|
Brazil has plans to grant economic and trade aid to Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay in an attempt to give South America's main trade grouping Mercosur, "greater cohesion," according to the financial press of São Paulo.
Allegedly Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva instructed his ministers to eliminate bureaucratic hurdles which complicate the access to Brazil of goods from those countries and make extending support to those countries in the framework of Mercosur, "difficult."
The target is to have the package ready for next January 18 when the bi annual presidential summits of the group take place in Rio de Janeiro.
Brazilian Foreign Affairs Secretary Celso Amorim confirmed that with his ministerial team he was coordinating Lula instructions to boost Mercosur and to appease the growing complaints from junior members.
Brazil's president met last Thursday with six ministers and it was agreed to extend a US$ 30 million credit to Bolivia for the purchase of 100 tractors and on request from the Bolivian government, plans for the construction of a biodiesel plant are under consideration.
Regarding Paraguay Brazil's intention is to increase compensations for energy from the huge bi-national hydroelectric plant of Itaipu, although how it will be instrumented still has to be worked out. Brazil and Paraguay are at odds over the price paid for the electricity generated in South America's largest dam, most of which most is consumed by São Paulo' industries.
"There's something sacrosanct about Itaipu, which is a successful bi-national project and that is that the energy not consumed by Paraguay goes to Brazil. That is the essence of the agreement when we decided to build the dam," said Amorim who nevertheless admitted "we must find an adequate compensation for Paraguay and I believe in a solution that does not pinch the Brazilian consumer's pocket."
Lula also instructed for an increase in the number of Customs officials in the border with Uruguay, which has complained that the lack of personnel deliberately slows down the inflow of Uruguayan goods to the Brazilian market.
The Brazilian president specifically ordered that trucks loaded with a famous Uruguayan bottled water, "Salus" be immediately liberated putting an end to alleged sanitary reasons for delaying shipments,
"I want to see Salus water in the Mercosur meeting in Rio de Janeiro," emphasized Lula.
Mercosur junior members Paraguay and Uruguay have bitterly complained that the grouping has become a two members' privileged club, Argentina and Brazil, which decide and act on their own with little regard for the other associates.
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Brazil received a huge boost in its international image with its selection as the host of the 2016 Olympics, but it was really just the cherry on top of the overall recognition of the country's ascension to the ranks of one of the world's most important countries. Now, as it finally takes its place on the world scene, there has been a great deal of concern about what kind of image Brazil hopes to project, now that the world is really paying attention. 
The only good thing to say about the visit to Brazil of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on Monday November 23, is that it was mercifully short and lasted less than 24 hours. Ahmadinejad had his picture taken being hugged by president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva who gave him a warm welcome and said Iran had every right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. 
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose.