04/12/2025

A brief history

Forty years ago, an event of singular political and diplomatic importance helped to strengthen the bonds of friendship and confidence between Brazil and Argentina.

It represented the embryo of Mercosur, which in turn became one of the pillars—together with the Andean Community—of the process of South American integration. It all began when Presidents José Sarney and Raúl Alfonsín met in the border cities of Foz do Iguaçu and Puerto Iguazú on 29 and 30 November 1985.

That historic moment in the Brazil–Argentina relationship took place under the sign of democracy restored in both countries. After the periods of dictatorship, it was the first presidential-level meeting, marked fundamentally by a shared interest in intensifying and deepening bilateral cooperation.

The particular circumstances of the internal political situation in each country were well known.

In Brazil, in the midst of democratic transition, we had just gone through the political and emotional impact of the death of President Tancredo Neves, and President Sarney, upon assuming the leadership of the government on a definitive basis, began to pursue a policy of closer engagement with the countries of Latin America. In August of that same year, he had paid a state visit to Uruguay at the invitation of President Julio María Sanguinetti.

In Argentina, in addition to the traumas caused primarily by the human rights violations committed under the military regime that governed the country from 1976 to 1983, the scars of the armed conflict three years earlier over the dispute for the Malvinas Islands were still reverberating—an issue on which Brazil had taken an explicit position of solidarity and support for the neighboring country’s legitimate sovereign rights. At the same time, Alfonsín was entering his third year in office with the launch of an economic stabilization plan that initially raised great expectations but ultimately failed.

“The Sarney–Alfonsín meeting had as its specific objective the inauguration of the International Bridge over the Iguazú River. On that occasion, the significance of the project as a real and symbolic bond between the two nations was emphasized.”

The Sarney–Alfonsín meeting had as its specific objective the inauguration of the International Bridge over the Iguazu River, linking the district of Porto Meira, in Brazil, to Puerto Iguazú, in Argentina. This work of physical integration was given the name “President Tancredo Neves Bridge.” On that occasion, the significance of the bridge as a real and symbolic bond between the two nations was underlined; it was also important for making real the legitimate aspirations of the populations on both sides of the border.

Until then, along the extensive river border between Brazil and Argentina, there had been only one bridge connecting the two countries: the international bridge between the cities of Uruguaiana and Paso de los Libres, inaugurated in 1947 during the administrations of Dutra and Perón. It was from the presidential meeting in Iguazú that other infrastructure projects for physical and energy integration between the two countries began to be planned and built.

Another aspect that reinforced the historical significance of the Iguazú meeting had to do with the success of Brazilian and Argentine diplomacy in overcoming, in 1979, the longstanding bilateral dispute over Itaipu.

For a long time, this issue had limited the prospects for closer relations between the two countries and, to some extent, still cast a shadow at the beginning of the democratic era, raising doubts as to how the new government in Buenos Aires would approach the matter.

“The visit had an extraordinary symbolic impact as it marked the end of the spirit of rivalry and competition that had led Argentina in the past to oppose the binational project built in partnership with Paraguay.”

To the pleasant surprise of the Brazilian delegation, President Alfonsín expressed a desire to visit the Itaipu hydroelectric plant during his meeting with President Sarney in Iguazú. Organized confidentially by the protocol service, since it did not appear in the official program, the visit had an extraordinary symbolic impact, marking the end of the spirit of rivalry and competition that had led Argentina in the past to oppose the binational project carried out with Paraguay, which had generated serious controversy with Brazil.

Ambassador Rubens Ricupero, then head of the Department of the Americas at the Itamaraty (Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs), was called upon to accompany Alfonsín’s visit to Itaipu, which took place on the morning of 30 November, before the inauguration of the bridge over the Iguazú River. When he returned to rejoin the members of the delegation who were waiting at the head of the bridge, he commented discreetly: “As the Baron used to say, there are victories we should not celebrate.”

The famous remark by the Baron of Rio Branco recalls a historic moment in Brazilian diplomacy, on the occasion of the announcement in 1895 of the arbitral award by U.S. President Grover Cleveland, which ruled in Brazil’s favor in the territorial dispute over Palmas.

Against this backdrop, Presidents Sarney and Alfonsín, at the end of their talks, signed in Iguazú two documents of fundamental importance for the interests of Brazilian foreign policy.

The first was the joint communiqué of the meeting, entitled the Iguazú Declaration, which covered a broad range of issues.

