by May 26 marked the 200th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Brazil and the United States. Celebrations of the occasion were strongly promoted by US imperialism in its efforts to drag Brazil and Latin America as a whole into its escalation towards global war.
Behind all the speeches celebrating the ‘historic friendship’ between the two largest countries in the Americas, the United States is carrying out extensive military maneuvers with Brazil, and virtually all the countries of South America, and is struggling to assert its control over the critical resources of the region. This includes continued pressure on Brazil to sign an agreement with Washington for the exploitation of the country’s critical minerals.
Both commercial and military initiatives in the region are being promoted by US imperialism as war measures against its ‘strategic competitors’ Iran, Russia and, above all, China, which in the late 2000s surpassed the United States and It became the main trading partner of the main South American countries.
Statements by US officials chosen by the Biden administration to represent it at the celebrations in Brazil expressed the belligerent way in which US imperialism viewed this anniversary. On May 27, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken praised the ‘bicentennial partnership’ between Brazil and the US, declaring in an official statement: ‘We were allies in World War II, when US and Brazilian forces fought side by side in the Italian campaign, demonstrating courage and sacrifice that contributed to victory.’
The top American representative present in Brazil for the celebrations was General Laura Richardson, head of the United States Southern Command (SouthCom). As SouthCom wrote on its X/Twitter account on the day of his arrival, May 20, the purpose of Richardson’s trip was to ‘explore ways to deepen defense cooperation’ with Brazil.
Richardson and other U.S. military officials went to São José dos Campos, the main center of Brazil’s arms industry, to participate in a roundtable discussion at a Boeing technology center and to visit the plant of the Embraer aerospace corporation, which also produces military aircraft. , where they ‘discussed aerospace and defense partnerships.’
The official de facto celebration of the ‘bicentennial partnership’ of Brazil and the US took place on May 22, aboard the nuclear aircraft carrier USS George Washington, docked in Rio de Janeiro for the military operation South Seas 2024. In the event aboard the US warship, Richardson and US Ambassador to Brazil Elisabeth Bagley hosted Brazilian military commanders and government officials to praise ‘the long-standing partnership between the two countries,’ in the words of Bagley.
Following military exercises with the Brazilian Navy between May 17 and 19, off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, the USS George Washington continued its voyage to other coastal South American countries for military engagements and port visits aimed at ‘enhancing capacity, enhancing interoperability and strengthening maritime partnerships’, according to SouthCom. The aircraft carrier is now heading to Peru, where the Resolute Sentinel 2024 military exercise is taking place, in which 1,500 soldiers from Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, Brazil, France and the United States participate.
General Richardson has intensified the challenge of US imperialism to the right of South American countries to establish any type of association with China, Iran and Russia, countries whose main partners are ‘the authoritarian regimes of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela’, as stated. as he declared in March at a hearing in the US Congress.
In an interview given on May 24 to the newspaper Economic valueRichardson praised the partnerships between the United States and ‘like-minded democracies’ in the region that respect ‘sovereignty’ and ‘the people’, ‘which does not happen with a communist country [en referencia a China]because he does not respect the rights of his own people’.
He also criticized Brazil’s possible entry into Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, which already includes 21 of the 31 Latin American countries. According to General Richardson, this initiative ‘looks very good in the initial stages… [pero] Over time, sovereignty is taken away if the loans are not repaid.’ Instead, he encouraged Brazil to join Washington’s Alliance of the Americas for Economic Prosperity, established in 2022 between the US and 10 Latin American countries with the goal of integrating their supply chains, including the exploration of critical minerals. demanded by the industrial ‘energy transition’.
China’s response to these provocations came on May 26 through the spokesperson of the Chinese Embassy in Brazil. He referred to General Richardson’s ‘complete political lies’ about China, saying the US ‘adopts a typical Cold War mentality and follows hegemonistic logic.’ He also recalled the ‘dirty record’ of the US in the region, which ‘has used ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’ as a pretext to attack, sanction and interfere in the countries of the region, bringing chaos and tragedy to many nations’.
