Auto-Estima in Brazil

Abstract

Less than two weeks after Luiz Inacio LuIa da Suva was sworn in as president of Brazil, his newly appointed foreign minister, Celso Amorim, was asked what would change in his country's foreign policy. For seasoned national observers the reply that Brazil would take an active role in world affairs was a bit of a disappointment, representing little more than a reaffirmation of the country's longstanding position of pushing multilateralism as a device for defending national autonomy. Subsequent suggestions by LuIa that Brazil might fill a middle ground between the north and the south as well as Amorim's detailed call for the use of multilateral institutions to democratize international affairs contributed to the impression that, despite forceful assertions to the contrary, little of substance had changed. Indeed, the reappointment of Amorim as foreign minister-he served in the post from August 1993 to December 1994-reinforces the long-term trajectory of Brazilian foreign policy initiatives such as regional and continental integration, elaboration of an inclusive multilateral trading system, and the expansion of linkages with other major emerging markets. These similarities between the Cardoso and LuIa policies aside, suggestions that everything was changed so that all could remain the same are quite mistaken. Although LuIa has maintained the tradition of continuity in Brazilian foreign policy, he has precipitated a dramatic change in the psychological tenor of his country's diplomatic efforts.This article argues that the LuIa government in Brazil is pursuing a psychologically transformative foreign policy agenda in the global south. The goal is not to overturn or delink from the existing international political and economic system, but to prompt a change in how developing countries are inserted into and view the system. In itself, this is not a particularly original ambition and is firmly grounded in Cardoso's persistent calls for reform of international economic governance institutions to make them more inclusive of the south. The originality lies in the strategy being taken to achieve this end. Although Cardoso-style institutional reform and a commitment to multilateralism remains a central facet of Brazilian foreign policy, it has assumed a subordinate role to a conceptual agenda that explicitly questions the neat division between developed and developing. LuIa is consciously attempting to reframe the development dichotomy, deliberately seeking to reshape notions of southern and Brazilian identity in the international political economy. Rather than presenting the country as a developing state in need of aid, the emphasis is on Brazil as a complex and highly sophisticated economy and polity that is working to overcome an inequitable internal development pattern. The argument that emerges in Brazilian diplomatic discourse is that neat categorizations of developed and developing bifurcate countries into two camps. Implicit in this division is a packet of assumptions about the capabilities of developing countries predicated upon a hierarchical ordering that privileges the capabilities, markets, products, investments, development practices, and socio-cultural norms of northern countries over those found in the south.1The result is not only a perpetuation of the socioeconomic dependence outlined by Cardoso in 1971,2 but also a psychological dependence on the north that prevents developing countries from recognizing and exploiting opportunities in the south. In a theme that strongly recalls the argument in Frantz Fanon's anticolonization text Black Skin, White Masks, LuIa makes constant reference to the auto-estima-self-confidence-that saw Brazilians calmly elect as president a former union leader from the impoverished northeast of the country who lacks a formal education. As will be outlined in the first section of this article, the importance of auto-estima is that it is a signal that a people are making decisions on their own terms to address their needs as they see them. …