Argentina: Europe on the other side of the world

After three months of travelling, I’ve decided – I’m not giving up on Europe. 

I’m currently halfway across the Atlantic, flying from Argentina back to Brussels after a three-month journey across North and South America. I have to say, it feels good to be going ‘home’. 

This is the longest I’ve been away from Europe since I moved to London ten years ago. It was a nice opportunity to clear my head, to spend some time with my family and to experience a new part of the world. I’ve used the peace and quiet to work on my book about nationalist education and the European project, which I’m happy to report is now nearing completion. 

It is perhaps fitting that I ended my trip in Argentina, a country many describe as the most ‘European’ place in the Americas. In fact, as I was travelling south through Latin America I kept hearing, “Oh, you’re going to Buenos Aires? But maybe it won’t be so interesting for you, since you live in Europe. It’s the same thing.” 

Is Latin America a vision of Europe's fenced future?

Europeans should look at the hassles faced by other continents before they thoughtlessly toss out Schengen's decades of free movement.

I'm spending this weekend at Iguazu Falls, the mammoth waterfalls at the border of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. It's a truly spectacular sight, more powerful than Niagara and wider than Victoria (the falls, not the queen).

Perhaps even more interesting than visiting the falls has been exploring the three towns at the 'triple frontier', Foz do Iguacu, Puerto Iguazu and Ciudad del Este. It is essentially one large urban conurbation spanning three borders. I've taken to collecting visits to sites like this. It's my fourth triple border, after NL-BE-DE, CH-FR-DE and CH-LI-AU.

Betancourt's rescue: the view from Europe

The reaction to the dramatic rescue of Colombian hostage Ingrid Betancourt and 14 others this week has received some unusual coverage in the European press, quite different from that in the US. If one didn’t know the back story behind this situation they might think the coverage downright bizarre.

Betancourt is due to arrive in Paris at any moment to greet French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The meeting is largely required by political necessity, as Sarkozy and his predecessors had made the release of Betancourt one of France’s top diplomatic priorities, and Sarkozy has been working tirelessly for a diplomatic solution between the Colombian government and FARC, the leftist guerilla militia that took her hostage. Betancourt is a dual French and Colombian citizen.But the pleasantries that will be exchanged at the Elysee Palace tonight mask an embarrassing reality for France: in the end it was not France’s tireless diplomatic efforts that rescued Betancourt but a US-backed military operation in which France had no involvement whatsoever. That has to be a tough pill for the country to swallow.

The Colombian government, a US-backed rightist regime that has fiery relations with leftist governments in neighboring countries, was never a natural partner for France to be working with in the first place. But given that Betancourt - a former Colombian presidential candidate for an ecological party - is a French citizen, France felt a duty to find a solution to her captivity. But France’s tactic was chiefly diplomatic, trying to negotiate a settlement between FARC, which has historically been backed by the Leftist governments in Venezuela and Ecuador, and the Columbian government, treating FARC as a political group rather than a terrorist organization and putting faith in Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez to act as a mediator with them. Instead, the United States (which had three citizens as hostages alongside Betancourt) swooped in and coordinated a military rescue with Colombia's president Álvaro Uribe in an operation that even had Israeli operational assistance.