United or Irrelevant

Integration as a Field of Political Dispute

The history of regional integration processes in Latin America has been marked by a permanent tension between projects of continental unity and fragmenting dynamics, often imposed from the outside but also reproduced by national elites themselves, as the critical literature on regional integration points out.

Regional integration in Latin America is neither a recent invention nor a situational reaction to the current global context. On the contrary, it constitutes a long political and strategic tradition rooted in the struggles for independence and in the unionist projects of the 19th century, such as those promoted by Simón Bolívar, José de San Martín, and the generation of founding fathers who imagined Our America as a regional entity in the face of imperial powers. Since then, integration has been a recurring response to cycles of foreign domination and division promoted from abroad.

Already in the 20th century, institutionalized forms of cooperation emerged, such as the Latin American Free Trade Association (ALALC), created in 1960 under the impetus of ECLAC and structuralist economists like Raúl Prebisch, who proposed a regionalism functional to import-substitution industrialization. In the 1980s, ALALC gave way to ALADI (Latin American Integration Association), which sought to adapt that project to a new context more inclined toward free trade and external openness. Despite its limitations, these experiences constituted the first serious attempt to articulate fragmented national economies into a common regional strategy and to conceive of development from the region itself rather than from the centers of global power.

The post-neoliberal integration cycle that began at the start of the 21st century—with UNASUR, ALBA-TCP, the expanded MERCOSUR, and later CELAC—revived that legacy but reconfigured it with a new language: that of regional sovereignty, South-South cooperation, health as a right, common defense, and integration as a public policy, not merely as foreign policy. In particular, UNASUR and the South American Defense Council represented a qualitative leap in the construction of an autonomous institutional architecture, with the capacity to mediate conflicts, coordinate health policies, and confront coups d’état. The subsequent emptying of these organizations does not invalidate their historical importance; instead, it demonstrates that integration without political anchoring or social backing can be easily reversed.

This article proposes a critical reading of the current state of integration, understood as a political construction shaped by ideological disputes, conflicting interests, and structural asymmetries. From a situated perspective, it argues that integration should not be limited to its institutional or economic dimensions: it is a regional policy with a transformative vocation that requires leadership, multilevel governance, and above all, social grounding.

As Latin American scholarship emphasizes, regional integration is, above all, a political endeavor. It is not a neutral technical-administrative process but rather a field of power struggle, crossed by divergent interests, conflicting development projects, and profound asymmetries, both internal and external. The direction, scope, and content of integration depend on correlations of power, ideological struggles, and sovereign decisions about what kind of region to build, for whom, and for what purposes. In this sense, to integrate is to create a common horizon that allows for contesting meanings, narratives, and priorities in the face of an increasingly fragmented, unequal, and exclusionary international order.

This perspective allows linking integration not only to foreign policy but also to a broader strategy of autonomous development, capacity building, and the construction of collective sovereignty. Integration is also a tool to defend the people's right to decide their own destiny, to generate well-being, and to guarantee rights in a global context where the logics of financial capital, extractivism, and technological subordination reinforce structural dependency.

This article, therefore, aims to contribute to this strategic debate. In an international scenario of polycrisis, marked by new geopolitical tensions, energy transitions, and eco-social crises, rethinking Latin American integration from a critical, situated, and multidimensional perspective is no longer merely an academic task but a political urgency.

Fragmentation as a Structural Weakness

The fragmentation of Latin America is neither a recent nor an accidental phenomenon, but rather the historical result of colonial, imperial, and neoliberal structures that shaped a geopolitics functional to dependency. From the perspective of Latin American critical thought, this disintegration is understood as an induced structural condition that weakens the region's ability to act as an autonomous political subject (Sanahuja 2012; Riggirozzi and Tussie 2012). The hegemonic powers promoted Balkanization since the wars of independence, aware that a cohesive regional bloc would threaten the global status quo. The Cold War later reinforced this logic, the constraints of external debt, initiatives such as the FTAA, and the disciplining role of international financial institutions (Fundación Carolina 2023–2024).

