Dateline Brazil: Southern Superpower

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Dateline Brazil: Southern SuperpowerAuthor(s): Jim BrookeSource: Foreign Policy, No. 44 (Autumn, 1981), pp. 167-180Published by: Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, LLCStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1148552 .

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DATELINE BRAZIL: SOUTHERN SUPERPOWER

by Jim Brooke

During the 1970s, while Americans were distracted by Cuba's penetration of Central America, Brazil quietly but massively ex-

panded trade and influence throughout Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.

Long the fifth largest nation on the globe, and now boasting a gross national product (GNP) of more than $200 billion, the Latin giant is emerging as the superpower of the South.

In Bolivia, air force pilots fly Brazilian-made

helicopters. In the Ivory Coast, a commuter airline uses Brazilian-made turboprops. Libya purchased 200 Brazilian light armored tanks that aided in the invasion of Chad. In Iraq, 3,000 Brazilians are building a 350-mile, $1.2 billion rail and highway system. The Philip- pines has imported Brazilian sugar cane alcohol distilleries for an alternative fuel program. And, in China, data processors are working with the first of an order of 1,000 Brazilian

computers. Yet like other members of the Third World,

Brazil faces severe internal political and economic problems. Although the country has the eighth largest GNP in the world, it also has the

largest foreign debt, one of the highest rates of inflation, and severe unemployment. The

government suffers criticism for violation of human rights and failure to address widespread poverty and illiteracy. But in an effort to avoid economic disintegration and further political disruption, President Joao Baptista Figueiredo has taken steps to liberalize the military regime and has embarked on an effort to export its way out of its current difficulties.

In 1977 the government enacted a popular democratization program, known as the abertura. As a part of this effort, it abolished Inter- national Act 5, which allowed the president to

JIM BROOKE is a Rio-based journalist who reports on Brazil for the Washington Post.

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overrule the congress and suspend civil rights; took controls off the press; amnestied exiles; and scheduled local elections in 1982. Figuei- redo has continued the liberalization, although reports of coercion by security forces persist.

The enhanced trade program has succeeded in expanding delivery of Brazilian exports to

developing countries from 10 per cent to 40 per cent of the country's total. Southern nations have increasingly welcomed Brazil as a non-

ideological alternative to the northern super- powers. Lured by low prices and the sales slo-

gan "Made for the Tropics," Third World nations have snapped up Brazil's manufactured

exports. Imports from the United States have fallen over the past decade from about 30 per cent of total purchases to 18 per cent.

Inevitably, the relationship between Brasilia and Washington is changing. The illusion of a

special relationship between the two countries was shattered during the Carter administration, when the governments exchanged harsh words over the U.S. human rights policy and the transfer of nuclear technology.

The chilliness has worn off, but Figueiredo's foreign policy declares that the country's economic and political interests are no longer con-

gruent with those of the United States. As a

report issued last year by the Commission on United States-Brazilian Relations warned: "Brazil has a different vision of the world, a different role and different responsibilities than we. It will look to its own interests first."

Brazil's New Course

Underpinning Figueiredo's conduct of South-South relations is a camaraderie with

developing nations made possible in part by the fact that Brazil itself possesses genuine Third World credentials. In spite of the doubling of its GNP in the past decade, however, Brazil confronts problems characteristic of Third World countries that portend difficulty for it in

maintaining its new status. The oil price increases that have wreaked

havoc in other developing country economies have not left Brazil unscathed. Brazil imports 80 per cent of its oil, the high cost of which has pushed the country's foreign debt to almost $60 billion. Inflation has climbed to 100 per cent.

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Brooke

The impact of overseas purchases lessened only in the first six months of 1981 as oil prices stagnated and as domestic production rose by 14 per cent.

Government economic programs have brought some measure of control over these two problems, but have exacerbated others. Last year, edgy U.S. bankers, who hold more than half of Brazil's debt, publicly prodded Figueiredo to turn to the International Mone- tary Fund (IMF) for help. But IMF loans are usually tied to mandatory austerity programs--requirements that Brazilian na- tionalists denounce as foreign meddling. Con-

sequently, Planning Minister Antonio Delfim Netto refused to borrow from the IMF and

voluntarily adopted an economic package simi- lar to the one the IMF would have imposed, in the hope of attracting private capital.

