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Third World Quarterly
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Third World Quarterly, Vol 20, No 5, pp 957-970, 1999
BENEDICTE BULL
Benedicte Bull is at the Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo, PO Box 1116 Blindern,
Oslo N-0317, Norway.
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BENEDICTE BULL
and hemispheric economic integration. Whereas the first has had a variety of
goals, the second has had primarily one: integration in the global market.
Liberalising regionalism became dominant after the mid-1990s but, as countries
moved forward to liberalise trade and investments on other fronts, this became
largely superfluous. Moreover, contrary to what theories of new regionalism
assume, Central American formal integration has not been followed by a more
spontaneous regionalisation, understood as 'the growth of societal integration
within a region and to the often undirected process of social and economic
interaction'.5 In consequence, as the official integration process stalled, the
regional project in Central America lost its dynamism.
The changing nature of the process is analysed here through the actions, but
also the rhetoric, of Central American regionalism. In the rhetoric, there has been
a change in discourse that can be described as a trivialisation of security on the
one hand, and a 'securitisation' of globalisation on the other. The term securiti-
sation was originally introduced in order to overcome the failure of a wide
concept of security (including various threats to human survival considered
'security issues') to distinguish between what is a security issue and what is not.6
A 'securitising move' is taken by presenting something as an existential threat
to a referent object, but the issue is 'securitised' only if and when the audience
accepts it as such. The argument here is that, during the process of Central
American integration, issues included in the originally wide-reaching security
agenda have received little attention, while integration into the global economy
is presented as an existential threat 'justifying actions outside the normal bounds
of political procedure'.7
958
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'NEW REGIONALISM' IN CENTRAL AMERICA
959
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BENEDICTE BULL
The term 'new regionalism' in Central America usually distinguishes the pro
of the 1990s from that of the 1950s and 1960s. However, the history of Cen
American integration dates back to the Federal Republic of Central America,
unifying what is now Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica and
Nicaragua after independence from Spain in 1824. After the breakdown of the
Federal Republic in 1838, regionalist projects were endowed with little success
until the 1950s and 1960s with the establishment of the Central American
Common Market (CACM). The CACM was primarily a trade agreement, designed
to create an enlarged home market for industrial products in line with a model
of import-substitution. A common external tariff was imposed on third countries,
and intra-regional trade with industrial products was freed. Schemes of regional
industrial integration had less success, partly because of US opposition.15 The
same was true for the Organisation of Central American States (ODECA) and the
Central American Defence Council (CONDECA), established in the early 1950s to
promote political and military integration, respectively. After the overthrow of
the allegedly communist Arbenz regime in Guatemala in 1954, the political side
of the integration process became overshadowed by US interests and the
suppression of subversive communist activities. 6
The CACM faced increasing problems during the 1960s because of conflicts
between new industrial groups emerging in relation to the new export sectors
and the old agrarian elite, fiscal problems faced by states previously dependent
on income from tariffs, unequal distribution of economic benefits between the
five countries involved, and the fact that the market of the five countries
combined proved to be too small. After the 'Soccer War' between Honduras and
El Salvador in 1969, Honduras withdrew from the CACM and the countries
returned to bilateral agreements. By the early 1980s when the economic crises
hit Central America, the CACM had lost its momentum. The internal wars in three
of the member countries had rendered ODECA a mere formality, and CONDECA
descended into an anti-democratic campaign organisation.17
The revival of the Central American integration process in the 1990s has had
seven major benchmarks. The first was the summit of the Central American
presidents in Guatemala in 1990, during which the Central American Economic
Action plan was agreed upon. This is a 10-point list of economic policies to
which the signatory parties committed, including a new judicial framework for
economic integration, a programme for integration of infrastructure and trade,
coordination of opening towards third countries, and policies to allow for a
larger role of the market in the domestic economies. The second was the
Protocol of Tegucigalpa, signed in 1991, outlining the judicial basis of the
functioning of the System of Central American Integration (SICA). The third
important agreement was the Protocol of Guatemala, signed in 1993, introducing
major reforms to the Treaty of Economic Integration of 1962. The protectionist
policies pursued by CACM were abandoned in favour of a model of 'open
regionalism'. 18 The fourth benchmark was the Protocol of Guatemala, establish-
ing a timetable for the reduction of the Common External Tariff (CET) to 20%
on all goods, and in 1996, a new agreement was reached establishing a ceiling
960
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'NEW REGIONALISM' IN CENTRAL AMERICA
of 15% for capital goods and zero for consumer goods.'9 The fifth important
agreement was the Central American Alliance for Sustainable Development
(ALIDES), signed in 1994 to provide a common platform to promote social and
economic development and environmental protection. It was followed up in the
sixth important agreement, the Treaty of Central American Social Integration
(the Treaty of San Salvador) of 1995. And finally, the Treaty of Democratic
Security was signed the same year in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, launching a
new model of regional security.
