Brazil’s Foreign Policy and Security under Lula and Bolsonaro: Hierarchy, Racialization, and Diplomacy

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.