Seven heads of state, an elected president, ministers of Economy and Finance and more than 2,500 businessmen, political leaders, representatives of international organizations and experts debate a new future for the region between this Wednesday and Thursday in Panama City. The president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has articulated his speech for almost 30 minutes about the need for integration on the continent. “We are experiencing one of the moments of greatest setback in this matter,” he lamented. The Brazilian president was critical of the weakness of regional institutions. “Our summits are empty, with the absence of the main regional leaders. Celac is paralyzed and has not even been able to make a single statement against illegal attacks that affect our nations,” he criticized.
The host of the event, informally considered a Latin American Davos due to its dimension, is CAF-development bank of Latin America and the Caribbean, in collaboration with the PRISA Group (publisher of EL PAÍS), through the World in Progress (WIP) forum that will feature, among others, the participation of its president, Joseph Oughourlian; its vice president, Fernando Carrillo, and the director of EL PAÍS, Jan Martínez Ahrens.
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The family photo of the heads of state attending the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Forum
The president of Panama, José Raúl Mulino, has been in charge of giving way to the heads of state. In a speech that praised free trade, Mulino called for the unity of the continent. “Latin America must be formed as a single bloc because only then will it have negotiating power and be able to claim the place that belongs to us,” he claimed. “The world is on the verge of a great storm,” he warned before ensuring that the region must be the “counterweight of peace” in the world. Gustavo Petro, Colombian president, was more vocal in the face of the current geopolitical scenario. “We do not want missiles over Caracas or any other country in America,” he warned during his presentation. “Having bombed the Homeland of the Liberator, no generation of young people in any part of our country will forget it,” he added.
Petro raised the need to “make a total alliance in all the Americas, starting with the United States,” warning that that country loses between 70,000 and 100,000 people per year due to what he defined not as a traditional drug, but as “a pure, deadly poison,” fentanyl. In this framework, he maintained that trying a continental dialogue is “very important”, even with the risk of failing, and stressed that this dialogue will only be possible if it is recognized that Latin America and the United States belong to different civilizations, with different trajectories, interests and realities.
Petro also once again publicly invited Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa to resume bilateral dialogue, an invitation that has not yet had a known response. The gesture comes in the midst of an escalation of tension between Colombia and Ecuador, marked by Noboa’s claims about an alleged lack of military cooperation on the border to combat organized crime, which has caused trade friction, with warnings about tariffs, surcharges in oil transportation and restrictions that affect exchange between both countries. In this context, Petro insisted that regional integration—including security cooperation—is the only effective way to combat transnational threats that do not recognize borders.
In his speech, Noboa precisely emphasized cross-border security that has generated friction between both heads of state. “Freedom is for those who do things well and, therefore, criminals must be deprived of their freedom,” he said. “Latin America must be together and, we must treat criminals as criminals, because they go from country to country causing chaos.”
The executive president of CAF, , was in charge of giving way early on Wednesday to the unprecedented interventions between Latin American leaders of different political colors. During the inauguration, Granados recalled that Panama celebrates the Bicentennial of the Amphictyonic Congress of 1826, convened by Simón Bolívar to promote the unity and integration of the American republics, and the CAF forum pursues the same. “This is the ideal scenario to build a strong and supportive region; one to see how to enhance the region by integrating ourselves and the rest of the world,” he said. “We are going to close this week with about 35 agreements.”
Lula, for his part, pointed out “the geographical proximity to the greatest military power in the world” as an “inescapable” element and warned: “History shows that the use of force will never pave the way to overcoming our scourges.” And he insisted on the need to promote unity with several calls to his counterparts. “Regaining trust in integration is an arduous task, but necessary,” he noted. “There is no possibility that any country in Latin America can solve its problems alone.”
Rodrigo Paz, president of Bolivia, also invited the heads of state to brotherhood and unity in times of “global lies and disinformation” to build a joint geopolitical force. “Today more than ever we have to demonstrate the ability to unite cultures, democracies, migration formats… Today, the southern hemisphere only has to make the decision to be part of the geopolitical forces. Let’s make the decisions,” he encouraged. Likewise, the president asked to leave ideologies behind to achieve common goals. “Ideologies do not provide food. What provides food is the truth, employment, health and education. That is what gives opportunities to men and women of our country.”
José Antonio Kast, president-elect of Chile, gave a speech critical of the past errors of the governments of the region in matters of education, security, migratory crisis and political leadership. “For decades we have accumulated papers brilliant speeches and correct speeches, but millions of citizens are locked in poverty, insecurity and fear. “This is a political failure,” he lamented.
His words were very focused on how stopping organized crime and gangs is an imperative to guarantee the strength of democracies and he called for common strategies, leaving individual ideologies behind. “Fragmentation weakens us (…) Latin America and the Caribbean can continue to be the continent of lost opportunities or it can be the one that decided to change its destiny. (…) The time has come to stop failing,” he exclaimed.
Andrew Holness, Prime Minister of Jamaica, also stressed the issue of insecurity. Although the island has reduced its homicide rate by 40%, at least three violent deaths a day continue to be reported. That is why he called for collective actions as a region for shared challenges. Thus, he directly suggested three proposals to his interlocutors: a competitive regional agenda, being institutionally ready, and a renewed diplomatic and economic posture. “We cannot speak as an isolated market but as a coherent hemisphere,” he warned. “Latin America and the Caribbean has been described as an area of vulnerability, but that is not our destiny. We have what the world needs: populations, strategic geography, natural resources, food, energy potential and a peripheral democracy. We are not peripheral to the global system.”
The president of Guatemala, Bernardo Arévalo, supported this idea of how to be flexible in a changing world. “We are talking about how Latin America can strengthen itself in the face of the global order, but that order is changing and so is the function of the regions,” he assured. “This invites us to ask ourselves how we are going to try to navigate these unknowns from our societies, pursuing the objective we have: well-being.”
The Minister of Economy and Finance of Ecuador, Sariha Moya, and her counterpart from Bolivia, José Gabriel Espinoza Yáñez, will also appear on the Forum panels. The 2024 Nobel Prize winners in Economics, James Robinson, and 2025, Philippe Aghion, will share their visions on development, institutions, innovation and economic growth.
The intention of the Forum is to become a fixed event on the calendar. In the previous call, some 2,000 people attended, more than 150 world leaders from 15 countries, 50 panels and special sessions were held and some 350,000 people joined the streaming. As on that occasion, the Forum can be followed live on the headlines of the newspaper EL PAÍS and through its social networks. In addition to these interventions, three members of the WIP Advisory Council, Julissa Reynoso, Josep Borrell and Juan Manuel Santos, will participate in the forum.
The Forum’s agenda will address issues such as economic growth and macroeconomic stability, energy and climate transition, digital transformation, productive investment and cohesion.
In parallel to the sessions, CAF has organized a meeting to bring participants together: 25-minute talks between attendees. At the Latin America and Caribbean Business Roundtable, 150 international buyers will be able to sit in front of 300 Latin American exporters in more than 4,000 one-on-one meetings designed to connect regional supply with global demand.
