Posted on 01/02/2003 5:42:22 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
Breakfast with Hugo Chavez, dinner with Fidel Castro.
The first day in office for Brazil's new president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, projects the image of a leftist alliance in Latin America — one that Chavez, Venezuela's president, has already nicknamed the "Axis of Good."
Such an alliance could hinder U.S. efforts to create a Free Trade Area of the Americas stretching from Alaska to the tip of Argentina by 2005.
Despite the perception of a new Latin American troika, doubts abound that Silva really wants to form a bloc with such close ties to Chavez and Castro, Cuba's leader.
But by giving Latin America's other two leftist leaders such a warm welcome a day after his inauguration, Silva gets huge political mileage in Brazil, where Castro and Chavez are revered by the far left of his party.
The United States sent trade representative Robert Zoellick to the inauguration, seen by the Brazilians as something of a snub because Zoellick suggested last October that Brazil's only trading partner would be Antarctica if it did not join the hemispheric trade zone.
Silva responded by calling Zoellick "the sub secretary of a sub secretary of a sub secretary" during his election campaign.
At the breakfast meeting, Chavez asked Silva to send technical experts from Brazil's state-owned oil company to replace some of the 30,000 Venezuelan state oil workers who have joined a crippling nationwide strike. Silva said he would consider the request.
And before dining Thursday night with Silva, Castro told Associated Press Television News that Brazilian-Cuban relations will grow stronger now that Brazil has its first elected leftist president.
Arriving at Silva's rural retreat 20 miles outside Brasilia for dinner, Castro shook hands and signed autographs for about 50 cheering Silva supporters. He did not speak with reporters.
Castro and Chavez had front-row seats in Congress at Silva's inauguration Wednesday, where an estimated 200,000 Brazilians waved red flags. Many were dressed in red and white clothes, the colors of Silva's Workers Party.
The Cuban and Venezuelan leaders had dinner together, and talked until 4 a.m. Thursday at the Brasilia hotel where Castro is staying.
But experts said Silva's efforts to accommodate Castro and Chavez in Brasilia could be carefully calculated political window dressing.
Silva angered his party's left wing by appointing fiscal moderates to key cabinet posts, but needs its help to push programs through Congress, where he lacks a majority.
"Embracing Castro and Chavez, the symbols of anti-U.S. influence in Latin America, gets Silva political capital in Brazil," said Stephen Haber, a Latin American expert at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. "But this is a dangerous game, you go too far one way or the other and this will blow up in your face."
Silva doesn't want to scare away investors, who already sent the value of the Brazilian currency, the real, down 40 percent last summer over fears that his administration might not follow responsible economic policies.
So far, Silva seems to be pleasing his supporters without spooking financial markets. The real, which ended down 35 percent last year, finished stronger Thursday as the market reacted positively to second-tier finance ministry appointments.
Named to the posts were a mix of left-leaning, moderate and liberal economists with strong credentials, along with officials from the administration of former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso who will keep their posts.
Chavez coined the "Axis of Good" term after Silva was elected in October, hailing the victory and saying Venezuela, Brazil and Cuba should team up to fight poverty.
"We will form an 'axis of good,' good for the people, good for the future," Chavez said at the time.
But Brazilian political scientists dismissed the possibility of an "Axis of Good" being created by the meetings between Silva, Castro and Chavez.
"There is no way this represents the beginning of Chavez' 'Axis of Good' and much less the 'Axis of Evil' imagined by right-wing Americans," said Luciano Dias, a political scientist at the Brasilia-based Brazilian Institute of Political Studies.
Silva, who is popularly known as Lula, "would never even consider creating a nucleus of leftists in Latin America, he is too smart for that," Dias said.
U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher would not comment Thursday on the possibility of the alliance.
Chavez left his strikebound and politically riven country despite the crippling work stoppage aimed at toppling him from the presidency of the world's fifth largest oil producer.
Silva also has a compelling reason for staying on friendly terms with Chavez: The long border the two countries share.
"Brazil worries very much about violence in Venezuela spilling over into Brazil," Haber said. "So you want to have peaceful relations with the Venezuelan, regardless of who is in charge."
During his breakfast with Silva, Chavez also brought up the idea of increasing cooperation among Latin American state-owned oil industries and set up a company called Petro-America.
"It would become a sort of Latin American OPEC," Chavez said. "It would start with Venezuela's PDVSA and Brazil's Petrobras," and could come to include Ecopetrol from Colombia, PetroEcuador from Ecuador, and PetroTrinidad from Trinidad and Tobago."
Last week, Cardoso's outgoing administration sent a tanker to Venezuela carrying 520,000 barrels of gasoline, but that barely dented shortages around the country.
If Silva decides to help Chavez with Brazilian oil workers, it probably won't accomplish much either, said Albert Fishlow, who heads Columbia University's Brazilian studies program.
"If he does it will be minimal and not enough to affect the situation," Fishlow said.
Bush did. Seems to me that I, along with several other freepers, noted a Communist bloc forming to our south a half-year ago. We were ignored or told that there were other pressing concerns like Iraq and that we as a nation couldn't handle more than one crisis at a time.
Next in line...Argentina and Ecuador. By the time Bush is up for re-election we may be facing an entirely Communist South America. And our southern border still isn't secured.
It does not follow, that because Lula was elected, that many people did not know that a communist bloc was forming.
It does not follow, that because Lula was elected, that Bush dropped the ball on this.
What should Bush have done about Lula and the elections in Brazil?
Bump!
Chilepepper-I'm really curious about how the majority of Chileans view Pinochet and would appreciate your insight.
Chileans have a pretty healthy attitude towards Pinochet: they view him as the defender of Chilean democracy, who stepped in to do the will of the people (e.g.- overthrow Allende who had taken Chile a lot farther to the left than it wanted to go).
However, they also view Pinochet, rightfully so, as a dictator whose regime killed people and who overstayed his welcome, who allowed corruption to set in over the years, but one who set up a robust and working economic system, and with the good grace to step down peacefully when the time came.
In General the Chileans (except the far left) did not like the Spanish/British attempt a few years back to try Pinochet as a criminal in Europe: these they saw as meddling in Chilean affairs. ("Pinochet is a mean and evil ex-dictator but he is OUR mean and evil ex-dictator -- hands off!")
History, IMHO, will be very kind to Pinochet and he will go down as a true, if not perfect, Chilean hero...
It doesn't work at all for the average citizen but it works great for the corrupt leaders who only plan to line their pockets and stay in power no matter what.
It doesn't work at all for the average citizen but it works great for the corrupt leaders who only plan to line their pockets and stay in power no matter what.
True Marxism is too much work and only assholes really believe it these days (e.g.- a lot of hollywood types and gay/lesbian professors)...
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