Javier Milei, president-elect of Argentina, wants to leave the disagreements with his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in the past, whom he invited by letter to the inauguration ceremony in Buenos Aires, on December 10.
“I send you this message, bearer of my cordial greetings and in order to convey to you the invitation to accompany me, on December 10, in the events that will take place here on the occasion of my Assumption of the Presidential Command,” Milei wrote in a letter that his future chancellor, Diana Mondino, delivered this Sunday by hand to the Brazilian chancellor, Mauro Vieira. Mondino flew to Brasilia for the match.
“Both nations have many challenges ahead of us and I am convinced that an economic, social and cultural change, based on the principles of freedom, will position us as competitive countries in which its citizens can develop their capabilities to the maximum and thus, choose the future they want,” adds the populist ultra-liberal, winner of the Argentine elections a week ago with 55.6% of the votes.
Milei’s step is bold, after months in which he dedicated all kinds of disqualifications to Lula and the Brazilian government. Having sent his future chancellor to Brasilia to try a new beginning of the relationship speaks to the fact that the Argentine president-elect will opt for pragmatism instead of continuing with his idea that with “socialist and communist countries” there should be no political relations of government to government. The same should be expected from the relationship with Spain, despite the fact that there have not yet been contacts with Pedro Sánchez.
On the night that Milei won the Argentine Presidency, Eduardo Bolsonaro, one of the sons of former president Jair Bolsonaro, uploaded a drawing to social networks in which his father, Milei and Donald Trump were seen smiling. The president-elect of Argentina has strong affinities with the former US president and the former Brazilian president, and he is well aware that Bolsonaro is nothing short of the devil for Lula.
The tense situation added a new ingredient last Wednesday, when Milei published a message on social network X: “Thank you to each of the world leaders who contacted me to congratulate our team and express their good wishes for the future.” of Argentina”.
The message included the mention of several world leaders, including the Chilean Gabriel Boric, from the left, the Italian Giorgia Meloni, from the right, the Frenchman Emanuel Macron, the Ukrainian Volodimir Zelensky and the British Foreign Minister, David Cameron. Lula did not appear, despite the fact that the same Sunday the Brazilian congratulated the Argentines on the election, although without mentioning the elected president.
Mondino, the future head of Argentine foreign relations, spoke in recent days with her Brazilian counterpart, Mauro Vieira, and with the Brazilian ambassador to Argentina, Julio Glinternick Bitelli, as well as with the Argentine ambassador to Brazil, Daniel Scioli. The four met this Sunday in Brasilia.
Scioli’s case is especially interesting. Peronism’s presidential candidate in 2015, narrowly defeated by Mauricio Macri, he managed to get Bolsonaro and the current Argentine president, Alberto Fernández, to talk and understand each other on some issues despite having started their governments by exchanging disqualifications and insults. Scioli wants to remain in Brasilia as an ambassador, and it would not be strange if he did so: Milei was part of his economic teams in the 2015 campaign. Other versions indicate that the Peronist Scioli would be Secretary of Tourism.
On Tuesday night, Lula gave a signal of detente at the Río Branco diplomacy school, in the Itamaraty Palace. “I don’t have to like the president of Chile, Argentina or Venezuela. He doesn’t have to be my friend. He has to be president of his country, I have to be president of my country. We have to have a Brazilian state policy and he has to have his. We have to sit at the table, each one defending their interests. There cannot be supremacy of one over the other, we have to reach an agreement. That is the art of democracy.”
We must “try to live democratically in adversity,” Lula added. If the president of Brazil and that of Argentina finally manage to establish a fruitful relationship, this would be greeted with joy in Brussels, headquarters of the European Union (EU), which is seeking to close the strategic association agreement with Mercosur, and the latest that What is needed is that Brasilia and Buenos Aires do not understand each other. And it would also be important for the rest of the world, because Brazil will preside over the G-20 in 2024, and a fight between the South American giant and its main regional partner would not exactly be a help in that forum.
After being blessed on Saturday night in Buenos Aires by a rabbi, Milei will embark on a trip tonight to New York, where he will attend to private matters of a “spiritual” nature and then will travel to Washington, where he will have meetings with State Department officials. .
