Featured Q&A from the Latin America Advisor

Inter-American Dialogue, 04/22/2013

Director of the Brazil Institute, Paulo Sotero, was interviewed by the Latin America Advisor on the mensalao trial.

Q: Prosecutors in Brazil announced April 5 that they have opened an investigation of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in connection with the so-called “mensalão” vote-buying scheme. The scandal has already led to several convictions, including that of Lula’s former chief of staff, José Dirceu. Have the prosecutions dealt a significant blow to corruption in Brazil? How is the scandal, and now the probe involving Lula, affecting the country’s politics ahead of next year’s presidential election?

A: Paulo Sotero, director of the Brazil Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars: “Politically, the mensalão episode is over. Brazil’s electoral politics will be governed this year and next by the effects of an underperforming economy on inflation and jobs. If the economy deteriorates in ways that reverses President Dilma Rousseff’s very high approval ratings, it could open political space for the opposition to revive corruption as an electoral issue, particularly if the current federal investigation of mensalão-related charges against President Lula lead to an indictment. In an unfavorable economic scenario, that improbable outcome could complicate Rousseff’s re-election campaign and Lula’s re-emergence as an alternative presidential candidate, which was an unlikely development even before the Supreme Court returned verdicts with prison sentences against 12 of the 25 people who were found guilty in the mensalão trial. That said, the historic mensalão trial resulted from pressure from a changing society fed up with Brazil’s tradition of high-level impunity. It represented progress in the fight against corruption, even if the sentences are ultimately reduced in the ongoing final stage of judicial review. The trial, broadcast live, was a teachable moment for Brazil’s expanding middle class and a younger generation of political leaders now emerging. Whether they learned from it remains an open question. Nothing, however, will change the fact that 37 people with special connections to power, including key advisors to the most popular president in Brazil’s history, were brought to justice and two-thirds of them were found guilty by a majority of judges nominated to the Supreme Court by that very president and by his handpicked successor, who felt compelled to declare that she does ‘not tolerate corruption.’ ”

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In the Spotlight: Brazil’s cocaine epidemic

Compiled by Christopher Martin – Brazil Institute, 02/25/2013

Photo credit: Lunae Parracho, Reuters

In recent years, Brazil has enjoyed economic success, rising purchasing power, a growing economy, and decreasing poverty levels, which have turned it into a more attractive market for drug trafficking.  As cocaine use in the United States, the world’s largest cocaine consumer, has fallen by an estimated two-thirds in the past thirty years, South American drug traffickers are increasingly turning towards Brazil’s growing market.  This is proving to be an effective and profitable strategy; recent years have seen cocaine consumption quickly rising and health officials say a nation-wide crack-cocaine epidemic is taking hold.  This is obviously not the image the South American giant wishes to project as it prepares to host the 2014 FIFA World Cup, followed by the 2016 Summer Olympics.

With respect to cocaine, Brazil has a border control problem that no other nation in the world has: it shares half of its 10,000-mile-long border with the world’s three biggest cocaine producers: Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru.  To make matters worse, much of this border falls in difficult-to-control, remote, and largely unguarded jungle areas.  Colombia, which was long the world’s top cocaine producer, has seen the amount of land used for coca leaf production, as well as its ability to produce cocaine, tumble in recent years.  However, the decrease in Colombian cocaine production has been eclipsed by Peru and Bolivia, which have seen significantly ramped up production in recent years.

The source of cocaine in Brazil is increasingly landlocked Bolivia, which shares a 2,126 mile border with Brazil, which is longer than the Mexico-U.S. border.  Much of the border lies along the Mamore River, separating Bolivia from the Brazilian state of Rodonia, which is patrolled by federal police agents who are under staffed, ill equipped, and must count on a degree of luck to determine which of the countless boats crossing daily are transporting drugs.  To make matters worse, the river is dotted with many small and isolated ports that can be used by traffickers to evade authorities.  However, according to Sabino Mendoza, an adviser on coca issues to Bolivian President Evo Morales’ government, Bolivia does not consider itself to be a cocaine trafficking country.  Mr. Mendoza said the problem is cocaine originating in Peru that makes its way through Bolivia en route to Brazil.  “For us and for Brazil, obviously it’s a concern,” he said.  “And between the two countries we are resolving it.”

