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This Tuesday opens in Buenos Aires the summit of CELAC, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, which brings together all the countries of the continent, with the exception of Canada and the United States. It is expected that this regional body will be revived, since Brazil has recently rejoined the group. Former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro had left CELAC but Lula decided to reverse this decision.
Originally, CELAC was created in 2010 to include all countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, unlike Unasur, which does not include Mexico, and compared to the OAS, which was strongly influenced by United States.
“It coincided with a situation of increasing attention of the United States, at that time, in the war against terrorism, with a notorious weakening of the OAS and with a strong erosion of the inter-American institutions”, explains Juan Gabriel Tokatlian, vice-chancellor of the Torcuato di Tella University, in Buenos Aires.
The organization quickly became an important interlocutor of the European Union and even of China, for example, in economic negotiations. But later, he suffered from the crisis of multilateralism in the region, explains the doctor in international relations.
“The economic challenges of a region that has not seen steady growth for almost a decade mean that now, with the return of Brazil and the ability to de-ideologize, that is, to lay the foundations for “Dialogue in differences, unity in diversity and communication skills are strengthened. That’s why Brazil’s return is so important”, analyzes Tokatlian.
According to him, CELAC has learned the lessons of the continent’s past divisions and will probably not fall into ideologization as has happened with other bodies.
Protests against Cuba and Venezuela
For Alejandro Frenkel, professor of international relations at the National University of San Martín, the opposition protests in Argentina against the presence of Cuba and Venezuela at the summit, despite human rights violations in both countries, are not relevant to analyze the future of CELAC.
“This year there will be presidential elections in Argentina and it seems to me that these criticisms relate exclusively to Argentine politics. Even nobody could argue a regional perspective or an alignment with the United States because the Biden administration’s policy with Venezuela changed after the war in Ukraine, there was a rapprochement,” says Frenkel.
The two academics point out that in addition to the economy and the effects of the war in Ukraine on the region, health and the environment will be among the most important topics of debate at this summit.
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