'South America is priority for Brazil's foreign policy'

[Judi Lynn]

'South America is priority for Brazil's foreign policy'

Rio de Janeiro, April 21 : Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said Wednesday that the priorities of her foreign policy is the integration of South America and closer relations with emerging nations like China, India and Russia, while at the same time maintaining "constructive relations" with the US and Europe.

"South America will continue to be the top foreign-policy priority of my government. I made that priority clear by choosing Argentina for my first trip abroad," Rousseff said in her speech at a Diplomat Day ceremony.

"There is no room for the strife and rivalries that separated us in the past. The countries of the continent have become valuable economic and political partners of Brazil," said the president, who took office Jan 1 replacing her mentor, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva.

Unlike other countries battered by the world economic crisis, those in South America had an average economic growth last year of 7.2 percent and became a "dynamic pole of world growth", she said.

More:
http://www.newkerala.com/news/world/fullnews-193943.html

[Peace Patriot]

1. K&R! Some stupid unrec'ed this article, yet it contains many keys to understanding Latin America.

Here are some key points from the quoted section:

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"Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said Wednesday that the priorities of her foreign policy is the integration of South America and closer relations with emerging nations like China, India and Russia, while at the same time maintaining 'constructive relations' with the US and Europe.

"'South America will continue to be the top foreign-policy priority of my government. I made that priority clear by choosing Argentina for my first trip abroad,' Rousseff said in her speech at a Diplomat Day ceremony.

"'There is no room for the strife and rivalries that separated us in the past. The countries of the continent have become valuable economic and political partners of Brazil,' said the president, who took office Jan 1 replacing her mentor, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva." --from the OP (my emphasis)

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The TOP priority of the biggest, richest country in Latin America--led by a leftist president--is the mutual benefit from peaceful, cooperative, social justice-oriented INTEGRATION with other Latin American countries.

It is absolutely vital, in understanding the new Latin America, to get this point and get it good. There will be NO U.S. "divide and conquer" permitted. Lula da Silva made this very clear in his close relationship with Hugo Chavez, for instance, and his aid to Bolivia during the U.S. funded/organized white separatist insurrection in 2008--with Dilma Rousseff at his side, as his chief of staff, through those and many other anti-"divide and conquer" actions and policies.

And though he failed to turn back the U.S.-supported rightwing coup d'etat in Honduras, Brazil's leadership in that situation illustrates that the leaders of the leftist democracy movement in South America consider all of Latin America to be the venue for this revolutionary and beneficial change of direction "south of the border." No Latin American country will ever again be treated like the U.S. corporate/war profiteer "backyard" without consequences.

Notice her use of the phrase "'constructive relations' with the US and Europe." That is a phrase that diplomats use when dealing with their country's enemies. And, really, the U.S. and Europe might as well have made war on Latin America during the 1980s-2000s period--economic war of a very brutal kind, often accompanied by murder and torture. (Rousseff herself was horribly tortured by the U.S.-supported fascist junta in Brazil.)

This brutal war is on-going in Colombia, Honduras and Mexico, in particularly bloody fashion--with the U.S. "war on drugs" as the most brutalizing tool. And it continues to various degrees in other U.S. client states in Latin America, including those with leftist governments, such as El Salvador and Nicaragua, struggling to get out from under the U.S. boot. These countries have the misfortune to be right in the middle of the U.S. corporate/Pentagon "circle the wagons" region--Central America/the Caribbean. This "wagon circling" is against the unity of South America, which South America formalized in the creation of UNASUR in 2008. Our multinational corporate/war profiteer rulers greatly fear the collective political/economic strength of these countries--fear in the sense of their CEOs and richest investors having to cut back from 5 mansions to just 4, and maybe forgetting the teak interiors for the private jets and yachts. Fear of their greed and their power being curtailed.

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"'Unlike other countries battered by the world economic crisis, those in South America had an average economic growth last year of 7.2 percent and became a 'dynamic pole of world growth',' she said."

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And this is the pay-off for Latin Americans, in cooperating with each other, and supporting each other's independence and sovereignty and common goals of social justice and peace. It was perhaps summed up in Lula da Silva's comment about "the blue-eyed wonders of Wall Street," who urged bankster deregulation, an out of control "market," privatization, "free trade for the rich," "austerity," usurious IMF loans, and other ruinous policies upon Latin America, for the purpose of ravaging Latin America's resources, workers and governments. But Latin America had elected leftist governments--in Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay and Paraguay--in time to head off these ruinous policies.

South America is now doing the right thing--pouring revenues and other resources--into social programs (education, job training, job creation, small business, land reform, infrastructure, et al) to stimulate the real producers of wealth, the People. This is what the U.S. should be doing and is not doing. It is the lesson of the "New Deal," which is not being followed here. It's as if we've had a collective memory wipe.

