Structural gem lies forgotten
Ecuador’s waning diplomatic hub reflects bloc woes
sAn Antonio de PiCHinCHA: It is a gravity-defying edifice that befits the lofty ambitions of what was supposed to be a symbol of South American unity.
Set against an arid moonscape on the equatorial line, two cantilevered glass wings soar dramatically above a reflecting pool, symbolising freedom and transparency and looking like something out of a science-fiction movie.
But for all its architectural grandeur, the headquarters of the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) outside Ecuador’s capital seems as moribund as the group itself.
What was once an aspiring diplomatic hub bustling with official translators and cocktail parties for visiting dignitaries looks more like a ghost building, with barely half the staff it had when it was inaugurated to great fanfare in 2014.
The group’s chief architect, former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, is in jail on corruption charges while another big booster, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, has died.
Meanwhile, a rightward shift in politics has left the region more polarised than it has been in decades.
“Unasur was a good idea but it ultimately didn’t deliver concrete results,” said Michael Shifter, president of the Washington-based think tank Inter-American Dialogue.
In April, half of Unasur’s 12 member-states stopped paying dues and suspended their membership.
Then in August, newly elected Colombian President Ivan Duque renounced the treaty altogether, paving the way for his country’s withdrawal in February.
The result is a US$20mil (RM82mil) deficit that has led to across-the-board budget cuts. At the current rate, the group, which has been without a secretary-general for two years, will burn through all of its cash reserves by April.
That is around the same time that Brazil, whose President Jair Bolsonaro has criticised Unasur, takes over the group’s rotating presidency.
For critics who see Unasur as a wasteful monument to leftist overreach during the previous decade’s commodities boom, its headquarters make a convenient target.
Designed by Ecuadorian architect Diego Guayasamin, the US$43mil (RM176.8mil) building was built and donated to the group by former Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa, a protege of Chavez.
The prize-winning building is equipped with a state-of-the-art assembly hall, an impressive art collection and salons named for leftist icons like Chilean poet Pablo Neruda and Nobel Prize-winning novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Unasur was formed in 2008 to realise independence hero Simon Bolivar’s dream two centuries earlier of a giant, borderless South American “homeland” to deter US and European designs on the continent.
Decisions required the consensus of all members, which was easy when the so-called “pink tide” of leftist leaders was sweeping across the region, mistrust of the United States was running high and governments were flush with cash.
But in identifying so closely with the left and fixating on the United States, it lost support when the political tide shifted, Shifter said.