adrian: leaders from south america's 12 nations meet in brazil. their host president lula da , silva, is calling for more unity and even a new single currency. so what are his plans and could they become reality? and what's bringing these countries together now? this is "inside story." ♪ hello, welcome to the program. i'm adrian finnegan. south america's biggest nation has played host to the continent's leaders.

it's part of a drive by brazil's left-wing president, luis ignacio lula da silva to create a regional political and economic bloc. there is a strength in unity, as the saying goes. and it is one of the -- one that the former trade union leader will be hoping applies to neighboring states too. a single currency for south america is one plan he's keen to develop to reduce dependency on the u.s. dollar. he wants more cooperation in areas that include trade, healthcare, the environment and fighting organized crime. but the presence of venezuela's president nicolas maduro caused some division. our latin america editor tells us more on what was discussed behind closed doors. reporter: it is the first time in nearly a decade that leaders of other south american countries actually sit down face-to-face behind closed doors, and speak frankly about the possibility of family laying out the groundwork for regional

integration. it is something that they all feel strongly about, particularly at a time when the world is forming into different blocs. they all believe south america has to have a voice -- it is an economically important part of the world -- altogether they make up the fifth-largest economic bloc in the world, and right now, their voices are not being heard because they are divided. certainty that seems to be what the argument that they are making. however, it has been very difficult to bring about. president lula, when he was last president, created unasur and that is the union of south american nations. that was supposed to be the building block for this regional integration. however, it fell apart when the political pendulum in this region swung from the left to the right. the presence of venezuela's leader, nicolas maduro, was somewhat divisive. some of the presidents believe that he is an authoritarian leader, and they had no problem telling him so to his face, but

maduro was actually very conciliatory. he simply did not answer the criticisms and said that he was happy to just agree to disagree on those issues. in the end, all the presidents were happy to all sit down together for the first time in so long and work toward something they all believe is important, as president lula said, after five years. that is a reference to the arrival of columbus in the americas -- we finally have to be able to leave from the margins and have our voices heard. adrian: this is not lula da silva's first attempt to create unity. in 2008, he led efforts to establish unasur, a regional bloc modelled on the european union, to integrate the 12 south american nations. but a swing to the political right on the continent led to the group fracturing. disagreements over its leadership, and venezuelan president nicolas maduro's involvement led to seven countries with the 2017. south america's population is

nearly 450 million, around 5.5% of the world's population. this year, the region's gdp is estimated to be just over $4 trillian, about one quarter of that of the e.u. the continent is rich in natural resources. brazil is the second largest producer of iron ore, while chile produces at around one-third of the world's copper. it is also the second biggest producer of the increasingly sought-after mineral, lithium. ♪ so let's bringing our guests for today's discussion. from caracas, we are joined by temir porras ponceleon, managing director of global sovereign advisory. he was deputy minister and senior aide to former president hugo chavez, and president nicolas maduro's chief of staff. from bayonne, is guillaume long, senior analyst at the center for economic and policy research, and former foreign minister of ecuador. and in miami is danny shaw, professor of latin american and caribbean studies at city university of new york,

he's also international affairs analyst for tv network telesur. a warm welcome to all. danny, let's start with you. president lula da silva has made no secret of the fact that he would like to revive this regional body, unasur, the union of south american nations. is it actually a good idea? what is the chance of uniting such a divided bloc of nations? guest: that is one of the main challenges. unasur could be powerful now that lula is in power. and there are some other-leaning presidencies in bolivia, mexico certainly moved in a more anti-imperialist direction. of course, nicaragua, cuba and venezuela have long opposed u.s. foreign policy across the hemisphere. the challenge is what if a bolsonaro-esque type of figure