IBSA on the 10th anniversary of the Brasilia Decleration

Franis A. Kornegay – SABC, 12/15/2012

Franics Korenegay was a Public Policy Scholar for the Africa Program at the Wilson Center from June-September 2012

Last year, South Africa hosted the 5th summit of the India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) Trilateral Dialogue Forum. In 2013 it is India’s turn. This will mark the 10th anniversary of the Brasilia Declaration that led to the trilateral build up toward the summits of heads-of-state of the three countries that have occurred over the last several years. Meanwhile, all three countries have become members of BRICS, the symbolic vanguard among emerging powers leading the non-Western ‘Rest’ through a transition of relative rise amid Western relative decline.

BRICS has garnered considerably more attention than IBSA and is taken much more seriously as a revisionist actor given the great power status of Russia and China compared to the ‘middle power’ profiles of India, Brazil and South Africa. Russia may be something of a ‘has been’ as the former superpower competitor of the US when it was the Soviet Union. But it remains at least a regionalized great power nonetheless. China on the other hand has effectively emerged.

Given perceptions of Sino-Russia as strategic competitors of ‘lone superpower’ America, BRICS carries a weight that middle power IBSA will never carry. And, it has been gaining momentum to a point where former Indian envoy Rajiv Bhatia, director-general of the Indian Council on World Affairs was moved recently to question what he interprets as IBSA’s relevance.

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On multilateralism, sovereignty and the western hemisphere: concepts in jeopardy

Luigi Einaudi, 11/08/2012

The Organization of American States Charter declares that “the historic mission of America is to offer to man a land of liberty.”  In reality, of course, the Americas have never been united except in the western mythology of the New World.  Its countries have shifting relationships, sometimes drifting apart, other times coalescing sub regionally. It is nearly sixty years since the historian Arthur Whitaker declared that the Western Hemisphere Ideal, the “proposition that the peoples of this Hemisphere stand in a special relationship to one another which sets them apart from the rest of the world” was in irreversible decline.So a question arises:  Do hemispheric relations still have a unique place in this globalizing world?

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Brazil in 2013: Can Rousseff rise to the occasion?

Paulo Sotero – CNN, 12/10/2012

This is the first in a series of entries looking at what we can expect in 2013. Each weekday, a guest analyst will look at the key challenges facing a selected country – and what next year might hold in store.

Editor’s note: Paulo Sotero is director of the Brazil Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, in Washington D.C. The views expressed are his own.

In her first two years as Brazil’s first female president, Dilma Rousseff did the improbable. A neophyte in elective politics seen by many as a mere extension of her revered predecessor and mentor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Rousseff is today more popular at home than her creator. Remarkably, she gained the trust of the Brazilian people while her economic team and policies lost investors’ confidence – GDP growth moved in the opposite direction of her approval rating, shrinking from 7.5 percent in 2010 to 2.7 percent in 2011, and somewhere around 1 percent this year.

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World Cup host Brazil struggles to fill stadiums

Andrew Downie – Reuters, 11/15/2012

Brazilians like to say theirs is the country of soccer and it certainly has a strong claim for the titles of the world’s greatest player, greatest team and even the greatest stadium.

In the nation that will host the 2014 World Cup, however, fewer people go to see professional soccer matches than in China or the United States.

With attendances falling further this year, Brazilian clubs are using different strategies to try to fill their grounds but they are hampered by antiquated stadiums, a lack of respect for fans, television stations that show every game live and insufficient policing and security.

In the home of Pele, the legendary team that won the 1970 World Cup and Rio de Janeiro’s giant Maracana stadium, just about everyone has a team and an opinion. But few actually go to support their side.

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Coisa de americano

Paulo Sotero – O Estado de S. Paulo, 11/12/2012

No fim de semana anterior às disputadíssimas eleições que deram o segundo mandato ao presidente Barack Obama, na última terça-feira, cenários de pesadelo preocuparam os analistas da grande imprensa americana. Em meio à polarização política que ameaça a governabilidade do país, e chegou ao paroxismo durante a interminável e caríssima campanha eleitoral deste ano, eles temeram que o pleito terminasse num empate no colégio eleitoral dos 538 chamados grandes eleitores que, constitucionalmente, escolhem o presidente do Estados Unidos. Num dos cenários, Obama e seu desafiante republicano, o ex-governador de Massachusetts Mitt Romney, acabariam com 269 votos cada um. As eleições, nesse caso, seriam decididas pela próxima legislatura do Congresso, a de número 113, que tomará posse no próximo dia 3 de janeiro, como manda a Constituição. A Câmara dos Representantes elegeria o presidente e o Senado, o vice. Como se previa que os republicanos continuariam no mando na Câmara e os democratas manteriam a maioria no Senado, como de fato aconteceu, os deputados elegeriam Romney para a presidência, os senadores confirmariam o vice-presidente Joseph Biden no cargo e a desgastante divisão que sufoca a política americana há quase duas décadas se instalaria na própria Casa Branca.