In the Nicaragua Declaration of September 1997, the Central American
presidents (except the Costa Rican) expressed the political will to initiate the
gradual and progressive process of creating a Central American Union as the
ultimate state of association in a community as laid down in the Protocol of
Tegucigalpa. However, at that point it was clear that progress in integration was
occurring not between SICA countries, but between SICA members and third
parties. A series of treaties have been signed between SICA members and third
countries.20 By 1995 all SICA members had become members of the World Trade
Organization (wTo), Costa Rica had signed a bilateral treaty with Mexico, and
El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala (The Northern Triangle) had started
negotiations for a similar agreement with Mexico. After this the initial enthusi-
asm for the Central American project started to fade. In order to understand this
turn of events, one has to look closer at the process of regionalisation and at the
regionalism promoted in the integration project.
Explanations for the rise and fall of the 'old regionalism' in Central America
centred around structural factors. The success of the project was associated with
the ascendance of an industrial elite and an urban middle class, but the fact that
the new industrialist classes never managed to take control from national
agro-export oligarchies is also often pointed to as an explanation for the eventual
fall of the CACM.21 The integration process was also viewed as particularly
shaped by two international factors: the development of a Third World ideology
expressed through the presence of officials of the Economic Commission for
Latin America (ECLA) and the geostrategic position, expressed through the
presence of the USA.
The 'new regionalism' framework assumes more room for agency at the
regional level, expressed through the five points discussed in the introduction.
Three features of the Central American integration process lend themselves to
interpretation within such a framework: its origins in the Esquipulas peace
process, its wide-reaching agenda and the participation of a variety of actors.
The Esquipulas peace process-the regional initiative headed by the then
Costa Rican president Oscar Arias to end the three ongoing civil wars in the
region-has been pointed to as the root of the new regionalism. This process not
only contributed to removing the main obstacle to cooperation between the five
countries (the three internal conflicts), it also created new practices for negotia-
tions between the Central American countries, upon which further cooperation
could be founded.22 A concrete outcome of Esquipulas-1 of importance for the
961
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BENEDICTE BULL
962
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'NEW REGIONALISM' IN CENTRAL AMERICA
to $12 988 million from 1992 to 1996. This means that the total value of exports
increased by 27.1 % per year on average. In contrast, intra-SICA exports increased
by 16.1% per year on average. The total value of imports increased at an even
faster pace, from $10 939 million in 1992 to $32 771 million in 1996. This
represents an average increase of 33.6% per year, whereas intra-SICA imports
increased by 15.1% per year in the same period. Investments in the region have
increased during the 1990s, but apart from a slight increase in European and
Asian investments, the pattern remain the same: the USA is overwhelmingly the
most important investor, and intra-SICA investment is negligible.30
Also with respect to less formal regionalism, integration between the Central
American countries is not clearly stronger than the integration between these and
the USA and other Latin American countries. For example youth gangs (Pandil-
las) have been shown to have connections to gangs in the USA rather than in
the other Central American countries.31
Furthermore, integration between civil society organisations at the regional
level has been shown to be a fragile process, highly dependent on external
support and marked by divisions between NGOS which spring from their differing
positions in the conflicts of the 1980s. The potential for creation of a regional
network of civil society organisations within the framework of the SICA process
has been further hampered by the bureaucratic procedures of the new regional
institutions.32
Upon closer inspection, despite the origins in the Esquipulas process, the
argument that integration is primarily a regional initiative may also be ques-
tioned. The process was given an impetus by the increasing number of hemi-
spheric and sub-hemispheric free trade and integration agreements. The NAFTA
agreement posed especially serious challenges to the Central American econom-
ies. Central Americans feared that existing and future investments in their
countries might be relocated to take advantage of Mexico's unique access to the
USA. Moreover, with respect to preferential trade agreements, Central Ameri-
cans feared that their privileged position would be threatened as a result of closer
connections between the USA and Mexico.