Washington’s history of military coups and other imperialist interventions in Brazil and throughout Latin America was completely buried by the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers’ Party – PT) in its celebrations of the bicentennial of diplomatic relations with the United States. Joined. This history includes above all the 1964 coup in Brazil, supported by the CIA, which inaugurated a bloody military dictatorship that lasted 21 years, crushed the working class and the political opposition and turned the country into a platform for the interventions of US imperialism. throughout the region.
Lula’s deliberate attempt to whitewash this ‘dark chapter’ in the history of relations between Brazil and the United States is a continuation of his government’s efforts to ‘turn the page’ on the history of the military coup on its recent 60th anniversary.
Such efforts have been carried out by the PT in order to appease the Brazilian military, who were directly involved in the recent coup plot led by former fascist president Jair Bolsonaro. Since then, Brazilian generals have increasingly strengthened their ties with the US military, either through official associations supported by Lula or through blatantly extra-constitutional channels not questioned by the PT.
In a flagrant demonstration of its servility to imperialism, the PT government held the seminar ‘200 years of Brazil-US friendship’, in which the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mauro Vieira, reviewed the historical relations between the two countries . Vieira highlighted that, under the Lula and Biden governments, Brazil and the US are advancing common agendas that reflect concern ‘for the protection of our democratic institutions, the promotion of racial equality [y] in relation to the fight against climate change’. Faced with the ‘formation of an increasingly multipolar order’, he expressed his conviction that ‘Brazil and the US can collaborate to promote global governance reform… [y] make the international order more just, harmonious and balanced’.
Far from representing a challenge to US imperialism, the defense of a ‘multipolar world’ by the Lula government aims to ensure Brazilian capital a better place in an increasingly explosive global political chessboard dominated by the threat of a new world war. imperialist. One of the main strategic pieces that Lula’s government believes it has in its hands are Brazil’s natural resources demanded by the so-called ‘green economy’ and the ‘energy transition’.
Although the US continues to be the largest investor in Brazil, Chinese companies have been investing increasingly in telecommunications infrastructure and in the mining sector, particularly in the extraction of niobium – a critical mineral for the aerospace, automobile, and weapons industries. and electronics– which has more than 90% of its world production carried out in Brazil. Chinese companies also lead the way in the production of electric vehicles in the country.
Expressing Washington’s determination to reverse this situation, Ambassador Bagley recently stated in an interview with Folha de S. Paulo that US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who has been at the forefront of the economic war against China, is holding talks with Lula’s Finance Minister, Fernando Haddad, about agreements ‘especially with critical minerals, green hydrogen.’ Haddad, for his part, declared last September at the UN General Assembly the intention of the PT government to ‘open new possibilities of rapprochement between Brazil and the US with mutual benefits’, advocating adhering to the Inflation Reduction Act. , the US bill to promote the ‘green economy’. He insists that the so-called ‘ecological transformation’ represents ‘the great opportunity that Brazil has to reindustrialize.’
Exposing the reactionary nature of the PT’s perspective to ‘reindustrialize’ Brazil, government officials and academics associated with the party have increasingly defended the industrial policies of the Getúlio Vargas-era corporatist dictatorship in World War II as a model to follow. continue in the present. When the United States entered the war, it established agreements with Brazil to obtain strategic raw materials such as rubber, iron ore, and manganese. In 1942, Vargas accepted the installation of a US air base in Rio Grande do Norte in exchange for financing the National Steel Company (CSN), which promoted the development of the Brazilian industry in the second half of the 20th century.
Behind the hypocritical and fallacious claims that increased integration with Washington’s so-called ‘ecological transition’ and the exploitation of critical minerals represent a perspective for the reversal of Brazil’s historic deindustrialization, the PT and its pseudo-left satellites manifest its orientation towards imperialism and the opportunities generated by the push for world war for Brazilian capitalism.
The result of the historical process of two centuries of rise and decline of North American imperialism will not be a ‘more just, harmonious and balanced international order’, as Vieira claims, but the explosion of militarism that threatens South America and the world with a nuclear catastrophe. The only progressive response to this threat is the development of an international working class revolutionary movement for socialism.
(Article originally published in English on June 11, 2024)
