MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina officially rejoins Unasur to play a leading role in its “revitalization”

Fernández announced on March the return to Unasur. When Macri's government left the bloc, it alleged that the organization was plunged into a crisis due to an “agenda with a high ideological content”

Argentina made official its return to the Union of South American Nations (Unasur), founded in 2009 and from which it had left in 2019, to “promote its institutional revitalization and build an increasingly integrated region,” official sources said Thursday.

The return to the international bloc became effective a day after President Alberto Fernández insisted on the need to “recreate” the Unasur in Santiago de Chile, where the head of state met his Chilean colleague, Gabriel Boric.

In a letter sent to the foreign ministers of the member states of Unasur, the Argentine foreign minister, Santiago Cafiero, said that his country will send “as soon as possible” a “new instrument of ratification”, in accordance with article 26 of the constituent treaty of the organization.

“Argentina's return to Unasur adds to the country an integration option that does not exclude any other. For the Argentine government, every instance that adds national decision-making power and consolidation of an increasingly integrated region is crucial”, said Cafiero in the letter, published in his official Twitter account.

In the words of the Argentine foreign minister, integration blocs are very important to “guarantee” that Latin America and the Caribbean “continue to be the most densely populated peace zone in the world”, in a world that shows “serious signs of fragmentation and instability”.

”In this way we have decided to retrace the path initiated by the Macrismo (referring to the Argentine president between 2015 and 2019, Mauricio Macri) arbitrarily on April 12, 2019,“ Cafiero stressed in a Twitter message.

The Argentine president announced last March 21 the return of his country to Unasur, reactivating Argentina's rights and obligations before this regional organization.

”The Unasur we knew had a virtue, that it was possible to coexist beyond ideological differences. That is already insufficient, we should take it for granted. What we have to guarantee is a Unasur that serves the economic development of our peoples“, said Fernandez on Wednesday at a press conference in Santiago de Chile, after meeting with his Chilean counterpart, Gabriel Boric.

The bloc was created in 2008 by the twelve South American nations through a constitutive treaty that entered into force in 2011 and which establishes the objective of Unasur as a ”space for integration and union“, giving priority to political dialogue.

But ideological differences between the governments of the member countries led to a massive exit from the bloc between 2018 and 2020, when Colombia, Ecuador, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay withdrew, and currently only Guyana, Suriname, Bolivia, Venezuela and Peru remain in the union.

When Macri's government left the bloc, it alleged that the organization was plunged into a crisis due to an ”agenda with a high ideological content and far removed” from its founding objectives.

The organization's General Secretariat, which between May and October 2010 was held by former Argentine President Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007), has been vacant since 2017.

 

Based on information from EFE