The presidents of seven nations —Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay and Peru— met in Santiago on Friday to start up a new regional integration organization, Prosur.
The objective is to make Prosur “more dynamic, less bureaucratic and free of ideologies,” according to Ivan Duque, President of Colombia.
The President of Paraguay, Luis Alberto Castiglioni, also said the organization aims to overshadow, even phase out, Unasur, which became a hard left-wing platform for the governments of Venezuela, Bolivia, and until recently Brazil (Lula da Silva), Ecuador (Rafael Correa) and Argentina (Nestor Kirchner and later his wife, Cristina Fernandez). Unasur was founded in 2008 by 12 member states and the first chairman was Michelle Bachelet of Chile, but today only Bolivia, Guayana, Surinam, Uruguay and Venezuela remain.
“South America needs a forum where we can talk, coordinate, collaborate, and strengthen our integration on the basis of the good experiences we have had, as in the Pacific Alliance,” said the pro-business host of the meeting, President Sebastian Piñera. The question is where the institution will stand, or if it will foster diversity of opinions, on issues like climate change and indigenous rights, acute issues in the Andean highlands and in the Amazon rainforest, and especially given the policies of Brazil’s newly-elected President Jair Bolsonaro, who has closed his country’s culture ministry and opened up indigenous lands in the Amazon to agriculture and mining.
Every country in South America was invited to join Prosur, except Venezuela, which the organizers said does not meet the requirements of democracy, rule of law and individual liberties.
