Brazil resumes efforts in CELAC towards a leadership role in Latin America

The participation of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in CELAC, less than a month after taking office, illustrates Brazil’s effort to resume a leadership role in the region.

“It is with great joy and very special satisfaction that Brazil is back in the region and ready to work side by side with all of you, with a very strong sense of solidarity and closeness,” Lula said Tuesday at a Community of Latin American and Caribbean States.

The 33-country group was founded in 2010 to replace the OAS and counter US influence in the region.

Brazil left CELAC in 2020 during the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro, at the ideological antipodes of Cuba and Venezuela.

The return of the country to the organization at the hands of Lula three years later was celebrated in a joint declaration at the end of the meeting.

The document reaffirmed the group’s commitment to democracy and demanded that regional banks and multilateral development organizations improve access to credit for countries that emerged from Covid with higher levels of public debt.

IDEOLOGICAL TENSIONS

The summit also served as a forum for member countries to strengthen diplomatic and commercial ties throughout the region.

“We have adopted a very good, comprehensive and exhaustive declaration on a wide range of challenges that we face,” said Ralph Gonsalves, Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, the small Caribbean island nation chosen to assume the pro tempore presidency of CELAC in 2023.

Even so, ideological differences continued to be a source of tension in the region, and the President of Uruguay, Luis Lacalle Pou, criticized CELAC members who do not respect democracy and human rights and warned that the organization runs the risk of becoming a “club of ideological friends.”

Uruguay has been clashing with its Mercosur trading bloc partners as it tries to advance bilateral trade talks with China.

“We are in a position to negotiate bilaterally with China,” Lacalle Pou said at the CELAC summit. “If it is with Mercosur, even better.”

Celso Amorim, Lula’s special adviser, said that Brazil respects Uruguay’s demands but wants to preserve Mercosur.

With information from Bloomberg