Cordoba, Argentina – An overwhelmingly leftist group of South American presidents met here Friday to try to accelerate a push for regional economic and political unity, while a specially invited guest from off the continent – Cuba’s Fidel Castro – took the limelight.
“I want to highlight an idea that (Argentine President Nestor) Kirchner mentioned and which I stress. I’m talking about solidarity. The countries that have many resources, let them contribute to those that have fewer,” Castro said in his address to the gathering.
He was invited to the summit to sign an economic cooperation pact linking Cuba with Mercosur, which comprises Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela with Bolivia and Chile as associate members.
After telling his colleagues he hadn’t come “to preach,” Castro suggested that Latin America can create an equivalent to the European Union, an entity he said was made possible by the solidarity of Europe’s big powers with their weaker neighbors.
His 40-minute speech included several glowing references to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, whom Castro thanked for the cheap oil and other economic assistance that Caracas has provided Cuba.
The Cuban also hailed what he called the consolidation of Mercosur, saying he was glad he had come to Cordoba and seen for himself that the process of integration “is not in crisis.”
“Besides,” quipped the soon-to-be-80-year-old survivor of numerous assassination plots, “this must be the only meeting where there are no threats of attacks against me.”
Castro also defended his government, maintaining that the Cuban Revolution has triumphed without resorting to coercion.
“There has never been a disappeared person, never someone tortured, never has anything been imposed by force,” he said to colleagues who had been publicly asked by Cuban rights activists to take the opportunity of their encounter with Castro to urge him to release the estimated 300 political prisoners being held by the Communist regime in Havana.
Chavez, meanwhile, used his country’s debut as a full member of the biggest Latin American trade bloc to invite his new partners to leave behind the “sins” of the group and embark upon a “stage of rebirth.”
He cited Argentine economist Aldo Ferrer’s list of the “four deadly sins of Mercosur,” which Chavez identified as excessive dependence on global financial markets; failure to coordinate approaches to poverty and other social ills; conflicting national strategies; and wide divergences among the members in their degree of international engagement.
The Venezuelan said the first of those ills can be remedied by throwing off “the curse of the International Monetary Fund,” a step that he noted had already been taken by his own country, Argentina, Brazil and “Cuba, decades ago.”
“Why do you look at me that way, Fidel?,” Chavez said with a nod to Castro, who responded, “I am listening to you like a student,” in an exchange that evoked applause from the gathering.
Chavez thanked the presidents of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay for demonstrating the “political will” to facilitate Venezuela’s rapid accession to Mercosur, an accord signed earlier this month and designed to be put into practical effect over the coming few years.
Chavez is a leftist, as are the leaders of Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Bolivia. Of the heads of state present here, only Paraguay’s Nicanor Duarte, a centrist, does not espouse a fundamentally socialist ideology.
“Latin America has everything needed to be a global power,” the Venezuelan said, maintaining that energy will be a “platform of integration for the region.”
The man who leads Mercosur’s biggest and most important member, Brazil, acknowledged Friday that the bloc is plagued with anxieties at the moment but called for “patience” in overcoming obstacles.
South America’s governments must be “alert,” Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said, because the ones “who nourish those anxieties are conservative sectors that have long been working to finish off Mercosur.”
Among the obstacles Mercosur must surmount, he pointed to “the asymmetries,” a reference to the substantial economic differences between small Paraguay and Uruguay, on one side, and big Brazil and Argentina on the other. He also mentioned the challenge of “strengthening the institutions of the bloc.”
Lula predicted that, following the accession of Venezuela, “very soon we will have that of Bolivia”, alluding to Mercosur’s campaign to induce La Paz to shift from associate to full membership in the bloc.
Bolivian President Evo Morales, for his part, celebrated Castro’s participation in the summit and said that if Cuba were to join Mercosur, the grassroots movements in Bolivia would “oblige” the government in La Paz to follow suit.
The gathering in Cordoba was transformed into an “historic” event by “the presence of comrade and big brother Fidel, who always brings us clarity and gives us strength,” the Bolivian said.
Morales, like Castro, was taking part for the first time in a summit of the regional bloc that was founded in 1991 by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.
Though linked to Mercosur, Bolivia remains a full member of the Andean Community, whose rotating presidency is currently exercised by La Paz. Morales says he views the two blocs as “pillars” for a broader and more ambitious regional integration in Latin America.
Morales, a staunch “anti-imperialist,” urged his colleagues to remain committed to change and to “genuine integration” and to “do away with the mechanisms of subordination imposed on the peoples.”
Mercosur, he said “should be a solution for the victims of economic models imposed from above and aimed at looting our natural resources.”
