President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) arrived at the White House at 5:50 pm (Brasília time) this Friday (10) and greeted Joe Biden with a handshake that symbolized the rapprochement between Brazil and the United States after two years of relations dormant.
Lula arrived accompanied by the first lady, Janja Lula da Silva, and was received by the American president and his wife, Jill Biden, in the back garden of the White House. They proceeded to the Oval Office, where they will meet alone before a larger meeting with ministers Fernando Haddad (Finance), Mauro Vieira (Foreign Relations), Marina Silva (Environment) and special advisor Celso Amorim, along with equivalent ministers of the Biden administration.
First lady Jill Biden was going to have tea with Janja, but the schedule was canceled because the American is not feeling well, according to the American government, which says she took a test for Covid-19 and the result was negative. Janja will then tour the White House as the two presidents meet in the Oval Office.
From the gardens of the White House, it is possible to hear supporters of the Brazilian president who went to welcome him with a loudspeaker and megaphone. They scream Lula’s name.
The visit to Washington is surrounded by expectations of the American government, after the tense relations between the White House and Brasília during the period when Biden lived with Jair Bolsonaro in charge of the country.
Biden was one of the first leaders to congratulate Lula after confirming his victory in the presidential election. The White House released a press release at 8:33 pm (Brasília time), just over half an hour after the official confirmation. When the democrat was elected US president in 2020, Bolsonaro took 38 days to congratulate him.
An early supporter of former President Donald Trump, the Brazilian even echoed allegations of fraud in the US election. Biden and Bolsonaro never spoke on the phone and only met once.
The invitation for Lula’s visit was made shortly after the election of the PT and reinforced when the two presidents spoke the day after the attacks on the Three Powers in Brasília on January 8. The coup acts against the election of the Brazilian repeated two years apart the invasion of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, when supporters of Donald Trump tried to forcibly prevent the confirmation of Biden’s victory.
This is one of the strongest elements of connection between Lula and Biden and one of the central topics of this afternoon’s meeting between the two presidents.
The other subject is the defense of the environment and the recognition of the urgency of the climate crisis. With Lula’s inauguration and the unfreezing of the Amazon Fund, an initiative backed by Norway and Germany to preserve Brazil’s largest forest, the United States reversed a position taken in recent years and accepted to invest money. The announcement must be made after the meeting between the two representatives.
Lula and Biden met in 2009, when the current American president was Barack Obama’s vice president and the PT candidate was in his second presidential term.
The new American ambassador to Brazil, Elizabeth Bagley, traveled to the United States to accompany the visit. When meeting with Lula last week in Brasilia, the ambassador stated that she was “very confident that they will be best friends”, because both have “very engaging personalities”. She also said that Biden sees Lula “not just as the leader of his country, but a regional and global leader.”
Bagley’s presence in the White House contrasts with the situation in Brazil. Lula’s visit to the US capital took place at a time when he was in charge of the Brazilian embassy in Washington.
The new government appointed Maria Luiza Viotti as the new government representative in the country, but it still needs to be approved by the Senate. The current ambassador, Nestor Forster, identified with Bolsonarism and an admirer of Olavo de Carvalho, has not yet left his post, but took a vacation during Lula’s visit to avoid a fight with the new president. During this period, the embassy is commanded by Bernardo Paranhos Velloso, today number two in the institution.
A presidential visit with a “no-brainer” embassy meant that the entire trip was organized directly by Brasília, with little participation from the Brazilian representation abroad.
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