The presidents of Bolivia, Luis Arce; Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro and Brazil's Lula da Silva.Andre Penner (AP)
In his first five months in office, Lula appears trapped between heaven and earth. It is between his dream of being and appearing as the most popular politician in the world, as Obama once defined him, or dedicating himself to the hard task of making a country sadly and painfully led astray by Bolsonaro march again.
The new Brazilian president arrived wanting not only to restore the country's lost dignity and it was evident thanks to his dynamism in foreign policy. In his first five months of presidency he has already met outside and inside the country with more than 30 world leaders. More than Bolsonaro in his four years at the helm of power.
At the same time that he built a center-left government with 37 ministers to face a Congress that he knew would be adverse to him given his Bolsonarist majority, Lula immediately made it clear that Brazil was not enough for him with his problems. He looked beyond. It was clear with his dynamism in participating in the debate on the war in Ukraine by immediately positioning himself as a world mediator offering his support for the creation of a team of countries to mediate peace.
He also revealed his international activity trying to mediate between the two largest world powers: the United States and China, even proposing an alternative currency to the dollar. And right now summoning to Brasilia the presidents of South America with the surprise of the accolade given to the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, denying that his was a dictatorial government.
Meanwhile, here, in his territory, his Administration begins to receive the first blows from Congress, where despite its efforts to give away ministries to conservative parties and even Bolsonaristas is increasingly cornered with adverse votes. The congressmen have already derailed his new progressive policy on the environment and the defense of the Amazon and indigenous peoples, stripping the ministries of Environment of Marina Silva and the indigenist issues of Minister Sonia Guajajara of their powers.
And now the government awaits with suspense the vote of the Congress that could annul the entire structure of the Executive with its 37 ministries that should be reduced to the 13 that his predecessor had, creating a real political earthquake. Despite so many concessions made to Parliament, Lula's government fails to have majorities to approve its reforms.
And the bone of contention, at this very moment, has been his positive stance with the Maduro Administration whom he received a day before the rest of the Southern Cone Summit, with great fanfare and before whom he openly defended that Venezuela is not a dictatorship and that the world is doing an injustice to Maduro.
The national press, as well as the most serious and progressive political blogs, have been harsh on the acquittal given to Maduro. They have applauded the fact that Lula has returned to dialogue with Maduro and his country, something that had been execrated by Bolsonaro, but they have criticized him for denying that Venezuela is a dictatorship.
The newspaper O Globo headlines its harsh editorial Lula's reception of Maduro was an embarrassment. It states: "No other South American leader received in Brazil was as praised as Maduro. It is one thing for the Brazilian government to offer itself as a mediator for a democratic transition, and quite another to put a red carpet on a dictator calling him a democrat against all the evidence and treating him as a "friend of faith, brother comrade. Sad."
Even the world of humor has taken part in the criticism of the triumphal reception granted by Lula to Maduro. O Globo cartoonist Chico portrays the president with these words: "I would like to say that was not what I said I said."
In Metropoles, the veteran journalist, Ricardo Noblat, indisputable in his lifelong progressive disposition, writes about Lula's praise of Maduro: "If he is not aging, Lula suffers an intelligence blackout."
There are those who say, however, that Lula is actually breaking paradigms and causing global scandal with his aggressive policy that does not want to circumscribe his country but is strong enough to try to extend his leadership beyond the borders of Brazil.
Just today, as I write this column, Lula's telephone conversation with Pope Francis is announced. Brazil is too small for the current president, who has returned to power for the third time wanting not only to rebuild the country from the fascist earthquake of his predecessor Bolsonaro, but to leave his mark on a planetary scale.
That Lula has never lacked political acumen even in the most difficult moments, such as his year and a half in prison, is in everyone's eyes. For this reason, even his harshest critics always leave an open door to the possible surprises that the already mature politician who claims to feel "with the vigor of a young man" may still reserve.
Subscribe here to the newsletter of EL PAÍS America and receive all the informative keys of the current situation of the region
75% discount
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
Read more
I'm already a subscriber