South American right-wing presidents have their own forum: Prosur

The South American turn to the right led to the birth of the South American Progress Forum in Chile, or Prosur, a new regional bloc in tune with the new political era.

The creation of Prosur is an initiative of Chile and Colombia, to which Brazil, Ecuador, Argentina, Peru and Paraguay quickly joined. Only Bolivia and Uruguay have been left out, where the left is healthy and, of course, Venezuela, common enemy of the new bloc.

The Prosur was born on the ashes of Unasur, the multilateral organization sponsored by the Venezuelan Hugo Chávez more than ten years ago and which had limited effectiveness in its attempt to integrate the region.

Ten years ago, the driving forces of the process were Chávez from Venezuela, Néstor Kirchner from Argentina and Lula da Silva from Brazil. The first two are dead and the third is imprisoned for corruption.

Prosur, promised by its creators, will this time be different. "It is a tool for cooperation, dialogue without any ideology," said Colombian President Iván Duque at the end of a bilateral meeting with President Sebastián Piñera in La Moneda.

The differences between the two blocks are obvious since the first picture. Those presidents in informal clothes clasping their hands in front of the camera at the end of each summit were replaced by a typical family photo, with heads of state setting the goal.

The first image of Prosur showed the guest Piñera with Duque; to our president Mauricio Macri; that of Ecuador, Lenín Moreno; the Paraguayan Mario Abdo Benítez; Martin Vizcarra of Peru and President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro.

The Brazilian landed in Santiago after meeting Donald Trump in Washington. Chile was Bolsonaro's first trip to South America as president, a break from the Brazilian tradition of creating the office in Argentina, his big partner.

Bolsonaro was able to capture all the attention, but he preferred the low profile. "I will not talk about Pinochet," he said when he arrived in Santiago. The clarification is not insignificant: a month ago, at a meeting with Paraguay's Abdo Benitez at the border, he had declared that the dictator Alfredo Stroessner had been "a statesman".

Of course, we will have another opportunity today, as Bolsonaro made an official visit to Chile and extended his stay until Saturday, when he will meet Piñera. On Friday, however, he limited himself to signing Prosur's statement of birth, a two-page text to which the representatives of Bolivia and Uruguay, who participated only as observers, did not join.

Prosur was born in the spirit of the Pacific Alliance, the economic bloc uniting Chile, Colombia, Peru and Mexico. That is, with the promise of a small bureaucracy, a simple structure, no secretarial and low cost. "This space should be progressively implemented (?) With an agile decision-making mechanism that allows South America to progress in concrete understanding and integration programs," says the signed presidential statement to Santiago. The concerns of the new block will be "integration in infrastructure, energy, health, defense, security and crime, prevention and disaster management." natural. "

The text did not mention trade, an agenda left in the hands of the Pacific Alliance and Mercosur, the second regional block, consisting of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and the United States. ;Uruguay.

Prosur has joined a dozen American integration initiatives that today form a complex network of crossed and often conflicting goals. Some are very old, such as the Organization of American States (OAS) or the Andean Community, and more recent, such as Celac or the Pacific Alliance. Until now, none of these organizations has managed to comply with the everlasting project of integration of Latin America.