CRITICISMS raised in the international press of the recently concluded 31st Summit of the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR), reflecting adverse opinions on the part of persons from ex-neoliberal governments in the bloc, indicate that the new South American leadership is on the right path; above all bearing in mind the social aspect that is predominant in each and every one of the projects and solutions that they have set in action.

The beautiful city of Rio de Janeiro served as a venue for the presidents of the member states and others associated with this regional integration mechanism which, created in 1991, concentrates more than 260 million inhabitants, 13 million square kilometers and a GDP of close to $1.2 billion. Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay are its founder members, to which Venezuela was added in the summer of 2006; while Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia are in it as associate members.

Without any doubt the new political scenario that has been taking shape on the continent with the rise to power of governments of a nationalist, anti-neoliberal, popular and revolutionary cut, has decisively contributed to the qualitative advance of MERCOSUR, even though there are burdens such as that of the asymmetries among the member states or, in certain cases, self-seeking interests persisting above and beyond the common popular will are still sticking their heads out to inflame bilateral relations between various nations, above all in the context of pending historical problems between neighbors.

It is a fact that the Rio de Janeiro Summit reached agreements that are a landmark in the new process of integration being constructed as an alternative for the sovereignty and survival of the South American nations in the face of the U.S. hegemonic model.

Those agreements include setting up a commission to decide on the entry of Bolivia to the bloc as a full member, an analysis to be concluded within 180 days and that must take into account that that country is a member of the Andean Community of Nations (CAN) and is not planning on leaving it. On the contrary, Bolivia is seeking the strengthening of the CAN as an indispensable step to its future fusion with MERCOSUR, a basis for the strategic founding of the South American Community of Nations or, in the concept of its liberator, Simón Bolívar, the "Nation of Republics" of Latin America.

With the inclusion of that Andean country as a full member, although that grouping would guarantee preferential gas supplies, it would make work in favor of development of the lesser economies – one of the bloc’s most controversial problems – more urgent. One example of that is the fact that last year Uruguay exported to Brazil just 61% of its imported goods, while in Paraguay that figure was 24%.

Also approved in Rio were 11 projects to be financed via the Structural Convergence Funds (FOCEM), to which Brazil and Argentina make the largest contribution, in support of Uruguay and Paraguay. Of those projects, five are to the benefit of Paraguay and three to the Oriental Republic, while the remaining amount is to be set aside to fight foot-and-mouth disease and the expansion of MERCOSUR itself.

The above funds, which are not handed over as loans but as non-returnable income, amount to $100 million, of which the Paraguayan economy is to receive $47 million and the Uruguayan economy $33 million.

It should be highlighted that the issue of energy was central in this 31st Summit, as opposed to in other world forums where U.S. geopolitics have converted into an instrument of harassment, pressure and wars of aggression.

Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales, the presidents of Venezuela and Bolivia respectively, placed their hydrocarbon reserves at the disposition of their neighbors, and the Caracas and Brasilia governments have established a timetable for the Gas Pipeline of the South, a colossal South American engineering work whose first section is to begin in 2009, in a line that is to advance from Venezuela to the northeastern states of Brazil, to then continue to the Río Plato.

President Néstor Kirchner also announced the upcoming initiation of the Northeastern Gas Pipeline between Bolivia and Argentina, a project that is part of the so-called continental Energy Ring that when complete, will guarantee supplies of gas and hydrocarbons to the South American nations on the basis of complementary agreements without leonine pacts that would be damaging to national sovereignties.

The 1st South American Energy Summit has been scheduled for April in Caracas and is set to become a landmark on the road to the continent’s economic and commercial independence.

Still pending in terms of a decision is the creation of the Bank of the South as its own multilateral financial institution, although discussions on it are advancing, as is the case with other proposals related to the elimination of double tariffs and a relaxing of the regulations of origin. However in relation to tariffs, Brazil has announced its unilateral decision to eliminate that double taxation. Also important was discussion on the creation of a Social Institute aimed at advancing among member states the free literacy and health projects that have been of such benefit to the peoples of Venezuela and Bolivia.

In this case, Cuba has been the driving force behind those initiatives and Cuban President Fidel Castro spoke of the will to extend them during an earlier presidential meeting in Córdoba, Argentina, in August 2006.

Plans are being made concrete to the benefit of our peoples, and which are the central objective of the new anti-neoliberal and nationalist governments to have assumed the leadership of this new Latin American and Caribbean epoch and whose first seeds were sown by the Cuban Revolution in the still-recent January of 1959.