To stem further increases in the debt, Del- fim began policing government spending and repeatedly devalued the cruzeiro, making Bra- zilian exports more attractive overseas. After several straight years of deficits, Brazil now stands a good chance of ending 1981 with an even balance of trade.

To cool inflation, Delfim tightened credit, forced up interest rates, and plunged the coun-

try into a recession. As a result, this year's growth rate is expected to drop from the healthy 8 per cent of 1980 to 4 per cent.

Delfim's policies seem to have restored international banking confidence in Brazil; during the first semester of 1981, foreign loans flowing into the country totaled a record $10 billion. But internally, the policies have aggravated another set of problems. The reduced growth rate means that the economy will not produce enough jobs for the 1.5 million new workers who enter the labor force each year. In June 1981 a commuter railroad announced 352 job openings, and 30,000 candidates appeared. Brazilians are cutting back as a result, buying 10 per cent less food this year than last.

Despite the economy's rapid growth since 1964, when the military regime took power, the unevenness of Brazil's income distribution has markedly sharpened. The per capita GNP ranked forty-fourth worldwide in 1978. In Rio de Janeiro, two-thirds of salaried workers earn

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less than $100 a week, the minimum needed by a family of four. According to a trade union

group, Brazil's minimum salary of $25 a week is the second lowest in Latin America.

On the upper end of the scale, however, studies show that Brazilian executives receive

higher salaries than their American and West German counterparts. And in the important agricultural sector, 1 per cent of the country's farmers own 43 per cent of the land, whereas 52

per cent of the farmers occupy only 3 per cent of the land.

[Brazil] has developed tropical technologies especially suited to its needs and useful in other parts of the Third World.

The automobile industry demonstrates the

country's economic straits. In the last decade, Brazilian car production nearly tripled, and the

industry entered 1981 dueling Great Britain for seventh place worldwide. But the high interest rates chopped sales, triggering widespread layoffs. This year, automakers expect domestic sales to drop by 38 per cent.

But Volkswagen sales director Bernhard Eland's desk faces a wall map of the world. Latin America and the African coastline are thick with black pins marking representatives of Volkswagen of Brazil. Last year, Volks-

wagen, Brazil's largest manufactures exporter, sold vehicles to retailers in 16 Latin American and 22 African countries. In 1980 Eland increased exports 50 per cent, and this year he is aiming for a 150 per cent jump.

Eland's approach exemplifies the new course on which the country has embarked. Manage- ment problems aside, the Brazilian economy has much to draw on. "Compared to Brazil's assets, the $60 billion debt is peanuts,"says a vice president for a major U.S. lender here, "This is a country that uses 15 per cent of its arable land, 15 per cent of its known hydroelectric potential, and has exportable surpluses of virtually all known mined minerals."

Once reliant on the success of its coffee crop, the large agricultural sector has diversified over the course of the last decade. Under a kind of jungle capitalism, the country has developed

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Brooke

tropical technologies especially suited to its needs and useful in other parts of the Third World, as many countries are discovering.

For example, in the hope of cutting oil im-

ports by 20 per cent, Brazil plans by 1985 to be producing 10.7 billion liters of alcohol fuel from sugar cane. The country already has 400,000 cars running on alcohol, and scientists are researching new uses: alcohol-powered air-

planes, kitchen stoves, motorcycles, farm gen- erators, and outboard motors.

Recognizing the nation's world leadership in alcohol technology, delegations from sugar cane growing countries have flocked to Brazil. Brazilian distilleries already operate in Kenya, Argentina, Costa Rica, Panama, Mexico, Ni-

geria, and the Ivory Coast. Southeast Asian countries have expressed interest not only in alcohol technology but also in Brazil's attempts to substitute palm oil for diesel fuel.

In the last decade, Brazil's total agricultural production has tripled, and not all of the growth has come in the output of crops tradi-

tionally associated with equatorial farming. For

example, when the United States at one point curbed soybean exports to Japan, the Japanese turned to Brazil. Soybean output jumped from 2.2 million tons in 1971 to an estimated 15 million tons this year, overtaking coffee as the

country's number one export crop. Last winter, Americans felt the pinch of Bra-

zil's agricultural boom. When a cold snap blighted Florida orange groves, Brazilian producers stepped in. Backed by expanded storage facilities and informally grouped in a cartel

jokingly called the OPEC of orange juice, the Brazilians signed deals at three times pre-freeze levels. During the 1970s, Brazilian orange juice production tripled and now accounts for 60 per cent of the world's exports, slaking thirsts in 30 countries from Australia to Saudi Arabia.

