Mar 08 2024 | Nº. 107

Editorial

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva hosted Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez in Brasília this week. During a joint press conference, the Brazilian president was asked to comment on the political situation in Venezuela. Drawing a comparison with his own experience, Lula urged the Venezuelan opposition to compete and accept the outcome of the election scheduled for July 28. “I was prevented from participating in the 2018 elections,” he noted, adding that “instead of crying about it, I nominated another candidate who ran in the election.” He concluded by saying he hoped the election in Venezuela would be “as democratic as possible” and relayed a promise made to him by Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro that international observers would be welcome to accompany the election. Lula’s remarks were the latest of his foreign policy statements to generate considerable blowback at home and abroad. María Corina Machado, the opposition candidate elected in Venezuela’s October primary elections who has since been barred from running, took to social media to criticize Lula: “me crying, President Lula? Are you saying that because I'm a woman? You don't know me. I am fighting to assert the right of millions of Venezuelans who voted for me in the primaries and the millions who have the right to do so in a free presidential election in which I will defeat Maduro.”

Lula’s approval rating has seen a slight dip, according to a new poll released this week. According to research firm Quaest, 51 percent of those polled approved of the Lula administration, which was down three points since December. The president’s disapproval rate ticked up three points to 46 percent. The most pronounced decline in Lula’s support came among self-identified evangelicals (the poll’s margin of error is plus or minus 2.2 percentage points). Some close to the president have urged him to make clearer overtures to the political center by, for example, explicitly opposing the decriminalization of drugs and abortion. Experts believe that Lula’s strong condemnation of the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza hurt him among evangelical voters in particular, a growing segment of the population already largely aligned with far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro. 

Bolsonaro also received some bad news this week as former army head General Marco Antonio Freire Gomes testified to the Federal Police as part of an ongoing investigation into anti-democratic acts that culminated in the January 8 insurrection in the capital. Much of the general’s testimony has yet to be made public, but it is widely expected to be damning vis-à-vis the former president. He is reported to have stated, for example, that he did not interfere in the pro-Bolsonaro encampment set up in front of the army’s headquarters in Brasília at the former president’s direct behest.

Highlights

• CONVICTED INSURRECTIONISTS. This week, the Brazilian Supreme Court sentenced another 15 defendants involved in the failed coup attempt on January 8, 2022. So far, 116 people have been sentenced to terms ranging from 3 to 17 years in prison. In total, the Public Ministry filed charges against more than 1,400 people. This week also, Supreme Court Justice Nunes Marques, who was appointed by Bolsonaro to the position, denied a request made by Bolsonaro supporters to release all those arrested on January 8. Nunes' argument is that a justice of the Supreme Court cannot grant habeas corpus that contradicts a decision previously taken by another justice of the Court, as well as one of the Supreme Court's groups and its plenary sessions.

   

• CONSERVATIVE ADVANCE. This week, parliamentarians from Jair Bolsonaro's party, the Liberal Party (PL), who recently signed a request to open an impeachment process against President Lula, this week took charge of four important committees in the Chamber of Deputies: Nikolas Ferreira on the Education Committee; Caroline de Toni on the Constitution and Justice Committee; Pastor Eurico on the Welfare, Social Assistance, Childhood, Adolescence and Family Committee; and Alberto Fraga on the Public Security and Combating Organized Crime Commission. The new configuration should create even more embarrassment for the current government's coordination in Congress.

   

• CRIMES OF THE DICTATORSHIP. The Federal Public Ministry recommended that the Lula government reinstall the Special Commission on Political Deaths and Disappearances within a maximum of 60 days. The body was created in 1995 to deal with disappearances and deaths that occurred for political reasons between 1961 and 1979, but ended up being shut down during the Bolsonaro government. Civil society organizations such as the Movement of Relatives of the Political Dead and Disappeared have demanded the recreation of the commission.

   

• DEATH OF AN INDIGENOUS PERSON. Minas Gerais Chief Merong Kamakã Mongoió was found dead on Monday morning, March 4, in Brumadinho, a region of Minas Gerais that suffered one of the biggest environmental disasters in history, when a dam broke in January 2019. The chief was buried in the territory that the Indigenous people have disputed with the mining company Vale, despite a decision by a federal judge that doesn’t recognize their rights. The civil police say that the Indigenous man committed suicide, but the Federal Police are still investigating the cause of death.

   

• INVESTMENTS. Motor vehicle manufacturers operating in Brazil announced record investments in the last three months. A total of R$71.4 billion (US$14.4 billion), of which R$30 billion (US$6 billion) will come from a single automaker, Sgtellantis (from the brands Fiat, Jeep, Peugeot, Citroen and RAM ) in the period from 2025 to 2030. The news is linked to the cutting-edge energy transition market, focused mainly on flexible hybrid models.

NEWS FROM WBO, ORGANIZATIONS AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS:

• NEW MEMBERS. The WBO welcomed six new members this week to its executive team: Pedro Kelson, coordinator of the Democracy Program; Carolina Lima, legal advisor in Brazil; Jefferson Nascimento, coordinator of the Human Rights Program; Paulo Lugon Arantes, coordinator of the Europe Program; Ana Barreto, Gender, Race and Diversity advisor; and Denise Dora, coordinator of the Gender and Freedom of Expression program.

