Word: brazile
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Brazil is hardly an idle player in Latin America. In fact, its diplomatic corps (usually called Itamaraty, after the name of the Foreign Ministry's Modernist building in Brasília) is widely considered one of the world's best, and it has played a key role in defusing South American crises like last year's chest-thumping row between Colombia and Venezuela. Brazilian troops run the U.N. mission in violence-torn Haiti. And Lula, one of the world's most popular heads of state, has become arguably the most effective intermediary between Washington and a resurgent, anti...
...Brazil prefers to keep that work behind the scenes, and its foreign policy is decidedly non-interventionist. "We don't feel a temptation to export our political and economic model," Lula foreign policy adviser Marco Aurélio Garcia told TIME last year. "We don't believe everyone should be like us." But at the same time, Lula is on a crusade to make Brazil, with the world's fifth largest population and ninth largest economy, a serious international player. He's stumping hard for a permanent Brazilian seat on the U.N. Security Council and more input from developing nations...
...whether it likes it or not, Brazil is up to its neck in Honduras, and the hemisphere is hoping that means enhanced prospects for a negotiated settlement between Zelaya and coup leaders like de facto Honduran President Roberto Micheletti. Zelaya has complicated things for Brazil by making hyperventilated comments, claiming last week that "Israeli mercenaries" were targeting him and his entourage with high-frequency radiation. Micheletti, meanwhile, has gone over the top this week, expelling an Organization of American States (OAS) delegation and trying to shut down constitutional rights in Honduras. He even gave Lula until early next week...
Still, because most analysts agree that the Honduras coup sends a dangerous signal to the region's fledgling democracies, they feel that having Brazil's respected heft thrown more directly into the mix could help negotiations. Says another source close to Lula, "I think the talks are evolving now that Zelaya is back and under our protection." If an accord actually gets inked in Honduras, Brazil's image as a regional power broker will take off. And if not, Lula at least will win points with the leftist base of his Workers Party. "Even if it doesn't work...
Even so, says Shifter, Brazil and the U.S. are likely to demarcate their hemispheric efforts when the Honduran crisis is over: Brazil focused on South America, where Washington's performance seems increasingly ham-handed, and the U.S. on Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, where Brazil has scant interests. For the moment, however, both powers are mired in the streets of Tegucigalpa...