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That's the question the Economist asked on the cover of an edition last month.
It's a fascinating question. As I reported last month, Brazil is coming out of recession, powered by its newly created middle class. Meanwhile, Lula has been flexing the muscles of the long sleeping giant.
But as the Economist reported, many people fear that Lula stands too often with the autocrats of the world. Hence the question in the headline.
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Inside South America is written by Jim Wyss, the South America bureau chief for the Miami Herald and McClatchy Newspapers.
Feel free to send a story suggestion. Read Jim's stories at MiamiHerald.com.
The U.S. is going to lecture democratically elected South American leaders for, ahem, being too often on the side of autocrats?
The same leaders whose courts are still in the process of investigating and prosecuting the last, 1970s and 1980s-era U.S. backed dictators?
The same South American leaders who have united to denounce the Honduran military coup, a nation which has along with Guatemala the merest fig leaf or "thin veneer" of civilian democracy lain on top of a famously death-squad filled military?
While the U.S. keeps giving the Honduran military-backed coup regime hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, whether directly or via indirect mechanisms as the Millenium Challenge Corporation or the U.S.' majority control of the IMF?
Really?
Posted by: El Cid | September 08, 2009 at 06:17 AM
What a stupid question!!!
Must be from someone that never got out of school and thinks the world is like gym class, everything boils down to team picking - beware of the simplifiers.
Kudos to first comment.
Posted by: chis@ | September 09, 2009 at 02:46 AM
I am afraid that President Lula is in the Russian-Chinese camp. This is the future economic superpower quickly emerging. It includes Chavez and Iran. The old ways of thinking in terms of internal Latin-American animosities are gone. In my time, the 50's, everybody spoke of the Brasil-Argentinian confrontation, the Chilean Peruvian confrontation, and the like. Today there is the U.S. versus the Russia-China block, and the Latin Americans will have to align themselves with either, want they or not!
Posted by: Nathanael | October 17, 2009 at 04:14 PM
Nathanael,
Im very, very sure Brazil is not going to join a Russian-Chinese team. It´s look like Lula wants to have partners and think more like a France wich is in the middle of this both sides ( US / Russia-China ).
Think about it and take a look at the last France/Brazil agreements. BR wants US/China/Russia as costumers but will not think the world like then doing the same diplomacy they have now a days ( wich is not so good, do you agree? ).
See you.
Alex
Posted by: Alex | November 03, 2009 at 07:25 AM
Brazil also is not going to join Iran-Venezuela super team...this month Ahmadinejad is going to visit BR and a lot of people will be scared about it but there is no reason for it.
There is a lesson that I think US have forgotten, there is goes: Keep you friend close to you and keep you enemy closer. Think about it guys.
Alex
Posted by: Alex | November 03, 2009 at 07:31 AM