Regional Integration Looking South to North: Mercosur and the Americas

Abstract

Much progress was made during 2005 in furthering regional integration within South America—despite failure at the Fourth Summit of the Americas (held November 2005 in Mar del Plata, Argentina) to put the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) back on the hemispheric negotiating agenda. Evidence of this progress is the further development and northward expansion of the Common Market of the South (Mercosur)—consisting of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay—and the deepening of the original Brazil-Argentina integration agreement, which celebrated its twentieth anniversary on November 30, 2005. There have also been negotiations on the incorporation of Venezuela as a full member of Mercosur and progress in the establishment of a continent-wide free trade area project, called the South American Community of Nations. (The latter is based on the merger of the Andean Community of Nations [CAN], which consists of Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela, plus Chile, Guyana, and Surinam, all of whom signed the founding document in December 2004 in Cuzco, Peru.)