“Brazil once again looks at its future with the certainty that we will be associated with our neighbors bilaterally, in Mercosur, Unasur and CELAC,” added the president, who is promoting Brazil’s return to international diplomatic and economic forums. in the image and likeness of what he promoted during his first two terms between 2003 and 2010.
In 2020 Bolsonaro, a harsh critic of the left, suspended Brazil’s participation in CELAC, alleging that it “gave prominence to non-democratic regimes such as those of Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua.”
Consequently, Brazil did not participate in the sixth summit in 2021 in Mexico.
Lula has always made explicit the ambitions of international political leadership that he understands fit Brazil due to its geographical size, economic weight and, more recently, due to the extent of the Amazonian territory that belongs to it, in a world that seeks to coordinate efforts against climate change.
But the years in which Brazil, with Lula in the Presidency, was a preponderant articulator between emerging countries and industrialized nations in the G20, promoting the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), or promoting Unasur and the CELAC itself, created in 2010, were far away.
The world is now “infinitely more complex,” Celso Amorim, then Lula’s foreign minister and today the president’s main adviser, recently told the Brazilian media.
In his speech this Tuesday, Lula highlighted the “multiple crises” the world is experiencing, from the pandemic to climate change, geopolitical tensions and food insecurity, or threats to democracy.