The return of progressive governments to the Latin American map is fostering the rebirth of the Union of South American Nations (Unasur), a regional organization founded in 2008 coinciding with the rise of the left in the region. The Ibero-American Summit last weekend in the Dominican Republic has served, among other things, to confirm the will to reinvigorate an organization that had been lethargic since several countries turned to the right in 2018.
At the moment, only the Argentine president, the Peronist Alberto Fernández, has confirmed his country's return to Unasur, but it is assumed that Brazil will also soon announce its return to the organization, now that ex-unionist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva governs.
Brazil suspended its participation in the organization in 2018, at the same time as Colombia, Peru, Chile, Paraguay and Argentina -that is, half of its members-, countries that at that time were in the hands of conservative governments. Later Ecuador and Uruguay would also abandon it.
Lula's return to power means that the president returns to lead Unasur, as he did in 2008 promoting its foundation together with the late Venezuelan leader, Hugo Chávez. Then, the two models of the left in the region –the moderate one embodied by Lula and the Bolivarian one of Chávez- found a way to coexist to advance in the long-awaited political integration that until then had not gone beyond the customs union that is Mercosur.
Now that Venezuela has already become an authoritarian regime -questioned even by the regional left-, the leadership of Unasur can only fall to a Lula who has gained authority in his country, and whose presidency once again coincides in time with progressive governments in Colombia and Chile.
"Unasur played an important role and its relaunching with new bases is worth the effort. And these bases include the result of the dialogue with the member countries, so that everyone considers the appropriate format. We are going to work in that direction," he said To Efe, during the Ibero-American Summit, the Brazilian Foreign Minister, Mauro Vieira.
Currently, Unasur - whose natural members are the twelve countries of South America - is only fully integrated by Bolivia, Venezuela, Guyana and Suriname, in addition to the reintegrated Argentina.
When the South American right was in the majority in the region - with the Argentine Mauricio Macri, the Chilean Sebastián Piñera or the Brazilian Jair Bolsonaro as battering rams -, he wasted no time and quickly dismantled Unasur, even physically. After leaving the organization, the government of Lenín Moreno in Ecuador decided to occupy the building expressly built in 2012 on the outskirts of Quito to house the organization's headquarters and remove the statue of Néstor Kirchner, the late Argentine president, at its doors. who was the first secretary general of Unasur and who also gave the building its name. The statue is today in a cultural center in Buenos Aires that is also called Kirchner.
The conservative leaders also promoted, in 2019, the Forum for the Progress of South America (Prosur), an entity that is now dying; like the Lima Group, an informal contact body created in 2017 in the face of the authoritarian drift of Chavismo to reinforce the isolation of the Nicolás Maduro regime and force democratic elections.
