Lula, 77, will start in Argentina, as is the tradition for Brazilian leaders, where he will participate in the seventh Celac summit and will meet on Monday at the Casa Rosada with his counterpart Alberto Fernández, who is also a personal friend.
“There is a very clear purpose of the teams of both countries to advance on issues such as energy integration and clearly gas integration,” Ambassador Michel Arslanian, secretary for the Americas of Itamaraty, as the Brazilian Foreign Ministry is known, said this Friday.
Brazil arrives in Buenos Aires to “relaunch the relationship at the highest level after three years of estrangement,” added Arslanian.
“It marks a contrast with the period that precedes,” he said, referring to the Bolsonaro administration, who was defeated by Lula at the polls by 1.8% when seeking re-election in October.
Fernández, who was the object of constant criticism from the far-right ex-president, maintains a cordial relationship with Lula, whom he even visited in 2019 at the Federal Police Superintendency in Curitiba where Lula was imprisoned accused of corruption. At the time Fernández was a candidate for the presidency of Argentina.
Both presidents met in Brasilia on January 2, one day after Lula’s inauguration ceremony.
Meet with other leaders
Lula is scheduled to hold a bilateral meeting with Cuban leader Miguel Díaz Canel on Tuesday in Buenos Aires, according to Planalto sources. Itamaraty, however, did not confirm the meeting.
Lula should also see the president of the European Council, Charles Michel, in Buenos Aires. A meeting with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro would also be on the agenda, who did not attend Lula’s inauguration ceremony in Brasilia, and sent his close ally and president of the National Congress, Jorge Rodríguez, in his place.
The meeting between Lula and Maduro generates expectations, after Brasilia sent a diplomatic commission to Caracas this week to “normalize relations between the two countries.”
The distance with Venezuela deprived Bolsonaro’s management.
The far-right disregarded the authority of Maduro, whom he described as a dictator. Instead, he recognized opposition figure Juan Guaidó as interim president and closed Brazil’s consular facilities in the Caribbean country in 2020.
Brazil seeks to return to the region “with a spirit of dialogue, of concertation,” Arslanian commented, referring to the challenges of aligning regional policies on matters such as the environment.
Although sources from the Planalto confirm that the meeting will take place on Tuesday, Itamaraty reported that the meeting, requested by Maduro, may be affected by the agenda of the summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac) that takes place that same day.
“Clear Symbolism”
The seventh CELAC summit, which brings together 33 countries from Latin America and the Caribbean, will serve as a backdrop to welcome back the leader of the Latin American left on the regional scene, after his spectacular return to power.
The bloc was created in 2010, at the behest of Lula at the end of his second term, and the region was witnessing a wave of leftist governments.
In 2020 Bolsonaro, a harsh critic of the left, suspended Brazil’s participation, alleging that the body “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.
Celac “was underutilized,” Arslanian commented this Friday. “Now there is a spirit of urgency to resume that relationship.”
Lula’s priority will be “to resume ties with Latin America, an essential region for Brazil but which was relegated to the background” by Bolsonaro, says Joao Daniel Almeida, professor of Brazilian foreign policy at the Pontifical University of Rio de Janeiro.
Lula wants to “show that Brazil is back” and “emphasize economic cooperation” in the region.
“There is a clear symbolism of the priority that Latin American and South American integration has for us,” said Celso Amorim, special adviser to the president and former foreign minister to Lula in his first two governments (2003-2010).
The leader of the Workers’ Party (PT) will end his tour on Wednesday in Montevideo, where he will meet his Uruguayan counterpart Luis Lacalle Pou.
It is also expected that he will visit his friend and former president José Mujica.