Brazil gears up for a fight

[Judi Lynn]

Brazil gears up for a fight
For the autumn elections, the opposition is adopting a Republican foreign policy strategy – but Brazil is not the US

Mark Weisbrot
guardian.co.uk,
Thursday 17 June 2010 20.02 BST

Four years ago, when the government of Evo Morales re-nationalised its hydrocarbon industry, the Brazilian media was spoiling for a fight. After all, Petrobras, the Brazilian oil and gas company, had major interests there. But President Lula Da Silva was calm. "I haven't had a fight with George W Bush," he told the press. "Why should I fight with Evo?"

In four months Brazil will elect a new president, and the main opposition candidate, Jose Serra of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB), has shown more interest in this kind of a fight. Last month he declared: "Eighty to ninety percent of the cocaine comes from Bolivia … Do you think that Bolivia could export 90% of the cocaine consumed in Brazil without the government being an accomplice? Impossible. The Bolivian government is complicit in this."

He has also attacked Brazil's mediation efforts and relations with Iran, and indicated he would weaken Mercosur, the South American regional trading block. Serra is running against Workers' party candidate Dilma Rousseff, a former energy minister and chief of staff for President Lula, who strongly defends the government's foreign policy.

The Brazilian right has also been hostile to Venezuela, with rightwing senators holding up its membership in Mercosur for more than three years and joining US-led propaganda campaigns against Venezuela's president, Hugo Chávez. Much as in the US, the major media has presented a caricature of Venezuela and the Chávez government, with some influence on public opinion. Serra has so far avoided attacking Venezuela, perhaps because he knows that Chávez could hit back hard and push these foreign policy issues to a higher profile than he may want for the campaign. In elections over the last few years in Peru, Mexico, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and other countries, the rightwing candidates – successfully in the first two contests – literally ran against Chávez as if he were their opponent. It is unlikely that the PSDB would want this to be the centre of their campaign; it would not sway many Brazilian voters.

Indeed, the PSDB may be treading a fine line. There has been a huge historic transformation in Latin America, and especially South America, over the past decade. The region has become vastly more independent of the US, and has clearly benefitted from this enormous, epoch-making change. Although there is a powerful part of the Brazilian political and media elite that is uncomfortable with these changes, and would prefer to roll things back to a cosier relationship with Washington, this is risky. The PSDB would not want to be perceived as being on the wrong side of this historic transition.

Even with respect to Bolivia, most of the voters that the PSDB is trying to reach would probably understand that it makes no sense to attack Bolivia for the illegal drug trade in Brazil. The government of Evo Morales has fought against drug trafficking (pdf) with more effort and less corruption than its predecessors; there is a clear distinction for the Morales government between coca, which is a legal, mild stimulant that has been part of Bolivia's culture for centuries, and cocaine. Try telling Americans to give up their coffee.

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/jun/17/brazil-elections

[Braulio]

1. Bolivia's gas industry isn't nationalized

As far as I know, they never did nationalize it.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Small memory refresher on nationalization of Bolivian gas, a very HOT topic for ages in Bolivia.

Bolivia’s Nationalization
Understanding the Process and Gauging the Results
by Nadia Martinez
August 2007

May 2007 marked one year since President Evo Morales announced the nationalization of Bolivia’s oil and gas
industry. Morales, who assumed the presidency in a landslide election 18 months ago, was responding to the
demands of his citizens by fulfilling one of his most popular campaign promises. Although critics and detractors
claimed that his move was radical and even irresponsible, initial evidence suggests that Morales’ actions have been
readily accepted and quite successful. Although it is expected that it will take several years to address the
country’s endemic poverty, regaining control of Bolivia’s natural resources was seen as a first step toward
generating the revenue to promote much needed development.

With 48.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, Bolivia has the second largest proven reserves in South America (after
Venezuela). Yet, it is the region’s poorest country. Although the Bolivian Constitution declares that all
hydrocarbons are property of the State, in the mid-1990s, to comply with reforms mandated by the International
Monetary Fund (IMF), the Bolivian government allowed the sale of oil and gas concessions to foreign companies,
including from the U.S. and Europe. All of the country’s gas transportation networks were sold to a consortium
owned by Royal Dutch Shell and the now defunct Enron Corp. Other corporate winners included Amoco, British
Gas, Australia’s BHP, Spain’s Repsol and Petrobras, the Brazilian state oil company. The deal allowed foreign
corporations in the oil and gas business, and increased the share of their gains to 82%, leaving a mere 18% for
In October 2003, then President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada fled the country amidst massive popular protests.
Already disenchanted by his earlier privatization policies, Bolivians refused to allow yet another gas export deal,
especially since the project, known as Pacific LNG, was meant to transport gas to Mexico and the United States via
Bolivia’s archrival, Chile. (The enmity dates back to 1884, when Chile swiped Bolivia’s only coast following the
War of the Pacific, leaving the nation landlocked).

Two interim presidents followed in the next three years. None was able to decidedly resolve the conflicts around
the issue of Bolivian gas, while calls for nationalization became louder and more widespread. In a national
referendum in 2004, 89% of Bolivian voters mandated the government to assume greater control of the
hydrocarbons sector. The “gas war” was a clear indication that Bolivians were determined to reverse centuries of
plunder of their natural resources. Morales, as their elected leader, is attempting to carry out those wishes.

More:
http://www.wola.org/bolivia/IPS%20Nationalization%2008.07.pdf