Speech by President of the Republic, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in a meeting with presidents of South American countries

It is with great joy that I receive my friends, South American presidents.

Thank you very much for having responded to this call and for the effort you have made to be here.

What brings us together today in Brasilia is the sense of urgency to collectively look again at our region.

It is the determination to redefine a common vision and relaunch concrete actions for sustainable development, peace and the well-being of our populations.

In Brazil, integration is the result of redemocratization. The 1988 Constitution states in its paragraph 4, single item:

“The Federative Republic of Brazil will seek the economic, political, social and cultural integration of the peoples of Latin America, aiming at the formation of a Latin American community of nations.”

We understand that South American integration is essential for strengthening the unity of Latin America and the Caribbean.

A strong, confident and politically organized South America expands the possibilities of asserting, at the international level, a true Latin American and Caribbean identity.

The end of the 20th century saw the emergence of a series of initiatives aimed at articulating actions at the sub-regional level.

The Andean Community of Nations, the Amazon Cooperation Treaty and MERCOSUR illustrate this regionalism with different scope and purposes.

I record, in particular, the actions of presidents Sarney and Alfonsín who understood the importance of integration for the consolidation of our democracies.

It was only on the threshold of the 21st century that we decided to unite the entire South American region.

Despite sharing the same continent, it was necessary to wait almost 200 years of independent political life before we abandoned reciprocal indifference and isolation.

When President Fernando Henrique Cardoso convened, in 2000, the first Summit of Presidents, the different political and ideological positions at that time did not prevent our countries from embracing the idea of a shared future and building mutual trust.

There, we began a long journey, launched with the Initiative for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America, or simply IIRSA, and the convergence between Mercosur and the Andean Community. Chile, Guyana and Suriname have also engaged in this effort.

A new and decisive impulse was given with the formation of the South American Community of Nations (CASA), the result of the meeting of leaders in Cusco, Peru, in 2004.

Several annual meetings of heads of state followed, which had, among other milestones, those in Brasília (2005) and Cochabamba (2006).

But the CASA was just a forum, with no permanent structure. After a new Summit, in Isla Marguerita, Venezuela, we finally decided to create an organization with its own legal personality, headquarters and secretariat.

On May 23, 2008, when we constituted UNASUR (exactly 15 years ago), here in this same Itamaraty Palace, we advanced in the institutionalization of our relationship with instances such as the Summit of Presidents, the Council of Chancellors, the South American Parliament and 12 sector councils to face our challenges.

For more than ten years, UNASUR has allowed us to get to know each other better. We consolidated our ties through broad political dialogue that accommodated differences and allowed us to identify common denominators. We implement cooperation initiatives in areas such as public health, infrastructure and defense.

This integration also contributed to important commercial gains. We form a robust free trade area, whose figures reached a record value of 124 billion dollars in 2011.

The profile of our exchange is more diversified compared to our extra-regional trade. It includes higher value-added and technology-intensive products and services.

We also combined economic growth with income distribution. We have reduced our historic inequalities and achieved tangible progress in the fight against poverty. According to FAO, South America reduced, in two decades, from 15% to 5% of its population affected by hunger.

UNASUR was effective as a forum for resolving disputes between countries in the region, notably in the crisis between Colombia and Ecuador and in the Bolivian separatist conflict.

We obtained expressive results in the reduction of deforestation and transnational illicit acts.

We encourage dialogue and cooperation to effectively reach millions of South Americans with the benefits of citizenship.

Summit meetings with Arab countries and with African countries helped to define a profile of South America's external relations.

These were formidable achievements for a region that inherited colonialism and was marked by serious forms of violence, gender discrimination and racism.

We did mot solve all our problems, but we were willing to face them instead of ignoring them. And we decided to do this by cooperating with each other.

Our South America was no longer just a geographic reference, it became a political reality.

Unfortunately, these achievements have been interrupted in recent years.

