Can Mercosur reverse decades of backsliding?

THIRTY YEARS ago South America had only recently emerged from dictatorships and protectionist isolation. It seemed like a revolutionary step when in 1991 the presidents of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay sat down in Asunción and signed a treaty setting up a free-trade area that soon became Mercosur, a customs union of 200m people and a combined GDP of $1trn. Coinciding with a wave of market-freeing reform, the philosophy behind it was known as open regionalism. “With regional integration, we’re going to be able to take part in world trade and world decision-making in the next century,” Fernando Henrique Cardoso, then Brazil’s president, told your columnist in 1996.