Bolivian President Evo Morales, host of the Community of South American Nations summit, invited his fellow heads of state to join him in writing a new story for South America."We are truly in an age of making history," Morales said during Friday's ceremony in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba. "We must make history _ a history that will leave behind a black history of subjugation and injustice."
The fiery leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said South America should come together as one. "Only united can we be free, and only free can we fly," he told reporters upon arrival.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva agreed that the time had come for integration and suggested that one day South America, or even all of Latin America, might form a parliament based in Cochabamba.
"South America is one of the last regions on earth to express itself politically toward the goal of integration," Silva said.
Also attending the summit were socialist Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and Ecuador's leftist President-elect Rafael Correa.
Nicaragua's President-elect Daniel Ortega of the Sandinista party also arrived Friday as a guest from Central America, sporting a black leather jacket similar to those favored by Morales.
As the leaders gathered, Bolivia faced storms both political and literal.
Demonstrators for and against Morales fired shots Friday at several buildings in the eastern lowland city of Santa Cruz, Bolivia's wealthiest and a center of opposition to Morales.
Meanwhile, Indian women in traditional velvet skirts and white straw hats scraped mud from streets in the summit's host city, Cochabamba, as they dug out from a deadly hailstorm blamed for killing a family of three whose car fell into a flooded canal and a fourth person who was electrocuted by a fallen power cable.
The summit is aimed at trade and energy issues, as well as weaving closer economic ties between South American nations split between the Mercosur and Andean trade pacts. Leaders have said they hope eventually for continentwide community similar to the European Union _ or China, as Peruvian President Alan Garcia suggested Friday.
"We in South America produce more than China, we export more than China," Garcia said. "But we don't have a common currency like China's, which makes the dollar back down and dominates the other currencies of the world."
Also likely to be discussed during the summit are ambitious proposals for giant infrastructure projects tying the continent together.
Correa on Friday proposed a land-and-river trade route linking Brazil's Amazon rain forest to Ecuador's Pacific coast, saying it could be an alternative to the Panama Canal.
Chavez, meanwhile, dreams of a pipeline able to deliver his country's natural gas the length of the continent.
Outside the fancy ballrooms hosting the summit, Morales also convened a "complementary" conference meant to give the continent's Indian groups, trade unions, landless peasants and local coca farmers a greater voice in South America's future.
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