Celso Amorim: Building our Latin American 'community of nations'

In Latin America we have been suffering for some time now the social consequences of policies unsuited to our circumstances. The emerging consensus is that globalisation has not lived up to its promise. It has failed to improve the livelihood of most people in the developing world.

In many quarters it has made social problems more acute. We must review some of the neoliberal assumptions and prescriptions about minimising the role of the state and a blind faith in the ability of market mechanisms to produce the changes needed to make the world socially more fair and politically more stable.

Thanks to a comparatively benign domestic political evolution, Brazil has been spared the social turbulence that has afflicted many of our neighbours from Ecuador to Argentina, from Venezuela to Bolivia. But this has only made us more sensitive to the interconnectedness between our own destiny and that of our fellow South Americans.

We are determined to transform the Mercosul trading block (which also comprises Paraguay and Uruguay as full members, and Bolivia, Chile and Peru as associated members) into a catalyst for building a shared future. Successful negotiations with the Andean Community (involving Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela) have set the stage for a common economic space, capable of heralding a new chapter in our integration efforts.

If we add our growing links to Guyana and Suriname, the emergence of a "South American Community of Nations" - to borrow from President Alejandro Toledo of Peru - does not look like a distant dream.