• NEW AFFILIATION. The Internet and Social Network Studies Laboratory at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro became the 62nd organization to affiliate with the WBO. NetLab works to diagnose the phenomenon of digital disinformation and its social consequences in Brazil. By joining the WBO, the possibilities for international connection of this work increase. Find out more about NetLab and read the article published in the latest edition of the WBO bulletin that deals with the concept of “information integrity”.

• THE CERRADO IN BRUSSELS. The Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (ABIB), Fern and Rede Cerrado are promoting on March 19 in Brussels, Belgium an event that will discuss the international protection of the cerrado biome. The debate takes place in the context of European regulation for deforestation. The current regulation works with the concept of forests applied to regions with trees above a certain height. This current parameter excludes important biomes in Brazil, such as the cerrado and pampas, for example. The organizations involved in the event seek, with the support of members of the European Parliament, such as the German Ana Cavazzini, to review and expand this concept starting next year.

Feature Article

The Space and Role of Black Women in Brazilian Diplomacy

By Elaine Gomes*

In March, the world celebrates International Women’s Day, the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, and the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. This article is an invitation to reflect upon the past, present, and future of Afro-descendant women in Brazil, especially with regards to their representation in Brazil’s Foreign Service (SEB).

When assessing the situation of people from African descent (Black and Brown people) in Brazil, it is imperative to acknowledge that the past still shapes many aspects of Brazilian society. Formerly enslaved Africans were not fully included in society when they became free men and women. No reparations were given to them or their descendants, who, until then, were dehumanized to the point of being considered property. Access to land, paid work, and education were made difficult for them in the late nineteenth century, when positivist ideas reinforced determinist theories associating black people with immorality, lack of intelligence, and violence: negative stereotypes that linger until today. Twentieth century cultural relativism and multiculturalism inspired theses that, attempting to overcome the pessimistic fate that racial determinism had decreed to Brazilian society, went too far to suggest that Brazil was a racial democracy, an idea that, for decades, prevented, and, to some extent, still prevents, Brazilian society from facing its contradictions.

One of the fundamental goals in Brazil’s 1988 Constitution is promoting the good for all. Achieving such a goal with regards to racial equality entails detangling the knots that bind Brazilian society, while keeping the largest part of its population marginalized, and building a network of solidarity with opportunities for all. Some 55.5 percent of Brazilians self-identify as Afro-descendants, and female Afro-descendants account for a third of Brazil’s population.  Data evincing the lingering effects of the past on Brazilian Afro-descendants living in the present abound. Their income is, on average, 60 percent of the income of white people. Female Afro-descendants income corresponds to 60 percent of white women’s and less then 45 percent of white men’s. The number of white women undergraduates is two times higher than the percentage of female Afro-descendants holding this degree.  Income and education are unavoidable passports to access goods and services necessary to entering the high echelons of the civil service. Being conscious of these figures is key to better understanding data on Black women in the Brazilian civil service, especially in SEB.

Since 2023, the Ministry of Foreign Relations (Itamaraty) has been releasing reports on race and gender of the SEB personnel. The second edition of the report on race, published last February, is very revealing of the (under)representation of Black women in SEB. The largest group in Brazilian society represents 3.23 percent of all the diplomats (51 of 1578) and 13.85 percent of women diplomats (51 of 368). This disparity would have been even more severe if affirmative action policies, such as Instituto Rio Branco’s scholarship program for Afro-descendants (since 2002) as well as Laws 12.711/2012 and 12.990/2014, which established quotas in public universities and in the public service, had not been implemented. Regarding the positions of these women in the diplomatic career, the report shows that, currently, there are no Black women ambassadors on the regular track and that 78.43 percent (40 of 51) of them are concentrated in low-ranking positions up to first secretary, a side effect of the implementation of affirmative action programs only from the years 2000 onwards and their focus on the entrance of Afro-descendants into Itamaraty.

The release of the report, which is based on self-identification, is welcome.  In shedding light on the situation of Black women, Itamaraty takes a necessary step towards thinking of ways of overcoming disparities. We can only overcome a challenge if we first recognize that it exists. The document is part of a broader positive approach to diversity, which has been taken by the current administration, encompassing other measures, such as the establishment of a System for the Promotion of Diversity and Inclusion, an Advisory Body on Diversity and Social Participation, as well as the nomination of a high-level Representative for Gender Issues. It is worth mentioning that female Afro-descendants are around 10 percent of the chancellery officers, and 24 percent of the chancellery assistants. The evident underrepresentation of female Afro-descendants in SEB, especially among diplomats, underscores the fact that the affirmative action policies in course need to be improved and complemented with additional measures in order to have tangible impact on today’s reality, and the current administration has been expressing commitment with this agenda.

In a speech delivered on the last November 20, celebrating Black Awareness Day in Brazil, Minister Mauro Vieira expressed his commitment to prioritizing the leadership and the career advancement of Afro-descendants, especially Black women. Looking into the future, let us recall that in 2024 the United Nations General Assembly decided to proclaim a second International Decade for People of African Descent. May Brazil seize this opportunity to consistently enhance the representation of women of African descent in SEB, especially in the positions and careers where they are most underrepresented, and to give them means of meaningfully participating in the implementation of Brazilian foreign policy.

The views expressed here are personal and do not represent the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

*Elaine Gomes is a diplomat (second secretary) assigned to the Brazilian Mission to the United Nations, where she deals with, among other topics, combating racism. She received a scholarship from the IRBr Affirmative Action Program and joined SEB through the decotas system. She holds a master’s degree in strategy (Master of Arts in International Affairs-Strategic Studies), with merit, from King’s College London.

Feature articles express the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or WBO.