Lula da Silva after voting in the second round of the presidential elections on October 30. AMANDA PEROBELLI (REUTERS)
Lula da Silva's victory in the last Brazilian elections, bounded by the consolidation of Bolsonaroism in Congress and state governments, will limit the president's margin of action in domestic politics, but it can decisively re-launch Brazil's role in the region.
Under the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro, Brazilian foreign policy confirmed its traditional logic of continuity: Itamaraty maintained its commitment to the BRICS, deepened its ties with China and Russia, and, after a difficult start with the Joe Biden Administration, repositioned itself within of the inter-American system at the recent Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles.
However, Bolsonaro's open trumpism and his ideological orientation towards retro anti-communism complicated Brazil's relationship with several of its neighbors, at a time when new progressive governments were rising, such as those of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico, Alberto Fernández in Argentina , Gabriel Boric in Chile and Gustavo Petro in Colombia.
In 2019, Brazil left Unasur and, in early 2020, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac).
At that time, Foreign Minister Ernesto Araújo maintained that the forum did not produce results and gave prominence to non-democratic governments such as those of Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba.
President Bolsonaro did not attend, therefore, the sixth CELAC summit held in Mexico, in September 2021, where López Obrador, as president
pro tempore
of the organization, proposed an integration of all of Latin America and the Caribbean to the United States. United States and Canada, following the model of the European Union.
Brasilia also did not send representatives to the CELAC foreign ministers' meetings in Buenos Aires, at the end of October this year, one of them with Josep Borrell, the high representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policies, where they discussed the issue of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The Argentine president, who currently exercises the
pro tempore
authority of CELAC, traveled to São Paulo shortly after the election and met with Lula, who assured Brazil's prompt reincorporation into that forum.
For his part, López Obrador has just announced that both Fernández and Lula would eventually travel to Mexico City, where in a couple of weeks there will be a summit of the Pacific Alliance, a centrally commercial entity, created in 2011 by Chile, Peru, Colombia and Mexico, in which presidents Boric, Castillo and Petro will intervene.
As is obvious, the expectations of a relaunch of Latin American integration, with Lula, are through the roof.
But these expectations, generally wrapped in a triumphalist rhetoric without true geopolitical support, hide the serious divergence on models of integration that subsists within the Latin American left itself.
As has been seen in recent years, the Mexican government's priority is integration with North America, hence its Latin Americanism is always mediated by that link.
And, at the same time, other lefts in power, such as the Argentine, Chilean, Peruvian or Colombian, unlike the "Bolivarian" ones, do not believe that Latin Americanism and inter-Americanism are incompatible.
Lula, in effect, can contribute to this waning regionalism with the support of the most powerful government in Latin America, which is not a small thing, and the professional diplomacy of Itamaraty.
But Lula will hardly put at risk the foreign policy of the Brazilian State, which, as was confirmed under a leadership as extravagant as that of Bolsonaro, follows guidelines of global balance such as the BRICS, South-South collaboration and inter-Americanism.
In any case, the most expected thing would be for Lula to bet on a Latin American approach that, without abandoning the inter-American platform, does not follow the line of hemispheric integration proposed by López Obrador, nor the “anti-imperialist” Bolivarian one promoted by Maduro, Ortega and Díaz-Canel. .
Lula would surely also sympathize with a return of Venezuela and Nicaragua to the channel of constitutional democracy -during his last campaign he made explicit criticism of the lack of public liberties in both countries-, but any gesture of his, in this sense, will be subordinated to the demand of the end of the exclusion of those two governments, and the Cuban one, from international forums.
Brazil's status as a middle power and global player translates, under a leadership like Lula's, into an emphasis on criticizing sanctions and isolation as tools of democratization.
The high expectations regarding Lula's role in the reactivation of integrationism have to do with this obsessive symbolic make-up of the differences or dissent within the Latin American left, but also with the factual verification that regionalism does not rebound in the new cycle progressive.
Traditionally, those lefts hold the right wing or the United States responsible for any setback, but the truth is that, to a great extent, integration has not advanced due to deep divergences that subsist among the governments of the Latin American left.
In some cases, these differences, regarding central issues on any agenda, such as democracy, human rights or relations with Washington, are irreconcilable, even if the opposite is projected.
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