CARACAS, Venezuela, Dec. 1 (UPI) -- When Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva won the Brazilian Presidency in October, 2002, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez celebrated the victory as further evidence of Latin America's turn to the left. The populist Venezuelan president assured that Lula would join the governments of Argentina, Ecuador and Cuba to form a continental "anti-globalization axis" that would fight against the neoliberal reforms of the 1990s.
Now a year into Lula's presidency, the former Brazillian steel worker appears more intent on taking advantage of globalization than fighting against it -- putting him increasingly at odds with President Chavez. And as the Bush administration continues to push for the 2005 approval of the Free Trade Area of the Americas, a continental free trade initiative, the two leaders will soon find it difficult to disguise their evident differences.
Also, although Lula has been able to successfully juggle a broad political coalition ranging from landless peasants to foreign creditors, progressive elements of his coalition are slowly drifting towards the Chavez hard line anti-globalization movement.
"Right now, Lula and Chavez have common interests, but they will inevitably split," says Venezuelan political analyst Alberto Garrido. "While Lula is trying to use the strength of Brazil's economy to carve out a strong positioning in the globalization race, Chavez is leading a worldwide movement against globalization."
According to Garrido, Lula's government put aside class struggle to advance the interests of Brazil as a nation, while the Chavez government has focused so intensely on class conflict that the country has polarized under his rule.
The main issue likely to drive a wedge between the two left-of-center presidents is the FTAA, a proposed free trade area stretching from Alaska to Patagonia. With a population of 175 million and the second-largest economy on the continent, Brazil refuses to be kicked around like the other supposed small fries and has aggressively negotiated trade concessions from the United States.
Brazil took center stage at the FTAA discussions in Miami late last month, forcing the U.S. to sideline discussions of thorny issues such as agricultural subsidies and intellectual property rights and winning concessions that make the FTAA agreement more flexible. The resulting compromise has been dubbed "FTAA lite," representing concessions for the Latin American countries concerned they are being thrown onto a tilted playing field.
But only a week after Brazil's success at the Miami bargaining tables, President Chavez told reporters that Venezuela would boycott any version of the FTAA -- even with the compromises that Brazil had managed to win. "Signing the FTAA is like drinking a glass of poison," Chavez told reporters in his usual jovial manner, "If someone offers me the 'FTAA lite', it would be like offering me the same glass with 10 percent less poison -- would I drink it?"
Venezuela's president is proposing economic and energy integration agreements between Latin American countries, and assures that Venezuela "will not support any version of the FTAA." The intransigence of the two positions will mean that a confrontation is inevitable down the road.
Even though both Lula and Chavez have their origins in the Latin American left, the circumstances that allowed each to reach the presidency have led to considerably different governments. Chavez, a former lieutenant colonel, was made famous by a one-minute television speech after he led a failed coup attempt in 1992. He managed to win two landslide elections in 1998 and 2000, despite no previous experience in politics and an openly left-wing social reform agenda that was widely accepted by a population desperate for a change from the old order.
Chavez now calls his movement the "Bolivarian Revolution," named in honor of Venezuelan founding father Simon Bolivar and dedicated to stopping globalization in its tracks. Lula, in contrast, cut his teeth in Brazil's union movement and made three unsuccessful presidential bids before being elected as the candidate of the traditionally socialist Workers Party (PT). For most of the 2002 campaign, Lula kept voters guessing as to whether or not he would maintain fiscal discipline and honor foreign debts -- compromises he decided to keep once reaching office.
Furthermore, there is evidence that Chavez may in fact be contributing to the growing cracks in Lula's coalition. Lula's poll numbers have dropped in recent months as he has been too centrist to keep the extremes happy.
The successful reform of Brazil's state pension program, known as costly pork-barrel burden the state, led three legislators to leave Lula's party in protest, arguing that the PT had always opposed the reform. The Movimento Sem Terra (MST), the country's primary organization of landless peasants, last week agreed to give Lula another 6 months to complete his promised land reform program, but still complain that Lula has only provided land for half as many families as promised. At the same time, the Venezuelan government recently invited the MST to a meeting of anti-globalization activists, where MST representatives signed a plan that opposes any version of the FTAA -- even the one negotiated by Lula in Miami. As Brazil's dispossessed begin to think that Lula is cozying up to multilateral lending agencies, Chavez is becoming an attractive alternative.
For its part, the United States has every interest in ensuring that the friendship between Lula and Chavez does not last too much longer. One the one hand, the United States wants better access to Brazil's booming $450 billion economy, expected to grow by 3 percent next year. But at the same time, Venezuela has become a headache for the Bush administration by effectively stymieing U.S. plans for the continent. In addition to opposing the FTAA, Venezuela has undermined the U.S. embargo of Cuba by shipping oil and fuel to the Castro government at subsidizes rates, and has become communist island's largest trading partner at a moment when President Bush is making campaign promises to strengthen the embargo. Furthermore, the Chavez government openly opposes Plan Colombia, a U.S. backed counter-narcotics program which in 2004 is slated to be expanded to include a counter-insurgency component. Thus the U.S. will not be sorry to see Lula and Chavez part ways.
Lula has also avoided backing Chavez as he fends off an opposition attempt to hold a recall referendum. In August, Lula told foreign correspondents that Chavez would have to allow a referendum on his rule, given that the vote was a guaranteed constitutional right. The U.S. is likely to pressure Chavez not to delay the referendum through legal challenges, which will be much easier for Chavez to ignore than similar pressure from Lula.
The fundamental underlying issue is that Lula and Chavez represent two different strains of a Latin American left reemerging in the wake of a decade of failed free market reforms. On the far end of the spectrum are Chavez, Cuban President Fidel Castro, and Bolivian cocalero leader Evo Morales, who was crucial in toppling former President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada. The three leaders, steeped in Latin America's tradition of 1960s militancy, have promised to remake the revolutions of the past.
Lula's movement has shunned the Latin America's traditional left in favor a pragmatic approach based on the politics as "the art of the possible." Although it is still unclear which of the two will dominate the continental renaissance of the left, Lula and Chavez, as emblematic figures of the two different wings, will at some point part company.
