Crisis, inertia or resilience? The current state of Latin American regionalism
- María Victoria Alvarez
- 2 days ago
- 6 min read
This article is an adapted version of the original piece published in Latinoamérica21 (L21), a media platform that brings together a diverse community of experts and scholars who offer analysis and commentary on political, economic, and social issues in Latin America. You can access the original text here.
For years, the most commonly used term to describe Latin American regionalism has been “crisis.” Yet that category no longer suffices to explain its current situation. Speaking of crisis implies at least two features: an exceptional and transitory condition, and a sense of urgency that anticipates some form of resolution. Neither of those characteristics seems to describe the region’s integration schemes any longer. Rather than going through a crisis, Latin American regionalism appears to have settled into a prolonged state of adaptation, marked by political fragmentation and the difficulties of responding collectively to shared challenges.
The limited and adaptive forms of regionalism that have managed to survive in Latin America do not discount the efforts —modest but valuable— to maintain cooperation in specific areas, such as those promoted by the Brasilia Consensus. However, the current debate requires moving past the idea of a permanent crisis and focusing on a different dilemma: the one between resilience and inertia. Although they are often confused, these are distinct phenomena. Inertia implies the mere persistence of institutions, without significant changes or any capacity to address regional problems. Resilience, by contrast, entails adapting to an adverse environment, preserving cooperative capacities and finding new forms of collective action. In other words, it is something more than simple survival.
The European Union’s experience offers a useful contrast for thinking through this dilemma. Although it too has faced severe crises —from the euro crisis and Brexit to the pandemic and the war in Ukraine— its capacity to respond has rested on institutions with greater resources, more binding rules and relatively more consolidated decision-making mechanisms. The comparison does not imply taking the EU as a model for Latin America, given the enormous historical, economic and political differences between the two contexts, but it does allow us to underscore a central point: regional resilience does not depend on the mere persistence of institutions, but on their capacity to produce collective decisions, sustain commitments and adapt their rules in the face of adverse scenarios.
What is now emerging in Latin America is an adaptive and resilient regionalism. Although these terms may lack the appeal of other labels, they describe the current reality with greater precision: integration schemes that, far from driving ambitious projects, seek to preserve minimum levels of political coordination and institutional operability in a context marked by ideological fragmentation, the advance of unilateralism and the growing influence of external geopolitical alignments.
The case of the Central American Integration System (SICA) is particularly illustrative. The reform of the Regulation on Integration, Quorum and Decision-Making of the Regional Bodies and Instances of SICA, approved in April 2026 without Nicaragua’s participation, was presented as a measure aimed at breaking the institutional paralysis generated by Managua’s permanent veto over the appointment of the secretary-general. The post had been vacant since 2023 due to the rejection by several countries of candidates nominated by Nicaragua, closely linked to the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. In response to that conflict, Nicaragua temporarily withdrew from SICA in 2024. Nevertheless, SICA did not cease to function. Technical cooperation in areas such as health, agriculture, digitalisation and risk management continued to operate, demonstrating that even in scenarios of deep political fragmentation, functional integration mechanisms can remain active.
The regulatory reform, which relaxes quorum and decision-making rules, constitutes a significant innovation in a region traditionally attached to consensus and unanimity. But rather than marking an advance toward deeper integration, it expresses a logic of institutional adaptation aimed at preserving functionality in the face of blockages arising from tensions among member states. In fact, the reform made it possible to overcome the main obstacle that had motivated its adoption. On 10 June 2026, SICA elected, again without Nicaragua’s participation, its new secretary-general, the Costa Rican Lina Ajoy Rojas, demonstrating that the relaxation of decision-making rules can preserve institutional operability even when political disagreements persist.
The Andean situation reveals another dimension of the problem: even highly institutionalised regional schemes face great difficulties in enforcing their own rules. A recent example is the trade dispute between Ecuador and Colombia. The Andean Community (CAN) ordered both countries to dismantle the tariff measures and reciprocal trade restrictions implemented since early 2026. However, both governments challenged the Andean rulings, prolonging the dispute and keeping the litigation open within the subregional system itself. The CAN General Secretariat ruled on 25 June to reject Ecuador’s appeals and to confirm that the Security Levy applied to imports from Colombia, as well as the closure of the San Miguel border crossing, violated the community’s free-trade rules. Although Ecuador eliminated the levy on 1 June, the government has ruled out any refund of the amounts collected during its validity, reopening the debate about the scope and effectiveness of the regional body’s decisions.
