The presidents of the member countries of the Andean Community of Nations (CAN) postulated this Monday in Lima the return of Chile and Venezuela to the group, the incorporation of Argentina and a greater rapprochement with Mercosur, in the first face-to-face summit in three years .
“I would like to express how important it would be for the projection of the CAN and the benefit of its members to expand its scope by recovering Chile and Venezuela as full members,” said the president of Peru, Pedro Castillo.
with those countries “We share the Andean heritage both geographically and politically, historically and socially,” Castillo added.who received from his colleague from Ecuador, Guillermo Lasso, the annual rotating presidency of the organization.
The host president even indicated the intention that Argentina be part of a “subregional integration” project linked to the CAN, according to the Sputnik news agency.
“Why not think of a subregional integration that, around the idea of an Andean homeland, reaches the sister Republic of Argentina, with which we share not only the Andes mountain range but also this common and historical heritage of the original peoples. of the Tahuantinsuyo?Castle asked.
Tahuantinsuyo names the set of territories that encompassed the Inca empire and that included part of what is now Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina.
“We must be more powerful, gather more voices; the requests of Chile and Venezuela must be taken into account, going back to the first scenario of the Andean community when they integrated this instrument”said in turn the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro.
“How good it would be if the CAN could be expanded; if we integrate Chile, Venezuela and Argentina, our voice would be heard more clearly on the world stage”, stressed Petro, according to the AFP agency.
The Colombian leader maintained the need for the expansion of the CAN to be carried out with a “minimum agreement” respecting the Human Rights Convention and for the organization to have “a stronger voice” in the international community.
The summit – in which, in addition to Castillo, Lasso and Petro, the president of Bolivia, Luis Arce, participated – meant the first trip abroad for the president of Colombia, who began his government on the 7th of this month.
While, Arce proposed “strengthening the approaches of the CAN and Mercosur in an articulation, complementation and convergence between both blocks in those areas of mutual interest.”
Likewise, he considered it important to establish dialogue tables with the European and Eurasian communities, in order to expand commercial spaces for the Andean countries.
In this way, he affirmed, integration can help these countries to face the global difficulties generated by the increase in the prices of products such as oil and food.
For its part, Lasso said that “the integrationist path requires the fulfillment of permanent challenges, oriented towards the strategic objective of achieving balanced and harmonious development” of the block members.
“All of us present are proud to be part of the most solid integration organization in the region, which has been able to maintain itself and adapt to political, institutional or economic crises”he added, according to the Ecuadorian newspaper El Comercio.
The CAN, made up of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, was born in 1969 with the signing of the Cartagena Agreement.
Chile was a member between 1969 and 1976, then it was an observer country between 2004 and 2006, and since 2006 it is an associate member.
Venezuela, which had joined in 1973, withdrew from the CAN in 2006, in protest at the free trade agreements that Colombia and Peru signed with the United States.
The previous summit of the organization, in 2019, had also taken place in Lima. Those of 2020 and 2021 were canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
