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Abstract
This article outlines how Brazil’s state actors carry out racialized diplomatic performances, which coexist alongside the oppression of Black, Indigenous, and mixed-race Brazilians, and at times even affect their physical security. Moreover, these racialized diplomatic performances are a continuous feature of Brazilian foreign policy across the two presidencies compared here, but with important differences due to their divergent ideologies and policy goals. During the Lula (2003–10) administration, racialized enactments of national identity furthered Brazil’s commercial interests across the Global South while having a mixed impact on marginalized domestic populations. Invocations of Brazil’s position within global hierarchies, under Lula, allowed its Global South activism to advance alongside the violence Brazil’s security forces perpetrated during the MINUSTAH mission in Haiti and in Brazil’s favelas. Meanwhile, for the Bolsonaro (2019–22) administration, racialized appeals functioned as a method for minimizing and disavowing the political violence that occurred during his term. Bolsonaro employed Brazil’s hybrid national identity to downplay concerns over deforestation in the Amazon as external “neocolonialism” while centering the role of Christianity in his foreign policy. This article draws upon trade/commercial figures, public speeches, data from official visits, and other sources to illustrate these claims regarding hierarchy, racialization, and diplomacy.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Camille Amorim, Sarah Brooks, Zoltán Búzás, Silvia Ferabolli, Chris Gelpi, Ben Kenzer, Marcus Kurtz, Erin Lin, Vinícius Mallmann, Jennifer Mitzen, Dom Pfister, André Reis, Alex Stoffel, Inés Valdez, and Sara Watson for their comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this article, as well as the participants at the Research in International Politics workshop at The Ohio State University and at the Brazilian Foreign Policy Analysis Lab workshop at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. The author would also like to thank the APSA Fund for Latino Scholarship and the Department of Political Science at The Ohio State University for their generous funding.
Notes
1 Alexander Anievas, Nivi Manchanda, and Robbie Shilliam, eds., Race and Racism in International Relations: Confronting the Global Colour Line (London: Routledge, 2014); Alexander D. Barder, Global Race War: International Politics and Racial Hierarchy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021); Errol A. Henderson, “Hidden in Plain Sight: Racism in International Relations Theory,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 26, no. 1 (2013): 71–92; Robert Vitalis, “The Graceful and Generous Liberal Gesture: Making Racism Invisible in American International Relations,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 29, no. 2 (June 2000): 331–56.
2 Steven Ward, “Race, Status, and Japanese Revisionism in the Early 1930s,” Security Studies 22, no. 4 (October–December 2013): 607–39; Steven Ward, “Status, Stratified Rights, and Accommodation in International Relations,” Journal of Global Security Studies 5, no. 1 (January 2020): 160–78.
3 Ayşe Zarakol, “Ontological (In)security and State Denial of Historical Crimes: Turkey and Japan,” International Relations 24, no. 1 (March 2010): 3–23.
4 Ji-Young Lee, “Diplomatic Ritual as a Power Resource: The Politics of Asymmetry in Early Modern Chinese-Korean Relations,” Journal of East Asian Studies 13, no. 2 (August 2013): 309–36; Ji-Young Lee, “Hegemonic Authority and Domestic Legitimation: Japan and Korea under Chinese Hegemonic Order in Early Modern East Asia,” Security Studies 25, no. 2 (April–June 2016): 320–52; David C. Kang, “The Theoretical Roots of Hierarchy in International Relations,” Australian Journal of International Affairs 58, no. 3 (September 2004): 337–52.
5 This is not to dismiss the ethnic and religious heterogeneity within these states or its impact on their identity, as well as the forms of discrimination and oppression it engenders—but rather to differentiate this from the racial heterogeneity and system of difference that is uniquely trans-Atlantic, Western, and manifested within Latin American identities.
6 Lula was elected as a member of the leftist Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores) and Bolsonaro by the far-right Social Liberal Party (Partido Social Liberal). However, Bolsonaro left this party in 2019 after disagreements with party leadership. In 2021, Bolsonaro joined the center-right Liberal Party (Partido Liberal). Lula was elected to a third term in late 2022, to succeed Bolsonaro, but new/ongoing foreign policy choices in his third term are beyond the scope of this article.
7 David Rothkopf, “The World’s Best Foreign Minister,” Foreign Affairs, 7 October 2009, https://foreignpolicy.com/2009/10/07/the-worlds-best-foreign-minister/.
