 | SEOUL NATIONAL UNIVERSITY
September 20th, 2006
A LATIN-AMERICAN VIEW OF GLOBALIZATION AND INTEGRATION
I. Integration & Globalization
It has been said, and with good reason, that globalization puts all of us in only one level, which includes the political, economic, financial, legal, cultural and social spheres, although such level is not equally shared. Nevertheless, we need to clarify one point regarding that generality. Globalization’s danger is not globalization itself, but its misinterpretation, because globalization is essentially a technical phenomenon with multiple scopes.
Globalization has already existed, though in a basic or essential way, and so it is recorded in the History of Civilization. There has been globalization in the 13th and 14th centuries in the medieval Europe, for instance, in the Italian cities that unified their business models and trade documents creating then the letter of credit and the bill of exchange. Of course, there was globalization with the Hanseatic League (Hanse), which created a common area using the means of that time and which communicated the North Sea with the Mediterranean through trade; there was a real distance at that time, but the advances in the seaway and in the international trade instruments shortened the distances. Therefore, we can see that everything is related with time and the respective technological stage of society. There has been globalization during the Spanish colonization in Latin America as well, when we all had the same currency in the Spanish America, i.e., the Spanish currency. We could even say that it was the Maastricht of the 16th century, although the currency was obviously established by a totally different economic and political system, in which there were no sovereign political units that had freely agreed that.
What I mean is that, when we speak today about the US dollar and the Euro, which are reference currencies in the international sphere, and we believe that they are an ingenious political, institutional and financial structuring, unique and totally original, it is not true in absolute terms. In a broad sense, there has been globalization before, in the rhythm of each time. The thing is that all the technical tools provided today to individuals and society turn globalization into a different phenomenon.
It has also been said that one of the ways of facing globalization is to develop the concept of region in the public sphere, because, somehow, globalization aims at a society that is still invertebrate from the legal point of view: there is no governance of globalization. There is no government dealing with globalization; essentially, there is no authority system for globalization. There is a phenomenon with some features and we have to work and position ourselves in it. But, do we have the appropriate tools to work with that phenomenon? Precisely, one of those tools is regionalism and, within it, integration, as it has been stated by an important part of the current theories; and I share that opinion. Why? Because cultural phenomena, knowledge phenomena, phenomena of the economic, social and political international affairs, and so on, are phenomena that are conditioned or, in some way, qualified by the environment, its geography and different kinds of vicinity. In integration, and especially in the region itself, the dominant phenomena are distance, physical proximity, historical contemporaneity, common cultural origin, common or similar language or the familiarity itself with its use. The same thing that Pablo Neruda said with his literary eloquence in Confieso que he vivido (I Confess that I Have Lived), when recalling that the Spaniards had taken the gold and wealth from our America, but they had left us the language, that language that we share in this real language clearing that we have with the Portuguese language–“Portunol”–to make communication easier.
Then, that vision of the region, that proximity principle that was handled decades ago by Professor Werner Goldschmidt, the great German-Argentine Professor of Private International Law, is the one that, in essence, under different shapes, nourishes integration. Why does integration exist? It exists, for instance, in the borders between Argentina and Brazil, Brazil and Uruguay, Ecuador and Peru, and Colombia and Venezuela. There we find a group of specific and different border agreements. And there are still other disputes to solve, and which we expect to be solved, because there is no place for disagreements and even less for confrontation, there is place only for understanding. And there, exactly, the proximity principle, which is not identical to the nearness principle, is strongly installed. But the proximity principle is not only physical, but also cultural, and has to do with the acquired and enriched treasure of language, which includes, of course, all Latin-American nations. Certainly, closeness and affinity do not eliminate diversity–that would be impossible.
In this scene of globalization situations, one answer within the institutional models of public law is regionalism and integration; the other answer, within the private law is the one given by the private agents in their contractual relations. The first, then, is the one of the States, and the second is the one of the private agents, i.e., of the individuals. Why do we say that also the individuals give answers to globalization? We answer: because the contemporary world has unified some practices, some customs, some models–think, for instance, about lex-mercatoria–, and it does not matter if we qualify this as positive or negative–and there is some margin, although short–it is obvious that when we buy an air ticket, when we sign up for a credit card, when we submit our private information to a database, etc., we are taking part in an universal formal case and its origin is in an essentially private construction of the economic agents.
Let’s see the following example: nowadays, the world great multinational is the FIFA. The greatest multinational in services is, I repeat, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, which also gives rules, statutes, rules the work of sportsmen and settles disagreements between them and their clubs, etc., but, of course, although they are not always considered by the internal law of the States, they have a binding strength that comes from the pacific practice of certain conditions. Today, there is in Uruguay a leading case of Uruguayan football players that migrated to the French football without having been freed by their national team, with regard to their contracts. So, there is a disagreement between each club and the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, which handles the issue almost as if it was a State. And it is a private subject, not a public subject; it is a private subject with no power to announce compulsory laws and, by the way, it does not have any power to pass justice. It also does not have the power of a police that can implement coercive acts. However, it makes all that with an unequivocal strength, an undeniable vigour, and its decisions have such a projection today of which it is very difficult to stand aside. Then, the private subjects also take part in this world of globalization, either in what has been attributed to them or in what is accepted or tolerated.
Additionally, there is a new actor: the non-governmental organizations, considered in a very broad sense. In fact, I am not referring now to the environmental NGOs or to the ones dealing with gender equity or other similar issues, which take care of international public goods and work in the institutional and legal field, but only to the ones working on the field of international affairs.
Integration is located in this new situation, in which regionalism grows and, at the same time, multiple private subjects emerge with a great power for creating a new regulation structure.
As a first point, we should know that there are many ways of tackling integration. It can be tackled from an historical point of view, classifying, systematizing, and defining it (for instance, regarding its effects on trade). Of course, many papers have been written on this subject from those different points of view.
On the other hand, integration can be seen from different sides: political integration, economic integration, trade integration, cultural integration, social integration, financial integration, Integration regarding a common foreign policy, exploitation of shared natural resources, cross-border joint ventures, and the exploitation of cross-border resources, among others, are also examples of the aforementioned (rivers, aquifers, etc.).
II. The Current Integration Process in South America
So, how is the current integration in South America? I would say that there are two big subregional integration initiatives in South America, basically economic integration: the MERCOSUR and the Andean Community of Nations. The first one, mainly Atlantic; the second one, on the Pacific, although without Chile There are, of course, crossed non-full membership initiatives between members of both organizations–Andean Community-MERCOSUR–. Then we have institutions, like the ALADI, which includes non-South-American countries like Mexico and Cuba; therefore, we can say that it is not a subregional organization, but a regional one.
Below, we will briefly define each of those integration processes that are taking place within the ALADI for its convergence; and in the end we will mention the last integration initiative in South America: the South-American Community of Nations.
We will start with the regional process and then continue with the subregional.
A) The Latin-American Integration Association - ALADI
1. Creation and Composition:
The Latin-American Integration Association is an international intergovernmental organization, which was created by the 1980 Montevideo Treaty. Its predecessor was the Latin American Free Trade Association (ALALC), created in 1960.
It is made up by twelve member countries of Latin America: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. The only country that has joined the ALADI by accession was Cuba, in 1999.
The land covered by its member countries totals ca 20 million square kilometres and has more than 430 million inhabitants.
The headquarters of the Association are in Montevideo, Uruguay.
2. Roles:
1) Promote and regulate reciprocal trade among the member countries;
2) Support their economic complementation;
3) Carry out cooperation actions aiming at broadening their national markets. | |