In recent decades, bilateral free trade agreements, the overlap of uncoordinated regional organizations, and fiscal competition among states have deepened this fragmentation, creating a regulatory framework functional to transnational capital. This prevents the negotiation of common regulatory standards, the protection of strategic goods, or the control of value chains.

The COVID-19 pandemic starkly revealed the consequences of this disintegration: without a regional health structure such as that provided by UNASUR, isolated responses prevailed, dependent on the global market. The dismantling of ISAGS prevented coordination in vaccine production, public procurement, or biomedical research. However, that same experience also demonstrated the potential of an integration anchored in the region's own scientific, technological, and productive capacities.

In this context, regional integration must be understood as a structural condition for the autonomy of the Global South. It is not a diplomatic accessory, but a central strategy for national development in the face of an unequal international order. A cohesive regional architecture expands room for maneuver, enhances shared capacities, strengthens collective negotiation, and enables the articulation of common defenses. It is a civilizational project that redefines the place of the South in the world, as Simonoff and Lorenzini (2019) argue, rather than a mere coordination among states.

Fragmentation not only undermines institutional effectiveness but also the possibility of constructing a regional identity with political and historical meaning. A fragmented Latin America cannot narrate itself as a subject: the lack of a familiar voice in multilateral forums, the inability to protect common goods such as lithium, the Amazon, or fresh water, or to agree on agendas in the face of challenges such as AI or climate change, are symptoms of an identity fracture that also endangers regional peace when alignments replace dialogue with industrial and military powers.

One of the most significant obstacles to Latin American regionalism has been its reliance on fragile institutional structures, which are scarcely resilient to the fluctuations of domestic politics. Without sustained political will and broad social backing, even the most ambitious designs tend to be emptied of content. UNASUR clearly exemplifies this: although in its early years it made progress in defense, health, and conflict resolution, its subsequent weakening showed that no institutional framework can endure without lasting strategic convergence among governments (Sanahuja 2012).

Regional institutionalism has oscillated between phases of normative density and abrupt collapse, revealing a discontinuous and vulnerable architecture. This logic of “reversible institutions” reflects a structural deficit: the lack of relative autonomy from domestic dynamics (Riggirozzi and Tussie 2012). Unlike the EU, where institutions acquired a life of their own, in Latin America, they remain subordinate to national circumstances.

This is not only a technical or legal problem. The institutional vacuum reflects a more profound disconnection: the absence of social legitimacy. Historically, integration has been monopolized by diplomatic elites, without citizen ownership. Without a social dimension, it becomes a bureaucratic artifact, devoid of transformative capacity.

For this reason, it is urgent to build a new regional institutional framework that combines efficiency with legitimacy, inclusion, and participation. This requires multilevel governance mechanisms that integrate subnational actors, universities, social movements, unions, and productive sectors. Resilience is not forged solely by norms, but by social foundations, territorial anchoring, and collective capacities.

At the same time, it is necessary to abandon the technocratic logic of functionalist regionalism. Integration must be a tool for building regional power, articulating sovereignties through cooperation, and contesting meanings in the international arena. For this, committed political leadership, common agendas, autonomous financing, and institutional structures oriented toward concrete results are needed.

Faced with contemporary challenges—climate crisis, energy transition, digital sovereignty, food security—Latin American regionalism must stop imitating external models and design an institutional framework that is situated, flexible, and rooted in the realities of Nuestra América. It is not about copying Europe, but about learning from its tensions to build, from the South, an integration that is its own, popular, and transformative.