8 Roxanne Lynn Doty, “Foreign Policy as Social Construction: A Post-Positivist Analysis of U.S. Counterinsurgency Policy in the Philippines,” International Studies Quarterly 37, no. 3 (September 1993): 297–320.
9 All speeches delivered abroad by both Lula and Bolsonaro while in office, as well as their foreign diplomatic visits and itineraries, are available via the Biblioteca Presidência da República, http://www.biblioteca.presidencia.gov.br/presidencia/ex-presidentes.
10 Claudia Aradau et al., eds., Critical Security Methods: New Framework for Analysis (New York: Routledge, 2015), 7.
11 Janice Bially Mattern and Ayşe Zarakol, “Hierarchies in World Politics,” International Organization 70, no. 3 (Summer 2016): 623–54; John M. Hobson and J. C. Sharman, “The Enduring Place of Hierarchy in World Politics: Tracing the Social Logics of Hierarchy and Political Change,” European Journal of International Relations 11, no. 1 (March 2005): 63–98; Meghan McConaughey, Paul Musgrave, and Daniel H. Nexon, “Beyond Anarchy: Logics of Political Organization, Hierarchy, and International Structure,” International Theory 10, no. 2 (July 2018): 181–218.
12 Bially Mattern and Zarakol, “Hierarchies in World Politics,” 634.
13 David A. Lake, Hierarchy in International Relations (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009).
14 Rebecca Adler-Nissen, Opting Out of the European Union: Diplomacy, Sovereignty and European Integration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
15 Bially Mattern and Zarakol, “Hierarchies in World Politics,” 641. Their examples of this logic include: Alexander D. Barder, Empire Within: International Hierarchy and Its Imperial Laboratories of Governance (London: Routledge, 2015); David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992); Cynthia Weber, Simulating Sovereignty: Intervention, the State, and Symbolic Exchange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
16 Hobson and Sharman, “Enduring Place of Hierarchy in World Politics”; see also David C. Kang, “Hierarchy and Legitimacy in International Systems: The Tribute System in Early Modern East Asia,” Security Studies 19, no. 4 (October–December 2010): 591–622.
17 Edward Keene, “International Hierarchy and the Origins of the Modern Practice of Intervention,” Review of International Studies 39, no. 5 (December 2013): 1079. Emphasis in the original.
18 Patrick Thaddeus Jackson and Daniel H. Nexon, “Relations before States: Substance, Process and the Study of World Politics,” European Journal of International Relations 5, no. 3 (September 1999): 291–332.
19 McConaughey, Musgrave, and Nexon, “Beyond Anarchy,” 182.
20 McConaughey, Musgrave, and Nexon, “Beyond Anarchy,” 184.
21 Edward Keene, “A Case Study of the Construction of International Hierarchy: British Treaty-Making against the Slave Trade in the Early Nineteenth Century,” International Organization 61, no. 2 (Spring 2007): 311–39.
22 Vitalis, “Graceful and Generous Liberal Gesture,” 333.
23 Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, “Rethinking Racism: Toward a Structural Interpretation,” American Sociological Review 62, no. 3 (June 1997): 469.
24 Barder, Global Race War, 11.
25 Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (London: Pluto Press, 2008 [1952]), 69.
26 Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 172.
27 Marco Vieira, “The Decolonial Subject and the Problem of Non-Western Authenticity,” Postcolonial Studies 22, no. 2 (2019): 150–67, Glen Sean Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014).
28 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 2004 [1961]), 15–20.
29 Lélia Gonzalez, “Por um Feminismo Afro-latino-Americano” [Towards an Afro-Latino-American feminism] 9 (1988): 14, https://edisciplinas.usp.br/mod/resource/view.php?id=174405. All quote translations are the author’s unless otherwise specified.
30 Aníbal Quijano, “Coloniality of Power and Eurocentrism in Latin America,” International Sociology 15, no. 2 (June 2000): 216–17.
31 Charlotte Epstein, “The Productive Force of the Negative and the Desire for Recognition: Lessons from Hegel and Lacan,” Review of International Studies 44, no. 5 (December 2018): 805–28; Julia Gallagher, “Misrecognition in the Making of a State: Ghana’s International Relations under Kwame Nkrumah,” Review of International Studies 44, no. 5 (December 2018): 884.
