Brazil of Davos and Mariel
The more power a country has, the more reasons it has to be pragmatic, multifaceted, and universal in its dealings with other nations. We cannot close our doors to anyone.
President Dilma Rousseff traveled to Davos, Switzerland, to meet with, among other personalities, the country's president, Didier Burkhalter, the president of the SAAB group – Brazil's partner in the Gripen NG fighter jet project – Hakan Buskhe, the president of FIFA, Joseph Blatter, and CEOs of major multinational companies such as UNILEVER and NOVARTIS.
From there, he went to Havana, Cuba, to meet with leaders of the continent at the CELAC meeting – the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States – and to participate, alongside President Raul Castro, in a landmark ceremony: the inauguration of the first phase of the terminal. containers and the Mariel Special Development Zone, next to the port of the same name, financed with Brazilian money and built by national engineering companies - which generated 198.000 jobs in Brazil with the project - in association with local firms, at an approximate value of one billion dollars.
Brazil's objective at the Davos Economic Forum was to clarify to investors that, regarding the economy, things aren't as bad as they seem or as some would like to portray them. In their conversations with investors, Brazilian representatives likely presented data such as the decrease in default rates, the increase in tax revenue, and the maintenance, last year, of Foreign Direct Investment at a level above 60 billion dollars per year, almost the same as in 2012.
In Cuba, Brazil's role was to provide a new example of its regional "soft power," exercised also through large infrastructure projects aimed at improving the living conditions of our neighbors and partners, and integrating Latin America through development.
What Paraguayans, Bolivians, Peruvians, Ecuadorians, and Mexicans saw, parallel to the CELAC meeting, when they learned about the scale of the Mariel project – where Brazilian companies are expected to set up shop starting next year to assemble products destined for the Americas and the Pacific, taking advantage of the proximity to the Panama Canal – is not very different from what Brazil already does in their respective countries.
Just consider the recently inaugurated 500 kV power line between Itaipu and Asunción, which will finally allow for the industrialization of Paraguay; the Bolivia-Brazil gas pipeline, which generates a good portion of Bolivia's GDP through gas exports; the bi-oceanic rail and road corridors, currently under construction, that will take us to Peru, Bolivia, and Chile, and through them, to the Pacific Ocean; the construction of the Quito metro in Ecuador, which also has Brazilian participation; or the largest petrochemical project under construction in Mexico, which is being carried out in partnership with local companies by Braskem.
For many people, the Brazil of Mariel, which is aware of its geopolitical dimension in Latin America, is incompatible with the Brazil of Davos, which, many also believe, should submit to the United States and Europe in exchange for capital, agreements, and investments.
This limited, narrow-minded view, defended by some sectors of the opposition, as well as by people within the government and its allied base, has already been superseded by events and should be abandoned in favor of a national project worthy of our destiny and potential.
The more power a country has, the more reasons it has to be pragmatic, multifaceted, and universal in its dealings with other nations. We cannot close our doors to anyone, nor can we fail to have contact or do business with anyone, as long as that relationship is conducted on equal terms.
This should not prevent or limit our right to strategically choose specific priorities and alliances in the international arena that allow us to more quickly achieve our goals of strengthening Brazil and improving the living conditions of the Brazilian population.
* This is an opinion article, the responsibility of the author, and does not reflect the opinion of Brasil 247.