Regional Integration and the Global Order in Dispute

Latin American regional integration must be understood not only as an internal political project, but also as a strategy in response to an international system undergoing profound reconfiguration. The 21st century is advancing toward an unstable multipolar order, marked by the rivalry between China and the United States, the weakening of liberal multilateralism, and the rise of fragmented, bilateral, and competitive power regimes. In this scenario, Latin America risks becoming a passive arena of confrontation if it does not strengthen its regional coordination and collective projection.

The so-called "second Cold War" between Washington and Beijing is being fought on technological, commercial, and financial fronts. Disputes over digital sovereignty, energy transition, and control of strategic inputs—such as lithium, semiconductors, and food—place Latin America at the center of global interest, both for its resources and for its geopolitical value. This competition is redefining the region’s margins of autonomy.

At the same time, traditional multilateralism is facing a legitimacy and effectiveness crisis. Institutions such as the WTO, IMF, and UN are losing governance capacity, while bilateral agreements, informal alliances (such as the BRICS countries or the Quad), and cross-sanctions proliferate. A fragmented Latin America is left exposed to these dynamics, lacking the tools to negotiate collectively on critical issues such as debt, digital trade, or environmental governance.

In this context, integration cannot be limited to symbolic declarations. It must become an effective tool for enhancing regional strategic autonomy—projecting a familiar voice, strengthening South–South alliances (especially with Asia and Africa), diversifying international ties, and coordinating regional policies on issues such as technology, ecological transition, value chains, and defense. The experiences of UNASUR, the Brasília Consensus, and CELAC acquire renewed significance in the evolving global geopolitical landscape.

The expansion of the BRICS in 2023, driven by Brazil and China, offered South America a concrete opportunity to contest global power. After two years of negotiations, Argentina was incorporated in recognition of its strategic importance as a pivotal actor. President Alberto Fernández's acceptance of the invitation was consistent with an autonomous and diversified foreign policy. Nevertheless, President Javier Milei's government formally rejected membership—a gesture reflecting its alignment with the United States and Israel, and a subordinated view of Argentina's international role. This renunciation represents a missed opportunity to leverage a key platform for South–South cooperation in areas such as alternative financing, artificial intelligence, and the energy transition, ultimately weakening the Latin American voice in the global arena.

Strategic Integration: Energy, Health, Science, and Culture

For Latin American integration to be a transformative project and not merely a rhetorical one, it must be grounded in strategic dimensions with real impact on daily life. Energy, health, and science are not simply technical sectors: they are arenas of dispute over power, sovereignty, and the model of development. Integration is validated through concrete actions: the production of vaccines, energy interconnection, the promotion of sustainable mobility as an industrial engine, cooperation in the peaceful use of nuclear energy, and the strengthening of regional scientific and technological networks.

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the fragility of health multilateralism. Had the UNASUR Health Council remained active, the region could have responded more coherently and with less reliance on the global market. This would have enabled reducing mortality and building a regional market for biomedical production. The ARVAC "Cecilia Grierson" vaccine, developed entirely in Argentina, demonstrates concrete regional capabilities when there is political will (CONICET 2023). The dismantling of ISAGS—the technical institute of UNASUR—meant the loss of a key tool for coordinating policies, training professionals, and strengthening sovereignty in public health. Health integration is, therefore, a policy for the defense of life and an antidote to global threats. Its value does not lie in rhetoric, but in its ability to anticipate risks and offer joint responses.

In a fragmented international context, Federico Merke (2023) proposes that Argentina's foreign policy acts as the arm of a development strategy. The energy transition, digitalization, and redesign of global value chains require an international insertion aligned with sustainability, inclusion, and genuine employment. To achieve this, it is necessary to replace reactive diplomacy with an active strategy that links industrial policy to today's challenges.

Merke takes up Stewart Patrick's concept of "ecological realism," which redefines national interest by incorporating the biosphere as a strategic concern. Unlike traditional realism, centered on state security, ecological realism focuses on planetary sustainability as the foundation of all security. From this perspective, foreign policy must promote climate financing, green bonds, environmental traceability, and regulations that allow Argentina to integrate into demanding markets. The energy transition is also an opportunity to reposition the country as a supplier of strategic goods, such as lithium and green hydrogen, as well as applied knowledge.

