AT MITAD DEL MUNDO (“Middle of the World”), a park in an Andean valley outside Quito, Ecuador’s capital, a stone monument marks the line of the equator. Just a couple of hundred metres to the south rises a striking new building clad in silver and black glass, its two cantilevered wings describing a U. It is the headquarters of the South American Union, or Unasur, opened last year.
The host government of Rafael Correa, then flush with oil money, agreed to finance the planned construction cost of $66m. It is a grand architectural statement. But it is still half-empty, and its splendid conference rooms are sparsely used. The building poses a question: just what is the point of Unasur?
Formed in 2008, its origins lie in the South American Community, a Brazilian-inspired push to merge Mercosur and the Andean Community, two would-be common markets, and to develop cross-border infrastructure linking the countries of South America. Under the influence of Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s socialist strongman, the group changed both its name and its purpose. It shed its economic mission in favour of “political co-operation”. The more or less explicit...
from The Economist: The Americas http://ift.tt/1IKiCqx
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