Support has also been given to the process by the hemispheric organisations:
the Organization of American States (OAS), the Inter-American Development
Bank (IDB) and the ECLA, now more commonly referred to as CEPAL. IDB has a
special department for regional integration and in 1995 financed the Consultative
Group on Regional Technical Co-operation for Central America. In 1998 a
general cooperation agreement was signed between CEPAL and SICA, and in 1997
CEPAL presented a diagnosis of the institutions and organisations of SICA aiming
to enforce its modernisation. The EU has also actively promoted the Central
American integration process. Since 1984 Ministerial Conferences on Political
Dialogue and Economic Co-operation have been held annually between the
countries of the European Union and the member states of SICA. They have been
used as a forum for discussion of integration issues, negotiations for support by
the EU to the SICA process and of EU preferential treatment of exports from
Central America.33 Spain is the European country that has supported the
963
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BENEDICTE BULL
In this section the results of a study of a set of core documents are presented.
They have been chosen from three categories: 1) common declarations from
meetings of the SICA countries; 2) speeches made by state leaders in multilateral
forums; and 3) speeches made by state leaders in national forums. The aim of
the analysis is to trace various regionalisms and their relative importance during
the process.
The official goals of the process have throughout the period been stated as
developing Central America as a region of 'peace, liberty, democracy and
development'. There have been four objectives: 1) creating a Central American
Union; 2) promoting economic and social development; 3) establishing and
strengthening democracy; and 4) promoting integration of Central America in
the world economy. However, the relative emphasis on these different goals, and
the extent to which they are treated as means or goals in themselves, have
changed over time. In particular, one can observe a tension between a regional
discourse emphasising peace, development and democracy, where the 'audience'
is the Central American people, on the one hand, and a globalisation discourse
directed primarily towards other states, international organisations and other
international actors, on the other.
From the start of the integration process, the main goal was peace in the
region, and development was argued to be the key to sustained peace. The
declaration from the summit in Guatemala in 1990 (Declaration of Antigua 17
June 1990) states that:
This road to peace goes through development. We will view the future with hope
and will imprint with energy and imagination our development and economic
growth, with a better and more just distribution of the benefits. Only in this way will
it be possible to destroy the vicious circle of poverty and frustration. War and
violence is an act of human cruelty, but poverty is an act of human desertion that
we have to confront.
The Declaration of Tegucigalpa (13 December 1991) reaffirms the support for
the ongoing peace processes in El Salvador and Guatemala and the goal of
achieving democracy in the region. The presidents:
Reaffirm their conviction of the necessity to achieve a peace, strong and lasting, in
the region through the consolidation of the State of Justice, the strengthening of the
democratic institutions, the unrestricted respect for human rights, and reconciliation
of the societies through an open, straight and constructive dialogue.
964
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'NEW REGIONALISM' IN CENTRAL AMERICA
Security issues are at the core of this declaration, defined in a broad sense as
mentioned above. The declaration expresses the appreciation of the work of the
Security Commission preparing an agreement on the verification, control and
limitation of weapons and militaries in the region, and support for the ongoing
peace processes in El Salvador and Guatemala. In the Declaration of Guatemala
(29 October 1993) it is established that the region has come a long way towards
achievement of peace. By this point the peace agreement in El Salvador had
been signed and it was emphasised that it was time to focus on development.