The region must decide whether to continue exporting resources without added value or to promote strategic energy industrialization. Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile hold more than 60% of the world's lithium reserves, yet they export it without coordination or joint policies. Unlike Latin America, OPEC succeeded in building a collective platform to regulate prices and maximize benefits. Although the contexts differ, it demonstrates that it is possible to avoid destructive competition and strengthen bargaining power. Integrated, Latin America would have the scale, legitimacy, and technical capacity to lead a just energy transition. This requires network interconnection, shared planning, harmonized regulatory frameworks, and a common vision of development—one based on sovereignty, environmental justice, and regional value added.

Sustainable mobility represents another opportunity. With key resources such as lithium and copper, and an existing industrial base, the region can build a sustainable transport industry with a substantial impact on employment, the balance of payments, and productive linkages. Equipment related to oil, gas, and clean energy (such as wind turbines) opens up new opportunities. Added to this is digitalization, in which Latin America stands out for its knowledge economy, shaping an agenda of regional productive and scientific-technological development.

From a Peronist perspective, integration does not mean yielding sovereignty, but multiplying it. As Juan Domingo Perón said, “No one fulfills themselves in a community that does not fulfill itself.” No country can sustain its autonomy if its neighbors fall into dependency. To integrate is to cooperate rationally and in solidarity. It is to build common power in science, health, energy, and production. Foreign policy should not replicate the interests of great powers, but project a country with autonomy—something that also applies to the region, which must see itself as a collective subject of its own destiny.

In science and technology, the region suffers from low R&D investment (0.7% of GDP, compared to 2.7% in the OECD and over 4% in South Korea), brain drain, technological dependence, and limited cooperation. Yet there are valuable precedents: regional academic mobility, MERCOSUR university networks, science funds, and shared data platforms. Reducing migration barriers for students and researchers, harmonizing visas, establishing scholarships, and recognizing equivalent qualifications are key to democratizing knowledge and building cognitive sovereignty vis-à-vis the Global North and major technology platforms.

Integration must be a concrete agenda—with policies, budgets, and timelines. A persistent mistake has been to think of it only in commercial terms, limiting it to tariff reductions or liberalization. That technocratic approach reduced regionalism to the management of the status quo. A transformative integration must be comprehensive: including higher education (mobility, common accreditation), science and technology (regional funds), health (shared production and distribution), energy (planned transition), and digital infrastructure (technological sovereignty). Examples such as the ESCALA Program, ISAGS, the Néstor Kirchner Gas Pipeline, and MERCOSUR’s university networks are precedents that can be strengthened.

Integration cannot be reduced to commercial interests or copied from external models. It must be built from our own needs, territories, and capabilities. Latin America has resources, talent, and popular will; what is lacking is leadership able to look beyond borders and commit to a truly strategic, multidimensional, and transformative integration. Integration must be felt in everyday life—by improving living standards, redistributing opportunities, and expanding rights. It is a commitment to another way of being in the world: fairer, more humane, more Latin American.

The region can no longer improvise; it must strategically plan its shared destiny, with viable policies committed to the well-being of its peoples. Because without sustained integration, there can be no true emancipation. Latin American integration does not emerge in harmony, nor does it advance without tensions. Ideological disputes, economic asymmetries, and conflicting visions of development traverse it. To acknowledge these is not a weakness but a condition for progress. Understanding them allows us to chart paths toward a firm, lasting, and transformative integration.

Today, opposing approaches coexist: some view integration as passive adaptation to the global market, while others see it as a tool to strengthen the South's collective action. There are also tensions between centralized models and proposals promoting active participation by people, youth, and community organizations. Development strategies, too, are contested between standardized prescriptions and context-sensitive approaches attuned to local realities. Far from halting the process, these tensions can energize it if handled with political responsibility. To move forward, it is necessary to build consensus, open plural dialogue, and embrace shared decision-making.

