BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (CN) — Chile’s new leftist President Gabriel Boric visited Argentina this past week, his first foreign trip since taking office on Mar. 11, where he described his Argentine counterpart Alberto Fernández as “an ally in the battle against inequality and for a more dignified world.”
Boric crossed the snowcapped Andean mountains that form much of their 3,300-mile border along with five ministers, the presidents of both chambers of the Chilean Congress and a group of business leaders.
Together with Fernández, Boric signed a stack of cooperative agreements ranging from gender equality and minority rights to the development of memorials of periods of military dictatorship under which both countries have recently suffered — Chile under the Pinochet regime (1973-1990) and Argentina under the military dictatorship (1976-1983).
“The route and destinations chosen during his visit have a symbolic importance and emit a message aimed at both domestic and foreign policy,” said Pablo Ortemberg, a historian at the National University of San Martín and researcher at CONICET, an important research institute in Latin America. These included the presidents' visit to the ESMA museum, a former military training center that was used by the dictatorship for the torture and murder of 5,000 people.
Boric signaled his intention to refocus the country’s interests closer to home. “Although for a long time we have been looking in other directions, our base is Latin America and it’s from here that we are going to build,” Boric said.
The economy of Chile has been based on a neoliberal model since the era of the Pinochet dictatorship, which remains a core part of its economy today. Half of Chile’s economic trade is with the U.S. and China, while Argentina’s economy is more integrated with South America. According to the OEC, 51.5% of Chilean exports are shipped to the U.S. and China while just 16.3% of Argentine exports go to the two global superpowers.
Speaking in Buenos Aires, Boric emphasized that “Latin America has to recover a common voice on the international stage.” The 21st century began with a wave of left-wing governments ascending to power across Latin America, whose implementation of social and inclusive policies was fueled by rising commodity prices. It lasted around a decade before the region swung to the conservatives.
In recent years, the left has regained ground across Latin America, including the election of Fernández in Argentina and Boric in Chile. This year, there are key presidential elections in Brazil and Colombia, where the left is currently leading the polls.
“We will have to wait until October when Brazilians will decide between the continuity of Jair Bolsonaro or the return of former president Lula to see if the leftist trend is consolidated,” said Cristian Di Renzo, a historian with a focus on geopolitics at the National University of Mar del Plata, Argentina.
Despite the region’s ideological affiliation, national struggles of reemerging from the pandemic may limit deeper integration across Latin America. “The common characteristic in the region is the improvement of local economies, where pragmatism seems to be the key concept for the current alliances taking place,” Di Renzo said. “Domestic politics is a pressing issue so it’s not surprising that there is a lack of emphasis on large-scale integration.”
At the bilateral level, Boric’s visit shows a gradual degree of progress between Chile and Argentina, with relations between the two Southern Cone nations historically punctuated by border disputes and diplomatic tensions that have reached the edge of war.
Both nations share a national hero, José de San Martín, an Argentine liberator who along with Simón Bolívar led the struggle for South America’s independence from the Spanish Empire in the early 1800s. In the decades after, both Argentina and Chile began nation-building in the south through the colonization of the vast Patagonia region — home to many indigenous peoples including the Mapuche — that was largely neglected by the Spanish.
Follow @@jayfranklinlive
