President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) decided to participate in the Summit of the Americas, a meeting of leaders from the continent that will take place in early June in Los Angeles. The information was confirmed by Itamaraty.
A bilateral meeting with US President Joe Biden is also planned on the sidelines of the meeting.
Bolsonaro received on Tuesday (24) an emissary from the US government, former senator Christopher Dodd, who traveled to BrasÃlia with the mission of convincing the Brazilian chief executive to participate in the event.
The president had signaled that he could miss the summit, which raised fears among Biden’s team that the meeting would be hollowed out — Mexico’s leader, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, is not expected to attend.
In the case of the Brazilian leader, the resistance to leaving the country was due to the internal scenario. In a pre-campaign for reelection, he told allies that the priority in the coming months is the domestic agenda.
The meeting with the American president on the sidelines of the summit, a way the US found to convince Bolsonaro to travel, was, at the same time, desired by members of the Planalto to reinforce the argument that Brazil is not isolated internationally and seen as a something of little electoral value, because the president is a declared ally of Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump.
In the 2020 American presidential elections, Bolsonaro was one of the last leaders to greet the Democrat and, in several statements, cast doubt on his victory, endorsing the former American president’s accusations, without any basis in reality, that there had been fraud in the claim.
Thus, previous US criticism of the preservation of the Amazon and repeated calls for a commitment to democracy have created rifts between Bolsonaro and Biden. In early May, for example, the Reuters news agency reported that William Burns, director of the CIA, the U.S. intelligence agency, had told high-ranking Brazilian government officials that Bolsonaro should stop casting doubt on the security system. vote, which would have displeased the Planalto leaders.
Aides to the Brazilian leader argue that, in the event of a bilateral meeting, Biden can renew such a charge — which, even in general terms, would fuel the president’s opponents. On the American side, interlocutors say that the US has no intention of creating constraints.
The Summit of the Americas, however, will have five priority issues, and the defense of democracy should be the main one, according to Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, special adviser for the event. In a debate held by the Atlantic Council think tank, she said the meeting will “pursue a regional agenda centered on our shared support for democracy and human rights.”
For Obrador, his presence at the meeting in Los Angeles was conditioned to the invitation of the Americans to the governments of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, dictatorships considered pariahs by Washington.
Invitations are indeed out of the question, as evidenced by a statement by Kevin O’Reilly, the summit coordinator, to a Senate committee. When asked this Thursday (26) about the participation of officials from the regime of Nicolás Maduro, he said: “No way. We do not recognize them as a sovereign government.”
The speech contrasts with previous White House movements, which signaled a rapprochement with the governments of Venezuela and Cuba. Ten days ago, the US eased sanctions and restrictions against Havana and Caracas, in another effort by Biden to try to double down on the Mexican president’s resistance.
Even earlier, the US government even considered inviting Cuban representatives, provided that the envoys had a lower status than the Minister of Foreign Affairs. For the US, holding the meeting in the country without the rulers of Brazil and Mexico, the two largest economies in Latin America, would be a diplomatic fiasco and would reinforce the image that Washington does not have the leading role it once had.
The ninth edition of the Summit of the Americas, organized by the US, was conceived as a way of symbolizing the return of the country’s leadership under the Democrat’s command in Latin American affairs.
During Donald Trump’s presidency, the region took a back seat, and the Republican even missed the event in 2018, becoming the first American leader to neglect the meeting.
At Itamaraty, diplomats see the risk of emptying the summit as an opportunity that should not be missed. After months of friction between the US and Brazilian governments, for the first time the American finds himself in a difficult situation in which he needs Bolsonaro’s collaboration. According to interlocutors, the Brazilian president is in a position where he can demand gestures from the Americans.
