Past and future

WITH Europe prostrate and much of Latin America rising fast, you might have expected what was once the junior partner in a transatlantic “strategic association” to be calling the shots. But no: at a biennial summit with the European Union in Chile’s capital, Santiago, on January 26th and 27th and at a get-together of CELAC, the community of Latin American and Caribbean nations, on the following day, the Latins seemed determined to display both internal divisions and their addiction to the gesture politics of the past.

Perhaps that was why, with the exception of Germany’s Angela Merkel and Spain’s Mariano Rajoy, Europe’s more important leaders did not bother to make the long trip. The main potential item of business was long-stalled trade talks between the EU and Mercosur, the trade block led by Brazil and Argentina. These began in the 1990s. “But on the core issue of access to each other’s markets we have still not gotten down to business,” lamented Karel De Gucht, the EU’s trade commissioner.Argentina and Brazil promised the EU that they would restart the talks, but with little apparent enthusiasm. Cristina Fernández, Argentina’s president, tweeted that she wouldn’t agree to any deal that exposes Argentine companies to what she regards as unfair competition from Europe. She was reported as telling Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff that she wanted to resile from Mercosur’s negotiating position. (Ms Fernández got Latin American support in Santiago, but not in the EU-CELAC communiqué, for her demand that Britain negotiate on the status of the Falkland Islands.)

Mercosur’s main achievement in the past year has been to suspend Paraguay, because its congress impeached its left-wing president, and admit Venezuela, which complies with few of the group’s rules. Meanwhile, it is being outshone by the Pacific Alliance, a newly formed group of faster-growing, free-trading Colombia, Chile, Mexico and Peru. Not by coincidence, these four already have free-trade deals with the EU. It was clear which countries the Europeans wanted to do business with. “We only have to look at the facts,” Mr De Gucht said. “The most open economies in the region are the ones that have had the most success.” Others have taken notice: Paraguay and Uruguay, another Mercosur member, have applied for observer status at the Alliance.

Many Latin American leaders still like to wage past political battles. CELAC was founded in 2010 as a regional body that included Cuba and excluded the United States and Canada. But its message—that Latin America is a region of more self-confident and independent democracies—was undermined when its rotating presidency passed in Santiago to Raúl Castro, Cuba’s 81-year-old unelected dictator, a living symbol of the cold war. Mrs Merkel’s dealings with the new leader of Latin America apparently went no further than a perfunctory handshake.