*Paulo Sotero, Director of the Brazil Institute, discusses the role of Chavez and how it relates to Brazil
Juan Forero – Washington Post, 05/17/2011
Across Latin America, people are raising concerns about Chavez’s governing style and Venezuela’s dwindling oil economy.
IPOJUCA, Brazil — Here on Brazil’s northeast coast, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez dreamed of building an oil refinery and naming it after a Brazilian adventurer who had fought for Venezuela’s independence. The joint venture with Brazil, he said in trips here, would help unify Latin America against his adversary, the United States.
The $15 billion refinery is now two years away from completion, but with little input from Venezuela or its mercurial president, who for years backed projects regionwide in his drive to make Venezuela the vanguard of a new era in Latin America.
Indeed, these days Chavez’s influence is waning across the region as Venezuela’s oil-powered economy has gone bust and concerns have been raised about his governing style, which includes the jailing of opponents.
In a year that saw an overall rollback in democracy and human rights in the world, the most shocking decline may have taken place just south of the U.S. border, according to the most widely cited index of global freedom. Freedom House’s annual Freedom in the Worldindex, released on Thursday, shows overall global freedom declining for the fifth year in a row — the longest period of continuous decline in the index’s nearly 40-year history.
Freedom House scores 194 countries and territories around the world on their levels of political rights and cultural liberties, assigning each a designation of free, partly free, or not free. This year, Mexico and Ukraine dropped from free to partly free while Ethiopia and Djibouti fell to not free. In total, 25 countries showed significant declines in their scores this year while only 11 improved.
But the decline of Mexico, which 10 years ago emerged from decades of one-party rule following the election of Vicente Fox, may be the biggest surprise on the list. Mexico’s fall is all the more unusual because it results not from repressive measures by the government, but from the state’s failure to “protect ordinary citizens, journalists, and elected officials from organized crime,” as the report puts it. Freedom House’s director of research, Arch Puddington, described the decline in freedom due to Mexico’s drug violence as nearly unprecedented.
Last Monday, Sept 21st, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva received the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service in a dinner chaired by Eike Batista (chairman and CEO of the Brazilian EBX Group) and Rex Tillerson (chairman and CEO of Exxon Mobil). At the dinner were 320 guests with varied backgrounds from politicians to journalists to the business community, including Celso Amorim; Marco Aurélio Garcia; Lazaro and Cuahtemóc Cárdenas;the next Ambassador to Brazil, Thomas Shannon; four former Ambassadors to Brazil, Anthony L. Motley, Anthony Harrington, Donna Hrinak, Clifford Sobel; Senior Judge Peter J. Messitte, US District Court of Maryland; and President of the Inter-American Development Luis Alberto Moreno.
Joseph B. Gildenhorn, Lee H. Hamilton and President Lula holding the award
The president of Brazil received the honorary award in recognition of his fight for democracy and social justice, and for his fundamental role in Brazil’s political and economic transformation–an award that he accepted not only on his own behalf, but on the behalf of the Brazilian people.
In his speech at the ceremony, held at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City, Lula underlined the crucial international role that his country has embraced in the last decade. The president affirmed that Brazil has a responsibility to its less fortunate South American neighbors, especially because, as Lula said, 2010 will be a very promising year for the country.
Lula commented on an important lesson he has learned over his many years in leadership positions: A leader needs to be flexible. Lula told a story of how, in his early days working with Unions, he dedicated his career to fighting consumerism in the country. However, after the 2008 global economic crisis, the President went on television to ask the Brazilian people to consume.
Even though Lula has learned to be flexible and innovative with problem solving, he has not changed his bottom-line goals for the country: Economic growth that transcends class lines and education. The development model of the country during the 1950-1980s hurt Brazil because of fast economic growth with high rates of inequality and little investment in education. The idea that first “the pie needed to get bigger” before you could divvy up the riches proved to be false. Lula stated, “The pie did get bigger, but one person came along and ate it all.”
Although this meeting reunited many politicians and people of the private sector, President Lula reinforced the bottom-line importance of economic stability. With high inflation and unemployment, those who suffer the most are the poor. Macroeconomic stability is not just for the private sector, but more importantly it is for those less fortunate.