Development is taking place in other economic sectors as well. In 1967 a Brazilian geol- ogist made a forced helicopter landing in the uncharted Carajas range of the eastern Ama- zon. As he later discovered, beneath his craft lay 18 billion tons of iron ore, the largest de- posit of high quality iron ore on the planet.

A decade of research in the mountain range has confirmed deposits of 1 billion tons of

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copper, 60 million tons of manganese, 47 million tons of nickel, 40 million tons of bauxite, 9,240 tons of tin, and 100 tons of gold.

To develop the area, the Brazilians have started borrowing $40 billion for a project they predict will earn the nation $11 billion a year by 1992. The blueprints call for 23 mining and

refining plants, millions of acres of agrobusi- nesses and tree farms, a 560-mile railroad, a 90-foot-deep ocean port, and a 4,000 megawatt hydroelectric dam.

Foreign bankers sizing up the debt are also

encouraged by Brazil's swelling gold reserves. Last year, a series of gold strikes across the Amazonian frontier raised Brazil's gold production from 2 tons in 1979 to 11 tons in 1980.

The Drive for Trade

Whether to heighten the visibility of its products or to win world status commensurate with its size, Brazil has coupled its economic aggressiveness with new political and military overtures to developing nations. Latin America and Africa are now crucial to Brazil's export drive.

Brazil has long been separated from its Latin American neighbors by language barriers and geography. But a diplomatic breakthrough came last year when Figueiredo traveled to Buenos Aires, the capital of neighboring arch- rival Argentina, the first Brazilian president to do so in 40 years. From the meeting emerged a settlement of a water rights dispute, an achieve- ment other Latin American countries have read as a new Brazilian willingness to cooperate with neighbors. Figueiredo has since traveled to five Latin capitals, four of them for the first time in Brazilian history. On these increasingly fre- quent visits, the presidential jet is always accompanied by a plane carrying 80-100 Bra- zilian exporters, who arrive carrying sales contracts in their attache cases.

But the government's search for increased trade extends beyond aggressiveness in locating new markets. Brazilian diplomats hope that inter-American relations will develop along the lines of the European Community.

Despite its overbearing position on the continent, Brazil is uniquely suited to orchestrate Latin unity. Virtually every Latin state is em-

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Brooke

broiled with a neighbor in a land dispute. Venezuela and Colombia argue over the oil- rich Gulf of Venezuela. Ecuador and Peru trade shots over Amazonian real estate. Chile and Argentina close their frontier over the Bea- gle Channel. Whether a tribute to the treaty- writing skills of Brazilian diplomats or a simple recognition of Brazilian power, Brazil has the continent's longest border, the greatest number of neighbors, and no significant border fights.

Banking on this position, Brazil has recently drawn its neighbors into treaties of cooperation that favor Brazilian interests. Once faced with a hostile Andean Pact -an alliance for economic integration involving Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela -Brazil now has to the south the River Plate Basin Treaty, which brought an end to feuding among Ar- gentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Bra- zil during the late 1960s. To the north and west is the 1978 Treaty of Amazonian Cooperation, providing for coordination in many areas

among Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Ecuador, Surinam, and Brazil.

Brazil's second major drive for trade and influence in the Southern Hemisphere is into another natural market-Africa. Figueiredo's current Africa policy mirrors that of the front- line black African states. Indeed, in June 1980, when the new Brazilian ambassador to Mozam-

bique presented his credentials to President Samora Machel, the envoy flatly announced: "Brazil supports all the [Mozambican] positions in southern Africa."

In the last 15 months, Ramiro Elysio Saraiva Guerreiro, Brazil's foreign minister, has led trade delegations to Mozambique, Angola, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, and

Senegal. Next year, Figueiredo is to be the first Brazilian president to travel to Africa when he visits Angola and Mozambique and two other as yet unnamed west African countries.

