The end of the Iberoamerican Summit in oporto

     The Oporto summit had two winners. The first was the port wine industry, which clearly played a major role in organizing it. Thanks to the Fraternity to which the summiteers were inducted, exports of port wine have tripled in the last few years. That should console a troubled world.
     The other big winner was Fidel Castro. Although long speeches were taboo at the summit, he spoke for an hour at the final session, and carried on for two more hours at a press conference. He harped on the evils of neoliberalism and therefore of the United States. His audience was receptive. No one asked him why Cuba's economic situation was not flourishing. After the conference, he took off for the Extremadura region of Spain, whose government had proclaimed him a citizen of honor. He could thus carry his message to the Spanish countryside.
     Meanwhile, Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar took the heads of six Latin American states to the resort of Bayona, just north of the Portuguese line, for a Christian Democratic summit. Since the collapse of the Kohl government in Germany, this group had almost collapsed, so Spanish America came to the rescue. Carlos Menem of Argentina was there. Presumably the Peronista doctrine of justicialismo justified his presence and his enjoyment of Spanish hospitality. The meeting was dominated by the tirades of President Eduardo Frei of Chile against the arrest of General Pinochet in London at the instigation of Spanish lawyers. In reply, host Aznar mumbled about different legal systems.
     President Ernesto Perez Balladares swept officially into Madrid, where he was embraced by King Juan Carlos, while a large band tooted. The two then had luncheon together; what else the Panamenian got out of the trip was not clear.
     The rest of the crowd went to the historic city of Cordoba for another summit on social affairs. As the Bible might have said, Of the making of speeches there is no end.
     The great absentee was Brazil, to which there was little reference, except for Castro's demand that its financial plight should be relieved. The Brazilian media paid little attention to the summit. Brazil has a paternal attitude toward its little mother Portugal, and it regards Spanish American republics as a necklace strung around its neck. Brazil's GNP is almost half of the Latin American total, and its economy is far bigger than that of Russia. As the Brazilian proverb says, "God is Brazilian," and that justified its looking down on the Iberoamerican summit.

Ronald Hilton - 10/19/98