Alberto Fernández bets on a progressive alliance with southern Bolivia

President Alberto Fernández inset to strengthen, with the return to the power of Movement for Socialism (MAS) in Bolivia from this weekend, a counterweight to the conservative axis within Mercosur and Latin America in general with a linked government. This is why he will travel with La Paz with the main references of the small foreign policy table of the In front of all and, if times are good, he will share a dinner with future president Luis Arce on Saturday, on the eve of his swearing-in, in a more intimate atmosphere than the events of the next day.

The Secretary General of the Presidency, Julio Vitobello; the strategic affairs secretary, Gustavo Beliz; The Chancellor, Felipe Solá and the heads of the external relations committees of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, the former chancellor Jorge Taiana and the legislator Eduardo Valdes, respectively. They will arrive in La Paz on Saturday afternoon and official acts will only take place on Sunday very early. On that day, the meeting which seeks to seal a bond of cooperation and political association would take place.

In parallel, from the Executive, they are considering the possibility of specifying bilateral agreements with other presidents present. We are talking, for the moment, of a possible separate meeting with the Chilean Sebastián Piñera, a pending visit, among other things, due to the pandemic. And they are also considering the possibility of meeting the representative of Spain attend Bolivia.

There is talk of a separate meeting with the Chilean Sebastián Piñera, a visit that was on hold, among other things, due to the pandemic. And they also plan to meet the representative of Spain.

Those who know Arce first hand describe him, like everyone else, by his technical profile, because it is the camp that has stood out the most during his long tenure as Morales’ economic executive. However, they also save extensive political preparation. Since his years of activism within the Socialist Party-1, founded by the historical reference of this current, Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz, at its size to implement the program of deep reforms that Morales has proposed at the appropriate pace, not too quickly or give up. And by targeting strategic sectors for the generation of currencies and the industrialization of the country.

Both the government and those around Morales, still in Argentina, describe the bond as a bond of mutual respect and gratitude, both for promoting – along with Mexico – the rescue of the president and part of his cabinet. in November of last year and for opening the doors to Argentina in December. Fernández also gave Arce explicit support when he met him in February, a month before the pandemic broke and borders were closed.. It was in this country that the formula was proclaimed with former Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca who would win at the polls ten months later.

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Although the delegation that will visit Bolivia will be small, it is possible that other officials and referents of Argentinian progressivism invited by their own links with masism, such as the current head of Astilleros Río Santiago and former ambassador to La Paz, join. Ariel basteiro. They estimate that part of them will travel in a private plane with the president and that the other will travel via Boliviana de Aviación (BoA), the national airline. According to confirmed government sources, Uruguayan Foreign Minister Francisco Bustillo Bonasso will travel to Fernández’s plane, with whom he shares a long friendship.

Sunday’s agenda starts very early, starting at 8:45 a.m. with the transfer of delegations to the Plurinational Legislature and previously allocated rooms. Half an hour later, it will be the turn of the invited heads of state and vice-presidents, under the usual capsule system. Due to the pandemic, they say in the organization they will try to limit access to half of the allowed capacity when in other years crowds have overflowed the spaces. Even the income of the families of those who swear will not be activated.

According to the official program, at 10:40 a.m. the central act will begin with the presence of Arce and Choquehuanca and it is estimated that it will last two hours, after which they will proceed to the formal greeting in the hall of the Casa Grande del Pueblo. This seat had been opened by Morales three months before his fall, as the new home of the Bolivian executive. De facto President Jeanine Añez has moved her office to the traditional burnt palace. At noon, heads of state and government, heads of delegation and special guests will participate in the lunch with which the new Bolivian president will entertain them before the civic-military parade.

According to confirmed government sources, Uruguayan Foreign Minister Francisco Bustillo Bonasso will travel to Alberto Fernández’s plane, with whom he shares a long friendship.

With Bolivia, several axes are brought into play at the bilateral level with the construction of a political society. Urgently, The priority that the Fernández administration has already declared is to add the neighboring country to the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) – in which Añez has never participated – as well as to complete its entry into Mercosur as a full member.. The Bolivians have already completed the long process and the only remaining obstacle is the ratification of the Brazilian Congress. The next round of the bloc’s pro tempore presidency belongs to Argentina and membership is expected to take place in the first half of 2021.

In July 2015, then-President Evo Morales signed the membership protocol along with leaders Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Dilma Rousseff (Brazil), Horacio Cartes (Paraguay), Tabaré Vázquez (Uruguay) and Nicolás Maduro (Venezuela) ), whose country had not yet been suspended. In August 2018, all that remained was to obtain the green light from the Brazilian Legislative Assembly and the government of Michel Temer had committed to resolve it the same year.

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Brazil and Argentina share a close energy link with Bolivia. Both countries are supplied with Bolivian gas. Añez renegotiated the contract with Brazil but was unable to do the same with Argentina, which had extended it, in 2016, by ten years. Under the government of Néstor Kirchner and in the early days of Morales, Argentina had agreed to increase the price paid by BTU, the unit of measurement for gas. It was a political move rather than a negotiation, at the behest of Morales. Now that Argentina is betting on achieving its ambitious self-sufficiency, with the Gas Plan, this issue may come back to the bilateral table.

The untapped wealth of lithium, where Bolivia, Chile and Argentina share a large reserve. A week ago, the former Bolivian vice-president, Álvaro García Linera, visited the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for lunch with Solá and that was one of the topics discussed. Without making any concrete progress, but with a reflection on the potential of lithium from an industrial and regional perspective. Morales has always denounced that the United States blessed the coup against him because of the interest in this mineral.

The particularity of the link between the two countries is that it has been stable, beyond the crossed political signs. Morales was able to live without major altercations both with the Kirchnerist administrations and with Mauricio Macri. The coup and the rise of a government that Fernández never recognized as legitimate or legal put the ties on hold. Despite this, some issues such as gas continued to be discussed at the technical level from the capitals.. In fact, other issues to be resolved will be the restoration of diplomatic relations at the ambassadorial level, since the two missions are now in the hands of business leaders.

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Fernández tried to preserve ties within his sphere of proximity even with the rulers of the opposite sign, especially with Chile and Uruguay. He even exercised presidential diplomacy on occasions when an episode could cause concern on the other side. As happened with Chile, during the first comparisons on the performance of the pandemic, or with Uruguay, when the rope tightened in Mercosur’s internal negotiations regarding trade agreements with third parties. The two situations were closed by a telephone dialogue between the presidents.

Bolivia was one of the countries with which the In front of all counted for the reconstruction of an axis of opposition to the conservatives when they won the elections in October of last year. In Uruguay, they also maintained expectations of a renewal of the Broad Front, although the forecasts were tighter than with the Bolivian elections. In the end, none of the plans came to fruition as expected: Morales fell after winning the election and the multi-colored coalition, led by Luis Lacalle Pou, changed the Uruguayan sign. Fernández and his own political front have been left alone in an ocean of conservatism, with the only possible ally of affinity in Mexico, at the opposite end of Latin America.

MB / DS