Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota held a short public press conference with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Washington Thursday, offering a few insights about an the two countries’ evolving hemispheric relationship ahead of President Barack Obama’s scheduled visit to Brazil in March.
The full transcript of the press conference is available here. And there’s a short blog post about Patriota’s visit at DOS’s Dipnote as well. The latter quotes Sec. of State Clinton at length about the some of the issues that are currently on the US-Brazil bilateral agenda, among them matters of food security, human rights, clean energy, and issues of global inequality. Ms. Clinton also reviewed a series of initiatives and agreements which have been made between the two governments over the last years. Clinton:
"I am also pleased that last year our two countries launched the Global Partnership Dialogue to advance exchanges on economic, security, and social issues. In the past year, our energy ministries have concluded a work plan for energy that will help us collaborate on advancing sustainable technologies such as hydropower, smart grids, and energy efficient housing. We initialed an Open Skies agreement that will increase the number of flights between the United States and Brazil and make pricing more competitive, and we signed a defense cooperation agreement that will help us work together to meet the security challenges confronting us. I also was pleased that we signed a Memorandum of Understanding that will help us together promote international development.”
The issue of international development gets particular attention, which is interesting for a few reasons. There’s been significant debate in recent years about the relationship between Brazil’s regional Latin/South American foreign policy agenda and its broader global agenda. Some have argued that Brazil’s regional foreign policy – particularly its focus on Latin/South American integration – was an attempt to launch itself onto the international stage. But it’s unclear what reason or historical precedent there may be for an emerging global power to first assert itself regionally. If comments to the press Thursday are any indication, it seems the US is more focused on Brazil’s international role rather than its regional role where, it could be argued, more points of disagreement have existed (Cuba, the 2009 coup in Honduras, the building of Latin American-exclusive regional institutions that might one day replace the OAS, etc.)
That said, there still remain a variety of points of disagreement on extra-regional issues, often backgrounded but no less insignificant. As Mercopress reports, longstanding differences between the US and Brazil over global trade issues re-emerged in another set of meetings that Patriota held with US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner Thursday. Tovar Nunes, a spokesman for the Brazilian minister is quoted by the news agency saying differences over agricultural policy remain a serious stumbling block in moving WTO trade talks forward.
Those words follow comments by Patriota himself last week in which the foreign minister also rejected US demands that large developing countries like Brazil implement significant tariff reductions on a variety of industrial goods. U.S. demands of developing nations were not “justifiable,” said Patriota, particularly after rich countries triggered the 2008-09 global financial crisis and emerging markets were instrumental in its recovery with their strong economic growth.
Another issue to watch: Brazil’s continued push for serious and comprehensive UN Security Council reform. The issue was the last one Antonio Patriota raised during his public press conference with Ms. Clinton yesterday. And it appears the Brazilians got the French on-board with the idea earlier in the week.
To other stories:
· Some other international visits happening now and in future days. Colombia’s El Tiempo and El Salvador’s El Faro both report on Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes’s visit to Bogotá this week. Much of the talk has been about security cooperation between the two countries. El Tiempo quotes Funes about that matter in its reporting: “More than teaching Colombia our experience, we should focus on the mutual exchange of successful results that each of our countries has been able to obtain, some in the area of “re-habilitation,” others in dealing with such [organized crime] groups.” El Faro focuses on the fact that Funes said Colombia and El Salvador were fighting a “common enemy” – that of international organized crime and narco-trafficking. In so doing, Funes distinguished organized crime from an older form of localized gang activity. According to Funes, the latter had “evolved over the last 20 years” into a system in which “operatives truly are at the service of [organized] crime.
· AFP reports that Rafael Correa will be next up on Santos’s guest list. The Ecuadorean head of state will travel to Bogotá in early May to meet with his Colombian counterpart. The visit will be Correa’s third to Bogotá since Santos assumed the presidency in August 2010. Relations between the two countries were only fully re-established in November of 2010 following a cross-border air strike into Ecuadorean territory in March 2008, led by then Defense Minister Santos.
