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[Translation of an article from Carta Maior of Brazil for May 3, 2013.  See original here.]

By Marcel Gomes

Rio de Janeiro – The strengthening of relations between Brazil and Venezuela during the administrations of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Hugo Chávez will allow Brasilia and Caracas to maintain close political and economic ties, even after the death of the Venezuelan.

Those who hold this view are supported by the high degree of institutionalization of the bilateral relations. The new president, Nicolás Maduro, has at his disposal UNASUR (Unión de Naciones Suramericanas – Union of South American Nations) and MERCOSUR (Mercado Común del Sur – Southern Common Market), energy projects, local branches of IPEA (Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada – Institute of Applied Economic Research), EMBRAPA (Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária – Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation) and Caixa (Caixa Econômica Federal – Brazilian publicly owned bank), as well as a commercial exchange that has jumped from 800 million US dollars to six billion reais [about three billion dollars] in a decade – 80 percent of it, keep in mind, to Brazil’s benefit. (more…)

[Translation of an article from Página/12 of Buenos Aires, Argentina, for January 7. See original here.]

By Eric Nepomuceno

Last Tuesday, the first day of 2013, besides marking the first two anniversaries of the Dilma Rousseff administration, marked as well ten years in power for the Workers’ Party (PT — Partido dos Trabalhadores). The first party declaring itself leftist to elect a president of Brazil, the PT elected, then re-elected, the first unionist, Lula da Silva, and the first woman, Dilma Rousseff, in the most populous country in Latin America and the country with the strongest economy.

It is certainly a very different party from what it was ten years ago. And much more different from twenty-some years ago, when radical discourse kept a wilfull Lula from attaining the right to occupy the presidency. It has been its more moderate phase and, principally, the strategy put in place by the then president of the party, José Dirceu, that allowed the PT to win the 2002 elections and to begin a stage that may in the end add up to a total of 16 years in power. According to the most recent polls, the party is the clear favorite for the 2014 elections, whether Dilma runs for re-election or Lula chooses to return. (more…)

Rousseff selects Eleonora Menicucci to head women’s ministry

[Translation of an article from Carta Maior of São Paulo for Feburary 8. See original here and related articles here and here. Newly appointed head of the Women’s Policy Secretariat, sociologist Eleonora Menicucci, is a former guerrilla fighter who spent time in prison together with President Dilma Rousseff during the military dictatorship. An outspoken feminist, she says she is bisexual and has had two abortions. Brazilian law makes abortion illegal unless the woman’s life is in danger or the pregnancy results from rape. A woman who terminates her pregnancy illegally can be imprisoned for one to three years.]  

By Najla Passos

Brasilia – The feminist movement has celebrated the choice of activist Eleonora Menicucci de Oliveira to head the Secretaria de Políticas para as Mulheres (SPM –Women’s Policy Secretariat). Aware of the limits inherent in leadership by any individual, activists for the cause believe that the new minister, who will assume office on Friday, January 10, will succeed in advancing the controversial debate on the legalization of abortion in Brazil. And they point out many other challenges Eleonora will face as head of the ministry. (more…)

[Translation of an article from AlterPresse Haïti for January 2. See original here and related articles here, here and here.]

Port-au-Prince, February 2 – “We are ready to accept Haitian citizens who would choose to seek new opportunities in Brazil,” Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff told the press during a brief visit to Port-au-Prince on February 1.

Brazil, which desires to be sensitive to Haitian social, economic and humanitarian difficulties, has created a category of permanent visa exclusively for Haitians.

The country can “admit under that type of visa as many as 1,200 Haitian families a year… for a period of five years,” the head of state specified. (more…)

((Página/12 photo))

[Translation of an article from Página/12 of Buenos Aires, Argentina, for January 14. See original here.]

By Eric Nepomuceno
In Río de Janeiro

It rains, and it rains hard. In several parts of Minas Gerais, in different regions of the Brazilian southeast and in the mountains neighboring Río, it is only with the help of the gods that one gets through the daily threat of being eliminated because nothing is to be expected from the government.