What is needed is leadership committed to a common horizon—one that brings together majorities rather than marginalizing them. Integration cannot be merely technical, nor a matter confined to foreign ministries: it must be a regional transformation project capable of improving lives, redistributing power, and expanding rights. Ultimately, it must be a determined commitment to a sovereign, just, and united Latin America.

New Regional Coordinates: From the Brasília Consensus to COP30

In an international scenario marked by geopolitical fragmentation, the rise of extreme-right movements, and multiple systemic crises—environmental, economic, democratic, and food-related—Latin America has begun to rearticulate a common roadmap. Far from being a uniform process, regional integration in Latin America has historically been characterized by its pendular nature. It does not advance linearly but rather through cycles of advances and setbacks, political impulses and reversals imposed by internal and external factors.

The Summit of South American Presidents convened by Lula da Silva in May 2023 in Brasília was a turning point. The so-called Brasília Consensus was not a legal-institutional agreement nor the creation of a new organization, but rather a foundational political gesture: the decision by heads of state to once again see themselves as a region, to engage in dialogue without external tutelage, and to rebuild the strategic bonds needed to confront shared challenges. In Argentina, the administration of Alberto Fernández supported this initiative with conviction, understanding that relaunching regional political dialogue could no longer be postponed.

The Brasília Consensus revived an idea already present in the Mujica Initiative, promoted by the former Uruguayan president at the start of 2023—that integration cannot depend solely on ideological affinities or rigid structures. On the contrary, it requires concrete, synergistic, flexible, and sustained agreements. In this sense, it fits within what scholars have defined as post-hegemonic regionalism: an approach that prioritizes South–South cooperation, relative autonomy, social inclusion, and actor pluralism, transcending the institutional constraints of traditional integration.

Thus, the Brasília Consensus proposed a flexible, pragmatic, and sovereign form of regional governance capable of acting amid the reorganization of the international system. Within this framework, the twelve leaders discussed crucial topics: energy transition, the fight against hunger, health cooperation, food systems rooted in traditional agriculture, digital connectivity, defense, and cybersecurity.

But as so often in our regional history, the integrative momentum soon encountered obstacles. The lack of political continuity in some countries, renewed tensions over Venezuela, and ideological differences among governments began to cool the process. This dynamic is part of what Briceño Ruiz (2014) calls the reversible condition of Latin American regionalism: an integration process that advances when conditions are favorable but retreats rapidly with changes in political cycles. However, such fragility should not lead to skepticism. History shows that Latin American regionalism is resilient—it rebuilds itself through new leadership, strategic junctures, and external opportunities.

One of those opportunities is, without doubt, the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30), to be held in 2025 in the Amazonian city of Belém do Pará. This is no minor detail: for the first time, the world's most important climate conference will take place in the heart of the Amazon—one of the planet’s most vital and endangered ecosystems. This symbolic and geopolitical location makes COP30 a historic opportunity for Latin America to reposition itself as a global actor in the environmental agenda—highlighting the ecological debt of the Global North, denouncing the asymmetries of the international climate regime, and proposing a just transition from the Global South.

This new momentum can build on the legacy of the Brasília Consensus to project a new kind of regionalism—environmental, sovereign, post-neoliberal, popular, and multi-actor. The region holds strategic resources—biodiversity, freshwater, lithium, copper, solar and wind energy—that can serve as levers for endogenous development and regional cooperation if they are articulated through a shared scientific, industrial, and technological policy. But without regional coordination, the risk is to repeat the historic pattern of subordinate insertion: exporters of nature, importers of technology.

The struggle for integration, therefore, is not fought only in presidential offices or international summits. It unfolds in schools, universities, social and labor organizations, the media, environmental movements, and business chambers. It is a cultural, pedagogical, and civilizational struggle—one that demands political will, widespread awareness, and strategic vision.