· Also on regional cooperation, the Center for Democracy in the Americas has released a new report on the need for US-Cuba cooperation around issues of oil exploration. According to CDA, Cuba and its foreign partners are preparing to begin oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico this year, but the US embargo on the island will “prohibit American companies from joining Cuba in efforts to extract offshore resources, deny Cuba access to U.S. equipment for drilling and environmental protection, tie the U.S. government’s hands leaving it unable to plan adequately for a potential spill, and put our coastal assets at great peril.” CDA’s executive director, Sarah Stephens:
“After living through the BP spill, we can’t maintain the illusion that the embargo will stop Cuba from drilling and must instead adopt policies that protect U.S. economic, environmental, and foreign policy interests.”
The full CDA report is available here, including a series of recommendations for US policymakers – among them the demand that that the 112th Congress “adopt bipartisan legislation introduced last year by Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Mary Landrieu (D-LA), and Representative Jeff Flake (R-AZ) to allow U.S. firms to participate in oil exploration and effective crisis planning with Cuba.” Additional mention of the report this morning from EFE.
· Also on Cuba, CNN reports a trial date for USAID contractor Alan Gross has finally been set for March 4.
· A new report from Reporters without Borders (RSF) cites organized crime (a term which includes drug cartels, mafias, and paramilitary groups) as the greatest threat to journalists in the Americas. A total of 141 journalists, RSF says, were killed during the decade of the 2000s for “daring to denounce the influence of criminal gangs and their parallel economy.” More from the Knight Center. Meanwhile, at Just the Facts, Adam Isacson looks at some of the non-violent, legal means in which journalists’ work in the region has been complicated in recent years.
· The New York Times and the Washington Post both have reports today on a series of major drug raids across the US Thursday. NYT: “[A]uthorities said sweeps were conducted in nearly every major American city; involved more than 3,000 federal, state and local law enforcement agents; and resulted in the seizure of an estimated 300 kilograms of cocaine, 150,000 pounds of marijuana and 190 weapons. DEA special agent Derek Maltz tells the Times that the raids were part of a “multinational investigation” that could lead to more arrests and seizures in the United States, Mexico, Colombia and Brazil. While planned before the attack on two ICE agents in Mexico last week, Maltz adds that “the United States hoped to show it would not tolerate attacks against its agents” (the Times’ words). “This is personal,” one ICE official tells the AP. “We lost an agent. We lost a good agent. And we have to respond.”
· The AP highlights a rising murder rate among youth in Brazil. According to a new Brazilian Justice Ministry report, the number of murders of Brazilians aged 15 to 24 rose from 30 per 100,000 inhabitants in 1998 to 52.9 in 2008. Reuters, meanwhile, looks at a troubling rise in “criminal band” activity in Colombia. So-called “successor groups” or “Bacrim,” (organizations linked to the dissolution of former paramilitary groups), drove a 40% rise in “massacres” in 2010, according to a statement by the UN human rights office in Colombia on Thursday.
· BBC Mundo profiles the first female chief of police in the state of Rio de Janeiro, 51 year old Martha Rocha.
· La Silla Vacía looks at the unraveling of “Uribismo” in Colombia, just six months after Uribe left office. Reporting in El Tiempo (here and here) looks at an ongoing and quite heated debate which has pit the former president and his allies against Argentine human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel.
· AFP reports on Cuban musician Silvio Rodriguez’s proposal this week that the US and Google team up to provide free internet access to the developing world.
· IPS on the debate over bio-fuel production which is quickly spreading across Central America.
· The AP on new immigration legislation in Mexico, passed by the Mexican Senate this week, without “controversial measures that would have toughened enforcement measures.” The bill now goes to the lower house for debate.
· Mercopress reports on a new joint Chile-Ecuador proposal for UNASUR to establish a regional scientific research base in Antarctica. Both countries currently have their own facilities on the continent. On March 11 UNASUR will become “fully effective” as a regional organization after nine of its eleven members ratified its organizational charter.
· A new site to bookmark for Spanish-language, Guatemala-related news: Plaza Pública.
· And a new issue of the NACLA Report on the Americas is out, examining the issue 21st century golpismo in Latin America. Contributors include a number of respected thinkers and activists, among them Fernando Coronil on the 2002 coup against Chavez in Venezuela; Kim Ives and Roger Annis on the ouster of Aristide in Haiti in 2004; and Rodolfo Pastor on the Honduran coup of 2009 against Mel Zelaya. An editorial note on the issue is here.
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