32 Silvio Almeida, O Que É Racismo Estrutural? [What is structural racism?] (Belo Horizonte: Letramento, 2018); Jaime A. Alves and João Costa Vargas, “The Spectre of Haiti: Structural Antiblackness, the Far-Right Backlash and the Fear of a Black Majority in Brazil,” Third World Quarterly 41, no. 4 (2020): 645–62.
33 Darcy Ribeiro, The Brazilian People: The Formation and Meaning of Brazil, trans. Gregory Rabassa (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000 [1995]).
34 Gilberto Freyre, Casa-grande e Senzala [The masters and the slaves] (São Paulo: Global, 2003 [1933]). Freyre’s work would later be problematized as racist by Florestan Fernandes and subsequent scholars.
35 Itamaraty does not keep official data on the racial composition of the diplomatic corps, allegedly due to federal privacy laws.
36 Karla Gobo, “Da Exclusão à Inclusão Consentida: Negros e Mulheres na Diplomacia Brasileira” [From exclusion to consented inclusion: Black people and women in Brazil’s diplomacy], Política & Sociedade 17, no. 38 (January/April 2018): 454.
37 Petrônio Domingues, A Nova Abolição [The new abolition] (São Paulo: Selo Negro, 2008), 149.
38 IBGE, “Características Gerais dos Domicílios e dos Moradores 2019” [General characteristics of households and dwellers 2019], Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios Contínua 2019, 8, https://biblioteca.ibge.gov.br/visualizacao/livros/liv101707_informativo.pdf.
39 Mala Htun, “From ‘Racial Democracy’ to Affirmative Action: Changing State Policy on Race in Brazil,” Latin American Research Review 39, no. 1 (2004): 60–89.
40 Gobo, “Da Exclusão à Inclusão Consentida,” 448.
41 Abdias do Nascimento, O Genocídio do Negro Brasileiro: Processo de um Racismo Mascarado [The genocide of the Black Brazilian: Process of a masked racism] (São Paulo: Perspectivas, 2016), chap. 8.
42 Michael C. Dawson and Emily A. Katzenstein, “Survey Article: Articulated Darkness: White Supremacy, Patriarchy, and Capitalism in Shelby’s Dark Ghettos,” Journal of Political Philosophy 27, no. 2 (June 2019): 264.
43 Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (London: Zed Press, 2000 [1983]), 2.
44 Felipe Antunes de Oliveira, “Who Are the Super-Exploited? Gender, Race, and the Intersectional Potentialities of Dependency Theory,” in Dependent Capitalisms in Contemporary Latin America and Europe ed. Aldo Madariaga and Stefano Palestini (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), 101–28; Flávia Biroli, Gênero e Desigualdades: Limites da Democracia no Brasil [Gender and inequality: The limits of democracy in Brazil] (São Paulo: Boitempo, 2018); Armando Boito Jr. and Tatiana Berringer, “Brasil: Classes Sociais, Neodesenvolvimentismo e Política Externa nos Governos Lula e Dilma” [Brazil: Social classes, neodevelopmentalism and foreign policy under Lula and Dilma], Revista de Sociologia e Política 21, no. 47 (September 2013): 31–38; Mariano Féliz, “Neodevelopmentalism and Dependency in Twenty-First-Century Argentina: Insights from the Work of Ruy Mauro Marini,” trans. Richard Stoller, Latin American Perspectives 46, no. 1 (January 2019): 105–21; Verónica Gago, Marta Malo, and Luci Cavallero, La Internacional Feminista: Luchas en los Territorios y Contra el Neoliberalismo [The Feminist International: Struggles in the territories and against neoliberalism] (Madrid: Traficantes de Sueños, 2020); Claudio Katz, Dependency Theory after Fifty Years: The Continuing Relevance of Latin American Critical Thought, trans. Stanley Malinowitz (Leiden: Brill, 2022); María Lugones, “Toward a Decolonial Feminism,” Hypatia 25, no. 4 (Fall 2010): 742–59; Rita Laura Segato, “Gênero e Colonialidade: Em Busca de Chaves de Leitura e de um Vocabulário Estratégico Descolonial” [Gender and coloniality: In search of keys and a strategic decolonial vocabulary], E-cadernos CES 18 (2012): 106–31.
