Many years ago, when Hugo Chávez was a rookie President, he was wont to say that the region’s leaders were going from summit to summit while their people went from abyss to abyss.
Almost a decade later, against a backdrop of common challenges of increasing concern for the citizens of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) – narco-trafficking and violent crime, climate change and environmental sustainability, sustainable development, poverty and inequity, unemployment, migration, food security, energy security, human rights and democratic governance – there seems to be more truth than ever in Mr Chávez’s observation, given the proliferation of regional integration and cooperation processes and the seemingly interminable cycle of summits they have spawned.
In the past six months alone there have been a number of regional summits, including the 17th Ibero-American Summit in Santiago, Chile, in November, and the Rio Group’s 20th Summit in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, in March.
The sub-regional groups of Caricom, the Central American Integration System, the Southern Cone (MERCOSUR) and the Andean Community also hold regular summit meetings. Caricom heads, for example, have already met twice this year, at their 19th Inter-Sessional Meeting in Nassau, The Bahamas, in March and at a Special Meeting on Security in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, in early April. They are scheduled to reconvene at the beginning of July at their regular annual meeting, their twenty-ninth, in Antigua and Barbuda. A week later, they are scheduled to travel to Zaragoza, Spain for a summit with the Spanish Prime Minister.
Today, many of them will be joining their colleagues from Latin America in a meeting with their European Union (EU) counterparts for the 5th EU-LAC Summit in Lima, Peru. And so on and so on.
Even Mr Chávez seems to have forgotten the mantra of his early days in office and is a regular summit attendee. Of course, the Venezuelan President continues to promote himself as the regional champion, primarily through his Bolivarian Alternative (ALBA) to the now moribund Free Trade Area of the Americas. But his involvement – some might say meddling – in the internal affairs of other Latin American countries is continuing to exacerbate the political fault lines in Latin America, even as his behaviour on the international stage continues to raise eyebrows and hackles.
Now, Mr Chávez has accused German Chancellor Angela Merkel, of being of the same ilk as those who supported Hitler and Fascism, simply because she has dared to suggest that he is not the only voice of Latin America and does not represent all the interests of the region.
In his weekly radio programme last Sunday, Mr Chávez went so far as to state that if he were to say anything to Frau Merkel in Lima, she might get mad and ask him, “Why don’t you shut up?” – a direct reference to the admonition of Mr Chávez by King Juan Carlos of Spain at the last Ibero-American Summit.
Indeed, Mr Chávez appears still to be smarting at the royal put-down and, in the wake of the latest diplomatic row with the Germans, it was not clear, at the time of writing, whether he would go to Lima. The German government, for its part, has tried to play down the war of words, but it has already cast a shadow over the summit.
The stated objective of the EU-LAC Summit is to advance joint action between the two continents to moderate climate change and to promote sustainable development, without constraining economic growth. The current global food crisis is also expected to feature prominently in the discussions.
The EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson, also wishes to inject new life into the EU’s trade talks with MERCOSUR and the Andean Community, stalled so far because of disagreements about EU protectionism and subsidies in agriculture. The chances of success are however slim, as the issue is really dependent on the resolution of the Doha round of trade negotiations.
Another sub-text of today’s summit, will be the strained relationship between Colombia and Ecuador. It will be recalled that the last Rio Group Summit took place with the threat of war between Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela in the air, following the Colombian incursion into Ecuadorian territory to hunt down a FARC guerrilla group. The tension was defused in the Dominican Republic thanks mainly to the efforts of the summit host, President Leonel Fernández, and President Lula of Brazil. President Chávez was also conveniently conciliatory, perhaps because of damaging evidence allegedly found on laptop computers in the belongings of slain guerrilla leader Raúl Reyes.
However, the Colombia-Ecuador face-off continues, even as the OAS has been facilitating bilateral negotiations aimed at restoring diplomatic relations and trust between Bogotá and Quito. Another bilateral meeting will be held just before the next OAS General Assembly in Colombia, at the beginning of June, but all eyes in Lima will be on Presidents Alvaro Uribe and Rafael Correa of Colombia and Ecuador respectively, to see whether there is any sort of encounter, as a major step towards kissing and making up.
It would be all too easy to dismiss summits as nothing more than expensive photo opportunities for the political jet-set. But the current economic and development challenges facing the region, not to mention the various political crises popping up across Latin America, would all seem to favour summit diplomacy as an indispensable mechanism for the reaffirmation of political will and commitment to action, as well as for constructive bilateral meetings, at the highest level, notwithstanding the grandstanding of a few leaders. If only there were a more transparent method of measuring the real results of summits beyond the rhetoric of the official declarations.
