Latin American Integration: A Brazilian View

Abstract

This chapter aims to discuss Latin American integration, with special attention to the Brazilian position, in order to understand the elements of continuity between the foreign policy of the first years of the Republic of Brazil, particularly from 1902 to 1912, when José Maria da Silva Paranhos Júnior, known as the Baron of Rio Branco, was Brazil’s Minister of External Relations (MRE is its acronym in Portuguese), and the present day. We seek the remote roots of the Brazilian regional integration policy that culminated in the MERCOSUR proposal in the 1980s. We shall study, therefore, the Brazilian policy relative to its neighbors throughout the 20th century. In this chapter we focus on coordinated policy and strategy experiments aimed at maximizing the interests of the countries of the region. Such is the case of the ill-fated ABC Pact, which was discussed at the time of the Baron of Rio Branco. The ABC was a cooperation, non-aggression and arbitration agreement subscribed in 1915 by Argentina, Brazil and Chile. Other attempts were made throughout the 20th century. One such attempt was the November 1941 Free Exchange Agreement signed by Enrique Ruiz-Guiñazú and Oswaldo Aranha, the foreign ministers of Argentina and Brazil, respectively, which, however, never came into effect. The question was taken up again with the important free trade agreement proposal submitted by Juan Domingo Perón of Argentina in the 1950s and with the attempt by the Humberto de Alencar Castello Branco government in 1967 to negotiate a Trade Union with the president of Argentina, General Ongania, though this idea was immediately dropped with the presidential inauguration of General Artur da Costa e Silva.