The guerrillas lost the war, but they won the peace after the military restored democratically elected government ...

Brazil’s Diplomatic Ambiguity

by 

Juan de Onis

During an appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil told the annual conclave of the global capitalist elite that foreign private investment was warmly welcome in Brazil, where property rights and free market principles would be respected. She pointed out that Brazil received $60 billion in direct foreign investment last year, mainly in oil, and expects to double oil production to 4 million barrels a day by 2020.





After harvesting the applause for these words, Rousseff flew off to Havana to take part in the annual summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), where she was effusively greeted by President Raúl Castro of Cuba, the president pro tem of CELAC, a regional group of 33 countries that excludes the United States and Canada. Rousseff, flanked by her minister of health, warmly thanked Castro for providing up to 10,000 Cuban doctors to work in Brazil’s understaffed public health services. Brazil is expected to pay Cuba $500 million for the medical deal, which is an electoral investment by Rousseff, who is seeking reelection to a second term in October. In passing, Rousseff joined the Cuban hierarchy in inaugurating a world-class container port at Mariel, on Cuba’s northern coast, that was built by a Brazilian construction company with $800 million in financing from the Brazilian Development Bank, a state-owned institution. If Cuba’s centrally planned, low investment economy can be made to produce goods for export, Mariel will be a doorway to the world. Brazil argues that this will be good for democracy, but this argument is far-fetched if Cuba doesn’t recover production and resume trade with its largest market, United States

The Rousseff visit illustrates the close political coordination that has developed between Brazil, South America’s largest country, and Cuba, a distant Caribbean nation. This is an alignment that has ideological roots because Rousseff and other leading members of the governing Workers Party (PT) are former left-wing guerrillas who obtained support from Cuba when they fought against Brazil’s military regime in the 1970s. The guerrillas lost the war, but they won the peace after the military restored democratically elected government in 1984. In this process, the PT, led by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a labor leader, won the presidency in 2002 and has ruled Brazil for the last 12 years through a coalition with other centrist parties.






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