Can we expect something from new Foreign minister?
Carlos França, Brazil's new minister of Foreign Affairs, knows well where he is and why.
He had a virtual meeting scheduled with Senator Kátia Abreu (Progressive Party, PP, of Tocantins) for the coming days. President of the Committee on Foreign Relations at the Senate and responsible for removing Ernesto Araújo from the job Mr. França now holds, she has avoided leaving her farm outside Palmas and prefers videoconferences since she spent a week hospitalized with Covid-19 in late 2020. She says that she still feels moderate shortness of breath and sometimes she loses her sense of smell.
Tactfully Mr. França offered: "Would you mind if I fly to Tocantins so we can talk face to face?" he asked, committing to follow health protocols. Politics and diplomacy are also about small acts. Ms. Abreu approved the visit, a signal, according to her, that he is making an effort to listen and to dialogue.
Dialogues, open channels and bridge-building were expressions used by Mr. França in his inauguration speech. Five years ago, this would have been ordinary. On Tuesday, it sounded revolutionary. It was sort of a funeral of Mr. Araújo's blistering rhetoric. A rescue of traditional diplomacy. Instead of greetings to an imaginary majesty, a real and objective nod to Argentina, a forever partner that cannot be wrenched from the map. Gone are the references to the coronavirus as a control tool to reshape global socio-economic relations.
Terms in disuse at the Itamaraty, the Foreing Affairs Ministry, since January 2019, such as "multilateralism" and "climate emergency," returned to the official speech. And the best: no messianism, there was no quote in ancient Greek or the proclamation of the Holy Mary in Tupi-Guarani.
Still without political weight, however, Mr. França will need to move amid the shadows of international advisor Filipe Martins, who went unscathed by recent changes at the top of the government, and of Deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro (Social Liberal Party, PSL, of São Paulo), who uses the access granted to him as the third son of President Jair Bolsonaro whenever suits him and hides under the excuse of being "just one more out of the 513 [elected deputies]" when he gets in trouble.
Anyone who thinks Eduardo Bolsonaro is very quietly recently is not following the work of the Chamber of Deputies' Foreign Affairs Committee. Last week, a motion was almost voted to repudiate Hezbollah as a terrorist group responsible for attacks in Buenos Aires in the 1990s...
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