45 Felipe Antunes de Oliveira, “The Rise of the Latin American Far-Right Explained: Dependency Theory Meets Uneven and Combined Development,” Globalizations 16, no. 7 (2019): 1146; Antunes de Oliveira, “Who Are the Super-Exploited?,” 104.
46 Antunes de Oliveira, “Who Are the Super-Exploited?”; Féliz, “Neodevelopmentalism and Dependency in Twenty-First-Century Argentina”; Katz, Dependency Theory after Fifty Years.
47 Segato, “Gênero e Colonialidade.”
48 André Luiz Reis da Silva and José O. Pérez, “Lula, Dilma, and Temer: The Rise and Fall of Brazilian Foreign Policy,” Latin American Perspectives 46, no. 4 (July 2019): 169–85; Paulo G. Fagundes Visentini and André Luiz Reis da Silva, “Brazil and the Economic, Political, and Environmental Multilateralism: The Lula Years (2003–2010),” Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional 53 (2010): 54–72; Marina Duque, “‘The Rascals’ Paradise’: Brazilian National Identity in 2010,” in Making Identity Count: Building a National Identity Database, ed. Ted Hopf and Bentley B. Allan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 47–62.
49 Sean W. Burges, “Brazil as a Bridge between Old and New Powers?” International Affairs 89, no. 3 (May 2013): 577–94; Antônio Carlos Lessa, “Brazil’s Strategic Partnerships: An Assessment of the Lula Era (2003–2010),” Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional 53 (2010): 115–31; Maria Regina Soares de Lima and Mônica Hirst, “Brazil as an Intermediate State and Regional Power: Action, Choice and Responsibilities,” International Affairs 82, no. 1 (January 2006): 21–40; Miriam Gomes Saraiva, “South-South Cooperation Strategies in Brazilian Foreign Policy from 1993 to 2007,” Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional 50, no. 2 (2007): 42–59; Oliver Stuenkel and Matthew M. Taylor, eds., Brazil on the Global Stage: Power, Ideas, and the Liberal International Order (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Armando Boito and Tatiana Berringer, “Social Classes, Neodevelopmentalism, and Brazilian Foreign Policy under Presidents Lula and Dilma,” trans. Gregory Duff Morton, Latin American Perspectives 41, no. 5 (September 2014): 94–109.
50 Celso Amorim, “Brazil and the Middle East: Reflections on Lula’s South-South Cooperation,” Cairo Review of Global Affairs 2 (Summer 2011): 52–53.
51 Celso Amorim, “Brazilian Foreign Policy under President Lula (2003–2010): An Overview,” Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional 53 (2010): 234.
52 Amorim, “Brazil and the Middle East,” 48.
53 This is not to imply that neoliberalism is universal or without local, popular, and micro-level contestation and negotiation; rather, neoliberalism can be constituted through and within the folds of local identities and subjectivities, thereby regimenting political economies, as argued by Verónica Gago, Neoliberalism from Below: Popular Pragmatics and Baroque Economies (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017).
54 Biblioteca Presidência da República, “Discurso do Presidente da República, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, na cerimônia de inauguração da Embaixada do Brasil na República Democrática de São Tome e Príncipe” [Speech by the president of the republic, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, at the inauguration ceremony of the embassy of Brazil in the Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe], 2 November 2003, http://www.biblioteca.presidencia.gov.br/presidencia/ex-presidentes/luiz-inacio-lula-da-silva/discursos/1o-mandato/2003/02-11-2003-discurso-do-pr-luiz-inacio-lula-da-silva-na-cerimonia-de-inauguracao-da-embaixada-do-brasil.pdf/view.
55 Lula, specifically, tends to draw on his origins in the Brazilian northeast, a region known for its racial miscegenation, to position himself as a racially ambiguous (or not completely White) Brazilian. Yet it would be difficult to argue most (or perhaps even many) Brazilians, or African leaders, view Lula as Black, thereby positioning him incongruously vis-à-vis the discourse he attempted to present while visiting African states.
56 Amorim, “Brazilian Foreign Policy under President Lula (2003–2010),” 216.
57 Boito and Berringer, “Brasil.”
58 Américo Martins, “‘Governos dos países ricos são culpados pela crise,’ diz Lula” [“Governments of rich countries are to blame for the crisis,” says Lula], BBC, 14 September 2009, https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/noticias/2009/09/090911_entrevistalula1_ji.
