Latin America is one of the most unequal regions in the world, we coexist 642 million inhabitants in a vast territory of 20.1 million square kilometers, with extremely unequal GDP per inhabitant, Uruguay with 15,438 dollars and Haiti with 1,177 dollars. In it we coexist with large economies like Brazil with a gross domestic product of 1,363,767 million dollars and Mexico with 1,040,372 million dollars, with small economies like Nicaragua with 11,905 million dollars and Haiti with 8,347 million dollars. This inequality has increased over time, instead of decreasing it has caused conflicts that have not been resolved to launch an economic cooperation project.
The CELAC meeting showed that there are different views on how to address problems; A point of agreement in the region was to reaffirm that health comes first, which is a great achievement and can lay the foundations for a future development of greater cooperation actions. Vaccination rates are extremely disparate in Latin America, Chile has 70 percent of its population vaccinated, while the three large countries of the region Brazil, Argentina and Mexico have 38, 44 and 32 percent of its population fully vaccinated , while small economies such as El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala register 50, 17 and 12 percent. In this perspective, an effort to achieve vaccination for the entire population is a challenge, but it would be a great achievement to put a sanitary floor and from there begin to build new cooperation initiatives.
In economic matters, cooperation has proven to be more difficult, intraregional trade is only 13 percent on the export and import side. Argentina is the country with the highest intraregional trade with around 33 percent of its exports and imports, Brazil with 16 percent of its exports and 21 percent of its imports. Mexico is the country that is furthest from the region, its intraregional trade is extremely low, only 4 percent on the export side and 3 percent on the import side. The question that arises is: How is it that Mexico has abandoned the Latin American market and maintains a discourse of cooperation with the region?
The basic reason for the region’s estrangement in economic terms has undoubtedly been the trade agreement with the United States and Canada. Mexican companies lost interest in developing greater ties with the Latin American region. We live so close but so far in practice. With Central America we have developed some links through maquilas in the textile area and in some other products, but no further progress has been made. Mexico has a problem in generating dynamic productive chains with less developed regions, such as in the south of the country, where we have the lowest per capita income levels, and the special economic zone programs that have been designed have been limited and they have not operated in practice.
Latin America needs to be more ambitious; it must propose programs for greater regional cooperation, well-grounded questions, what a regional infrastructure program would be like for both land communications – how could it be the renovation of roads and the design of railways that connect Mexico City with Buenos Aires? Aires. A program of this type would open new horizons to the production of the entire region, the first condition to advance in greater integration is precisely the development of communications that connect the main markets of the region, this would open the way for the development of chains regional value. The promotion of local production is the only solution to migration, since, if Latin America is waiting for Washington to open its doors to migration, we can miss an opportunity to develop the capacities for productive cooperation that are required.
It is necessary to create planning tables for the region in terms of infrastructure to see how to implement more agile communications and at the same time design the infrastructure that will be necessary to face climate change, a large part of the coastal areas of Latin America will suffer from strong hurricanes and require an infrastructure that allows them to survive. In these roundtables it would be necessary for the region to redesign its sources of energy supply so that they are compatible with the new reality and adhere to the required standards. The region has lived off oil for energy generation and to obtain foreign exchange for its development, we have reached the limit, it is time for energy exchange and the region needs to understand it, countries like Venezuela need to reinvent themselves to adapt to the new reality.
It is in moments of crisis that profound changes can be introduced in the institutional structures, it is time to redesign the Latin American State so that it has as a perspective the structural change necessary to face the imbalances that have become evident with the pandemic and the onslaught of the climate that have affected the entire region. It is time for profound reforms, the question that arises is who should guide the region in the tortuous paths of restructuring? These are difficult times, the expectation is that Latin America will have time to rethink itself for the challenges we face and not wait for someone to do the homework for it.
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