The Biden administration has given the reason why they did not invite Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela to the Summit of the Americas held last week in Los Angeles. They say that these three countries are ruled by undemocratic regimes. Fine. Democracy is desirable and noble.
But, why did the Americans invite Bolsonaro, who is an imminent and clear danger to Brazilian democracy? Are they not aware that Bolsonaro has made his admiration for military dictatorship and contempt for democracy publicly, eloquently and consistently on numerous occasions. He had glorified the army officer who had tortured Dilma Rouseff. “Elections won’t change anything in this country”, an angry Bolsonaro told an interviewer on the programme Câmara Aberta, broadcast by TV Band in 1999. “It will only change on the day that we break out in civil war here and do the job that the military regime didn’t do, killing 30,000 people. If we kill some innocent people, that is fine, because in every war innocent people die.” Shouting at the interviewer, an intemperate Bolsonaro said that if he became president he would dissolve Congress on his first day in office.
Bolsonaro had instigated mobs to protest against the judiciary and the Congress with anti-democratic slogans. He had refused to accept the defeat of Trump for a long time. His senator son praised the right-wing hooligans who attacked the Capitol on January 6. He commented that the uprising could have succeeded if the protestors were better armed. The father and his fascist sons are threatening Washington DC-style attacks if Bolsonaro loses the coming October elections. They have been asking their supporters to buy arms and be prepared. To facilitate this, the Bolsonaro administration has loosened gun laws as a result of which there is an explosive increase in civilian guns in the country.
Bolsonaro has politicised the armed forces and militarised the civilian government. He has included several thousand military personnel in various levels of civilian government. He has done it to use those military officials to support him from within. This is evident from the way the Defense Minister Paulo Sergio Nogueira de Oliveira is openly challenging and attacking the authority of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal and is casting doubts on the e-voting system, although Bolsonaro himself was also elected by the same system. One of his politician sons made a statement threatening that the supreme court could be closed just with a soldier and a corporal. So it is clear that Bolsonaro is a threat to the Brazilian democracy.
Bolsonaro had taken his admiration for military dictatorship even beyond the borders of Brazil. During his visit to Chile, he praised Pinochet dictatorship, causing embarrassment to his Chilean hosts.
Bolsonaro has vitiated the democratic system, institutions and norms systematically. He is planning to do worse. So it is logical that the democracy-loving US should not have invited him for the Summit.
But the US policy is beyond logic. The Americans have a reason. But it has nothing to do with democracy or Brazil. They want to help Bolsonaro to defeat Lula, since they consider Lula as a threat to US interests. When he was president, Lula challenged the hegemony of US and the neoliberal policies imposed by Washington Consensus in Latin America. He competed with US for leadership in Latin America. He tried to bring back to power Honduran President Manuel Zelaya who was overthrown in a coup supported by US in 2009. Lula had worked with Chavez and Kirchner and killed the US initiative to form FTAA ( Free Trade Area of the Americas) at the Mar del Plata Summit of the Americas in 2005. He took initiatives for regional integration of Latin America with formation of CELAC and UNASUR. These were aimed to give collective strength to the region through which the US domination was to be resisted. Lula raised the regional and global profile of Brazil, working with others for a multipolar world and challenging the unilateralism of US. It is for this reason that the FBI, NSA and CIA had worked with the US-trained Brazilian prosecutor Sergio Moro in the Lava Jato corruption scandal and managed to put Lula in jail and prevented him from contesting in the last elections. Moro was rewarded by Bolsonaro who made him as Justice Minister.
President Bolsonaro had single-handedly brought down the global and regional profile of Brazil by his isolationist policies and rhetoric. He tarnished the image of Brazil and antagonised foreign leaders with his vulgar comments. He disrupted the process of regional integration and alienated fellow Latin American countries. He converted Brazil as a global pariah. He cut down the multilateral initiatives of the Brazilian foreign ministry and discarded the traditional South-South solidarity policies of the previous governments. He had forced the Brazilian diplomats to vote with US on UN resolutions on which Brazil had voted against or abstained in the past. The Americans are immensely pleased with him. No one could have carried out the America agenda against Brazil better than Bolsonaro. So the Americans want Bolsonaro to win and Lula to lose.
Bolsonaro is the first ever pro-American President of Brazil. During his 2019 visit to US, he tweeted: “For the first time in a while, a pro-America Brazilian president arrives in DC.” He had made an unusual visit to the CIA headquarters. This was bizarre. No foreign president goes to CIA office. According to diplomatic protocol, it should have been the CIA director who should have called on him and not the other way. After the visit, Eduardo Bolsonaro described the CIA as “one of the most respected intelligence agencies in the world”, in a tweet. In July 2021, the CIA chief visited Brasilia and held talks with Bolsonaro. It seems that the Americans and Bolsonaro clan have been cooking something. It does need much imagination to know what dish they should be preparing. The Latin Americans know from their past experience the American cook book which had recipes for coups, destabilisation of unfriendly democratic governments and support to military dictatorships in the region.
According to media reports, during the Americas Summit, Bolsonaro had asked Biden for help to defeat Lula and mentioned that Lula is a “danger to US interests”. Bolsonaro portrayed himself as a protector of US interests in Brazil. Now we know the reason why the Americans had invited the undemocratic Bolsonaro and gave him a photo-op in Los Angeles with President Biden. They want to extend a hand to Bolsonaro to increase his poll ratings. Both Bolsonaro and the US have a common agenda to defeat Lula. But Lula is leading in the opinion polls and is likely to win despite the combination of the dirty tricks of CIA and the Bolsonaro clan.
The author is an expert in Latin American affairs.