INTEGRATION OF SOUTH AMERICA REMAINS SLOW

When Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won the 2022 election, he asked for a new foreign policy to be designed for the country. As a result, the transition team prepared a document in which the pillars of Brazil's new insertion in the world would take place. But one of them was considered strategic: bringing South America back together around a single table and resuming the regional integration process.

The failed coup attempt in Bolivia this week, however, was just another sign of the difficulty in implementing the project. With political crises, tensions, accusations of repression, threats of annexation and organized crime gaining ground, the continent sees its attempts to recreate a regional strategy shaken.

BOLIVIA

Geographical "heart" of South America, Bolivia managed to prevent democratic rupture in the country. But the tension and the process in recent days have shown that the threats are constant.

In prison convicted of a coup d'état, the former president of Bolivia Jeanine á?ez even received an offer from Jair Bolsonaro to grant her asylum. Months earlier, Brazil had been the first country - alongside Donald Trump's government - to recognize its government as legitimate. In 2022, her daughter, Carolina Ribera á?ez, even paid a visit to Michelle Bolsonaro.

If the country is the place with the highest number of coups d'état in the world since 1950, the current situation is still a mirror of the existence of completely different projects regarding the idea of a nation and how to relate to the rest of its neighbors.

PERU

The fragility of democracy is also the reality in Peru today. One year after the removal of then president Pedro Castillo, the organization Freedom House denounces repression by the new government, interference in the Judiciary

As a result, the country is no longer considered "free" in the entity's classification and is placed on the list of "partially free" places.

Its maintenance, according to entities such as Amnesty International, is guaranteed in a repression that has already left more than 40 people dead. At the same time, laws were passed reducing transparency and monitoring over Congress and the Executive.

VENEZUELA

The continent is still experiencing the return of the flow of Venezuelan refugees and immigrants who, in 2023 and 2024, once again surpassed the volume of people generated by the war in Ukraine. More than 6.1 million Venezuelans are now outside the country, with a large number in neighboring countries.

If the hope was that the presidential election in July would be able to turn the page on the political crisis involving Nicolás Maduro and his opposition, UN reports reveal that repression has once again gained strength.

Maduro also canceled the invitation for Europeans to monitor the election, after the EU chose to maintain sanctions against Caracas.

The instability takes on a geopolitical contour in the face of Maduro's threats to annex territories from Guyana, a gesture that forced the Lula government to take a stance and warn Venezuelans that they would not have the support of Brasília.

ECUADOR

Considered for decades as an "island of tranquility", Ecuador has become one of the epicenters of regional instability. Son of a banana tycoon, President Daniel Noboa took office with the promise of providing security to the population in the face of increasing violence.

Twenty gangs were declared terrorist organizations and a 90-day state of emergency was announced. If that wasn't enough, his government carried out an invasion of the Mexican embassy in Quito, violating international laws and leading the Mexicans to open a case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The operation was to arrest a vice president accused of corruption and who was on the run.

Part of the country's violent takeover has to do with its deep ports, which have turned its coast into an important transit point for cocaine that is exported to the US and Europe. Rival criminal organizations from Peru, Colombia and Ecuador are locked in a battle to control these trafficking routes.

According to data from the National Police of Ecuador, the homicide rate in 2016 was 5.8 homicides per 100,000 people. By 2022, it had risen to 25.6, a level similar to Colombia and Mexico, countries with a long history of drug cartel violence.

ARGENTINA

Regional instability also gained a new component with the coming to power of Javier Milei, in Argentina. His ultraliberal project opened a political crisis in the country, with protests and a struggle between the different political forces in Argentina.

The decision to offend Lula, even during the campaign, led the Brazilian to refuse to speak to the Argentine, increasing the impossibility of coordination at the highest level to deal with regional crises.

Lula demands that Milei apologize, an act that the Argentine refuses to do.