In the last decade, African trade with Brazil increased sixfold. Linked by language to the continent's five Portuguese-speaking countries, Brazil is quickly supplanting Portugal as the major trading partner of these nations. Today, Brazil trades more with Angola than with neighboring Peru. In Nigeria, the company that built Brasilia is installing the infrastructure

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for Abuja, the new capital. In Angola, a Brazilian supermarket chain runs 25 stores sup- plying food to 1 million residents of greater Luanda. In Mauritania, a Brazilian contractor is building an airport and an 850-mile road.

Brazil's position in Africa is enhanced by the existence of special cultural ties. "There are

parts of Bahia where I feel I am in Lagos," remarked Timothy Mgbokwere, Nigerian ambassador to Brazil. Indeed, Bahia, often called the capital of "black Brazil," has an estimated 1,000 temples of African cults where deities are

worshipped in Yoruba chants. One of the most heavily advertised books in Brazil is a Yoruba-

Portuguese dictionary. "Translate and learn what you are chanting," beckon the ads.

The cultural exchange also flows back to Af- rica. At the turn of the century about 3,000 black Moslems returned to west Africa, and today many of their descendants, known as Brasiliens, hold elite positions in Benin, Ni-

geria, Togo, and Ghana. "The first president of Togo after liberation was a descendant of Bahians; in Lagos there is a strong Bahian com-

munity that celebrates carnival and the festival of Bonfim," says novelist Jorge Amado.

Brazilian diplomats have not overlooked the cultural and racial ties between Brazil and Africa. On a four-day trip to Nigeria earlier this year, Guerreiro paid a special call on a village where descendants of the retornados live and still dress for holidays in the yellow, green, and blue colors of the Brazilian flag.

Poisonous Snakes

Brazil is also bidding for military power. In a matter of a decade, Brazil has become the world's sixth largest arms exporter, combining an attempt by the military to become self- sufficient in arms supply and a desire to make the industry profitable through exports.

Self-sufficiency is not far off. By the 1980s, the Brazilian navy plans to be producing sub- marines with West German technology. The Brazilian and Italian governments signed ac- cords to produce a $10 million air-attack and combat jet capable of traveling at 700 miles an hour. Through the Italian participation, the Brazilians hope to help meet the demand of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO),

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Brooke

which they estimate will need 1,000 planes of this type for the late 1980s and 1990s.

Called the AMX Close Support Aircraft, the

jet will be equipped with Piranha missiles engi- neered by Brazil's growing rocket industry, which last year exported $20 million worth of

projectiles. The missiles are products of Bra- zil's adolescent space program, which in De- cember 1980 launched its Probe 3 rocket to a

height of 375 miles. Between June 1988 and December 1990, the Aeronautics Ministry plans to launch into orbit four meteorological satellites.

Most of Brazil's arms clients are interested in conventional hardware. Best sellers are the Cascavel, a light armored tank; the Urutu, an

amphibious transport vehicle; and the Jaraca, a rapid armored reconnaissance vehicle-all named after poisonous Brazilian snakes. Last

year Brazil sold more than $1 billion in tanks, airplanes, armored cars, grenades, missiles, re- volvers, napalm, machine guns, automatic rifles, ships, submarine parts, cannons, and flame throwers.

Weapons producers here emphasize that

they are not selling ideology, and Third World

buyers welcome the no-strings-attached policy. The government cultivates these clients by in-

creasing the number of military attaches in Bra- zil's Third World embassies. After the fall of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's regime in Iran, the Iraqi government requested a Bra- zilian ambassador with strong military ties. Instead of the usual career diplomat, they got Brigadier General Samuel Augusto Alves Cor- rea, the former head of the Brazilian Joint Chiefs of Staff.

U.S. Mission Rebuffed Ten years have passed since a Brazilian

president traveled to the White House. The once dominant American presence is now in-

creasingly diluted. Leftists used to complain that more Americans lived in Brazil than Brit- ish in India at the time of independence. But according to the U.S. consulate in Rio de Ja- neiro, the number of Americans living in the country has dropped sharply in the last five years from 16,000 to 10,000.

The American school is short of students;

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the Brazil Herald has been swallowed up by the Latin America Daily Post; and Brazilian Business, a glossy, English-language monthly published for the last 60 years by the Association of American Chambers of Commerce, has folded. Japan, Western Europe, and Third World nations have rapidly moved into the roles the United States has vacated.

