Prosur: the construction of a new geopolitical block without history in the region

At a round table at the Camelot, Sebastián Piñera proposed to his colleagues in South America to create a multilateral organization "flexible and without ideology". It is an unprecedented geopolitical adventure in the region and will need a lot of vocation to reach its founding goals. Venezuela has already emerged as the first obstacle in the random road of its construction, then the seven presidents who went to Santiago de Chile have opted for a magic pbad to prevent the Prosur from being born with an institutional hump: in the final document he omitted a direct reference to the humanitarian crisis provoked by Nicolás Maduro, although this was debated during the two secret sessions held at the Palacio de la Moneda.

The ideology according to Piñera

The president of Chile is a liberal businessman who defeated a center-left coalition in elections that failed because of Michele Bachelet's erratic management. Piñera is not trained in political science and believes that burying the traumatic experience of the South American Union (UNASUR), designed by Hugo Chávez and bury "ideologies".

With more training than the Chilean head of state, Francis Fukuyama has already tried to argue that the fall of the Berlin Wall was "the end of ideologies", but the terrorist attacks in the United States, the United States. Donald Trump's global agenda and Xi Jinping's multilateral arguments have shown the opposite.

A regional president who participated in the deliberations explained to Infobae Piñera refers to the concept of ideology as an antidote to the word democracy. And in this sense, democracy functions as a limit to allow the entry – or not – of some countries closer to Hugo Chávez's populism than the fundamental parameters of the French Revolution.

"The essential conditions for participating in this space will be the full validity of democracy, the respective constitutional orders, respect for the principle of separation of state powers, as well as promotion, protection, respect and guarantee Human Rights and Human Rights, Fundamental Freedoms, and the Sovereignty and Territorial Integrity of States, Respecting International Law "supports point five of the Santiago Declaration signed by the Presidents of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay and a representative of Guyana.

This express defense of democracy, which implies a direct blockade of Venezuela because of its institutional status, was rejected diplomatically by the delegates of Bolivia, Suriname and Uruguay. It is not that these countries do not intend to integrate the Prosur – they participated in the drafting of the Santiago Declaration – but they still support the Nicolás Maduro regime and opted for abstention when signing the Patio de los Cañones. from the Palacio de la Moneda.

Prosur is a political construction that tries to implement a 21st century institutional program to solve endemic evils endured by the region throughout the twentieth century. "We underline our commitment to consolidate and deepen sustainable development, to eradicate poverty in all its forms and dimensions, to achieve greater equality of opportunity and to enable our citizens to deploy their talents, their ability 39, innovation and their entrepreneurial spirit, "declares the Santiago Declaration.

However, as a political construct, Prosur must make considerable efforts to include those countries that have failed to sign the original document. At his last meeting with Vázquez in Olivos, Macri worked to bring positions closer together, but domestic politics conditioned the president of Uruguay.

At the bilateral meeting of Bolsonaro and Macri in Brasilia, the two presidents used the same word to rebuild Mercosur: flexibility. This means moving towards a free trade area that preserves block coherence (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay), while allowing each of its partners to conclude bilateral agreements outside the multilateral organization. Mario Abdo, president of Paraguay, joined Bolsonaro and Macri. The will of Uruguay, which tried a few years ago to sign a solitary agreement with the United States, is implied.

"This space will deal in a flexible and priority way with the problems of integration of infrastructures, energy, health, defense, safety and crime, prevention and management of natural disasters", explains point 4 of the Santiago Declaration.

As noted, Mercosur is an institutional fossil that survives through the political decision of its partners. Macri, Bolsonaro, Abdo and Vázquez recognize that there is aggiornarloHowever, this will come up against the agenda of each country, bureaucratic limitations and the lack of a roadmap transforming Mercosur into a geopolitical bloc adapted to the unstable global agenda of the 21st century.

The seven Presidents who make up Proto Prosur ordered their foreign ministers to launch a series of consultations to structure the forum in South America, chaired by Piñera for 12 months. In turn, these Foreign Ministers have their own agenda, which includes meetings of Mercosur, the Lima Group, the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Pacific Alliance, in order to to list some multilateral organizations that also include Prosur's founding partners. As noted, there is overlap in regional forums, political goals and unrealized dreams.
The 7 presidents of Prosur showed a programmatic setting and spent five magnificent hours in Santiago de Chile. Piñera was a good host and the lunch was exquisite. But each of them will return to his office to deal with a regional plot that goes beyond good diplomatic intentions.

Until the end of the crisis in Venezuela, external relations in the southern cone will have a monothematic bias: the exit of Maduro and the beginning of the democratic transition that could end a geopolitical crisis with enough capacity to turn Latin America into a Vietnam without magical realism.