The episode demonstrates both the strengths and the limits of the CAN. On the one hand, the body had the necessary instruments to intervene and demand compliance with community regulations. On the other, the decision by Ecuador and Colombia to maintain trade restrictions and challenge the Andean rulings exposed the difficulties regional bodies face in disciplining state behaviour when national priorities and political — and even personal — tensions predominate. Even in an area central to integration, such as intraregional free trade, the Andean institutional framework’s capacity to guarantee the effective enforcement of its decisions faces evident limits.
Moreover, Colombian president Gustavo Petro went so far as to raise the possibility of leaving the CAN and reorienting Colombia’s strategic priorities toward other regional spaces, particularly MERCOSUR. Although the statement had a clear short-term dimension, it is revealing of a longstanding tendency in Latin America: affinities and rivalries between governments strongly condition the dynamics of regional integration.
In this context, the recent electoral victory of right-wing leader Abelardo de la Espriella in Colombia could introduce a scenario of reconfiguration of bilateral relations with Ecuador. A possible political and ideological alignment between both governments would open the possibility of a gradual easing of trade tensions within the CAN, not so much because of the body’s regulatory capacity, but due to shifts in national leaderships and their foreign-policy orientations.
The episodes we have described suggest that Latin American regionalism is going through a different phase. Rather than advancing toward ambitious deep-integration projects, regional schemes seek to preserve basic coordination capacities, manage conflicts and prevent political differences from completely paralyzing cooperation. In that context, the SICA reform constitutes an eloquent example of institutional adaptation, finding a way to overcome a blockage that threatened its functioning and restoring its decision-making capacity, even without resolving the political tensions that gave rise to it.
The CAN’s intervention in the trade dispute between Ecuador and Colombia shows that regional schemes still retain a degree of institutional capacity. However, the decision of both governments to challenge the Andean rulings, along with Ecuador’s refusal to refund the revenue collected during the period when a levy was declared contrary to free trade, also reveals the usual limits: the effectiveness of regional institutions ultimately depends on the political will of governments to abide by the rules they themselves agreed upon.
The alignment of governments such as those of Nayib Bukele, Daniel Noboa and Laura Fernández with the second Trump administration, combined with visible tensions between leaders of opposing outlooks — such as the confrontation between Noboa and Petro — suggests that these political affinities also project onto Latin American regionalism. Beyond expressing ideological differences, these alignments make it harder to build regional consensus and discourage cooperation.
In short, both the SICA reform and the CAN’s actions point to the fact that contemporary Latin American regionalism can no longer be understood in terms of “crisis.” If an optimistic reading is possible, although the region appears to have moved away — at least for the moment — from the most ambitious integration horizons, these processes continue to show capacity for adaptation and resilience, adopting more flexible and pragmatic forms of cooperation focused on preserving certain levels of governance in fragmented and polarised political contexts. The central question, therefore, is not merely their survival, but whether this adaptive resilience can become the foundation for rebuilding more solid and effective forms of regional governance.
María Victoria Álvarez holds a PhD in International Relations (National University of Rosario, UNR), a Master's degree in International Integration and Cooperation (UNR and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven), and a postgraduate degree in European Union Law and European Economic Studies (Paris I Panthéon – Sorbonne). She is an Associate Professor and Researcher at the Faculty of Political Science and International Relations at the UNR, holds the Jean Monnet Chair at the UNR, a visiting professor at the Institute of Foreign Service of the Nation of Argentina, and Director of the European Union Studies Group (UNR). She has been a visiting researcher at the Jean Monnet EU Centre of Excellence – University of Pittsburgh, Sciences Po – Paris, the Autonomous University of Madrid, the University of Zurich, and the Federal University of Paraná. Her research interests include European Union politics and institutions; Latin American regionalism, comparative regionalism, and relations between the EU and Latin America, and between the EU and Mercosur.
The opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of the EULAS Network.
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