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| American Bashing - In Brazil the Tail Wags the Dog |
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| 04 January 2004 | |
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by John Fitzpatrick President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva´s first year in office was generally successful in terms of domestic affairs but less so in terms of foreign policy. Pointless anti-American rhetoric and vainglorious attempts to be seen as a leader of the developing world marked Lula´s debut on the world stage. Going by recent events, it looks as though this unimpressive record in foreign affairs will continue. This year had barely started before Brazil found itself enmeshed in a silly dispute with the United States over American visitors which Lula could have resolved with a phone call. He also lost an arm-wrestling contest he picked with President George Bush over the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas at a 34-nation regional summit meeting held in Mexico. By leaving unchallenged a judge´s ruling that American visitors to Brazil had to be fingerprinted and photographed on arrival, Lula made his government look weak and petty-minded. The ruling followed a request by a prosecutor in Matto Grosso state who was annoyed to learn that the US intended fingerprinting and photographing most foreign visitors, including Brazilians. The prosecutor´s case was based on his personal feeling that the American moves were undignified and the judge made a tit-for-tit ruling. Since all of us who live in Brazil have already been fingerprinted and it is common to be photographed just to get into a building one wonders why these two defenders of the public´s dignity have not come to our aid in the past. More importantly, the affair raises the question of who makes Brazil´s foreign policy. Is it the President, the foreign minister or an obscure judge in a Midwestern state which to my knowledge does not even have an international airport? By remaining silent while American visitors were spending up to seven hours at Rio de Janeiro airport waiting to be photographed and fingerprinted Lula showed the callous indifference Brazil´s rulers always show to the victims of the country´s bureaucracy. Queuing is a way of life here and has not altered a bit under Lula´s rule, as we saw recently when thousands of pensioners aged over 80 were forced to report to social security offices to prove they were still alive. The primitive equipment used by the immigration police – inky rubber pads and hand-held cameras – compared unfavorably with the modern equipment used in the US and made Brazil look like a banana republic. The issue came to a head this week when an American pilot was arrested in São Paulo and fined a mind-boggling R$36,000 (about U$S 12,000) because he allegedly made an obscene gesture on being photographed. (In a sickening example of populist hypocrisy, the money is to be donated to a shelter for homeless people in nearby Guarulhos. Since when were fines used for this kind of purpose and who made that decision?) The procedure seems to have been streamlined with the arrival of modern equipment but is bound to have some damaging effect on tourism. Americans arriving through land frontiers such as Foz de Iguaça are not being dealt with because there is no equipment there, showing the uselessness and absurdity of this bureaucratic bungling. Lula Reaps What He Sows When Lula raised the matter during his meeting with Bush, his suggestion that Brazil should be added to the 27 countries which were exempt from the US measure was plain naïve. Lula seems to have no understanding of how the US has changed since the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington and the ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. America has become more insecure and is determined to defend itself at home and abroad whether other countries like it or not. Discretion rather than valor is the way to handle the US while it is in this jumpy stage and has someone like Bush in charge but Lula has never been discreet. He has challenged the US over a number of issues and not taken its fear of terrorism seriously. He has been dismissive of American concern that the frontier region where Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay meet is a shelter for Islamic extremists. This area has a large community of Arabs and people of Arab descent. Had Lula showed more understanding for the American position over the last year perhaps Bush might have heeded his appeal. Lula is reaping the bitter seeds he himself sowed. Lula´s performance at the Monterey summit was pretty lackluster. Perhaps this was because he had his mind on domestic issues, ahead of a long-heralded government shake-up, or because he was badly briefed by his advisers. Even before the meeting started the Brazilian side was demanding that the final declaration should make no reference to the FTAA. Since the FTAA is supposed to come into being in January next year, this was an astonishing demand. According to the Brazilian side, the Monterey summit should have focused on social issues where presumably Lula could pontificate about poverty, hunger etc. There was no need to mention the FTAA because it had already been discussed at the recent meeting in Miami was the comment of Lula´s special adviser Marco Aurelio Garcia. In the event Lula lost and a reference to the FTAA was made. To save its pride Brazil successfully insisted that no date should be mentioned but the document indirectly stated that the timetable for establishing the FTAA should be maintained, thereby robbing Brazil of any glory. The only support Lula could muster was from Venezuela´s erratic president Hugo Chavez. January 17, 2004 © John Fitzpatrick 2004 |
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