New four-country Latin American body unites pro-U.S. allies.
| Autor | Gaudin, Andres |
| Cargo | Alianza del Pacifico |
Within a region that has developed an integration process in recent years leading to the creation of several economic and political bodies--from the Southern Cone Common Market (MERCOSUR) to the Comunidad de Estados Latinoamericanos y Caribenos (CELAC)--four countries sharing both a common ideology and a Pacific coastline (Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Chile) have formed a new organization. The Alianza del Pacifico (AL) was first proposed in early 2011 (SourceMex, Dec. 7, 2011) by then President Alan Garcia of Peru, who was careful to specify that "what we are attempting is not a poetic, romantic integration but rather a realistic integration with the world and to the world."
The union was formalized in June 2012 and began to operate late last year (SourceMex, June 20, 2012). Neither political leaders nor Latin American and Caribbean analysts expressed differences with the Peruvian president's superficial comments. But most delved into the concept and understood the AP as a schism--Brazilian Jose Luis Fiori, a researcher at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), called it "the Pacific schism"--that has more ideological than economic importance.
"Politically it deals with a part of President Barack Obama's project to reaffirm US power in the Pacific," said Fiori in an analysis published Feb. 3 by the online Spanish-language magazine Sin Permiso.
Fiori and other experts see the AP as a victory for neoliberal economists and present the new four-country body as a trade bloc promoted to compete with MERCOSUR. They point out that the four countries have economies based on commodity exports (oil and minerals), and all subscribe to the most orthodox economic policies. They emphasize that the "geopolitical enthusiasm of AP cheerleaders hides elemental facts and data."
The first is that, before the four member countries had signed the agreement creating the new organization, they had already signed free-trade agreements (FTAs) with the US and major Asian countries. The second--perhaps most important--is that Mexico is geographically part of North America. Since its incorporation into the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, it has been become inseparably linked to the US economy (SourceMex, Aug. 17, 2011). Its territory is the battleground for the war waged by the large drug cartels that supply US society with cocaine (SourceMex, April 11, 2012), which comes from two of the four AP countries--Peru and Colombia. Third, say...
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