Something to watch closely: whether Brazil will gradually push Mexico aside from regional diplomatic groups and emerge as the undisputed political leader in Latin America.
It's not an academic question. Brazil's efforts to create a South American political bloc -- that by definition would exclude Mexico and Central America -- is likely to have a major impact on key hemispheric issues, including the planned creation of a Free Trade Area of the Americas and the debates over the crises in Venezuela and Cuba.
In recent days, Brazil's leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva got a major boost for his plans to create a Brazilian-led South American diplomatic bloc when Argentina's president-elect, Néstor Kirchner, vowed to abandon what he called his country's previous ''automatic alignment'' with U.S. foreign policy, and instead follow Brazil's lead.
Brazil, which despite being South America's biggest country used to keep a low diplomatic profile, has become an increasingly active player in regional affairs since 2000, when former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso convened the first summit of South American presidents in Brasilia.
Other Latin American leaders initially saw it as a vanity project by Cardoso, which would most likely die at the end of his term. Instead, da Silva has revitalized the idea of a South American political bloc, in part as a way to negotiate from a position of greater strength with Washington on the planned hemispheric free trade agreement scheduled to start in 2005.
Since taking office Jan. 1, da Silva has vowed to lead an effort to revitalize the ailing Mercosur free trade group made up of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay; has created a group of ''friendly countries'' to seek a solution to the Venezuelan crisis; convened a new South American summit later this year, and tried to convene a special meeting to coordinate a joint South American response to the war with Iraq.
POLITICAL AMBITIONS
Brazil is even trying to redefine the regional map, in what may be an effort to make it more suitable to its political ambitions. There is no such entity as ''Latin America;'' three different groups -- South America, Central America and the Caribbean, and North America have very different interests, some influential Brazilian officials say.
''Latin America is a concept that has been superseded,'' Brazil's ambassador to Washington, Rubens Barbosa, said at a May 2 conference in Miami. Arguing that the term ''Latin America'' was created by a French sociologist in the 19th century, when Emperor Maximilian was installed in Mexico, Barbosa said that today ``there is a new geography that makes the concept of Latin America completely out of date.''
NEW GEOGRAPHY
The new geography has become apparent since the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico. South American countries have a ''completely different'' reality, and their own common interests, Barbosa said.
But other Latin American diplomats fear that Brazil's efforts to hold regular South American summits -- and create a South American political bloc -- will inevitably weaken the existing Group of Rio, a 19-country political bloc that includes Mexico and Central America, and which meets regularly to coordinate the region's foreign policy stands.
17TH SUMMIT
The Group of Rio will hold its 17th summit in Cusco, Peru, on Friday and Saturday, but only 11 presidents have confirmed their participation.
''Presidents are already complaining that they have too many summits to attend,'' one Latin American foreign minister told me this week.
``If we strengthen the South American summit, the Group of Rio summit will begin losing steam.''
Brazilian diplomats deny any intentions to weaken the Group of Rio. And Mexico's undersecretary of foreign affairs, Miguel Hakim, told me in a telephone interview that Mexico is not alarmed over the possible overlap of regional groups.
Hakim said that South America's ''renewed efforts toward integration are a step in the right direction.'' The two regional groups ''can co-exist and complement one another,'' he said.
My conclusion, based on interviews with officials from half a dozen Latin American countries: Don't put too much credence in official declarations of mutual love. Mexico, Central America, Chile and Colombia are not crazy about Brazil's efforts to create a South American bloc, and will fight to maintain the expanded Group of Rio setup.
You won't see any official statements about the behind-the-scenes tug of war between Brazil and Mexico. But there will be an increasingly bitter turf war for the region's leadership, and Brazil -- with its new government and its new Argentine ally -- now seems to have the political momentum on its side.
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