Exactly one year ago, the summer storms washed away two cities in the neighboring mountainous region – Teresópolis and Nova Friburgo – and caused heavy damage in a third, the most beautiful and important, Petrópolis. The tally of destruction was 918 dead and 215 missing, who surely are dead as well. It was the greatest disaster provoked by climate change ever recorded in Brazil. (more…)

“Brazil’s solutions won’t work for Mexico”

[Translation of an article from La Jornada of Mexico City for September 4. See original here.]

By Arturo Cano

The subject is Brazil, that “miracle” so admired by Mexicans of the left and the right, of the top and the bottom. And João Pedro Stédile, founder and leader of the Movimento dos Sem Terra (MST – Landless Workers’ Movement) of Brazil talks about it: “Mexicans think that we have solved all our problems and we haven’t even solved the soccer problem.”

Stédile has been in Mexico for only a few days now but he knows this country well because he was here a few decades ago as a graduate student in the Universidad Nacional. With that familiarity, he is surprised that Mexican governors and intellectuals never tire of talking about Brazil and Petrobras as models. “Don’t take us as a model for anything. You are okay here with the Under-17 [World Cup soccer games],” this white bearded man says laughingly, looking like a university professor, the descendant of Italian immigrants, born in Rio Grande do Sul where Brazilians, he agrees, look like Argentines and Uruguayans. (more…)

US diplomat says president opposes country’s permanent membership and will avoid topic during March visit

[Translation of an article from Estadão of São Paulo for February 6. See original here and related articles here and here.]

By Denise Chrispim Marin

United States President Barack Obama is not likely to bring up support for Brazil’s membership in the UN Security Council during his visit to the country in March. The White House and US diplomats are working to skirt inevitable embarassing questions [on the topic] from the press in order to avoid damage to their project of relaunching bilateral relations…

According to a State Department source, any change in Washington’s position is a remote possibility. It would be a “miracle.” As far as the US government is concerned, Brazil committed a “mortal sin” in June when it voted against a Security Council resolution on new sanctions against Iran.

The Brazilian action was more serious than its insistent attempts to reach a nuclear accord with Iran because “it compromised the very credibility of the system” and revealed signs of interference by former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and former Chancellor Celso Amorim in the most sensitve foreign policy decisions. “It was a blunder,” the source said.

It is still not clear to the State Department whether the administration of Dilma Rousseff, as a continuation of the Lula administration, will continue on the same path in foreign affairs.

The doubt will be resolved on the 23rd when Foreign Minister Antônio Patriota will make his first visit to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Washington.

This will be the first opportunity for dialogue between the US and Brazil on restructuring the Security Council, which is still pending in the UN.

[Translation of an article from La Jornada of Mexico City for November 6. See original article here.]

by Arturo Cano

Salvador de Bahía, November 5 – The election of Dilma Rousseff has unleashed a wave of racism in Brazil. And not because the president elect is the daughter of a Bulgarian immigrant, a communist who became moderately wealthy, but because in the northeastern region, the poorest and the darkest of the country, the vote for the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT – Workers’ Party) candidate was substantially larger than that for José Serra, candidate for the Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (PSDB – Brazilian Social Democrat Party).

On every side, traces of racism and regionalism are surfacing: “Do São Paulo a favor: hang a northeasterner.” The sentence urging the killing of inhabitants of the northeast of Brazil because “they are not people” was written by law student Mayara Petruso on Monday morning. By then it was known that the PT candidate had gotten the majority of the 12 million votes in the north and the northeast of the country that made the difference. Petruso, in the southern city of São Paulo, voted for Serra. (more…)

Neutrality in the runoff may have been only on the surface

[Translation of an article from Brasil de Fato of São Paulo for October 28. See original article here.]

by Eduardo Sales de Lima

Marina Silva says she is neutral in the runoff election, as does the Partido Verde (PV – Green Party). What appears to be agreement at first sight may hide what some political personalities see as a programmatic abyss between the former candidate for the presidency and the majority of the party cadre.