This change away from a focus on regional peace continues in the Treaty of
Social Integration (1995). Development is cited as the main goal, and globalisa-
tion and new technologies are the main challenges in achieving this. The
Declaration of San Salvador following this treaty (31 March 1995) states that:
We are convinced that the Central American Union should materialise with the goal
of achieving more tangible results and benefits for the population. This implies
deepening even more the compromises adopted in the framework of integration, in
particular those that permit the region to connect beneficially with the processes of
globalisation.
To our Central American brothers, we send our most sincere greetings. The great
political changes that the world has experienced in recent years, and the process of
economic globalisation show the necessity of continuing to work hard as a region,
to integrate our markets and together encounter favourable positions towards third
countries.
We reiterate that 'we have Central American paths to peace and development' and
we are ready to walk them, primarily by our own forces, but the task may be
facilitated by the generous help from the International Community.36
965
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BENEDICTE BULL
In the declaration of Guatemala of 1993, the space given to appeals for support
from the international community for the integration process increases, as do
appeals for specific benefits:
In the economic sphere we have renewed our vision basing it on the inclusion of
Central America in the new economic global system, based on the opening of our
economies ... In this context, we request the government of the United States of
America to widen the benefits for Central American products towards that market,
in the spirit of the Caribbean Basin Initiative, to maintain the levels of competitive-
ness of our export products while the process of negotiations for introduction to the
North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) develops.
Pleased with the notable presence of the International Community in this Confer-
ence, we renew our call to the friendly countries and international organisations for
them, as a concrete manifestation of their solidarity with the peace and development
of the region, to contribute to the Central American efforts to achieve our objectives
of sustainable development.
Honduras, as we know, forms a part of the great Central American family, united
we were in the colonial period and united we were born to independence ... [we]
do not speak of romanticism, nor of an act of maturity, but a realistic recognition
of the needs created by the internal developments and the external demands that
require, to survive with dignity, giant efforts that in our case go further than what
we can do individually as separate states.
966
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'NEW REGIONALISM' IN CENTRAL AMERICA
[We] have met to dedicate special attention to a subject of regional interest 'the
security of persons and their property', which we consider to be an indispensable
complementary to guarantee the success of the Alliance for Sustainable Develop-
ment ... We have signed the Central American Treaty of Recovery and Devolution
of Stolen, Captured, Appropriated and Illegally Retained Vehicles, which is an
instrument that facilitates and accelerates the procedures for recovery of vehicles,
in all countries of the region, and discourages this type of crime.
To sum up, there have been three major changes in the discourse. First, the
priorities changed from being peace, democracy and development in a broad
sense, to being economic development and inclusion in world markets. Second,
the audience changed from Central American citizens to the international
community. Third, the issues presented as being 'beyond and above politics'
changed from being first military threats, then a wide range of threats to human
survival and, in the end, primarily globalisation.
Concluding remarks
The Central American integration process shares a number of features with other
regional integration projects in Latin America. However, it is not paralleled by
spontaneous regionalisation. Contact between the Central American countries
has always been far-reaching, but the current increase in cross-border interaction
is more a global, hemispheric and Latin American process than a Central
American one. Furthermore, although the regional leaders took the initiative in
the integration process, it has increasingly been modelled to please external
actors. This is reflected in a discourse that is increasingly directed to an external
audience and less and less to the Central American people. The third point
highlighted here is that, although the integration process started out with a
multifaceted agenda, the focus has narrowed primarily to encompass economic
issues. This is reflected in the discourse by the increasing securitisation of
globalisation and de-securitisation of various other threats to human survival.
The main conclusion is that caution is needed when treating all new regional-
ism projects as the same type of phenomenon. Although occurring simul-
taneously and sharing some general features, they may be of a qualitatively
different character. In some cases, the 'new' before 'regionalism' is a multidi-
mensional adjective, as Hettne has argued.38 In other cases, it merely distin-
guishes the regionalism of the 1990s from that of the 1950s and 1960s. The
Central American integration process is in danger of becoming an anachronism,
a process building on historic integration experience but without the dynamics
of a new regionalism. Some have argued that the integration process had already
become superfluous by 1991 when the Barrios Chamorro government ended the
period of socialist rule in Nicaragua and thereby removed the opposition to the
currently dominant development model.39 Others have argued that the significant
date is 3 September 1995, when Nicaragua became a member of the WTO, the
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BENEDICTE BULL
Notes
'Central American countries' usually includes Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa
Rica. Central American integration is used here generally to denote integration between these countries. It
should be noted, however, that Panama is also a party to some of the agreements and that Costa Rica has
refrained from becoming a member of the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN).
