Brazil & Southern Cone - August 2026

At the latest summit of the Mercosur regional trade bloc in late June, which was hosted in Paraguay, leaders from its member states as well as associate countries reiterated their commitments to boosting cooperation on combatting transnational crime. Although the bloc was originally founded in 1991 primarily with economic objectives in mind, the gathering of regional leaders in Paraguay featured more rhetoric related to security, given that fighting crime has become an increasingly prominent political priority in countries throughout the region. 

The leaders’ summit in Asunción on 30 June concluded with a joint declaration signed by heads of state such as Uruguay’s President Yamandú Orsi, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Bolivia’s President Rodrigo Paz, and the summit’s host, Paraguay’s President Santiago Peña. The bulk of the declaration featured calls for deeper integration regarding trade and investment in various sectors, but the section regarding the joint management of trade routes mentioned the need to work together on efforts to combat transnational organised crime. 

With Mercosur being a regional grouping that traditionally holds the promotion of trade as its original core mission, it is unsurprising that the official declarations from summits would use language pertaining to economic objectives rather than firm calls for the creation of multilateral crime-fighting initiatives. However, the speeches given by some leaders at the summit placed greater emphasis on the importance of regional security cooperation.

For example, Lula’s speech started by going through the usual Brazilian foreign policy priorities he often mentions when speaking at diplomatic events, such as the need to defend multilateralism, respect for democracy, and promoting global climate action. But his speech devoted more words than usual to the importance of intelligence sharing between law enforcement authorities in different countries. “There is no strong democracy or lasting development where organised crime corrodes the legitimate authority of the State,” he said, adding that “organised crime controls territories, intimidates communities, destroys the environment, feeds corruption, diverts public resources, and expands its activities in the digital sphere” and calling for “police, judicial, and financial cooperation” to address these problems. 

It is worth noting that Lula is seeking a new term in Brazil’s presidential election in October, so any public platform to express his commitment to fighting crime is likely to be seized upon by his campaign team as an opportunity to convince voters that he is taking their concerns over insecurity seriously. But this is by no means a priority limited to Brazil. With crime often ranking as a major public concern in countries across the region, any politicians seeking to boost their popularity could try to ramp up their tough-on-crime rhetoric, even at events such as the Mercosur summit in which trade and economic matters are expected to be the main discussion points. 

Aside from the left-wing Lula, another leader attending the summit, Chile’s right-wing President José Antonio Kast, who took office in March, also gave a speech in Asunción arguing for the need to foster regional security cooperation. Although Chile is not a full member of Mercosur, it is an associate state of the bloc and Kast’s presence at the summit highlighted the trend of conservative leaders, several of whom declared fighting crime among their main campaign pledges, winning elections across the region in recent years.

In his speech, Kast proposed that Mercosur and its associate countries “build a security architecture together” to cooperate on areas such as border management, the pursuit of illicit financial flows, arms trafficking control, and intelligence sharing between prosecutors’ offices and police forces. He went on to further emphasise the point of border management, calling for “a regional migration agenda”. In recent months, the Kast government has been trying to promote its tough-on-crime credentials, especially after facing criticism for not having a concrete security plan [SSR-26-06], given that rhetoric about tackling crime and illegal migration dominated his presidential campaign last year.   

With regional leaders reiterating their political goals at diplomatic events such as the Mercosur summit, it is clear what their intentions are, but it is not quite clear when the intentions will manifest as a concrete expansion of Mercosur’s institutional capabilities. A left-wing leader like Lula and a right-wing leader like Kast can both agree that there is a need for more multilateral security cooperation among South American governments, but it could take a lot of time and sustained political will for Mercosur or any other regional grouping to provide the infrastructure and resources to effectively turn the rhetoric into reality.

In Lula’s speech at the latest Mercosur summit, he sought to highlight Brazil’s achievements in recent years regarding the promotion of transnational security cooperation, pointing to the Amazonian police hub launched in the northern Brazilian city of Manaus last year. This is a police base run by Brazil’s federal police (PF) which will aim to coordinate operations and manage intelligence sharing to tackle transnational crime in the Amazon. The establishment of the police centre was one of the objectives declared by leaders at a summit of Amazonian countries that Lula hosted in 2023, but the result, which came to fruition in 2025, was primarily a Brazilian PF initiative rather than the creation of a truly international team of anti-gang specialists working together to dismantle the illicit economies of criminal organisations in the Amazon.

Lula also highlighted that when Brazil held Mercosur’s six-month rotating presidency in the second half of last year, the bloc’s summit held in the Brazilian city of Foz do Iguaçu in December 2025 already included pledges for the creation of a committee to implement a regional strategy against transnational crime. But it was not until late May this year, under Paraguay’s six-month presidency, that Mercosur announced a more specific plan to create a regional crime monitoring centre which will aim to standardise and align the databases of law enforcement institutions across Mercosur members and associate states. In the second half of 2026, Uruguay will lead Mercosur, and Orsi said at the summit on 30 June that under his pro tempore presidency he will similarly push for “greater integration” and “new cooperation mechanisms” between security forces around border areas.

After the Mercosur summit ended, Kast remained in Asunción on 1 July for a bilateral meeting with Peña, where the two leaders signed various memoranda of understanding, including an agreement that reiterated their commitment to collaborating on efforts to improve border security, intelligence sharing, and judicial coordination. Similar calls for joint action against organised crime were made two weeks later when Peña hosted Brazil’s defence minister, José Múcio Monteiro, in Asunción on 15 July. During his visit Múcio did not sign any deals with his Paraguayan counterpart, Óscar Luis González Cañete, but they stated that they reviewed existing bilateral defence programmes and affirmed their commitment to tackling transnational crime.

Talks between authorities on the issue of regional security are clearly underway, at multilateral summits as well as in bilateral meetings, and the main buzzwords, such as intelligence sharing and judicial coordination, are being highlighted in statements and speeches. Now it remains to be seen if any more concrete plans emerge from these declarations of intent.

Lula sovereignty rhetoric

In his speech at the summit on 30 June, Lula said that “nobody is the owner of the world” and “nobody is the owner of South America”. This was not a direct criticism of the US government, which made the controversial decision in late May to designate Brazil’s largest gangs as foreign terrorist organisations [SSR-26-07]. But Lula’s insistence that no country has that right to lord over the region is consistent with his previous criticisms of US President Donald Trump over the past year, especially in 2025 when Trump ordered steep tariffs on Brazilian goods, which prompted Lula to condemn the US pressure as imperialist bullying.

Milei absent

Argentina’s President Javier Milei was the only head of state among the five full Mercosur members to skip the summit in Asunción on 30 June. Some media reports have highlighted the long-running tensions between Milei and Lula as well as Milei’s frequent criticisms of Mercosur and his clear preference for boosting ties with Trump and the US, but other reports have noted that Milei’s decision to remain in Buenos Aires rather than travel to Asunción was also due to more pressing domestic political concerns, such as the need to discuss the handover to his new cabinet chief Diego Santilli, who officially took over from Manuel Adorni in late June, after Adorni resigned amid an alleged illicit enrichment scandal.