(Brasilia) Just three weeks after taking office followed by a major crisis in Brasilia, left-wing President Lula embarks on his first trip abroad on Sunday, to Argentina, determined to put Brazil’s return on the scene into action international.
If the first outing of a Brazilian president is traditionally reserved for the big neighbor, this visit will also allow Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to find a faithful ally and friend, President Alberto Fernandez, but also his counterparts in a region where the left returned to power, taking part in the Celac summit.
“Brazil is back! Lula had launched on the evening of his victory on October 30 against outgoing far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, whose four years in office were marked by great international isolation.
“Everyone wants to talk to Brazil,” Lula said to TV Globo this week, promising to “rebuild” Brasilia’s ties with the international community.
Latin America is therefore the first stage of this normalization, before the arrival of the first European leader in Brasilia, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, on January 30, then a visit by Lula to American President Joe Biden, in Washington, on February 10. .
Lula’s priority is to “reconnect with Latin America, an essential region for Brazil, but relegated to the background” by Mr. Bolsonaro, explains to AFP Joao Daniel Almeida, specialist in external relations at the Pontifical University of Rio.
Lula is expected in Buenos Aires on Sunday where he will meet the next day with Mr. Fernandez. The center-left leader had gone to Sao Paulo to warmly congratulate his “friend” on the evening of his victory.
Argentina is “a very important partner” for Brazil, said Lula vice-president Geraldo Alckmin. It is the third customer of Brazilian exports, which exceeded 15 billion dollars last year.
Discussions are expected to include trade, science, technology and defence, Brazil’s foreign ministry said.
“Pink Wave”
The left-wing president could also meet his Cuban counterparts Miguel Diaz Canel and Venezuelan Nicolas Maduro, with whom Brasilia has just reconnected, on Tuesday in Buenos Aires. Mr. Bolsonaro’s Brazil was one of the fifty countries that recognized the main opponent of the socialist president, Juan Guaidó, as “interim president” of Venezuela.
Lula must then travel to Uruguay for a meeting with center-right president Luis Lacalle Pou.
In Buenos Aires, he will participate in the VIIe summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac), which brings together 33 states in the region. Lula had been at the end of the last of his two terms (2003-2010) one of the founders of this organization, during the first “pink wave” on the continent.
Jair Bolsonaro had suspended Brazil’s participation in Celac, accused of “giving importance to undemocratic regimes like Venezuela, Cuba or Nicaragua”.
Likewise, he had not frequented Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Colombia where the left had come to power. “A reductive ideological vision”, judged Lula’s foreign minister, Mauro Vieira.
Lula wants to “prioritize economic cooperation” in the region, Almeida said.
He also expressed this week his interest in “a continental policy” for the preservation of the Amazon, a file on which he is eagerly awaited after the record deforestation of the Bolsonaro era.
The new Brazilian president undertakes this first visit abroad having received the full support of the international community, and in the first rank of Latin American capitals, after the January 8 assault and ransacking of places of power in Brasilia by bolsonarists refusing his accession to power.