Carlos Malamud: "Lula has a firm intention to strengthen relations with the European Union"
In the latest edition of "De cara al mundo", on Onda Madrid, we had the participation of Carlos Malamud, researcher for Latin America at the Real Instituto Elcano, who spoke about the new phase that awaits Brazil with the new mandate of Lula da Silva and about the situation of the left in Latin America.
Is the division in Brazil so worrying, and do you fear that there could be clashes in the streets that could lead to chaos?
What is worrying is the polarisation that exists in the country, there is no doubt about that. The dialectical clashes in the campaign and in some cases that reached the point of violence testify to this. Now, most of the protests are subsiding, the roadblocks have practically ended, almost all Brazilian motorways and highways can be used normally again and those Bolsonaro supporters who are more adamant or radical are leaving the streets where they were protesting against the alleged fraud. Fraud, by the way, does not exist.
And this is being accompanied by a series of positive signs, such as the aforementioned visit by the delegation of the winning party led by the vice-president-elect, Geraldo Alckmin, who is a centre-right politician, in a way that marks the beginning of the transition process.
But at the same time other signals such as the declarations of an evangelical bishop, Macedo, once a staunch Bolsonaro supporter, who has said that the time has come to pardon Lula in order to begin a new stage in the country. This does not imply that Brazil is totally pacified, but it does imply that steps are being taken in the right direction at least to avoid such violent outbursts.
However, this does not imply that, in the future, especially after the first of January, when the new government takes office, Brazil will be a raft, calm waters. The new government is going to have to move in quite turbulent waters, bearing in mind that in parliament the right-wing and centre-right parties control 50% of both chambers and that territorial power is largely in the hands of right-wing parties, not necessarily the Bolsonaristas. Bolsonarismo controls 14 states, including Sao Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro, among the most important. Things are going to be complicated and this is going to require Lula and his government to adopt a policy of very firm and much broader alliances since the pro-democracy coalition that allowed him to win the elections this time.
What kind of Lula da Silva do you think we might find? The Lula of the first stage who, we must remember, with his policies lifted many millions of Brazilians out of poverty, or a Lula who, after suffering prison, may have some kind of revenge or who may align himself with Bolivarian lines.
In their day, the four governments of the Workers' Party (PT), including Lula's two governments and Dilma Rousseff's two, showed a significant distance from Chavismo and the Bolivarian governments of the time. Today the situation is very different. In the first decade of the 21st century, we were in the midst of a commodity boom, commodity exports meant constant and increasing flows of money into the public coffers to finance public policies, and this was the oil that greased these governments. Today the situation is very different. The economic difficulties, from inflation to the supply problems in Brazil. There are more than 30 million people who are going hungry and Lula promised to respond to this situation. All of this means that Lula has to be much more focused on the domestic front, on the problems inside the country, than on responding to foreign issues. This is not to say that he will not do it, but those who expect Lula to somehow become the great leader of the Latin American left seem to me to be mistaken.
No matter how much he has tried to capture the vote of many evangelical voters, no matter how much he is a proclaimed anti-abortionist and believer, he is not going to be able to work miracles and make the Latin American left speak with one voice. It is a practically impossible task. Bringing Daniel Ortega, the Nicaraguan dictator, and President Boric of Chile into agreement on the issue of Ukraine and Russia's constant violation of human rights in the region, for example, seems to me to be a task that Lula will not be up to.
Do Spanish economic interests, which are important, have anything to worry about, or has it already been demonstrated with Lula that in this case those investments will be respected and they will be able to continue working as usual?
Not at all. Brazil is an extremely stable country, even with Bolsonaro and all the difficulties that occurred during his administration. Legal security, and above all the legal security of foreign investments, has not been compromised at any time. We have already seen how the four PT governments were in the past, where nothing similar happened. So I do not believe that at the moment the situation of Spanish investment in Brazil is compromised in any way in any of the sectors where it is present, of which there are many.
I believe that Lula has a firm intention to strengthen relations with the European Union. It is not going to be easy because the background to all this is the ratification of the EU-Mercosur Association Treaty, which is a complicated task. But Lula's statements go in that direction.
In this left-wing current that is now prevailing in Latin America, although of course each country is different, perhaps the European Union or the United States bear some responsibility and have been somewhat unconcerned or have not shown the attention that Latin America deserves at this time, or are they political cycles?
The other day there were big headlines in the international press about the shift to the left, the new red wave or even that the five largest Latin American economies are going to be governed by the left. This is true in principle, but if we stop there, we understand half or less of what is going on. If we look only at the colour of the president's T-shirt, we will get a picture, but if we want to get the full picture we have to look at how the parliaments are composed, for example.
In the case of the Brazilian parliament, the right and the centre right have more or less 50% control of both chambers, the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. In Chile and Colombia it is much the same. The parliamentary situation complicates governability and means that - this is the second point to bear in mind - these theoretically left-wing governments have to make pacts with the right or the centre right.
In Lula's case, he had to take as his running mate a politician clearly aligned with the centre right, Geraldo Alckmin, who comes from the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB), Fernando Henrique Cardoso's party, although he later left it, because otherwise he would not win the election. And these alliances with the right or centre right are made either before the election, in the second round or afterwards to guarantee governability. Thus we see, for example, that Gustavo Petro in Colombia had to form a parliamentary alliance with international political parties described as neoliberal, such as the Partido de la U, the Liberal Party and even the Conservative Party.
The third issue, along the same lines, is that in many of these elections the identity of the winner was decided in the second round, because the left-wing candidate who finally triumphed did not obtain the necessary votes, and in order to win in the second round he had to make these alliances, but he also had to receive a large number of votes, we could say, on loan. And these votes often come from sectors of the population that do not want an extreme right-wing president under any circumstances. This is what has happened in Brazil, Chile and Colombia.
If we do not bear these issues in mind, we fall into the simplistic trap of saying that the left is governing Latin America as in those maps where practically the whole region appears tinged with red as if it were the new Soviet Union. We lose the possibility of really understanding what is happening in Latin America.
As part of his interest in Latin America, Mr Feijoo has embarked on a tour of Uruguay, Argentina, Chile and Ecuador. So fortunately we still have politicians who care about it. The President was also there a few weeks ago. Does Spain need to pay more political attention?
It is vital. Hence the importance that I hope Spain's rotating presidency of the European Union in the second half of next year will have, where the government has already indicated that one of its objectives is precisely to focus on strengthening the bi-regional relationship, the relationship between the European Union and Latin America.
There are high expectations, perhaps too high, of what a summit between the European Union and CELAC, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, which in recent years has been the fundamental structure on which this bi-regional relationship is based, could bring. But this commitment to Latin America is more important than ever, especially after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the need for the European Union, but also the United States, to reformulate its alliances. In this sense, cultural proximity, proximity of values, what has always been argued about the proximity to Latin America, is important and fundamental.
China is the main trading partner for many of the countries in the region. However, Chinese investments do not have the weight that European or US investments, above all, have. China's financial relationship with Latin America must also be put into perspective. I would add one more thing to this, and that is that if, as a result of the war in Ukraine, Russia drifts towards increasing its dependence on China - and this is a possibility that is becoming increasingly important - then Russia would become a major supplier of raw materials, hydrocarbons, energy products, minerals and food to China, among other things due to its proximity. If this happens, Latin America's importance for the Chinese economy would diminish considerably, which is something that Latin American leaders should start to think about, bearing in mind that Europe would be one of the natural replacements for China's presence as a trading partner for Latin America.
Americas Coordinator: José Antonio Sierra