is elected in any country in the upcoming years? that will immediately divide this attempt at unity and integration. what we have seen in the past few days with this unasur, together is important, but there is a long way to go. we have seen voices that want more integration with the north, with the united states and the european union than they want integration with their own south american and caribbean neighbors. so it will not be an easy feat to achieve this unity in an ongoing way. adrian: guillaume, is it a realistic ambition for south america to have its own version of the e.u. or the african union? how does the continent move past organizations that ultimately turn into clubs for ideologically aligned allies? what tangible benefits would such a grouping need to deliver? to outlast the continent's ever ha-shifting political

landscape? guest: latin american integration has been a long-lasting lasting dream of the latin american region going back to the 19th century. south american integration is a bit more recent. it groups in actually visiting consensus, broadly speaking, between the center-left and the center-right. it starts in the 1990's and the president cardoso. then and are lula in the first decade of this century. the community of south american nations was created in 2004 and finally in 2008 unasur with the 12 member states. in fact, it was created as a nonideological and nonpolitical forum. 12 countries, some on the left, some on the right. the only comedy of nominator -- the only, denominator was geography. you had to be a south american nation. then from 2015, 2016 onwards, there's a shift to the right. quite radical right.

bolsonaro, very radical and reactionary right, accompanied by trump in the united states who encouraged latin american countries to abandon south american unity and to return to the fold of monroe-ism, the monroe doctrine, the u.s., germany, the hemisphere, and the expression that they organize. the u.s. has not really wanted an independent group of states with strategic autonomy such as a unasur. now with the shift of the left we are seeing the possibility of unasur being rekindled. we saw it yesterday at the summit, lula once more reasonable right-wing figures t to understand that it is in the strategic interest of the region. he doesn't just want a club of

leftists. you want the political spectrum to understand its south american region that it is in the interest of all 12 countries, in a world which, as you said, is going to be increasingly dominated by regional blocs. they will need regional be geopolitics and muscle to face the challenges of the future. adrian: while a majority of south american leaders are currently leftist or centrists, the region is more idealistically, pluralistic that it has been for some time now. there is no guarantee, is there, that things will stay this way. is it perhaps just a matter of time before a grouping like the one president lula da silva has. part again on ideological grounds? is this the best way to achieve the unity that president lula da

silva is looking for? guest: that is the price of democracy in latin america. politics are competitive. you can have changes in government and alternation in power. it is the people of south america who decide those changes, and i would say happily, to some extent, those alterations happen regularly. but on the other hand, president lula couldn't have said it better yesterday by giving an example -- brazil and argentina, for instance, have a bilateral trade that can amount to $35 billion per year. that is massive. very, very important. in the way, he was comparing that trade between brazil and argentina to the trade that

happens every year between brazil and european union that is probably $19 million. he was giving that example, explaining that this integration effort needs to be very pragmatic. that trade between brazil and argentina is crucial for the companies and businesses in both countries, so why not finding ways to not only improve the conditions for that trade to happen. for example, one of the ideas he put on the table was, why not build a common currency that would allow brazil and argentina to perform the trade exchange without resulting to the u.s. dollar? why should brazil and argentina trade the u.s. dollar among them and not find a regional arrangement? the more that integration goes into a very practical aspects

like the one i am quoting -- for instance, you could say that today it is very difficult for south american students to go from one country to another and then come back to their countries and just exercise their professional with a degree or diploma obtained in a fellow south american nation. so the moment that you start moving in that direction and people see the concrete benefits, it will be much harder for any government, as conservative as it could be, to explain to their populations that they are walking away from such a big medic and beneficial arrangement. adrian: briefly, what would a regional trade currency look like? guest: something that could be what was in existence in the european community before the existence of the euro. what you need is to have mechanisms -- you don't actually

need to move a formal common currency because that would require a long-lasting effort of convergence of the different monetary policies that is a bit ambitious and probably not even suitable. but why not having a common currency that simply allows the different central banks to compensate and trade. those tools existed in the past. the latin american integration is not a new idea. what we need is to use those tools, for instance, to just improve the interdependency of our region, and see in which aspects, in which areas of the economy it makes sense to

integrate further. one example, energy. that is something president lula talked about yesterday. why would some south american nations import their gas or oil from a very remote region went brazil or venezuela have immense reserves, just because there is no pipelines in the region. those infrastructure need to be built. that needs to be a common network in order to allow for those projects to happen. adrian: ok. danny, the presence of president maduro at the summit made some leaders, even left-leaning ones uncomfortable. did president lula de silva go too far in his embrace of venezuela's president? guest: that has certainly been the headline in bloomberg and in the new york times and in u.s.

