Despite public diplomacy efforts by Pacific Alliance and ASEAN members alike emphasizing the desirability of upscaling their relations, actual progress will face challenges on several fronts. [...] Nonetheless, the current context offers the Pacific Alliance and ASEAN an outstanding opportunity to build up their partnership.

Ex-presidents Felipe Calderon of Mexico, Alan Garcia of Peru and Cesar Gaviria of Colombia brought to Bogota the fad for selfies that has overtaken Hollywood and US President Barack Obama. In charge of posting the dignitaries' picture on the social network Twitter was Calderon, and judging by the look of concentration on his face, he seems to have been the photographer as well.

Just over a year ago, as President Enrique Peña Nieto started his administration, the domestic and international press were touting “Mexico’s moment” and the rise of “the Aztec tiger.” Now, the naysayers have returned. Their pessimism stems in part from disappointing economic results: Mexico’s GDP growth has fallen, from nearly four percent in 2012 to around an estimated one percent in 2013.

A group of young Colombian musicians known as “Cantares del Pacifico” is crossing the Atlantic for five days in a cultural exchange of music and dance with the west African nation of Ghana. The visit comes after opening diplomatic relationship between the two countries following the establishment of shared embassy between Colombia, Mexico, Chile and Peru in Ghana under the Cali Declaration made in recent accord with the Pacific Alliance.

The Pacific Alliance is a new initiative among four Latin American nations with the potential to reinvigorate the regional trade agenda in an exciting way. Having grown weary of waiting for meaningful hemispheric trade expansion in the wake of the collapse of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) a decade ago, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru agreed to link their economies more closely through trade, finance, and labor market integration. Others, including Costa Rica, are on deck to join.

If freedom, democracy and the rule of law are universal, Latin America can and must benefit from the regeneration of the Trans-Atlantic bond. If this does not happen, other models will spread, giving precedence to mercantilism and state capitalism. The news that Nicaragua has awarded China a 40 billion dollar contract to build a new canal across the straits confirms this country's increasingly important role in regional politics.

Behind the excitement is the sense that the Pacific Alliance is a hard-nosed business deal, rather than the usual gassy rhetoric of Latin American summitry. Under the leftist governments that rule in much of South America, there has been plenty of talk of regional integration, but precious little practice of it.