Brazil Institute director Paulo Sotero on the outlook of the race to choose Lula’s successor
On September 9th and 10th, the”Trade and Investment in the Americas” Conference sponsored by the Corporatión Andina De Fomento (CAF), the Organization of American States (OAS), and the Inter-American Dialogue, brought together experts to debate where Latin America stands “post” global crisis. In talking about the future of Latin America, all of the speakers indicated that Brazil has made significant accomplishments in reaching a new level of influence over the global world. The director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars’ Brazil Institute, Paulo Sotero, elaborated on the upcoming 2010 elections in Brazil during the 90-mine session.
Brazil’s next presidential elections will be a crucial event for a country that has raised its international profile considerably under the Lula administration. Paulo Sotero started his talk explaining how Brazil has been building its democracy for the last twenty-five years, a process which has included both frustrations and accomplishments. In the last fifteen years, the steps taken to strengthen democracy have followed a continuous path. First, Fernando Henrique Cardoso stabilized the economy and moved on the reform of the overbearing Brazilian state apparatus. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has continued to strengthen the policies of economic stabilization while simultaneously and aggressively expanding social programs such as Bolsa Família.
The 2010 elections will probably not lead to radical changes in the macro policies of the federal government Two hot topics will be management capacity and regulatory framework– including of Lula’s newly proposed rules to govern the country’s potentially huge pre-salt oil reserves.
With Lula’s astounding approval rating of 70% in his seventh year, one would believe that Dilma Rousseff, the likely candidate of Lula’s Worker’s Party (PT), would have a great chance at wining the 2010 elections in a polarized campaign between her and the current Governor of São Paulo, José Serra, from the opposition party PSDB. Initial polls, however, have not supported that belief. Instead, Serra, who ran against Lula in the 2002 elections and lost, has led consistently initial polls. Dilma Rousseff never ran for elective office. Sotero jokes that both of these candidates have one thing in common, which Brazilian are not used to: Neither are very charismatic. Continue reading to learn about the other candidates…
Presidente Prudente, a bustling community of 206,000 in the south-western corner of São Paulo state, offers a good view into Brazil’s rise.
From its unremarkable beginning as a stop on the Sorocabana railway when coffee was king, it is now one of two dozen prosperous municipalities at the centre of one of Brazil’s success stories – agro-industry.
Less than one hour to the west, a high-tech ethanol plant is nearing completion. Conquista do Pontal, is one of three plants being built by ETH, a subsidiary of Grupo Odebrech, with Sojitz, the Japanese trading company.
Agriculture has historically been associated with slavery and, in recent decades, with the abuse of workers rights. But, thanks to the rapid expansion of the sugar ethanol industry alongside flex-fuel cars that were introduced in 2003, it is now being transformed into an industry that is emblematic of the South American country’s emergence as a social innovator on the world stage.
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Posted by Brazil Institute 
Freedom gone south
January 14, 2011Joshua E. Keating – Foreign Policy, 01/14/2011
In a year that saw an overall rollback in democracy and human rights in the world, the most shocking decline may have taken place just south of the U.S. border, according to the most widely cited index of global freedom. Freedom House’s annual Freedom in the World index, released on Thursday, shows overall global freedom declining for the fifth year in a row — the longest period of continuous decline in the index’s nearly 40-year history.
Freedom House scores 194 countries and territories around the world on their levels of political rights and cultural liberties, assigning each a designation of free, partly free, or not free. This year, Mexico and Ukraine dropped from free to partly free while Ethiopia and Djibouti fell to not free. In total, 25 countries showed significant declines in their scores this year while only 11 improved.
But the decline of Mexico, which 10 years ago emerged from decades of one-party rule following the election of Vicente Fox, may be the biggest surprise on the list. Mexico’s fall is all the more unusual because it results not from repressive measures by the government, but from the state’s failure to “protect ordinary citizens, journalists, and elected officials from organized crime,” as the report puts it. Freedom House’s director of research, Arch Puddington, described the decline in freedom due to Mexico’s drug violence as nearly unprecedented.
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