ABSTRACT
The unprecedented crisis in regional cooperation in the Americas has both structural and conjunctural dimensions. In spite of similarities, the American continent, from Alaska to Argentina and Chile, is extremely varied in its economic, historical and cultural background.
The chapter takes into account the diverging ideational backgrounds of, on the one hand, hemispheric, and, on the other, South American, regionalism. Both the influences of the US and of Europe explain what we have defined as the golden age of Latin American regional organisation, the 1990s, with democratisation, modernisation, openness to globalisation and regionalisation jointly progressing. The failed free trade hemispheric US project Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) has the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), now replaced by CUSMA (Canada–United States–Mexico Agreement) at its well-performing centre in a context of hard competition among alternative cooperation models, from pro-US to anti-US. The most successful experience, MERCOSUR, is in an open crisis and is currently largely depending on domestic Brazilian politics.