59 Yvonne Captain, “Brazil’s Africa Policy under Lula,” Global South 4, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 183–98; José Flávio Sombra Saraiva, “The New Africa and Brazil in the Lula Era: The Rebirth of Brazilian Atlantic Policy,” Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional 53 (2010): 169–82.
60 Stacie E. Goddard and Daniel Nexon, “The Dynamics of Global Power Politics: A Framework for Analysis,” Journal of Global Security Studies 1, no. 1 (February 2016): 11. Emphasis in the original.
61 Biblioteca Presidência da República, “Discurso do Presidente da República, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, no jantar oferecido pelo Presidente de Moçambique, Joaquim Chissano” [Speech by the president of the republic, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, at the dinner hosted by the president of Mozambique, Joaquim Chissano], 5 November 2003, http://www.biblioteca.presidencia.gov.br/presidencia/ex-presidentes/luiz-inacio-lula-da-silva/discursos/1o-mandato/2003/05-11-2003-discurso-do-pr-luiz-inacio-lula-da-silva-no-jantar-oferecido-pelo-presidente-de-mocambique.pdf/view.
62 Amorim, “Brazilian Foreign Policy Under President Lula (2003–2010),” 225–26.
63 Under Bolsolaro, Heleno rose to the post of secretary of institutional security, dos Santos Cruz to the post of secretary of government, and Pujol to commander of the Brazilian army.
64 Marina G. Duque, “Recognizing International Status: A Relational Approach,” International Studies Quarterly 62, no. 3 (September 2018): 577–92.
65 Barder, Global Race War, chap. 1; Susan Buck-Morss, Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009); Robert Shilliam, “What the Haitian Revolution Might Tell Us about Development, Security, and the Politics of Race,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 50, no. 3 (July 2008): 778–808; Adom Getachew, “Universalism after the Post-Colonial Turn: Interpreting the Haitian Revolution,” Political Theory 44, no. 6 (December 2016): 821–45.
66 Alves and Costa Vargas, “Spectre of Haiti”; W. Alejandro Sánchez Nieto, “Brazil’s Grand Design for Combining Global South Solidarity and National Interests: A Discussion of Peacekeeping Operations in Haiti and Timor,” in Global South to the Rescue: Emerging Humanitarian Superpowers and Globalizing Rescue Industries, ed. Paul Amar (New York: Routledge, 2013), 161–78.
67 See Keeping the Peace in Haiti? An Assessment of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti Using Compliance with its Prescribed Mandate as a Barometer for Success (Cambridge, MA; São Paulo: Harvard Law Student Advocates for Human Rights and Centro de Justicia Global, 2005), https:/www.fidh.org/IMG/pdf/KeepingthepeaceJusticiaGlobal-4.pdf; Amélie Gauthier with Pierre Bonin, “Haiti: Voices of the Actors: A Research Project on the UN Mission” (FRIDE working paper, 2008); Gustavo Gallón, “Report of the Independent Expert on the Situation of Human Rights in Haiti, Gustavo Gallón,” United Nations Human Rights Council, 2014, https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/766939?ln=en.
68 Paul Amar, The Security Archipelago: Human-Security States, Sexuality Politics, and the End of Neoliberalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013), 6.
69 See Monica Hirst, “Latin American Armed Humanitarianism in Haiti and Beyond,” Relaciones Internacionales no. 55 (2018): 213–26.
70 Author’s calculations based on US Department of State annual “Foreign Military Training Report” to Congress for fiscal years 2003 to 2010, https://2009-2017.state.gov/t/pm/rls/rpt/fmtrpt/index.htm. The annual funding amount has only grown since the Lula administration.
71 Amorim, “Brazilian Foreign Policy under President Lula (2003–2010),” 225.
72 The authority over such operations technically falls under the responsibility of state governors in Brazil. However, there have been “federal interventions” in Rio de Janeiro state and elsewhere in Brazil over the past 20 years, whereby the federal government temporarily takes over the security-maintenance responsibilities of local officials. Likewise, these federal interventions became more common and intense under Lula’s successors: Dilma Rousseff, Michel Temer, and Bolsonaro. The point here, though, is these interventions have purposefully drawn upon and employed the same militarized troops and skills acquired during MINUSTAH for domestic policing purposes.
