Concerned about a possible deflation of the Summit of the Americas, to be held this year in the US, President Joe Biden called an emissary to try to convince Jair Bolsonaro (PL) to participate in the meeting of leaders of the continent scheduled for early June, in Los Angeles. Angeles.
The chosen one was former senator Christopher Dodd, who has a meeting scheduled with the Brazilian leader on Friday (20), according to Planalto advisers. The American embassy in Brasilia said that the Democrat, special adviser to the summit, is awaiting the result of a Covid test to confirm the trip.
“If you can’t travel, per CDC guidelines [Centro de Controle e Prevenção de Doenças dos EUA, na sigla em inglês]he should meet virtually” with the Brazilian authorities, said the embassy.
According to people involved in the preparations for the meeting, who spoke with the Sheet On condition of anonymity, the purpose of the trip is, more than making the invitation on behalf of Biden, to show that the US government sees the participation of Brazilians as something important.
The Summit of the Americas, which this year reaches its ninth edition, was designed by Washington to symbolize the return of US leadership in Latin American affairs, after the presidency of Donald Trump, during which issues in the region took a back seat. —at the last summit, in 2018, the Republican did not go to Lima, Peru, and became the first American leader to miss the meeting.
The meeting, however, runs the risk of ending up empty due to signals from Bolsonaro and the President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, that they do not intend to attend. Therefore, before coming to Brazil, according to the planned itinerary, Dodd must also travel to Mexico, with the same objective of convincing a heavyweight leader to reverse the decision not to go to Los Angeles.
For the Americans, holding the meeting in the United States without the leaders of the two largest economies in the region would be a diplomatic fiasco and would reinforce the image that Washington no longer has the leading role it once had. Obrador said last week he would only go to the summit if the US invites the governments of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, dictatorships considered pariahs by Washington.
Although an invitation to authoritarian regimes is out of the question, interlocutors believe that the easing of sanctions and restrictions against Cuba and Venezuela, announced on Monday (16) and this Tuesday, were also signals from Biden to try to double the resistance of the Mexican leader.
On Monday, the US announced the withdrawal of measures imposed during the Trump administration on remittances and travel to Cuba. In practice, the new regulations make it easier, among other things, to send dollars from Cubans living in the US to family members on the island. The relief of sanctions against the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro should allow the state oil company PDVSA to carry out previously prohibited business.
A senior US government official interviewed by the AFP news agency said he hoped that one of the main consequences of the announcement would be the resumption of negotiations between Chavistas and members of the Venezuelan opposition in Mexico, under the mediation of Norway.
Bolsonaro’s situation is seen as less problematic than Obrador’s, according to Biden administration officials. First, because the Brazilian has not yet publicly signaled that he does not want to go to Los Angeles, nor has he placed conditions considered unrealistic — as the Mexican president did.
If he did not publicly manifest that he does not want to go to the meeting, Bolsonaro expressed his will to allies. According to interlocutors, he is focused on the pre-campaign for reelection and prefers to focus on domestic agendas. A meeting with Biden, by the way, is seen by members of the pre-campaign to the Planalto as something of little electoral value, since the Brazilian is an ally of Trump, an opponent of the Democrat.
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 to attend the meeting. One of the points that is still open, diplomats say, is confirmation that Biden would welcome Bolsonaro for a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the summit.
The expectation of interlocutors in the Brazilian government is that the emissary Dodd, along with the invitation, confirms that the American intends to make room in his agenda for Bolsonaro. If held, the meeting will bring together leaders with a history of provocation and disagreement on the most diverse topics.
Tensions began in the American campaign in 2020, when the Brazilian said he was rooting for Trump’s re-election. Even after Biden’s victory was confirmed, Bolsonaro repeated Trumpist theories, without any basis in reality, that the result had been rigged – the US government never found any evidence of this – and was one of the last leaders to greet the Democrat.
The focus on the election campaign is not the only reason raised by Bolsonaro’s aides to justify his lack of interest in moving to the US. In early May, the Reuters news agency reported that William Burns, director of the CIA, the US intelligence agency, reportedly told high-ranking 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 Burns’ 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 say that the Biden administration has no intention of creating constraints for the Brazilian.
Speaking about the summit, the US Embassy in Brazil said that the US government is “looking forward to Brazilian participation” and that the country is “a crucial regional partner, with shared commitments to democracy, human rights, economic prosperity, the rule of law and security”.
