THE CONGA LINE OR HOW TO BUILD A CONTINENTAL POLICY (2001)

While alerting drums beat from valley to valley, Americans from everywhere go to battle: the coming Free Trade Area for the Americas is seen as an unfriendly ghost who will take jobs and money away from where they are already not abundant. From California to Patagonia, as the song says, a crowd of eight hundred million people are tapping their shoes, more ready to march savagely to a demonstration than to go to a ballroom.

The war against a feared and increasing poverty as well as against a flight of capital and manufacturers has started. The protesters against globalization and against its youngest breed, Continentalism, attract the attention of doubtful people all over the Continent, who wonder if this new free trade agreement can be of any benefit for them or will represent, again, a shortcut to misery. As long as it is not understood that a free trade area is not only a commercial area but also a political and cultural agreement, the drums will not play a cheerful music that gathers continental populations in a happy dance of love, joy and growth.

The Free Trade Area for the Americas is not a free trade among equals. Though the previous NAFTA has given many examples of success, the fact that this time the partners are thirty-four and with completely different political and economic situations gives little hope for an easy path. Since the leadership of this project is undeniably US American, the main question of success or failure is about how the USA qualifies for this leadership. Besides, the USA has to play the drums as well as dance dance, with the help of Argentina which has, through General Perón's continental doctrine, a solid theoretical foundation for this political construction.

Of course, Perón thought in the 50s that Argentina could be the natural leader of such an association and that that association would include the United States only in the last period. All the Ibero-American (of Spanish and Portuguese descent) countries would gather first in a still politically difficult but culturally easy association, inviting the United States to join them when their power would be the USA equal. In spite of] their abundant natural resources and their talented people, the Ibero-American countries have made in half a century a poor performance, and the United States has become the first country in the world, as well as the economic, financial and military leader of the planet. The Perón plan has had to face a change: Argentina and the rest of the Ibero-American partners, in order to constitute a continental association, have had to accept the USA's leading role.

How is it that a project, which was mainly an Hispanic project, not even Ibero-American because Brazil always rejected the idea of a continent going beyond the limits of South America, came to be a high priority US project? Disfavored by its condition of being a continental minority in a large majority of Ibero-American countries, the USA has always more willingly played a role in the whole planet than in what was its so-called backyard --- a bunch of poor unknown Latino countries only able to buy US industrial goods and to get bank loans at high rates. The achievement of the first common market in the world, followed by a political and cultural union, set the example: the European Union was to be naturally followed by an American Union.

The eventual construction of a whole planet free market with the same political rules begins with that first continental brick. The necessity of a safer planet, with countries linked by open markets and financial interdependence, builds the rest. Continentalism is understood also as a convenient path to a military cooperative association for safety and peace. By proposing the Free Trade Area of the Americas to the countries of the Continent, the United States enlarges the Free Trade Area of the world, obtaining at the same time a market big enough for fair commercial competition with the European Union.
Where the factories will relocate themselves for the best competitive product prices, and who will be the owner of jobs and profits, are questions raised by the old pre-continental thinking, particularly by union leaders who are not adapted to the conditions of a new economy. These issues, even if they are the ones that get the headlines, are not the most relevant in a future Continental economy. Since the problem remains on the political construction, the economy will be affected more by how the United States as a political leader organizes the continent, and how --as the richest country in the world-- it manages to raise the rest of the countries of the Continent to its level.

With the help of emerging secondary leaders who cannot be ignored because of their size and the influence they exert in their region, such as Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, the United States can avoid the cultural trap of misunderstanding by accepting that they live on an --at least-- bicultural and bilingual continent; as well as the political trap of imperialism, by organizing countries under a federal system. The way to get countries into a cooperative association seems to be based on a recognition of the equality of both dominant cultures --- the Anglo-American and the Ibero-American --- as well as on the imitation of US administrative systems to provide equal rights and justice to the rest of the countries on the Continent.

The idea of an enlarged Federalism, where all the countries would join together on equal conditions in an American Union, points only to a richer continent with multiple owners and beneficiaries, instead of to an Empire with a ruler and its vassals. This continental Federalism needs the active participation of countries that will fear less the mighty power of the USA if allowed to install in their territories the same laws and regulations as exist in the USA. Only this would gain the immediate support of traditionally disorganized societies who would then feel ready for fair Federal competition for investments and production.

The main business of the United States will not be --as the US American workers fear --- in moving factories to countries with low salaries, but in exporting services. From the reorganization of state administration to the updating of infrastructure like highways, water supply, electrical power and communications, the upgrading of services in developing countries to the level of --at least --- the poorest state in the United States will prevail as the most rewarding investment.

At the same time, the local production in every country –contradicting their local union leaders who fear US export of goods -- will jump to an international level and besides selling to the rest of countries on the Continent, will export to the rest of the planet under the new Continental flag.

A new vision, considering Federalism as the political tool of Continentalism, and services instead of products as the main US export to its neighbors, improving dramatically both Ibero-Americans' conditions of life and US business earnings, can change the sound of the drums and go from a military march to a mambo. Reluctant countries can then forget old ideas about Imperialism, accept the Continent as the common motherland and join, one by one, the fair and joyful conga line.