73 See Jaime Amparo Alves, The Anti-Black City: Police Terror and Black Urban Life in Brazil (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018); Jean-Philip Struck, “Exército no Rio: 25 Anos de Fracassos” [The army in Rio: 25 years of failure], DW, 27 February 2018, https://www.dw.com/pt-br/exército-no-rio-25-anos-de-fracassos/a-42750301.
74 For a detailed analysis of militarized police tactics and operations in the favelas, see Marielle Franco, “UPP: A Redução da Favela a Três Letras: Uma Análise da Política de Segurança Pública do Estado do Rio de Janeiro” [UPP: The reduction of the favela to three letters: An analysis of the public security policy of the State of Rio de Janeiro] (master’s thesis, Universidade Federal Fluminense, 2014). Franco was elected to the Rio de Janeiro city council and was subsequently assassinated on 15 March 2018 after opening investigations into police violence and corruption in the favelas.
75 Maria Helena Moreira Alves and Philip Evanson, Living in the Crossfire: Favelas Residents, Drug Dealers, and Police Violence in Rio de Janeiro (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011), 30–32.
76 Alves and Evanson, Living in the Crossfire, 31.
77 See Anúario Brasileiro de Segurança Pública [Brazilian yearly review of public security] (São Paulo: Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública [FBSP], 2005–19), https://forumseguranca.org.br/anuario-brasileiro-seguranca-publica/; Daniel Cerqueira et al., Atlas da Vioência 2019 [Atlas of violence 2019] (Rio de Janeiro; São Paulo: Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada / FBSP, 2019), 49, https://forumseguranca.org.br/atlas-da-violencia/.
78 Fanon, Wretched of the Earth, 16.
79 Wendy Hunter and Timothy J. Power, “Bolsonaro and Brazil’s Illiberal Backlash,” Journal of Democracy 30, no. 1 (January 2019): 68–82.
80 For instance, the Bolsonaro administration broke a long-stranding Brazilian diplomatic tradition of a new president’s first trip abroad being to neighboring Argentina and instead choose the World Economic Forum in Switzerland as his first, leaving Argentina for the sixth trip of the year. During his initial year in office, Bolsonaro visited the United States on three separate occasions, and only at the end of the year did he conduct lightning-round visits to five non-Western states: Japan, China, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.
81 Ricardo Barbosa Jr. and Guilherme Casarões, “Statecraft under God: Radical Right Populism Meets Christian Nationalism in Bolsonaro’s Brazil,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 50, no. 3 (2023): 669–99.
82 Ministério das Relações Exteriores, “Speech by Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro at the Opening of the 74th United Nations General Assembly,” 24 September 2019, https://www.gov.br/mre/en/content-centers/speeches-articles-and-interviews/president-of-the-federative-republic-of-brazil/speeches/speech-by-brazil-s-president-jair-bolsonaro-at-the-opening-of-the-74th-united-nations-general-assembly-new-york-september-24-2019-photo-alan-santos-pr.
83 Ministério das Relações Exteriores, “Speech by Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro at the Opening of the 74th United Nations General Assembly.”
84 Marco A. Vieira, “(Re-)imagining the ‘Self’ of Ontological Security: The Case of Brazil’s Ambivalent Postcolonial Subjectivity,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 46, no. 2 (January 2018): 142–64.
85 Guilherme Stolle Paixão e Casarões and Déborah Barros Leal Farias, “Brazilian Foreign Policy under Jair Bolsonaro: Far-Right Populism and the Rejection of the Liberal International Order,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 35, no. 5 (2022): 741–61.
86 Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, trans. Joan Pinkham (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000 [1972]); Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 65–68; Lélia Gonzalez, “A Categoria Político-cultural de Amefricanidade” [The political-cultural category of Amefricanidade], Tempo Brasileiro 92 (1988): 69–82.
87 Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, 33.
88 Bolsonaro fired his secretary of culture, Roberto Alvim, in January of 2020 after Alvim paraphrased Joseph Goebbels in a speech, provoking outcries of racism from the public. See “Secretário de Cultura é demitido após discurso semelhante a de ministro de Hitler” [Culture secretary is fired after speech similar to that of Hitler’s minister], G1, 17 January 2020, https://g1.globo.com/jornal-nacional/noticia/2020/01/17/secretario-de-cultura-e-demitido-apos-discurso-semelhante-a-de-ministro-de-hiltler.ghtml.