Over the past few years, the U.S. government has phased out the Peace Corps and

Agency for International Development programs. Official U.S. bilateral aid has also ended, increasingly irrelevant to a country that in 1981 is expected to raise $20 billion in private capital markets. In 1977 Brazil broke a 25-year-old military supply and training accord with the United States, ostensibly because of Carter-era human rights criticism, but more accurately because Brazil found the agreement outmoded and anachronistic when its own arms industry was mushrooming.

Brazil is uniquely suited to orchestrate Latin unity.

In the first six months of the Reagan administration, Brazil was put on the back burner. In a key policy address in June 1981, Thomas Enders, assistant secretary of state for inter- American affairs, dwelled at length on Mexico and Cuba, but dealt with Brazil in only two sentences. Reagan's choice for ambassador to Brazil, an Alaskan businessman, is widely seen as repaying a political favor to two Republican senators from Alaska.

As of July 198 1, the only Reagan overture to Brazil was a February visit by Lt. Gen. Vernon Walters (ret.), who served as military attache in the U.S. embassy in Rio during the 1964 military coup. Walters evidently came to Brazil hoping to drum up support for U.S. intervention in El Salvador, based on a precedent set back in 1965 when Brazil was the only South American country to send troops to back the U.S. intervention in the Dominican Republic. In line with the new realities, Walters was cor- dially rebuffed.

In the weeks ahead, Brazil and the United States will encounter several major points of

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probable disagreement. In Latin America, Bra- zil will continue to parry undue U.S. muscle

flexing. Concerning El Salvador, Figueiredo continues to maintain a hands-off policy and has not publicly backed diplomatic initiatives

by the United States, Venezuela, or Mexico. Relations with Cuba remain officially fro-

zen, largely because of Cuban aid to Brazilian

guerrillas in the early 1970s. But under-the- table trade is expected to grow. Brazilians have traveled to Havana to participate in international conferences, and in April 1981 Cuban technicians came to Sao Paulo to inspect sugar cane distilleries.

The U.S. and Brazilian policies toward Africa are also likely to diverge. In his first six months in office, Reagan warmed to South Africa, froze aid to Mozambique, and courted

Jonas Savimbi's rebels in Angola. In contrast, the Brazilian foreign minister roundly de- nounced South African incursions into Angola and Mozambique and attacked South Africa's

apartheid policy as "a crime against humanity." The discrepancy between the two govern-

ments' policies will affect cooperation in yet a third area, the South Atlantic. The new

security-conscious Reagan administration is

acutely aware that one-half of U.S. oil imports float through this unprotected sea. Conse-

quently, administration officials have infor-

mally proposed a South Atlantic pact that would cover the waters south of the Tropic of Cancer, the southern limit of NATO. Brazilian

foreign office spokesmen have rejected the idea. Brazilian admirals look on the South Atlantic

as a Brazilian lake. Backed by the world's second largest shipbuilding industry, Brazil is lay- ing the groundwork to project an eventual

presence in the area. But today Brazil's navy is barely able to patrol the Amazon and the 5,000-mile Atlantic coastline. Thus, any South Atlantic pact would inevitably require the in- volvement of South African forces. But such an alliance would torpedo Brazil's carefully con- structed Africa policy, exacting a high price in the absence of a perceived threat.

Figueiredo's policy toward the Soviet Union may also disturb the Reagan administration. The White House will not be able to rely on its old ally for automatic support of anti-Soviet

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initiatives. Although anticommunist at home, the Brazilian military is increasingly even handed in its dealings with the USSR. In the last year, Brazilian parliamentary delegations have traveled to both the Soviet Union and China, and trade with Eastern Europe has increased sevenfold in the last decade.

Brazil condemned the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, but later sent a full team to the Moscow Olympic games and ignored U.S. calls for a grain boycott. Indeed, in July 1981

Soviet traders signed contracts to import an- nually from Brazil 600,000 tons of soy, virtually wiping out the Soviet need to import it from America. And although the Soviet Union is cutting back on oil deliveries to Eastern Eu- rope, last month Moscow tripled its oil sales to Brazil to 30,000 barrels a day.

The oil deal is part of a five-year, $5 billion trade package signed in July by Delfim, who led a group of 115 businessmen to Moscow. In return for soy, corn, soccer balls, and 1 million pairs of blue jeans, the Brazilians are to receive a wood ethanol factory, five hydroelectric tur- bines, and Soviet expertise in petroleum ex- ploration. Permanent trade missions were established in Moscow and Brasilia, and the groundwork is now being laid for joint Brazil- USSR highway and hydroelectric projects in Peru, Angola, and Ethiopia.