In Brazil, a government that denied Science attempted against the rights of its own population, broke with the principles that traditionally guided our foreign policy and closed our doors to historical partners.

My country chose to isolate from the world and from our neighboring countries.

This attitude was decisive for the country's detachment from the major issues that mobilized the daily lives of our neighbors.

Our region has allowed ideologies to divide us and to interrupt the integration efforts. We have abandoned our channels for dialogue and the mechanisms for cooperation in place. As a consequence, we all have lost.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I am firmly convinced that we need to renew our commitment to South American integration.

When I assumed the Presidency, on January 1st of this year, South America returned to the be at center of Brazilian diplomatic action.

For this reason, I have invited all of you to the present meeting, which will be followed, in August, by the Summit of the Amazon Countries.

The elements that unite us are beyond ideological differences.

From Patagonia and the Atacama Desert to the Amazon, from the Cerrado and the Andes to the Caribbean, we are a vast continent bathed by two oceans.

We are a human, historical, cultural, economic and commercial entity with common needs and hopes.

The recent elections in Colombia, Chile, Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay have demonstrated the strength of democracy in our region, in election processes marked by broad popular participation and freedom of expression.

South America's integration depends on this sense of belonging to the same community.

We have a history of resistance, forged during the struggle for independence and in the fight against dictatorships.

We share a vibrant culture and artistic expressions ranging from music to literature.

Even in football, a sport that we all learned to love as children, it is possible to see the rivalries declining. We experienced something unthinkable last year: Brazilians cheering for Argentina in the final match of the World Cup in Qatar.

The joint candidacy of Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile and Argentina for the 2030 World Cup is perhaps the most complete expression of this South American identity under construction, and of our ability to cooperate beyond the football field and our own borders.

Dear presidents,

We are now taking the first steps to resume dialogue as a region, but the context that we face today is even more challenging than it was in the past.

Global governance forums face severe difficulties in offering fair and effective responses to contemporary problems.

Our countries have been some of the hardest hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. The deaths, human suffering and economic cost left deep marks. The health crisis has shed light on old inequalities and generated new injustices.

Scientific evidence confirms that the current rate of carbon emissions will lead us to an unprecedented climate crisis and the entire planet is already feeling its impacts.

The lack of collective action affects our ability to contain global temperature rise.

We know that what happens in the Amazon affects the Plata Basin.

With the paralysis of the World Trade Organization, multilateralism recedes and protectionist postures in rich countries grow, limiting our options.

We all suffer the consequences of war. The conflict in Ukraine has destabilized the energy and fertilizer markets and caused food price volatility, deteriorating our living conditions.

When global supply chains were disrupted by this set of factors, our infrastructure shortcomings and our external vulnerabilities were exposed.

The region stopped growing, unemployment rose and inflation increased as well. Some of the main social advances achieved in the last decade were lost in a short period of time.

In Brazil and in other countries, recent attacks on democratic institutions, including the headquarters of our constitutional powers, have offered us a tragic synthesis of the violence of extremist groups, which use digital platforms to promote disinformation campaigns and hate speech.

In light of so many changes and challenges, what role do we want for South America?

No country can face today's systemic threats alone. It is only by taking action together that we will be able to overcome them.

Our region has solid assets to face this world in transition.

The combined GDP of our countries this year will reach 4 trillion dollars. Together we are the fifth global economy.

With a population of almost 450 million inhabitants, we are an important consumer market.

We have the largest and most varied energy potential in the world, if we take into account oil and gas reserves, hydroelectricity, biofuels, and nuclear, wind, solar energy and green hydrogen.

We are large and diverse food suppliers.

We have more than 1/3 of the world's freshwater reserves and a very rich, but little-known biodiversity.

Our soil contains a rich and varied set of ores, including those, such as niobium, lithium and cobalt, which are essential for next-general industrial projects.

We are a region of peace, without weapons of mass destruction, where disputes are resolved through diplomatic channels.