Two years after the Brasília Consensus, the initiative promoted by Lula da Silva has shown that regional integration is not dead; it simply requires constant reactivation through political imagination, cooperative will, and concrete ties between states and peoples. In a context marked by the disarticulation of previous mechanisms such as UNASUR and the abandonment of common spaces during the most challenging years of the pandemic, the 2023 summit enabled the twelve South American presidents to reach a shared diagnosis: the region faces common challenges that cannot be addressed in isolation.

That spirit was embodied in the adoption of a Roadmap for Integration, outlining 17 priority areas and clear criteria to avoid institutional duplication: flexible meetings, without bureaucracy or a fixed headquarters, but with political and technical continuity. In addition, a new fund was proposed to finance strategic regional projects—with support from CAF, BNDES, the IDB, and FONPLATA—aimed at moving beyond "declaratory regionalism" and toward material cooperation with tangible impact on people's daily lives.

However, as is often the case in Latin America's regional history, the advances of the Brasília Consensus soon met significant resistance. With the change in political orientation in some countries—particularly in Argentina under the government of Javier Milei—the initiative lost momentum. Instead of deepening integration mechanisms, a unilateral shift took hold, ideologically hostile to regional multilateral spaces and aligned with a logic of geopolitical subordination. This rupture meant that Argentina withdrew from an agenda prioritizing the joint development of value chains, energy transition, regional defense, protection of the Amazon, and scientific and educational sovereignty.

In doing so, Argentina risks forfeiting the opportunity to participate actively in a cooperative architecture that, far from denying differences, builds upon common interests to expand the region's margins of autonomy. Yet the will of a single government must not define the historical horizon of a nation that has repeatedly played a leading role in regional integration. With Néstor Kirchner—who firmly opposed the FTAA and promoted an autonomous, solidarity-based vision of Mercosur; with Cristina Fernández de Kirchner—who led the creation of UNASUR as a South American political coordination space and steadfastly defended regional sovereignty against external interference; and with Alberto Fernández—who secured Argentina's first CELAC presidency and played a key role in Brazil's return to regional forums—Argentina has demonstrated that its foreign policy can and must play a constructive role within the South American framework. Integration is part of the region's political DNA, and sustaining it transcends individual government cycles. That is why it is vital for social, institutional, and political sectors committed to South America's common destiny to continue strengthening ties and forging consensus beyond short-term circumstances.

Like any collective political construction, regional integration does not advance in a straight line. The Brasília Consensus reignited a spark after years of regression, but its achievements remain fragile. The political situation in Venezuela, for example, once again strained consensus among South American governments. While some countries promoted dialogue with Nicolás Maduro's government as part of a strategy of non-intervention and regional problem-solving, others adopted more critical stances, prioritizing alignment with extra-regional actors. This divergence exposed the deep tensions that persist around how to address internal conflicts within South American countries and revealed the absence of solid mechanisms for regional political coordination.

Venezuela thus became a turning point: either the region moves toward an integration architecture capable of managing differences through political dialogue, or national disputes will once again fracture the shared regional horizon. Yet these conflicts should not be read as structural failures, but rather as part of a historical dynamic in which regionalism advances when political will prevails and retreats when fragmentary interests or external pressures take over. The key lies in building mechanisms that can endure despite disagreements. That is what our integration is about: not abandoning the common project when conflicts arise, but anchoring it in what is shared, so that it can regain momentum when conditions allow.

COP30, to be held in Belém in 2025, must be a turning point. Argentina cannot remain absent from the main regional coordination forums if it intends to influence the strategic debates of the twenty-first century. The continent's climate, energy, and production agenda demands an active presence and concrete proposals.