An "average economic growth last year of 7.2 percent" in the midst of the U.S./Bushwhack-induced Great Depression here and in Europe! Think about it!

And then ask yourself what corporate-run 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines in every state in the U.S. have bought for the multinational corporate/war profiteer rulers. South America also has rancid corporate media, but what they have, and we don't, are honest, transparent elections. REAL democracy is the key to this economic boom in South America, as the lack of it is the key to our woes.

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Here is the bottom half, with some notable points;

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"She said another priority for Brazil are its relations with emerging nations of the group known as BRICS - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

"She said she used the BRICS summit to send a "clear message to our strategic partners: we not only want to expand trade but also to diversify it. We're not ashamed to be a big exporters of raw materials but we want to expand our value-added exports".

"At the same time, Rousseff said that Brazil will not give up its already good relations with the US and Europe.

"In that regard she hoped that US President Barack Obama's recent visit to Brazil will serve to invigorate bilateral relations and give them an added dose of pragmatism.

"Rousseff also used the speech to repeat Brazil's long-standing demand for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

"'Reforming the UN Security Council is not a whim of Brazil. It reflects the need to adjust this important instrument to the correlation of forces of the 21st century. The big decisions have to be taken by organisations that are more representative and consequently more legitimate," she said.

"The council currently has five permanent members - the US, Russia, China, Britain and France, each with veto power - and 10 rotating seats apportioned by region." --from the OP (my emphasis)

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First of all, notice that the phrase "good relations with the US and Europe" is not Dilma Rousseff's phrase. It is the journalist's phrase. Rousseff used the phrase, in quotes, of "constructive relations" (a hostile phrase).

Secondly, her "hope" that Obama's visit will add "a dose of pragmatism" to U.S. policy in Latin America is almost withering in its contempt for U.S. arrogance, U.S. "divide and conquer" ploys, U.S. ignorance and U.S. bad intentions. Of course, Latin America had quite a "dose" of these things with the Bushwhacks--which must make them highly attuned to the bad intentions--and then they got another "dose" from Obama, in Honduras. Her urging of "pragmatism" on the U.S. is almost a gauntlet thrown. It means 'forget your cruel domination of Latin America--it's over!'

I'm thinking maybe that some of Lula da Silva's more "poke the U.S. in the eye" actions--inviting Iran's president to Brazil, traveling to Turkey and Iran to try to broker a nuclear materials deal to get Iran out of U.S. gunsights, sheltering Honduran president Mel Zelaya in the Brazilian embassy in Honduras after the U.S.-supported coup--came from Rousseff, his chief of staff. Not that he didn't believe in them. He did, passionately, I think. He considers world peace to be THE most important premise for social progress and prosperity in Latin America, and he considers Latin American countries having each other's backs, on U.S. interference, to be THE most important regional policy in Latin America.

But these were provocative, in your face actions, that perhaps got their impetus from Rousseff, who--if this article is any guide--has quite a fiery character, not so evident as that of the leftist president of Argentina, Cristina Fernandez--quite a fiery personality--but more...seething.

I'd sure like to be a "fly on the wall" at their meeting.

[Peace Patriot]

2. Just wanted to add a big THANK YOU for finding and posting this article!

I've been very curious about Dilma Rousseff--wondering about her behind-the-scenes role as chief of staff to Lula da Silva, wondering if she will pursue his best policies, and how vigorously she will pursue them, and wondering how she views what I think is the most important thing that Lula da Silva has done--creating an atmosphere of cooperation in Latin America, so vital to Latin America's social progress and prosperity, with its corollary of resisting and preventing U.S. bullying and domination.

This article shows her to be very committed to those policies--maybe with even more passion than he was. Da Silva was imprisoned by the junta. Rousseff was horribly tortured by it. That may be a factor in her character as opposed to his. She seems, on the surface, to be more steely and less accessible. But I think that is a facade and that Rousseff is one incredibly determined woman--with one part of her motivation being vindication for all the suffering that she and others went through, at the hands of U.S. supported, U.S.-trained fascists and sadists. The vindication would be the realization, at last, of the decent society that the U.S. has so immorally tried to prevent in Latin America. It is not revenge that I sense. It is strength.

She may be able to go even further than the pioneering Lula in creating that dream--what they all wanted, what their parents wanted, what most Latin Americans want: fairness and self-determination.

It is totally remarkable to me that Latin America has been able to start turning around centuries of gross unfairness, peacefully and democratically. They have no great war machine to bully their way to resources and riches. Lula's vision, Rousseff's vision, Chavez's vision--the collective vision of all the new leaders--is so DIFFERENT from what we see in the corporate masters and their toady politicians in THIS country, today, that it's hard to recognize the mirror that we are looking into: This is who we, as a People, once dreamed of being and, at certain times in our history, became: a peace-loving country devoted to fairness.