On March 9th, the Ministers of Communication from 12 countries that make up the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR, for its acronym in Spanish) made the decision to build a fiber-optic ring that created a direct connection between countries in the region without relying on the United States. The network will be completed in 18 months and they will begin laying ocean cables between South America, Europe, the United States and Africa.
After President Ollanta Humala’s state visit to Venezuela Jan 7, and despite some adverse reactions to the visit in Peru, Humala announced that the two countries have “succeeded in turning away from the bilateral politics of the past in which nothing major had been accomplished in diplomatic, commercial and cultural relations.”
The recent meeting of UNASUR Defense ministers and the Brazilian parliamentary debate on defense reveal that the region has made the decision to defend itself in the face of the intensifying global climate of war.
In many ways, the first decade of the 21st Century was the flip side of the last decade of the twentieth century in South America. There have been numerous and significant changes. We still don’t know if it’s a glitch in time or a new beginning. In any case, the region will never be the same.
Néstor Carlos Kirchner died Oct. 27 of a sudden heart attack. The former Argentine President and First General Secretary from UNASUR, died at the age of 60 years old at the peak of his political career. His wife, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner will continue to run the country as she has been since December 2007. She will keep her governing role, but now without her operator, without the man who was willing to get his hands dirty, and loved it.
On Oct. 31, Brazilians elected their new president, Worker’s Party (PT) candidate, Dilma Rousseff. Over the last eight years, President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, has turned the world’s attention to Brazil like never before, as his country has increasingly participated on the international scene.
To understand what this will look like under the Dilma government, I sat down with Igor Fuser, international journalist and Professor at the Cásper Libero University in São Paulo. Fuser has a Masters degree in International Relations and is the author of the book “Petroleum and Power: U.S. Military Involvement in the Persian Gulf.”
The Sept. 30 attempted coup in Ecuador that killed three and held the elected president hostage serves as a warning. Democratic transitions remain fragile and incomplete in Latin America and some of the boldest moves away from colonialism and toward inclusive societies are being met with reactionary force. As the Ecuadorean police uprising shows, nations could lose the important gains that have been made over the past decades.
