms, they claimed that Venezuela has not complied with all requirements for full integration in MERCOSUR, and that its government violates human rights at home.
Uruguay took a contrasting position, pointing out that Venezuela had occupied the pro-tempore presidency in the past, even with these same alleged shortcomings. It noted that for the past 25 years, MERCOSUR's leadership had changed every six months, with the only condition that the rotation be in strict alphabetical order.
"Encumbering the traditional procedures, the three right-wing governments are looking for a way to weaken MERCOSUR and abandoning solidarity to snuggle up to the neoliberal Alianza del Pacifico (AP) and aid the destabilization campaign designed to bring down Maduro," said Eduardo Sigal, a diplomat and former assistant secretary of Argentina's international economic integration agency (Integracion Economica Internacional de Argentina) (NotiSur, Dec. 6, 2013, Sept 19, 2014,and Aug. 26, 2016).
Region-wide scope
MERCOSUR is the most solid attempt at regional integration to arise during the second half of the last century, which saw successive failures with the Asociacion Latinoamericana de Libre Comercio and the still surviving Asociacion Latinoamericana de Integracion (ALADI). It unites all South American countries. Besides its five full members (Venezuela and Uruguay are the other two), Bolivia is in the process of joining, and Chile, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Surinam, and Guyana are associate members.
Despite its slow but successful development, the pendulum began to swing toward the Alianza del Pacifico with the change in the region's political landscape--by the will of the electorate in Argentina, and by institutional maneuvering in Paraguay and Brazil. The trend became more marked when Venezuela should have occupied MERCOSUR's temporary presidency, but there have been other signs. In August 2105, the president of the Brazilian Senate, Jose Renan Calheiros, and the...
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