President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) considers not attending the Summit of the Americas, in the United States, on an agenda in which he would meet Joe Biden for the first time. The continent’s leaders meeting is scheduled for early June in Los Angeles.
The possible absence of the Brazilian representative at the international meeting organized by the American was reported by Reuters and confirmed by Sheet. According to different interlocutors, Bolsonaro’s decision on whether to attend or not has not yet been made, but a number of factors weigh on his lack of interest in traveling to the US now.
The main one, according to these sources, is the domestic scenario in Brazil. The president is in the pre-campaign for reelection and has shown resistance to leaving the country to fulfill an international agenda — his last such trip was to Guyana last week. Although he has outlined a reaction in the latest polls, he is still behind the leader in the polls, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT).
Bolsonaro has told allies that his priority in the coming months is reelection. For diplomacy, scheduling a meeting with Biden under these conditions creates the risk of the president giving up the trip at the last minute, which would create the embarrassment of canceling the meeting with the leader of the most important international power.
Although a meeting with the American leader is wanted by members of the government — it would be a way to reinforce the argument that Brazil does not actually face international isolation —, the photo with the Democrat is seen by members of the pre-campaign of the president as something of little electoral value. That’s because Bolsonaro is a declared ally of Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump.
During the American campaign in 2020, the Brazilian said he was rooting for the Republican’s re-election. Even after Biden’s victory was confirmed, Bolsonaro repeated Trumpist theories that the result had been rigged — the US government never found any evidence of that — and was one of the last leaders to greet the Democrat.
When contacted, the Itamaraty said only that the president’s trip to the Summit of the Americas “is under evaluation and has not been confirmed.”
The meeting, which reaches its 9th edition this year, has been held since 1994 and brings together 35 countries to discuss political, diplomatic and commercial matters. At the last summit, in 2018, Trump did not travel to Lima and became the first US leader to miss the meeting.
The Biden administration’s idea was to use the event to convey the message that the US has returned its attention to Latin America after its predecessor’s friction with nations in the region. The faltering organization, however, has accumulated diplomatic strain and shows signs that the plans could be thwarted.
This week, the presidents of Mexico and Bolivia, the leftists Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Luis Arce, conditioned their participation in the event on invitations to the leaders of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela — the dictatorial regimes are considered pariahs by Washington.
“Exclude themselves, if they don’t invite everyone [os líderes do continente], will a representation of the government of Mexico. I wouldn’t go”, said the Mexican AMLO in an interview. The Bolivian tweeted this Tuesday (10): “A Summit of the Americas that excludes American countries is not a Summit of the Americas in its entirety. If the deletion persists, I will not participate.”
US officials have already indicated that the event may prioritize democratic regimes, cutting the Cuban, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan delegations from the list.
If Bolsonaro confirms his intention to miss the meeting, the tendency is for the government to send Vice President Hamilton Mourão (Republicans) as a representative, in addition to Chancellor Carlos França. In this scenario, the leaders of the two largest Latin American democracies would be absent, which tends to weaken Biden’s plans to show renewed leadership on Western Hemisphere issues.
Interlocutors heard by Sheet they also reported other circumstances that cast doubt on the president’s trip to Los Angeles.
In early May, Reuters reported that CIA director William Burns told senior Brazilian government officials that Bolsonaro should stop casting doubt on the voting system. The president and minister Augusto Heleno (Institutional Security Office) denied that such a message was transmitted during the American’s visit to Brasília, in July last year.
Bolsonaro runs a disinformation campaign about electronic voting machines and has been questioning the security of the system on different occasions, without providing evidence. The actions are considered an attempt to disrupt the lawsuit, opening the way for him to question the outcome if he is defeated.
People who follow the theme say that the disclosure that Americans would be demanding Bolsonaro not to interfere in the election was poorly received by the government. Aides argue that, in the event of a bilateral meeting, Biden would be likely to renew such a charge — which, even in general terms, would be more fuel for the president’s opponents.
On the American side, interlocutors said on condition of anonymity that the Biden administration has no intention of creating embarrassment. Relations between the two leaders have a history of friction, even though they have never met in person or spoken on the phone.
The American has also had conversations with other presidents in the region, such as AMLO, Alberto Fernández (Argentina) and Iván Duque (Colombia), while the Brazilian currently has few local allies.
In August 2021, Bolsonaro went so far as to say that Biden has “almost an obsession with the environmental issue” and that this “has a little bit of a hindrance” to the government.
Although relations between presidents are frozen, governments have tried to maintain an agenda of contacts between authorities. In addition to Burns, national security adviser Jake Sullivan and State Department Undersecretary for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland have visited Brazil in recent months.