“The Iguazú Declaration expressed the high degree of diversification, deepening and fluidity achieved in bilateral relations.”

Among other points, the document expressed the high degree of diversification, deepening and fluidity that bilateral relations had reached. It pointed to converging positions against protectionist policies in international trade. It defended the need for Latin America to strengthen its bargaining power with the rest of the world through policies of regional cooperation and integration. It called for a political approach to the question of external debt, in line with the terms advocated by the Cartagena Consensus.

It also addressed the proposal for the South Atlantic Peace and Cooperation Zone, the question of the Malvinas Islands, the Contadora Support Group, cooperation within the framework of the La Plata Basin, and the problem of drug trafficking. In the end, it established a High-Level Joint Commission for Bilateral Economic Cooperation and Integration. The Declaration then set out a series of guidelines for the Commission’s work with a view to deepening bilateral ties in areas such as industrial complementation, trade, energy, transport, communications and scientific-technical development. On this basis, the agreements reached during President Sarney’s visit to Buenos Aires in July 1986 were concluded; these agreements subsequently led, with the participation of Uruguay and Paraguay, to the creation of Mercosur.

“The Joint Declaration on Nuclear Policy underlined that the nuclear programs of Argentina and Brazil were exclusively for peaceful purposes.”

The second document signed at the presidential meeting in Iguazú was the Joint Declaration on Nuclear Policy. By encouraging bilateral nuclear cooperation, the declaration underlined that the nuclear programs of Argentina and Brazil were exclusively for peaceful purposes and determined that mutual understandings in this field should be extended over the long term.

To that end, a permanent working group was established. At the same time, the declaration reaffirmed the right of both countries to develop autonomous nuclear programs within the framework of their international commitments. This meant that Argentina and Brazil would abide by the rules arising from the Statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), since neither was a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

In practical terms, an exchange was launched which, although timid at first, was progressively intensified, building mutual confidence through periodic meetings, exchanges of information and materials, and contacts between the atomic energy commissions of the two countries. The permanent working group brought together, for a little more than two years, officials from the foreign ministries and the commissions and, in the Brazilian case, also representatives from the Office of the Secretary General of the National Security Council.

Argentina, acting on President Alfonsín’s instructions, opened its most sensitive facility—because of the technological secrecy it involved—to receive a Brazilian delegation: the uranium enrichment plant at Pilcaniyeu. Up until that point, no foreigner had ever been there.

Shortly thereafter, President Sarney ordered that the Argentines be received at Brazil’s own enrichment plant at the Aramar Center, operated by the Navy. President Alfonsín visited the center on 8 April 1988, when the Iperó Declaration was signed. Under that declaration, the joint working group was transformed into a Permanent Committee, instructed to meet every 120 days to address “all issues of mutual interest in the nuclear field.”

“At the political-diplomatic level, the bilateral understanding generated unprecedented mutual confidence between actors who, only a few years earlier, had been carrying out programs that could have led to tests with nuclear explosives.”

At the political-diplomatic level, this understanding generated unprecedented mutual confidence between actors who, only a few years earlier, had been implementing programs that could have led to tests with nuclear explosives, thereby heightening tensions and possibly triggering an arms race. Particularly noteworthy is the creation, in 1991, of ABACC (the Brazilian-Argentine Agency for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials), which established a system of reciprocal inspections of the two countries’ nuclear programs.

Twenty years after the Iguazú Declaration, and to mark the anniversary, the Presidents of Argentina and Brazil met in Puerto Iguazú and signed another Joint Declaration on Nuclear Policy, in which they pledged to work “for a world free of nuclear weapons” and reaffirming “the importance of ABACC and of the common system for verification of nuclear programs as a mechanism for mutual confidence and transparency.”

On the fortieth anniversary of the Iguazú Declaration, we highlight the leadership exercised by Raúl Alfonsín and José Sarney, thanks to whom barriers were dismantled, understandings were launched, confidence was built and regional integration was set in motion. May they serve as an inspiration at a time when centrifugal forces are at work in the bilateral and regional context.*

Eduardo Santos is a diplomat. He was Secretary-General of the Itamaraty (Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs), ambassador to Paraguay and to other posts, and adviser in the Office of the President of the Republic.

José Eduardo M. Felicio was Undersecretary-General for Latin America at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Brazil’s ambassador to Uruguay, Cuba and Paraguay, and served in the Office of the Secretary General of the National Security Council of the Presidency of the Republic.

*Article originally published in the journal Interesse Nacional