media outlets. in the u.s. you cannot even mention venezuela. there is no objective analysis, no sociological or historical, critical understanding of everything that is happening in venezuela, just like there is the russophobia, there is a venezuelaphobia. a cold war mentality. why shouldn't the representatives of all countries regardless of their ideology -- this is a geographic unity they are trying to build. so of course leadership from all over the continent should be invited. it is so important to break this dollar dependency. the debt traps, the structural adjustment programs from the imf and the world bank and some have done so much damage. a common currency can begin to break this historical dollar dependencies, the supremacy of the dollar.

and what washington has consistently done is they have vilified any presidency, any leadership, any country that has tried to oppose their unipolar designs for the region. that is why we have, i think, what can only been termed as sensationalism against nicolas maduro. adrian: guillaume, lula said that there was very large prejudice against the country, and that the image of an antidemocratic venezuela was a narrative promoted by the western countries imposing harsh sanctions that exacerbate the country's humanitarian and economic crisis. did he, as chile's president has argued, make light of human rights violations in venezuela? guest: i think lula's approach to venezuela is in response to a growing view that a for this order counterproductive and

created much of the problems that are criticized. if you look at the evolution of venezuelan gdp or even if it, there has been a lot of talk of venezuelan migration in the region, but also to the united states. if you look at the evolution of those figures in the last few years, the origins lie in the sanctions. latin americans are more and more aware that sanctions have been causing venezuela, for example, not to be able to export its main export, oil, which obviously leads to venezuela facing great economic and social hardship. and this has a trickle-down effect on poverty and on migration and so on and so forth. so generally speaking in the region, lula was speaking of his government, but there is growing consensus even in the mainstream diplomacy that the sanctions have not worked. not only have they not achieved

regime change, the goal of the united states, that they have actually created a broader regional crisis and everybody is fed up with this and wants to move on. i think it is important to insert this in this return of unasur and the return of south american geopolitics, the 12 heads of states getting together to discuss this, agreed to disagree and sometimes having harsh words, but all sitting at the table and discussing this in contrast to what has happened in the last three years in the organization of american states. the trump administration actually managed to get a self-proclaimed president with no legitimacy, juan guaido, to be the representative of venezuela, there was no precedent to that. there was no opposition to pinochet or even to fidel castro sitting in some invented seat at the oas.

this was a completely new thing. and clearly the u.n. and other multinational fora, it is nicolas maduro. in international law, the government which represents the country, that controls the territory and control state cetaceans. that is international law. but somehow the united states invented that some figure of the position could certainly take the seat of venezuela at the organization of american states. it was shocking. so what we saw yesterday with lula receiving maduro and having a meeting with the other 11 presidents in the region, some of whom dislike maduro strongly, that is kind of a return of a yearning to negotiate, a yearning to have diplomacy as opposed to just regime change. there were several coup attempts and 2019 that failed.

maduro is still there. the general consensus even among presidents who dislike maduro is that they will have to sit down with him at come to some kind of agreement. i think that was lula's -- the spirit of his meeting with maduro yesterday. adrian: i don't want to spend too much of the program talking about venezuela in particular, but why is it so important now to bring venezuela in from the cold? guest: well, it is very important because on the one hand, venezuela's economy is starting to grow again. and venezuela in our has shown that it -- it has problems that nobody denies, and that can only be solved by venezuelans. foreign interference, especially