In the coming years, we will host events from the main forums of global governance, such as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum meeting, in Peru, the G20 Summit, the BRICS meeting and the COP 30, on climate, in Brazil.

We need to arrive at these meetings united, as reliable interlocutors sought after by all.

Dear friends,

Among the many things I learned in politics lies the lesson that the presidential term is much shorter than it appears. We have no time to lose.

South America has before it, once again, the opportunity to tread the path of unity.

And we do not have to start over from scratch.

UNASUR is a collective asset. Let us not forget that it is in effect. Seven countries are still full members. It is important to resume its building process.

But in doing so, it is essential to critically assess what did not work and take those lessons into account.

We need flexible coordination mechanisms that offer agility and efficiency in the execution of initiatives.

Our decisions will only have legitimacy if taken and implemented democratically.

However, the consensus rule could be restricted to substantive issues, avoiding that stalemates in administrative matters paralyze our activities.

It would be a mistake to restrict activities to the spheres of government. Involving civil society, trade unions, businesses, academics and parliamentarians will give consistency to our effort.

Either processes are built from the bottom up or they are not viable and will be doomed to failure.

In this sense, and without prejudice to other proposals that we will discuss throughout today, I suggest the following initiatives for your consideration:

• to place regional savings at the service of economic and social development, mobilizing development banks such as CAF, Fonplata, Bank of the South and BNDES;
• to deepen our South American identity also in the monetary area, through more efficient compensation mechanisms and the creation of a common reference unit for trade, reducing dependence on extra-regional currencies;
• to implement regulatory convergence initiatives, facilitating procedures and reducing bureaucracy for exporting and importing goods;
• to expand nex-generation cooperation mechanisms, involving services, investments, electronic commerce and competition policy;
• to update the project portfolio of the South American Infrastructure and Planning Council (COSIPLAN), reinforcing multimodality and prioritizing those with high impact for physical and digital integration, especially in border regions;
• to develop coordinated actions to face climate change;
• to reactivate the South American Institute of Government in Health, which will allow us to adopt measures to broaden vaccination coverage, strengthen our health industrial complex and expand services to people in need and indigenous peoples;
• to launch the discussion on the constitution of a South American energy market, which ensures supply, efficient use of our resources, legal stability, fair prices and social and environmental sustainability;
• to create a regional mobility program for students, researchers and professors in higher education, an initiative that was important in the consolidation of the European Union; and
• to resume cooperation in the area of defense with a view to providing the region with greater education and training capacity, exchange of experiences and knowledge in matters of military industry and defense doctrine and policies.

Finally, we have no preconceived ideas about the future institutional design that we could adopt. We want to dialogue and know everyone's opinion.

I am, however, personally convinced of the need for a forum that allows us to discuss fluidly and regularly and guides our countries' actions towards strengthening integration in several of its dimensions.

I consider essential the creation of a High Level Group, gathering personal representatives of each President, to follow up on that reflection work. Based on what we decide today, this Group will have 120 days to present a road map for the integration of South America.

Ladies and gentlemen,

As long as we are disunited, we will not make South America a developed continent in all its potential.

Integration must be a permanent objective for all of us. We need to leave strong roots for the next generations.

Allowing disagreements to prevail would have a high cost, in addition to wasting much of what we have already built together.

I would like to close by mentioning two comrades who have worked tirelessly for our region.

We learned from dear Marco Aurélio Garcia, intellectual and leader of the Workers’ Party, who died in 2017, that:

“Politics is not destiny, but human construction on given historical conditions. Integration will be done with respect for difference, because there is no longer any room for the homogeneity of submission”.

I conclude by paraphrasing Ambassador Samuel Pinheiro Guimarães, who was Secretary General of Itamaraty: we need to refuse to spend another five hundred years on the periphery.

The human and material conditions for our sovereign development are in our hands.

Thank you very much.