Outro cenário que preocupou os analistas até tarde na noite do dia 6 foi a inversão dos resultados da eleição popular e do colégio eleitoral. No envenenado ambiente da política americana – no qual narcisistas bilionários como o empresário e personalidade de televisão Donald Trump alimentam a mentira segundo a qual Barack Obama não nasceu nos Estados Unidos e não é, portanto, elegível à Casa Branca -, a inversão certamente ajudaria a alucinada direita republicana a levantar dúvidas sobre a legitimidade do presidente. Ocorreu quatro vezes na história do país, em 1824, 1876, 1888 e no ano 2000. No episódio mais recente, o vice-presidente Albert Gore, democrata, ganhou a votação popular por uma diferença de 543 mil votos num total de mais de 104 milhões. No entanto, o republicano George W. Bush recebeu a maioria dos votos do colégio eleitoral depois de uma controvertida decisão por 5 a 4 dos juízes da Suprema Corte, que lhe deu a vitória na Flórida. Em 18 eleições desde 1824, o vencedor foi eleito sem receber a maioria dos votos das urnas.

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Why the United States and Brazil will pursue a more productive bilateral relationship

Paulo Sotero  - Wilson Center/The Huffington Post, 11/09/2012

The growing presence of Brazilian global companies in the United Stated, complementing traditionally strong American investments in Brazil, has created a two-way street where common interests are more visible and pressure both governments to recognize the benefits of working together or risk paying a political price for not doing so.

Converging economic interests and similar challenges are emerging as the principal driver of United States-Brazil relations in the years ahead. A reelected President Barack Obama and President Dilma Rousseff, at the half mark of her government, are confronted with daunting tasks. Both need to significantly improve the economic performance of their countries in the face of political major obstacles at home, and an adverse economic outlook abroad. In both countries, sustainable growth will require investment in infrastructure, education and innovation more than consumption. How they respond will determine the success or failure of their administrations. It will also affect the two countries’ bilateral relationship and their regional and global standing.

After four years of anemic recovery and a victory on November 6th without a clear political mandate,, President Obama has now to find a path of economic growth that reduces unemployment while avoiding the pitfalls of a fragile fiscal and financial situation, which, if mishandled, could easily throw the United States and the world economy back into recession.

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Brazil sees steady ties with US after Obama re-election

Julia Carneiro – BBC, 11/08/2012

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff was quick to react to the US election result.

Almost before Barack Obama’s victory was confirmed, she used a public event in Brasilia to send her warmest wishes to him and the US people.

And she would, she said, be calling him later to offer her congratulations.

But President Rousseff’s reaction seems to stem less from the hope of great things to come in the US-Brazil relationship than relief at the continuity in the White House.

In fact, even if Republican Mitt Romney had triumphed, analysts suggest relations between the two biggest countries in the Americas would have been little altered.

Ties grew stronger during George W Bush’s time in office and have matured under President Obama, although some tensions persist.

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Activists want Brazil government to drop proposed new AIDS funding rule

Javier Hourcade Bellocq – Global Fund Observer/Aidspan, 11/05/2012

Brazilian activists have sounded an alarm over a plan by the government to introduce a new law that will have a negative impact on funding for HIV programmes. The activists said in a statement released on 26 October 2012 that the Ministry of Health is about to publish a decree that will allow states and municipalities to reallocate funding that was originally earmarked exclusively for HIV programmes but that was unspent either because of inefficiency or lack of commitment.

The activists said that to worsen matters, the Brazilian government has also issued a new decree stating that its so-called “incentives policy,” which earmarks amounts of the general health budget to specific programmes, will be terminated in 2013.

“If approved, this new rule will mean the final blow to the Brazilian AIDS policy, as we have known it,” the statement from activists said.

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Read AllAfrica’s analysis of this story here