China also keeps a foot in Brazil's door, ex-

porting 43,000 barrels of oil a day to Brazil. Brazil recently opened a $100 million credit line for exports to China.

Threats to Abertura

Finally, Brazil has a series of specific economic grievances with the United States. U.S.-Brazilian relations are irritated by an unending series of minor spats over import tar- iffs and quotas, including a U.S. threat-later

dropped-to block imports of airplanes from the showcase aircraft industry. The primary Brazilian complaint, however, is the poor shape of the U.S. economy. Most of Brazil's loans are tied to floating interest rates, and each time the U.S. prime rate inches up 1 per cent, Brazil loses $300 million.

It is in the multilateral forums that the United States will encounter outright Brazilian

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opposition in the 1980s. Once a loyal supporter of U.S. stands, Brazil is increasingly on the other side of the fence. Although not a member of the non-aligned group, Brazil voted to con- demn Zionism as racism at the United Nations, called for tighter controls on the marketing of infant formulas at a recent World Health Or-

ganization meeting, and took Third World

positions at the Law of the Sea Conference. A complete break between the two countries

is unlikely, whatever course the Reagan administration chooses to take. The United States remains Brazil's largest single national market, largest supplier, largest source of bank finance, and largest foreign investor. Brazil will work to avoid conflicts with the United States for fear that discord might hurt Brazilian interests.

The changing complexion of Brazil's domestic situation is likely to determine the nature and extent of any future partnership between the two countries. If Brazil's economic head- aches persist, the governing party, Partido Democratico Social, is likely to lose next year's congressional and gubernatorial elections to a center-left coalition. The main opposition party, Partido Democratico Brasileiro, will benefit from the support of Brazil's combative Catholic church, the government's most for- midable adversary. Standing on the side of dis-

placed Indians, landless peasants, and under- paid urban workers, the church commands a network of 100,000 bible study groups, which often side with left-wing parties.

It is in the multilateral forums that the United States will encounter outright Brazilian opposition in the 1980s.

A worker's party emerged in the current liberalized climate of Figueiredo's abertura, but in February 1981 its leader, Luis Ignacio da Silva, was found guilty of leading an illegal strike. Although free on bail, the highly popular "Lula" will not be able to compete in the 1982 election because of his conviction.

To maintain control in a potentially ex- plosive atmosphere, Figueiredo's government wields several powerful tools. For example, it is

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illegal to be unemployed in Brazil; under fre- quently enforced vagrancy laws, military police can jail any citizen without a signed work card. Corporatist legislation that dates from the 1930s, a copy of Italian dictator Be- nito Mussolini's labor law, controls those with jobs. The minister of labor collects all union dues, approves or rejects all union budgets, and has the power to remove any offending labor leader from his post. Strikes continue in spite of these laws-perhaps a measure of the se- verity of Brazil's economic plight.

In the past 17 years, the military government has not hesitated to break its promise of elections and with the possibility of political defeat may do so again. Usually, the postponements have not triggered violence, and it is possible that a decision again to defer balloting will not set off a popular revolt.

Should the abertura come to an end, however, the Reagan administration will find itself faced with a dilemma. Although the new U.S. foreign policy rejects application of pub- lic sanctions against governments that violate human rights, it has advocated an electoral solution in El Salvador and could lose credibil- ity if it failed to support elections in Brazil.

In the future, bilateral relations will take place most effectively in a limited, non-military form. When Americans talk nostalgically of renewing military alliances or returning to special relationships, Brazilians read these overtures as freezing power structures. At this point the most important requirement in U.S.-Brazilian relations is more regular consul- tation at a high level to develop understanding and avoid unnecessary conflicts.

Reagan and Figueiredo are to meet for the first time in October 1981 at a conference of North-South leaders. Asked about the Bra- zilian position, Figueiredo gave a taste of what is to come: "What we want to do in the October meeting in Mexico is to show the injustice of the world economic order imposed by indus- trialized countries on countries in development." The challenge before the Reagan administration is to devise a response to this and other issues of concern that will both reflect U.S. interests and take into account Brazil's growing importance.

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Documents

Dateline Brazil: Southern Superpower