Opinion: Is Brazil Truly a World “Pariah”?

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – (Opinion) On Thursday, October 22nd, Jair Bolsonaro’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Ernesto Araújo, told students at Rio Branco College, a prestigious institution for training Brazilian diplomats, that it is of no importance that Brazil should seem “a pariah” to the world if it defends its freedom. He said this before President Jair Bolsonaro, who was attending the ceremony.

Words are often telling of one’s thoughts. And it is no coincidence that Araújo chose the noun “pariah”, which also means someone excluded, marginal and outcast, and which remits us to the outcasts of India, to the untouchables, to people with no rights, to those punished to perform the most humble jobs.

To state that it does not matter that Brazil is seen as a pariah and outcast in the world could be seen as an insult to the over two hundred million Brazilians. And to add that this is to “defend freedom” has the ring of sarcasm.

What freedoms does the right-wing government defend today? Freedom of expression? Women’s freedom to control their own bodies? The freedom to be able to peacefully enjoy one’s own sexuality? That of blacks and mixed-race people who are the majority and most exposed to institutional violence? The freedom of the different and excluded? That of the indigenous peoples who are being exterminated and pushed into our alienated civilization?

Nowadays, millionaires are buying virgin islands to live outside the thunder of an increasingly polluted and massified world. No, Brazil is not seen abroad as a pariah. At most it is seen with concern, because its government is threatening all freedoms with an authoritarian policy that alienates it from the world’s major democracies.

Minister Araújo, upon arriving at the Itamaraty Palace, stated that “God chose Trump and Bolsonaro to save the world.” Save it from what? At this very moment, the United States and Brazil are paying a high price for the denialist and authoritarian policies of their presidents.

The truth, like it or not, is that today Brazil is seen by the world with concern, not as a “pariah”. Brazil has always been widely admired, not only as an economic power, but also for being a country that aroused affection and even envy. Brazil is a country where people from over 90 different nations have always coexisted peacefully. They remained here and today their children and grandchildren feel Brazilian.

The fact that its Minister of Foreign Affairs is unperturbed that this country, one of the largest in the world and strategic in the continent, is seen as a “pariah” reflects better than anything else to which limits political and spiritual poverty are driving the country.

Brazil has always stood out for its foreign policy, long regarded as one of the most well-prepared in the world. Itamaraty was considered a school of diplomats that exalted Brazil’s image abroad.

Today’s rulers, who are impoverishing the country with their exclusionary policies and negationism, should not delude themselves. Democracy, with all its faults, is today approved by 70 percent of Brazilians as being better than dictatorship.

Trying to poison the country by promoting hatred and depleting freedoms will only lead to rebellion or contempt for the new politicians.

It is daunting for a government to speak of freedom when it persecutes artists, scientists, and humiliates teachers, while allowing the powerful militias and traffickers to remain calm. It is grotesque for a government that considers its 155,000 pandemic victims insignificant, because of its negationist policy towards the virus and for boycotting the hope of a vaccine that will free us from this nightmare, to boast that it is the champion of freedom.

To undermine Brazil, a nation with tremendous potential so often emasculated by obtuse policies and the plundering of public property, is a sin that the far-right may pay for dearly.

Brazil is not a pariah, it is a potential for development designed to play a role on the world stage. And this no one will ever be able to take away from it. A country that has never loved war, to which the love for weapons is instigated and is poisoned with hatreds that could lead to a civil war, deserves statesmen who, rather than patronizing it, are capable of reinstating it inside and abroad not as a pariah, but rather as a possibility and as hope.

Source: Juan Arias, El País