when it is the position of sanctions and openly regime change, as what was applied to venezuela during the trump administration, only brings hardship for the people of the country and makes finding solutions sensible, durable solutions, more difficult. now that venezuela has overcome that critical period, it is time for the region to focus on an agenda that has more to do with what can the country do to work together in order to improve their situation, rather than having an institution that is only there for one country criticizing another, or groupings of countries basically pointing out what they dislike about the internal politics of a

different country. i will give you an example. the room has been extremely unstable -- peru has been extremely unstable, probably hasn't had an elected leader finishing his term in over a decade, and still there is no international mobilization to lateral in the peruvian internal affairs. why does it happen in venezuela? well, venezuela is home to the world's largest oil reserves. the government of venezuela had an approached the management of those reserves that probably is not of the taste of the united states administration or major oil companies. so again, the regional agenda is more about finding solutions than meddling in each other's problems. adrian: temir, you touched upon it in your last answer, how does the u.s. view a more united and, therefore, assertive grouping of

south american nations, and this regional currency that would be designed to rival the u.s. dollar? guest: the u.s. foreign policy establishment is a gift success of a sur, against a south american unifying currency. senator marco rubio last month on fox news expressed that if there was no longer a dependency on the dollar, if the dollar no longer reigned supreme, these countries could begin the club of the sanctioned, the club of the blockaded. marco rubio is a representative of the republicans, and the u.s. foreign policy establishment was very afraid that caracas could find tehran and iran could find bolivia, and bolivia could find

mexico, and mexico could find beijing. all roads these days seem to lead the way from washington. that is why they got behind the coup attempt against pedro castillo in peru. now supporting the coup government representation in brazil yesterday. they are doing everything to pivot towards a leader who spends more time critiquing caracas than he does washington when his own country was a victim and survivor of the 9/11, 1973 coup. i certainly think he has to think about his talking points and his priorities. we have seen a more bold lopez obrador. we have never heard a mexican presidency since the 1950's speak in these nationalist and internationalist terms. so i think overall, the second intermission of the pink tide, the synthesis is more south

american integration and unity and true self-determination. but as we are hearing, there are many challenges coming from the hegemony of the north who doesn't want to see the rise of this multipolar world on the horizon. it is in construction right now in brasilia, in south africa, and across the world. adrian: ok, we have about two minutes left of the program. one final question. to what extent is president lula trying to establish brazil as the region's leader? how do other south american states due brazil right now, and are they willing to fall into line behind it politically? guest: i think it's going to take a little while. there are a few governments, we saw it in the settlement yesterday, who had a resistance to unasur. the president of uruguay, who exited unasur, i like to use the

word brexited, because that is what it looks like at the time, he is still the current president. it is uncomfortable to have left unasur and to go back in. the others may have been in favor of it at the time, but they weren't actually presidents, they didn't actually leave the union so, it would be no problem to go back and, and accept new lob's invitation. i think it will happen in the medium to long-term. we now have seven members of unasur out of the 12 regional members, so there are still five countries -- colombia, chile, uruguay, paraguay, and ecuador, that still need to go back in. brazilian leadership and lula's leadership show there is an important role. . it's an old brazilian dream. there are two south american subsystems -- the atlantic ocean of south america which is dominated by americosur, and on the pacific side, the andean

side, those subsystems don't communicate with each other. one of the historic geopolitical goals of brazil have been to try and unify both the pacific coast and the atlantic coast in one big geopolitical area, not just market, but political area as well. i think that is unlikely to outlive lula. it is likely to continue in brazilian foreign policy and i think it will be successful. adrian: gentlemen, we are out of time. many thanks for being with us, temir porras ponceleon, guillaume long, and danny shaw. and thank you for watching. don't forget you can see the program again at anytime, by going to the website, aljazeera.com is where you'll find it. for further discussion, join our facebook page. that is at facebook.com/ajinsidestory. and you can join the conversation on twitter, our handle is @ajinsidestory. fermi, adrian finighan and the team here at doha, thanks for

being with us. see you again. ♪

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