Support for the former PV presidential candidate grew surprisingly in the days before the first round of the elections, winning her 19.6 million votes from throughout Brazil. Roberto Malvezzi, CPT [Comissão Pastoral da Terra – Pastoral Commission for the Earth] advisor, believes many people, to the right and to the left, underestimated the votes for Marina and attributed her growth to conservative and evangelical backing. Support for Marina, according to Malvezzi, reflected more than that; it represented the discontent of many Brazilians over the lack of regard for the environment, especially in connection with large projects like the transposition of the São Francisco river and the construction of the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant on the Xingu river. “The Lula government misjudged the environmental question. I don’t know if Serra judged it at all,” he declares. (more…)

Benedict XVI tries to exert influence on questions of abortion and gay marriage

[Translation of an article from El País of Madrid, Spain, for October 28. See original article here.]

By Juan Arias

Three days before the Brazilian presidential election to choose a successor to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in a campaign strongly dominated by debate of a religious nature, Pope Benedict XVI has thrown fuel on the flames with an address at the Vatican in which he asks the bishops to influence the faithful “with a moral judgement in politial questions.” His message could influence the vote on Sunday.

The theme of decriminalization of abortion has been a thorn in the side for both candidates, who were charged by Catholics and evangelicals alike with being in favor of abortion. Out of fear of losing the votes of Christians (60 percent of them Catholics, 30 percent evangelicals), Lula’s candidate, Dilma Rousseff, had to back down and with a letter to Catholics and evangelicals promised solemnly that if she becomes president she will not allow legislation on the questions of abortion and same-sex marriage. Rousseff had begun the campaign arguing for the decrimininaliztion of abortion as a question of public health. (more…)

Rousseff changes her position on abortion, which costs her two points

[Translation of an article from La Jornada of Mexico City for October 7. See original article here.]

by Arturo Cano

Rio de Janeiro, October 6 – At the beginning of last year, Brazilian media gave prominence to a terrible story: a nine-year-old girl, raped by her stepfather and pregnant with twins, received an abortion in a public clinic in Pernambuco. The doctors had determined that in her case the two exceptional circumstances in Brazilian law were met: the life of the young mother was in danger and the pregnancy was the result of rape

The reaction of the Catholic Church, represented in this case by the archbishop of Recife and Olinda, José Cardoso, left no doubt about how far the Brazilian hierarchy would go in its “defense of life”: it excommunicated the doctors and the girl’s family members, except for the stepfather who had abused the child since she was six years old. “We consider it illicit to end one life to save another,” declared the Catholic hierarch in his final judgement on the episode.

When this case is taken into account, things did not go so badly for Dilma Rousseff, the Workers’ Party candidate, and Lula’s, for the Brazilian presidency. The war against her because of her support for decriminalizing abortion, on which she reversed herself in the campaign, cost her only two points in the first round of the election, according to some polls.

But although Rousseff would like to end this chapter, the more conservative sectors of the churches (the Catholic and the numerous evangelicals) are not going to let go of it from now until October 31, the date of the runoff election.

Besides, now they have an invaluable ally in José Serra, the Social Democrat Party candidate and Rousseff’s opponent. (more…)

Three articles

Dilma makes amends with Catholics and evangelicals

[Translated from Hora do Povo of São Paulo for October 1. See original article here.]

The candidate of the Para o Brasil Seguir Mudando [So Brazil Will Continue Changing] coalition, Dilma Rousseff, held a meeting with representatives of catholics and evangelicals on Wednesday, September 29, in which she made a statement denying defamatory messages spread through the internet that accuse her of declaring that not even Jesus Christ could take this election away from her and that she would favor abortion and marriage between persons of the same sex.

“I reject totally statements that claim I used the name of Christ to say that not even he could defeat me in this election. It is slander, it is villany,” she said, emphasizing that these attacks represent a “defamatory campaign” against her candidacy. “These rumors come from the political underworld and are typical of the end of a campaign,” she declared. (more…)