The Iron Lady

An election in a Latin American country other than Mexico normally doesn’t create even a ripple in the U.S. Elections south of the border are the stuff of yawns for most Americans… but that was before one of the super-high-growth BRIC countries was anchored in South America, before massive off-shore oil reserves were discovered in Brazil, before populist leader, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (“Lula” to his followers), began carving a powerful path to defy the “big bully” to the north, the United States of America. Most recently, he brokered a deal between Iran and Turkey in connection with spent nuclear fuel rods, a clear slap in America’s face with no clear benefits to Brazil. Lula may in fact be the most popular leader modern Brazil has ever had, but there was one little catch: he was termed out and unable to run for another consecutive presidency. He is credited with lifting 20 million people out of poverty and expanding Brazil’s middle class by 29 million, making him a tough act to follow. He campaigned heavily for the candidate who succeeded him.

Enter Dilma Rousseff, who crushed her centrist opponent in a 56%-44% victory on October 31^st, to become the first woman president (effect January 1^st) of the second largest country in the Western Hemisphere. A cancer survivor and a former Marxist guerrilla who was imprisoned and tortured during Brazil’s last dictatorship, Rousseff is cut from the same leftist/populist cloth as Lula. While hordes would have swept Lula back into office had he been able to run (and he can run again in the future, since the ban is only on direct succession), Rousseff is immensely popular and equally negatively inclined towards the United States. She hates the “Iron Lady” epithet, but those words tell you more than you need to know about her ability to lead.

Brazil has come into her own, with massive new economic values, but she still has a huge struggle ahead with severely polarizing poverty and a significant dearth of educated professionals to solve her obvious issues and spread growth to sectors outside of pure energy exploitation. The legendary favelas of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro – slum cities – rife with organized crime and hopelessness, are the symbols of Brazil’s failures, which perhaps the new oil money can erase. Rousseff has credentials to make a difference; she was Lula’s right hand and the nation’s minister of energy. It is not only that Brazil is listed as one of the highest-growth significant economies on earth (along with Russia, China and India), but she will be increasingly the center of world attention as host of the 2014 World Cup a nd the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Will Rousseff be able to walk her own path or is she simply a surrogate for the ever-popular Lula? The November 1^st AOLNew.com reports these words from her post-election victory speech: “‘The joy I feel with this victory today is mixed with the emotion of his farewell. I know that a leader like Lula will never be away from his people,’ she said, using the president's nickname as her eyes welled with tears and her voice cracked. ‘I will always be able to knock on his door and I'm sure that it will always will be open.’” Time will tell, but if she is to present the power of women, can she truly be completely beholden to a man? “[H]er first promise was to ‘honor the women’ of Brazil and that she hoped her win would allow ‘fathers and mothers to look their daughters in the eyes and say, ‘Yes, a woman can.’” AOL.News.com.

Whatever her politics, challenges and accomplishments might be, Brazil’s ascension to the forefront of modern powers cannot be ignored by American policy-makers and business leaders. The recent hostility from her leaders toward American interests can no longer be glossed over as irrelevant, because Latin America is looking for a new power to challenge the seeming hegemony of the United States over all of the Americas. In a sea of challenges and complex economic impairment, we can no longer afford to ignore our neighbors to the south.

I’m Peter Dekom, and learning to balance global interests against our own is a very necessary skill-set for a United States with a litany of problems it has never faced before.