The Andean region and, in general, all of the Latin American countries have today reached an important point in their history, the moment to define how they will position themselves in the existing globalization process. For that reason, the time has come to shape a steadfast political consensus to confront globalization from the vantage point of integration. And in this undertaking, the National Congresses and the Andean Parliament itself have key roles to play. The signing of free trade agreements with the U.S. and then with the European Union, like that already reached with MERCOSUR, are the new scenarios in which the Andean Community must act, both in South America and at the world level.

It is important to stress here that the Andean Presidents made important decisions in this process, at the Summit recently held in Quito, that reinforce our countries, allowing them to meet these new challenges better equipped:

We are on the threshold of the transcendental moment of the signing of the Declaration of South American Presidents that will give birth to the South American Community this coming December 8th, with Cusco as its historically symbolic backdrop. The new community will be built from the progressive dovetailing of the Andean Community and MERCOSUR, with the addition of Chile, Guyana, and Suriname, making it the largest and most ambitious development project in South American history.

The South American Community will constitute a unique opportunity for the decentralized development of our countries by creating regional economies in the areas of influence of the great Integration and Development Hubs of the IIRSA program, complemented by the free trade agreement the two subregional organizations have just concluded and the harmonizing of their respective Community rules and regulations. This is a task we must undertake rapidly in order to underpin the deep integration process and our joint external projection.

For a start, the South American Community will be among the five major world powers, given its existing gross domestic product, and without counting the improvements the integration process will produce.

This event, of historical importance to the lives of our nations, will be preceded by a special meeting of the Andean Presidential Council on December 7. This meeting will be devoted to a critical dialogue about development, employment, and also the major social and political challenges our countries must meet as they move toward a process of globalization that encompasses all, but excludes many.

In this connection, this fifth forum of Presidents of the Andean Legislative Powers is very well-timed to contribute to the decisions our Presidents will take in Cusco, as was the meeting of the Andean Parliament held just a short time ago.

However, the citizens’ withdrawal from politics, together with the weakening of democratic institutions, threaten the governance of our countries. Given this situation, compounded by the social debt resulting from the growth of poverty and inequality, concerted action is needed to generate a new Andean social pact that will enable democracy, our societies, and the integration process itself to lay down new bases of social legitimacy and to build a shared future.

It is a fact that pacts are often viewed as agreements between entrepreneurs, workers, and the state. We must go beyond that terrain, however, and forge a pact involving all political and social forces, united by a shared vision of the kind of society we want to live in and of the new democratic state we must build –a state capable of promoting equitable growth, strengthening social cohesion, and ensuring our countries’ democratic governance.

For that reason, Andean integration must also be viewed as an element inherent to this new social pact, for it links up states and societies through Community objectives and interests that go beyond limited national boundaries.

The Integration process is precisely the meeting point between an internal agenda designed to deal with our great social deficit, and an external agenda that tackles the challenges posed by globalization. It is in this integrating process that we will be able to find the solutions to our serious national problems and, at the same time, to build, first, an Andean Community, and later, a South American Community, as a road to the recovery of the project of an integrated Latin America.

Because the integration process, as a social and political project, must be highly democratic and popular, and because, in the end, it is the societies that must build those ties of understanding and unity that we seek here today, I wish to underscore the increasingly important role the Andean Parliament and our national Congresses must play in building and giving legitimacy to this new social pact in favor of development and integration, as well as in giving birth to the new South American Community.

We will all work together on this mission: governments, parliaments, civil society, and the bodies and institutions of the Andean Integration System. Because today, more than ever, we can say with Bolívar, “our Native Land is America.”

Thank-you very much.