Carlos Portales has been director of the International Organisations, Law and Diplomacy Programme at American University’s Washington College of Law since 2010. He was director general of foreign policy for Chile for over ten years, third in command at the Foreign Ministry and ambassador to the O...
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CELAC: a voice for Latin America and the Caribbean?
The complex challenge of giving the region a stronger voice despite its many different cooperation and integration projects
Carlos Portales
, 2 February 2012
This paper analyses the creation of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in Caracas on 3 December 2011, locating it within the current context of cooperation and integration in Latin America and the Caribbean. This new body is based on an agreement that includes political cooperation functions and the task of seeking inter-governmental coordination of public policies.
CELAC is not a replacement for the cooperation and integration groups that have been set up around three distinct visions: the desire to actively open up to the world (Mexico, the South American countries of the Pacific Basin and, to some extent, the Central American countries); the desire for a limited opening, subject to negotiations that seek first of all to bring about a very significant transformation in the international trading system (Mercosur); and the search for the special situation of small states to be recognised (CARICOM). Neither does it replace groups that encourage cooperation – mainly inter-governmental bodies – in order to address what they see as the threat of globalisation (ALBA). Although the idea of coordinating sub-regional policies and processes is one of CELAC’s aims, the tools it has for doing so are poor.
CELAC also superimposes itself over important sub-regional treaty-based coordinating bodies, such as UNASUR, as well as other cooperation mechanisms that extend beyond the region, such as the OAS and the Ibero-American summits.
The desire for CELAC to be an alternative body – especially to the OAS – does not enjoy regional consensus and it would be difficult to achieve with the resources the new body currently has at its disposal. The complex challenge facing it is rather to give the region a stronger and more representative voice and attempt to bring about some degree of coordination among the different visions and mechanisms being implemented.
