The EU was an inspiration to the rest of the world, and now it’s not

Like the rest of the world, Latin America is feeling the effects of Brexit in the form of plunging currencies and stocks. The uncertainty unleashed by the UK’s vote June 23 to leave the EU will continue to shake the region’s wobbly economies in coming months, experts predict.

The biggest loss, though, may be the comfort that we once had that at least somewhere in the world a group of nations was able to put aside their differences to work together. To this Mexican, that is a lot more depressing than the Mexican peso’s record low.

Latin American countries have much more in common than the nations of the European Union—language, history, culture, similar levels of development—yet the region has never been even close to achieving the degree of unity and solidarity of Europe, as Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez points out.

“The dozens of entities and coalitions, whose initials, logos and premises surround us everywhere in Latin America, pompously hold inaugural summits with family photos filled with heads of state, but in practice and in real life they are of very little use,” she wrote in an editorial before the Brexit vote.

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The Real Style ------ NP 2016