2 overviews of regional integration projects in Latin America, see A Hurrell, 'Latin America in the new
world order: a regional bloc of the Americas?', International Affairs, 68 (1), 1992, pp 121-139; Hurrell,
'Regionalism in the Americas', in A Hurrell & L Fawcett, Regionalism in World Politics, New York:
Oxford University Press, 1995, pp 250-282; J Grugel, 'Latin America and the remaking of the Americas',
in A Gamble & A Payne, Regionalism and World Order, London: Macmillan, 1996, pp 131-167; and
Inter-American Development Bank, Periodic Note on Integration, July 1997.
3See B Hettne, 'Globalisation and the new regionalism: the second great transformation', In B Hettne, A
Inotai & 0 Sunkel, Globalism and the New Regionalism, The New Regionalism Series Vol 1, London:
Macmillan, 1999, pp 1-24.
4M B0as & H Hveem, 'Regionalisms compared: the African and South-East Asian experience' in B Hettne
A Inotai & 0 Sunkel Comparing Regionalisms: Implications for Global Development, The New Regional-
ism Series, Vol 5, London: Macmillan, 1999 forthcoming.
5 A Hurrell, 'Explaining the resurgence of regionalism in world politics', Review of International Studies, 21,
1995, pp 331-358.
6 Buzan, 0 Wever & J de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner,
1998.
7Ibid, pp 23-24.
8The concept of a double movement originates in the writings of Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation:
the Political and Economic Origins of our Time, Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1957. It is used by D Bach
& H Hveem in 'Regionalism, regionalization and globalization', paper presented at the Third General
Conference of the Standing Group on International Relations of the ECPR, Vienna, 16-20 September 1998,
to analyse the relationship between globalisation and regionalisation. 'Common regional action' is Eduardo
Lizano Fait's description of Central American integration. See E Lizano Fait 'LHacia un nuevo enfoque de
la integraci6n regional? in FUNPADEM, El nuevo orden economico internacional: temas sobre la insercion
de Centroamerica en los 90, San Jose, Costa Rica: Fundaci6n del Servicio Exterior para la Paz y la
Democracia, 1996.
9 The idea of regional security dynamics is developed in B Buzan, People, States and Fear: An Agenda f
International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1991. For an account
of the hemispheric initiatives in this respect see F Rojas Aravena, 'Williamsburg: LUn giro definitivo en las
relaci6nes hemisfericas de sguridad?', Revista Occidental, Estudios Latinoamericanos, 13 (1), 1996, pp
1-28. For a more critical account of the security dimensions of Latin American regionalism see A Hurrell,
'Security in Latin America', Foreign Affairs, 74 (3), 1998, pp 529-547.
10 R Cox, 'Gramsci, hegemony and international relations. An essay in method', Millennium: Journal of
International Studies, 12 (2), 1983, pp 162-175.
" A Gamble & A Payne, Regionalism and World Order, London: Macmillan, 1996.
12 A De la Ossa, El sistema de integraci6n centroamericana: critica de la vision oficial, San Jose, Costa Rica:
Fundaci6n Ebert, 1994.
13 B0as & Hveem, 'Regionalisms compared'.
14 The critique originates in the writings of Alexander Wendt, 'The agent-structure problem in international
relations theory', International Organization, 41 (3), 1987, pp 335-370; and Wendt, 'Anarchy is what states
make of it: the social construction of power politics', International Organization, 46 (2), 1992, pp 391-425.
A structure is in this sense a set of relatively unchangeable constraints on the behaviour of states. Although
these can take the form of systems of material incentives and disincentives, the idea that they are constructed
refers to the fact that actions may or may not reproduce both actor and structure. See T Hopf, 'The promise
of constructivism in international relations theory', International Security, 23 (1), 1998, pp 171-200.
968
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BENEDICTE BULL
EDITOR
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