|
One of the questions on the table in Montevideo as the 29th Mercosur Summit happens is: Should Venezuela be a full member of Mercosur? The question divides opinions among Brazilian political scientists.
Marcelo Coutinho, coordinator of the South American Political Observatory at the University Institute of Research in Rio de Janeiro (Iuperj), says the presence of Venezuela in Mercosur would be "a most welcome addition." He sees the question in practical terms. Venezuela has enormous petroleum reserves and the continent's third biggest economy, he points out. "The presence of Venezuela is fundamental for the development of an economic block," he says. "We also have to keep in mind that Hugo Chavez is transitory, Venezuela's oil fields are not". Coutinho adds that for Venezuela to be a full member of Mercosur it will have to renegotiate its relationship with the Andean Community (Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia) and that will take time. Ricardo Caldas, professor at the Political Science Institute at the University of Brasília says that the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, "wants to join Mercosur for purely personal reasons, in order to gain more power." Caldas says Chavez sees Mercosur as something he can use as a "free campaign platform," where he can broadcast his opinions on international issues. Caldas described Venezuela as "in the throes of neopopulism." José Eduardo Felício, a Brazilian diplomat, the deputy secretary-general for South America at the Foreign Ministry, says it is quite possible that as of this summit Venezuela will officially be "in the process of joining Mercosur." Felício sees Venezuelan membership in Mercosur as strengthening the Southern Cone common market and facilitating its integration with the Andean Community, South America's other economic block. The 29th Mercosur Summit is also discussing a series of other issues. There is the matter of a regional parliament that the smaller members of the block see as a means to leveling the playing field. One of the burning issues is just how each member country will be represented - everybody with a fixed number of representatives (which is what the small countries want) or a number of representatives proportional to the country's population. The parliament would initially be a consultative body emitting only opinions, but that could change by 2014. Professor Caldas from the University of Brasilia says the regional parliament is politically an interesting idea, but is less important than ironing out problems with the customs union and putting an operative tariff reduction system in place. Another issue at the summit is development. A special fund (Fundo de Convergência Estrutural) will be discussed. José Eduardo Felício, the diplomat from Itamaraty, says Brazil will surprise the other members with a generous offer for funding projects. The fund would have a US$ 100 million budget beginning in 2008, of which Brazil is willing to provide 70%. The fund would earmark 48% of its development projects for Paraguay, 32% for Uruguay and the remaining 20% for projects in Brazil and Argentina. Agência Brasil
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.