Paraguay's decision to rejoin MERCOSUR revitalizes trade bloc.

AutorGaudin, Andres

In just two hours, Paraguay's Congress--South America 's most discredited legislative body, with a majority that acts as President Horacio Cartes' rubber stamp, with little international relevance, and suspected of amassing great fortunes through illicit activities such as contraband and drug-money laundering--produced a bit of news that immediately made major changes to the region's political map.

Following a Senate decision eight days earlier, Paraguayan deputies on a split vote Dec. 18 agreed to rejoin the Southern Cone Common Market (MERCOSUR), a trade association it helped create in 1991 along with Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay (NotiSur, March 28, 1991). Venezuela joined in 2012 (NotiSur, Sept. 21, 2012).

Immediately after voting to rejoin MERCOSUR, Paraguay's Congress also decided to recognize the democratic government in Caracas, re-establish diplomatic relations broken 18 months earlier, endorse Venezuela's MERCOSUR membership, and lift a declaration declaring Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro persona non grata (NotiSur, Sept. 18, 2009, Aug. 31, 2012, and Nov. 8, 2013).

Together these measures re-established the equilibrium broken on June 22, 2012, when the rightist Partido Liberal Radical Autentico (PLRA) and Partido Colorado (PC) toppled the constitutional government of President Fernando Lugo in a parliamentary coup d'etat (NotiSur, July 13, 2012).

A perhaps unanticipated result of the deputies' decision is the revival of MERCOSUR at a time when the Alianza del Pacifico--Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Mexico--appears to have moved to the forefront, outshining MERCOSUR, an organization that had previously represented continental integration. This turn of events also served to recognize Venezuela's Revolucion Bolivariana. For six years, Paraguay had shown its disapproval of Venezuelan politics by vetoing that country's entry into MERCOSUR on the pretext that the movement created and led by the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (1999-2013) did not fit within the provision of the organization's Democratic Charter.

Finally, by recognizing the Revolucion Bolivariana and the legitimacy of the current Caracas administration, Paraguay's action ended up isolating Henrique Capriles, the former leader of the Venezuelan opposition group Mesa de Unidad Democratica (MUD). He was alone in his stubborn decision to not recognize the April election of President Maduro (NotiSur, Jan. 10, 2014). Shunned by his former MUD allies, Capriles ended up...

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