89 Ernesto Araújo, “Now We Do,” New Criterion 37, no. 5 (2019): 37.
90 Dan Williams, “Brazil Opens Israel Trade Mission in Jerusalem, Short of Full Embassy Move,” Reuters, 31 March 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-brazil/brazil-opens-israel-trade-mission-in-jerusalem-short-of-full-embassy-move-idUSKCN1RC097.
91 Presidência da República, “Discurso do presidente da República, Jair Bolsonaro, na assinatura de acordos entre Brasil e Israel: Jerusalém/Israel” [Speech by the president of the republic, Jair Bolsonaro, at the signing of agreements between Brazil and Israel: Jerusalem/Israel], 31 March 2019, https://www.biblioteca.presidencia.gov.br/presidencia/ex-presidentes/bolsonaro/discursos/discurso-do-presidente-da-republica-jair-bolsonaro-na-assinatura-de-acordos-entre-brasil-e-israel-jerusalem-israel.
92 Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce, “Arabs Became 3rd Largest Destination of Brazilian Exports,” Brazil-Arab News Agency, 29 January 2020, https://anba.com.br/en/arabs-became-3rd-largest-destination-of-brazilian-exports/.
93 Janice Bially Mattern, “Why ‘Soft Power’ Isn’t So Soft: Representational Force and the Sociolinguistic Construction of Attraction in World Politics,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 33, no. 3 (June 2005): 584–86.
94 Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, chap. 2.
95 Jennifer Mitzen, “Ontological Security in World Politics: State Identity and the Security Dilemma,” European Journal of International Relations 12, no. 3 (September 2006): 341–70.
96 Barbosa and Casarões, “Statecraft under God,” 685.
97 Ministério das Relações Exteriores, “Speech by Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro at the Opening of the 74th United Nations General Assembly.”
98 Stephen M. Walt, “Who Will Save the Amazon (and How)?” Foreign Policy, 5 August 2019, https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/08/05/who-will-invade-brazil-to-save-the-amazon/.
99 Federal Supreme Court, “Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil,” 2019, http://www.stf.jus.br/arquivo/cms/legislacaoConstituicao/anexo/brazil_federal_constitution.pdf.
100 MapBiomas, “Relatório Anual do Desmatamento do Brasil: 2019” [Annual report on deforestation in Brazil: 2019], 2019, https://s3.amazonaws.com/alerta.mapbiomas.org/relatrios/MBI-relatorio-desmatamento-2019-FINAL5.pdf.
101 Danielle Brant and Phillippe Watanabe, “Sob Bolsonaro, Multas Ambientais Caem 34% para Menor Nível em 24 Anos” [Under Bolsonaro, environmental fines fall 34% to lowest level in 24 years], Folha de São Paulo, 9 March 2020, https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/ambiente/2020/03/sob-bolsonaro-multas-ambientais-caem-34-para-menor-nivel-em-24-anos.shtml.
102 Jake Spring, “Exclusive: Brazil Exported Thousands of Shipments of Unauthorized Wood from Amazon Port,” Reuters, 4 March 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-environment-lumber-exclusive/exclusive-brazil-exported-thousands-of-shipments-of-unauthorized-wood-from-amazon-port-idUSKBN20R15.
103 See INPE, “A Estimative da Taxa de Desmatamento Por Corte Raso Para a Amazônia Legal em 2019 é de 9.762 km²” [The estimate of the deforestation rate for the legal Amazon in 2019 is 9,762 km²], Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais, 18 November 2019, http://www.inpe.br/noticias/noticia.php?Cod_Noticia=5294; Ernesto Londoño, “Bolsonaro Fires Head of Agency Tracking Amazon Deforestation in Brazil,” New York Times, 2 August 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/02/world/americas/bolsonaro-amazon-deforestation-galvao.html.
104 Bolsonaro’s cabinet lacked Black, Indigenous, or pardo representation, and his administration had a paucity of Black staffers, while showcasing open hostility to racial quotas and affirmative action initiatives and working to defund programs dedicated to social inclusion.
