https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_South_American_Nations
UNASUR: GDP $US4 trillion dollars, population 414 million. Members: every fucking country in South America (not counting some small UK colonies).
Explain yourself, where is this clay?
What the South is "hiding" is Unasur and Celac. There's a growing regional power bloc down there. You don't hear about it because it doesn't suit the US's regional aims for you guys to be informed about politics in the South.
To be honest, it's because USA news quality is fucking shite, and even when they try to frame a narrative one way they don't even get their slants right
Not like it matters since no one watches their shitey news
The real reason no one's heard of CELAC is because CELAC doesn't do anything, there's fuck all it does and until it further integrates there's little point in it. Bilateral relations with South American countries is far more common, as far as I can tell the only thing I've ever known CELAC to do is do some business summits in Yurop with the Yurop Commission every now and then - which is hardly a public spectacle.
South America has a unified parliament now, a unilateral military alliance amongst all 12 countries of the continent, and is talking about moving to a single currency. This development was largely spurred by widespread distrust of the Bush administration.
South America does not have a unified parliament, they made sure that their defence policy in this phase of integration was exclusively not unilateral and instead focused on multilateral cooperation, talks of single currency are a long way away from implementation - but everyone will be buzzing over it when it happens :]
Basically the US was previously backing two rival trade groups in South America, keeping them at each others throats. After a while they got together and went "you know what? fuck those asshats!" and now they've basically formed a federated union of all of South America, modeled on the EU and NATO.
Mercosur and PA would not have gotten together better without the USA trading with either of them, or only one of them Lel
It's not like NATO and it's also not going to be creating all the useless bureaucrats that the EU's made, using the already useless bureaucrats of the previous trade blocs to be eco-friendly and only use renewable bureaucrats
An entire continent forming a federal parliament is pretty big news. Ask yourself why hardly anyone in America has heard about this.
Because most Americans don't give a shit about foreign countries
If that doesn't make you go wtf, check this one out, the expanded membership:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_of_Latin_American_and_Caribbean_States
CELAC: GDP $US9 trillion, population 591 million.
With CELAC, you're looking at a regional economic bloc with almost twice the population of the USA, and a total GDP rivaling China, right on America's doorstep. Combine that with moves to political federalism in South America, and you can see there's a lot of economic power down there, and they're starting to get politically organized.
Starting to does not equate to anything
There is a gorblangous volume of potential that could arise from this, but that potential is yet to be realized, or at the very least in the realm of the current year and public consciousness. It's already entering financial consciousness, so once they've grubbed the monetary opportunity and election campaigns are over, everyone else will get the opportunity to moisten themselves with glory glory bbrrrrrazil continent