By Héctor Tobar Times Staff Writer Los Angeles Times
December 1, 2003
BRASILIA, Brazil - About 10 paces down the hallway from the office of Brazil's president in the Planalto Palace here, a 62-year-old history professor named Marco Aurelio Garcia has set up shop.
Garcia's official title is "foreign affairs advisor to the president," which makes him a leading exponent of the idea that Brazil should stretch its legs and start acting like a regional power - and a counterbalance to the United States.
Garcia and President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva first talked about advancing Brazil's interests years ago, when Lula was still a trade-union activist in the industrial suburbs of Sao Paulo. Now Lula has moved boldly to assert that agenda.
In the leftist leader's first year in office, Brazil has helped lead a successful revolt against American and European trade policies at World Trade Organization talks in Mexico, has provided key backing to the troubled government of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, and was one of the harshest critics in the Americas of the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
"Brazil wants to see the internationalization of peace efforts and not the internationalization of military interventions," Garcia said from his office overlooking Brasilia's landmark Plaza of the Three Powers, site of the presidential palace, Congress and Supreme Court.
It was a slightly veiled jab at the Bush administration's policies in the Middle East. Having butted heads with U.S. policy often enough to provoke murmuring of Brazilian "anti-Americanism," the professor took pains not to make any overtly critical remarks.
When President Bush and Lula meet, "they get along quite well," he said.
Last month, Brazilian diplomacy registered another triumph, when its scaled-down version of the Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement was a pproved by 34 Western Hemisphere trade ministers. U.S. negotiators had decided to step back from their effort to seek a wide-ranging accord.
This month, Lula will make his 19th trip abroad since becoming president. His swing through the Middle East will include stops in Libya and Syria, countries the United States accuses of sponsoring terrorism.
While President Lula plays the statesman, it is Professor Garcia who keeps alive Lula's old contacts with progressive-minded leaders, trade unionists and left-of-center politicians around the world, people such as Robin Cook, the former British Cabinet minister who split with Prime Minister Tony Blair over the Iraq war.
In October, Garcia caused a small stir when, during a visit to labor leaders in Washington, he dropped in on Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. The press in Brazil suggested that the country had officially embraced the Democratic Party, further alienating the Bush administration.
"My missions are discreet, but they are never secret," Garcia said. In all of them, he is trying to advance Brazil's interests. "There are certain issues that can be resolved in other ways than through traditional diplomacy."
At the same time, Garcia occupies a post traditionally held in Brazil by diplomats. When he travels abroad, his words and actions represent Brazilian policy.
"I can't always say what I'm thinking," said Garcia, who taught in Chile when leftist Salvador Allende was president there. "What's more, being in this position makes me think differently. When you are a professor, you are supposed to say what you think no matter what. But political thought is different than academic thought. Here, we translate thought into action."
Garcia's dilemma encapsulates the central contradiction that faces the Brazilian left in power, caught between the quasi-socialist ideals of its program and the practicalities of running a country where a kind of hyper-capitalism reigns.
Within Brazil, Lula is finding it difficult to balance these concerns. The rank and file of his Workers' Party can't understand how he could have signed a new agreement with the International Monetary Fund, the global lender of last resort, accepting its prescription for more government austerity.
But abroad, Lula remains an endearing figure to much of the Latin American public, a popularity that analysts agree has helped him advance Brazil's foreign policy agenda. A regional survey by the U.S. polling firm Zogby International found him to be Latin America's most popular leader, with a 69% approval rating.
Bush, by contrast, has a 12% approval rating among Latin Americans, according to the same poll.
"Lula is popular because he represents a kind of Latin American dream, the idea that a working man can become a president," said Guillermo Holzmann Perez, professor of American Studies at the University of Chile in Santiago.
Now, with war continuing to be waged in Iraq, that popularity has spread because Lula's Brazil is seen as one of the few nations in the region strong enough to offset the overwhelming power of the U.S., Holzmann Perez said.
Most Latin Americans know the story of how Lula began his career as a factory worker in Sao Paulo and founded the Workers' Party in 1980. Garcia was the party's international affairs guru for a decade.
Garcia organized the party's "Sao Paulo Forum," which brought together leftists from throughout Latin America, including Zapatista rebels from Mexico and FARC guerrillas from Colombia.
Some of those contacts have already come in handy in his new job. "There's nothing more important than a good phone book," he said.
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