ENVIRONMENTAL INTEGRATION FROM THE SOUTH

The holding of COP30 in November 2025 in the city of Belém do Pará, in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, represents a geopolitical event of great significance for Latin America and the Global South. It is not merely a question of venue or host country. It is, above all, a political statement: placing the center of the global climate debate in the most strategic—and most threatened—biome on the planet, while recognizing the irreplaceable role that South America, and Brazil in particular, must play in the ecological transition and the defense of the global commons.

The choice of Belém as the site of COP30 encapsulates a narrative that combines environmental diplomacy, regional leadership, and climate justice. The Amazon—historically reduced to an extractive territory under the colonial logic of "development without people"—is thus transformed into a platform for a new multilateral environmental architecture from the South. It is no coincidence that this COP will take place in a city with a strong Amazonian and multicultural identity, historically peripheral in global decision-making. As President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva declared at the opening of the Brazil–Caribbean Summit on June 13, 2025: "We must arrive united at COP30," and do so with a voice of our own, one that can challenge narratives, agendas, and financial mechanisms based on the realities of the South.

This positioning aligns with the strategy that Brazil, under Lula's leadership, has been developing—one that understands that regional integration and the environmental agenda are not parallel paths, but mutually reinforcing processes. In his address to Caribbean leaders, Lula emphasized that the success of COP30 will depend on the "degree of ambition" of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), but also on the Global South's capacity to act in a coordinated way in the face of the industrialized countries' systematic failure to meet their climate commitments. "It is up to the rich countries to fulfill their responsibilities," he warned, proposing a pragmatic approach to technical, technological, and financial cooperation among countries of the South.

From that perspective, Brazil has been promoting the articulation of multiple dimensions of the environmental agenda: adaptation, financing, satellite monitoring, ocean preservation, access to clean technologies, and a just energy transition. This leadership also finds expression in the relaunch of the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) as a regional climate monitoring tool, the reopening of embassies in the Caribbean, and the creation of cooperation networks with less-developed countries to help them design NDCs that are ambitious yet realistic.

Of the thirty sessions of the Conference of the Parties (COP) held since 1995, more than half have taken place in European cities, reaffirming a geography of global climate power that has historically concentrated decision-making in the Global North. In Europe, for instance, Germany has hosted three times (Berlin in 1995, Bonn in 1999, and Bonn in 2004). By contrast, South America has hosted only three editions: in Buenos Aires (1998 and 2004) and in Lima (2014), with Argentina being the only Global South country to have hosted twice. It is noteworthy that more than a decade has passed since the last time South America was at the center of the international climate agenda. COP30, to be held in November 2025 in Belém do Pará, marks a historic shift: it will be the first COP ever held in Amazonian territory, bringing the heart of the environmental debate to the heart of one of the planet's most vital and threatened ecosystems. Holding this conversation in these latitudes challenges the very architecture of global climate governance. It opens a unique opportunity to rebalance the South's voice in shaping solutions to the planetary ecological crisis.

COP30 thus represents a high-impact political opportunity to revitalize Latin American regionalism with an environmental, popular, sovereign, and multiactoral focus. This vision aligns with the structuralist and autonomist development paradigm, long defended by thinkers from ECLAC to contemporary intellectuals of the South. There can be no development without technological autonomy, nor an ecological transition without social justice. By assuming the co-chairmanship of the Alliance for NDCs alongside Denmark, Brazil is advancing a strategy that combines financing, energy planning, food security, and technology transfer as the pillars of a transformative South–South climate cooperation agenda.

The centrality of the Amazon places it at the heart of global climate governance, a territory that has been historically marginalized—and the peoples who inhabit it. This is an act of epistemic, political, and environmental reparation. In Lula's words, the region "that shares this [colonial] past with Brazil can also be part of this sustainable and just future." In this context, COP30 can and should serve as a platform to relaunch the Brasilia Consensus under a new key: environmental integration as a vector of regional development.

