The Ibero-American Summit Process: Prospects, future development and incentives for Latin America. Jean Monnet/Robert Schuman Paper Series Special November 2006

[From the introduction]. On November 4 and 5, 2006, a new Ibero-American summit will take place in Montevideo, Uruguay. This event will be one of the last epoch-making Latin American developments that have attracted attention of political analysts for a long year, among them a dozen presidential elections in Latin America that in part shook the foundations of political behavior and propelled a number of neo-populist leaders to power. While the historical balance of the Ibero-American process that aimed at its birth in 1991 for the formation os an Ibero-American Community of Nations is modest, the current circumstances make it this time an attractive exercise to be closely observed. While Latin America seems to be immersed in a crisis of regional integration, Europe is experiencing growing pains with the result of important casualties such as the derailment of the constitutional ratification in mid 2005. What is new this time in the Ibero-American setting is the inauguration of a new permanent Secretariat with site in Madrid, headed by former President of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) Enrique Iglesias. Also new in the environment is the apparent abandonment of polemic encounters mostly staged by Cuban president Fidel Castro and his nemesis Spain’s Prime Minister José María Aznar. Calculating that a fight did not rendered him the expected results, he skipped recent gatherings (as well as the parallel EU-Latin America summits), leaving the scene to minor stars, much to the satisfaction of the local organizers. The fact that the Cuban leader has announced that he will reintegrate himself as attendant for the summit of Montevideo is a signal that an accommodating negotiation has been reached and that his cooperation for the success is guaranteed, under a friendlier environment