Regionalism

In this multicultural continent still trying to forge a disputed sense of cultural homogeneity, independent nation-states emerged relatively early. The liberation movement was partly inspired by the Enlightenment and revolutions in France/the United States, but Simon Bolivar’s leadership went further.

Various approaches to regional cooperation have been fostered by a defensive posture toward adverse external circumstances and inequalities in international trade. Regionalism, reframed more than once, has centered narrowly on trade issues and more overtly on geo-political designs and anti-imperialism. A current classification distinguishes between mid-twentieth century closed regionalism — corresponding to inward-looking strategies of development with economies of scale in enlarged protected markets — and open regionalism, seeking international competitiveness in liberalized markets.

Regional schemes have proliferated, either as a form of economic nationalism, as a defensive mechanism against the protectionism of rich countries or as unrestricted insertion in global markets. One of the unfulfilled attempts to advance a Latin American community of nations was proposed in the 1920s by the Peruvian Haya de la Torre to increase autonomy and socialist solidarity in the face of expansionist policies from the United States. A more technocratic approach was tried in the 1960s, with the Latin American Free Trade Association (ALALC) that envisioned a common market modeled after European integration.

More recent examples of regional solidarity have emphasized political associations. ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America) was put forward by the Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in 2004 as a counter-hegemonic project against the wave of market-oriented trade agreements and policies. A more ambitious invocation of “Bolivar’s dream” is UNASUR, the Union of South American Nations, born in a treaty signed by twelve nations in 2008. CELAC, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, launched in 2011 and excluding the United States, is another initiative to enhance self-rule over regional affairs.

The desire to join forces to elevate the status of Latin America in the international system by speaking with a single voice can be traced to early denunciation of colonial officials and missionaries. This was followed with critiques of foreign bankers and academics for resorting to coerced compliance with this or that system of taxation, tariffs, or budgeting. Academic and professional networks, political movements as well as waves of political exile energized dynamic cross-border dialogues that reinforced the cosmopolitanism of Latin American intellectual elites.

At times, conflicting economic visions from both world centers and Latin America led to a boomerang effect. The United States answered the challenges of redistributive reforms from the region with the Alliance for Progress in the 1960s. The World Bank's 2006 World Development Report stressed the complementary of equity, economic efficiency and growth long after the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA) introduced the widely used slogan of “productive transformation with equity” in the early 1990s. Much older illustrations include Spain's attempt to address the mistreatment of indigenous labor with the Laws of Burgos in 1512 in response to the anti-slavery advocacy of Antonio de Montesinos, a Dominican friar sent to support the empire in the Americas. The Jesuit order was expelled from Spanish dominions in 1767 for its renowned economic experiments in Paraguay, which lasted well over a century. Jesuits, it was said, had created an “Empire within the Empire.”