With its history of environmental leadership, scientific capacity, and integrative vocation, Brazil is well-positioned to call on Latin American and Caribbean countries to build a joint strategy toward Belém. The task is to overcome fragmentation, share capabilities, fight for climate finance, and consolidate a regional bloc defending the South's interests. As the literature on post-hegemonic regionalism (Riggirozzi and Tussie, 2012) argues, this is an opportunity to build "structures of opportunity" that strengthen a more political, plural, and autonomous form of integration. COP30 in Belém will not be just another COP. It could be the COP of Latin America—of our Amazon, of our South, of our agendas. But it will only be so if the call for climate justice and a just transition is tied to a sustained political project of regional integration rooted in the peoples of the region.

To squander this moment would be to forfeit our chance to be protagonists. Regional integration can no longer remain an empty slogan or a forgotten file in ministerial archives. It is a concrete, strategic, and indispensable tool for developing our people. What is at stake is neither an ideological preference nor a tactical conjuncture, but the possibility of defining our collective destiny in an increasingly uncertain world. As was once achieved during the UNASUR era—through political will, a spirit of understanding, and strategic vision, even amid governments of differing ideological stripes—it is once again possible to advance toward a new stage of integration.

We believe deeply in regionalism as a path toward a sovereign, cooperative, and solidaristic international presence. That is why we must rise to the occasion. History is calling us—and Latin America has everything it needs to respond with unity, courage, and purpose.

CONCLUSION: INTEGRATION OR IRRELEVANCE

Latin America today stands at a crossroads. The convergence of a multidimensional global crisis, an increasingly polarized international order, and the rise of new technologies reshaping global power places our region before a decisive choice: to deepen fragmentation or to take on the historic challenge of integration. This article has argued that integration is not an empty slogan or a bureaucratic gesture—it is a political decision that permeates every sphere of collective life: from public health to technological sovereignty, from education to the energy matrix, from territory, resources, and populations to modes of production compatible with a dignified and healthy life in those territories.

Contrary to the thesis that views integration as a merely contingent phenomenon, Lorenzini and Pereyra Doval (2023) argue that regionalism constitutes a structuring and persistent axis of Argentina's foreign policy since the return of democracy. This continuity, beyond the ideological shifts of successive governments, can be explained by an active integrative memory—historically sedimented as part of a State policy. Thus, integration is not simply a functional tool but a strategic component that expresses a vision of Argentina's place in the world and its relationship with the region.

Far from understanding integration merely as a technical or commercial mechanism, the authors emphasize that it represents a political commitment grounded in a conception of collective autonomy. In a context of growing international uncertainty, this perspective revisits and updates Latin American intellectual traditions that conceive regionalism as a platform for shared sovereignty. From this standpoint, integration does not mean merely adding states together—it means building shared power, contesting global narratives, and expanding room for maneuver within an exclusionary international order.

Regional integration can no longer be thought of solely as a commercial instrument or as a reflection of temporary affinities between governments. It is a strategic project that demands vision, courage, and political pedagogy—one that must be supported by popular participation, multiactoral cooperation, a flexible yet robust institutional framework, and a shared narrative capable of rekindling enthusiasm among Latin American peoples for their shared destiny. It is about connecting the problems and challenges affecting this region's population with regional-scale solutions, grounded in the sovereign exercise of designing a development plan grounded in social justice.

The future of the region is not written in stone. What is at stake is not a rhetorical utopia but the concrete possibility of building a more just, sovereign, and solidaristic regional order. As recent experiences have shown — and as embodied in the legacy of leaders such as the beloved Pepe Mujica — Latin American integration is achievable when it is embraced as a political priority, a public policy, and a cultural horizon.

To integrate is not only to resist: it is to propose, to create, to unite. It is believed once again that a collective destiny is possible from the South. Making it a reality requires political will, social commitment, and an ethic of encounter that draws on the best of our shared history and projects it into the future.

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Received: July 16, 2025

Accepted for publication: July 18, 2025

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