PAGINA NO OFICIAL DE CARLOS ESCUDE

By Laurie Goering, Tribune Staff Writer

 Argentina has long been the cultural and intellectual center of South America, a proud, European-focused nation accustomed to seeing itself as a world power sadly attached to a barbaric and chaotic continent.

In the 1920s, middle-class Portenos--as the nattily dressed residents of Buenos Aires are known--spent part of each year at their apartments in Paris or homes in the French countryside. Some shipped their cows along to provide the type of milk they were accustomed to drinking. Such were the prerogatives of citizens of one of the wealthiest nations.

Even today, Argentines remain among the richest, best-educated South Americans, with an enviable middle class, a rich cultural tradition and a capital touted as the "Paris of the Pampas."

"Without a doubt, all Portenos feel they're the center of the world," said Enrique Baby, a relocated Brazilian and Buenos Aires editor of Gazeta Mercantil, a Brazilian business newspaper.

Argentina, however, is no longer the leader of South America. Brazil, that disorganized giant to the north, has quietly stolen the title.

Three times the size of Argentina and with a population nearly five times larger, Brazil has tamed its out-of-control economy, elected a president envied by many Argentines and taken over the dominant economic position in South America.

When recent Asian stock market crashes set South American economies wobbling, it was Brazil that took the lead in shoring up the region, now united by the Mercosur trade pact.

For Argentines, who in previous decades dismissed the predominantly mixed-race Brazilians as macaquitos--little monkeys--the change has been greeted with disbelief, good-natured grace and frustration.

"For much of its history, Argentina has been so much richer and more cosmopolitan than Brazil that we didn't even think of coming to a par with her, much less outranking her," said Amaury de Souza, a sociologist in Rio de Janeiro.

Now, however, "we're looked on as the big power south of the Rio Grande. We lead Mercosur. Argentina's fate is intimately tied to our own.

"For Argentines, it must be really hard. To look at us must set their teeth rattling. They would rather die than acknowledge Brazil is the leader."

Argentina and Brazil have been rivals on about every possible level. Almost from the time the Spanish founded Buenos Aires and the Portuguese settled Brazil, the two Iberian nations have bristled at each other across their shared border, though wars have been rare.

They've battled for soccer supremacy, Brazil with Pele and Argentina with its star, Maradona. Brazil's samba has won hearts in Buenos Aires, but Argentina has always claimed the more refined culture.

Since 1995, the rivalry largely has turned to cooperation. Mercosur, the trade pact among Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay, has welded the two countries economically, making political feuds costly. Brazilians for the first time are learning Spanish in huge numbers, and Argentines are learning Portuguese.

Tensions have eased so much that the countries hold joint military maneuvers, with Argentine planes flying off Brazilian carriers. For their size, each nation spends less on arms and soldiers than virtually any other country.

"Brazil and Argentina are fast converting toward becoming a single entity," De Souza said, "and the speed with which it's happening is simply amazing."

Beneath the new public spirit of cooperation, however, Argentina clearly still harbors a bit of wounded pride.

When Brazil announced that it would seek a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, Argentina's President Carlos Menem vetoed the idea, saying it would "break the balance" of power in the region.

Carlos Escude, a political science professor at Di Tella University in Buenos Aires and a foreign-policy adviser to Menem, said Menem's objection was mainly designed to keep opposition politicians at home from accusing him of "giving up the leadership of the continent."

But it put Argentina in an "embarrassing position," he said.

"Personally, I think it's absolutely reasonable that Brazil take the seat," Escude said. Argentina is "not big enough, too remote, too unimportant strategically and too developed" to take a regional Security Council seat designed to represent the region's Third World nations.

For the most part, Argentines are learning to accept their waning international spotlight. Since their disastrous war against Britain in 1982 over the Falkland Islands and a bout of hyperinflation that convinced most Argentines they weren't immune from the continent's ills, "Argentines are no longer convinced this is a world power or can become a world power," Escude said.

In turn, Brazil is recognizing it has a lot to learn from Argentina, whose ground-breaking economic and political reforms it has watched and partly copied.

"Brazil is the proverbial latecomer," De Souza said. "We learn from the errors of those who got there first."

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