105 Patrícia Figueiredo, “Número de mortes de lideranças indígenas em 2019 é o maior em pelo menos 11 anos, diz Pastoral da Terra” [Number of deaths of indigenous leaders in 2019 is the highest in at least 11 years, says Pastoral da Terra], Globo News, 12 October 2019, https://g1.globo.com/natureza/noticia/2019/12/10/mortes-de-liderancas-indigenas-batem-recorde-em-2019-diz-pastoral-da-terra.ghtml.
106 Anthony Boadle, “Brazil Readies Task Force to Expel Miners from Yanomami Lands, Officials Say,” Reuters, 1 February 2023, https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazil-prepares-task-force-expel-miners-yanomami-lands-indigenous-leader-says-2023-01-31/.
107 During Bolsonaro’s tenure, gold become the state of Roraima’s second-largest export, behind only soy, even though the state does not have any federally sanctioned gold mines. See João Fellet, “Roraima Exporta 194 kg de Ouro à Índia sem Ter Nenhuma Mina Operando Legalmente” [Roraima exports 194 kg of gold to India without having any legally operating mines], BBC, 12 June 2019, https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/internacional-48534473.
108 Tom Phillips, “Lula Accuses Bolsonaro of Genocide Against Yanomami in Amazon,” Guardian, 22 January 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/22/lula-accuses-jair-bolsonaro-genocide-yanomami-indigenous-amazon.
109 See Sarah Mota Resende, “‘No Que Depender de Mim, Não Tem Mais Demarcação de Terra Indígena’, Diz Bolsonaro a TV” [“As far as it depends on me, there is no more demarcation of Indigenous lands”, says Bolsonaro on TV], Folha de São Paulo, 5 November 2018, https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/poder/2018/11/no-que-depender-de-mim-nao-tem-mais-demarcacao-de-terra-indigena-diz-bolsonaro-a-tv.shtml.
110 Zoltán I. Búzás, “The Color of Threat: Race, Threat Perception, and the Demise of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance (1902–1923),” Security Studies 22, no. 4 (October–December 2013): 573–606.
111 Lucas Guerra, “Security as White Privilege: Racializing Whiteness in Critical Security Studies,” Security Dialogue 52, no. S1 (November 2021): 28–37.
112 See Gustavo Uribe, “‘Cada Vez Mais o Índio É um Ser Humano Igual a Nós’, Diz Bolsonaro” [“Increasingly, the Indian is a human being just like us,” says Bolsonaro], Folha de São Paulo, 23 January 2020, https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/poder/2020/01/cada-vez-mais-o-indio-e-um-ser-humano-igual-a-nos-diz-bolsonaro.shtml.
113 Roberto Simon and Brian Winter, “Trumpism Comes to Brazil,” Foreign Affairs, 28 October 2018, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/brazil/2018-10-28/trumpism-comes-brazil.
114 Terrence McCoy, “Rio Police Were Ordered to Limit Favela Raids during the Pandemic. They’re Still Killing Hundreds of People,” Washington Post, 20 May 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/05/20/brazil-police-rio-jacarezinho-favela-raid/.
115 Pedro Baqui et al., “Ethnic and Regional Variations in Hospital Mortality from COVID-19 in Brazil: A Cross-Sectional Observational Study,” Lancet Global Health 8, no. 8 (August 2020): E1018–26; Carlos Madeiro, “Covid Mata 55% dos Negros e 38% dos Brancos Internados no País, Diz Estudo” [Covid kills 55% of Black people and 38% of White peoples hospitalized in the country, study says], UOL, 2 June 2020, https://noticias.uol.com.br/saude/ultimas-noticias/redacao/2020/06/02/covid-mata-54-dos-negros-e-37-dos-brancos-internados-no-pais-diz-estudo.htm.
116 BBC, “Covid Map: Coronavirus Cases, Deaths, Vaccinations by Country,” 2021, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51235105; José O. Pérez and Vinícius Mendes, “The Intersectionality of Health (In)security: Healthcare, Disposable Workers, and Exposure within Brazil’s Pandemic Politics,” Security Dialogue 54, no. 2 (April 2023): 155–72.
117 Jack Nicas, “Brazilian Leader Accused of Crimes against Humanity in Pandemic Response,” New York Times, 19 October 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/19/world/americas/bolsonaro-covid-19-brazil.html.
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José O. Pérez
José O. Pérez is a PhD candidate in political science at The Ohio State University.