The Foreign Service Journal, April 2006

ulation. A larger territory than the continental U.S., it occupies about half of the land area of South America and borders on every other country on the continent except Chile and Ecuador. Its economy is the 12th-largest in the world, surpass- ing that of Russia. It is an agribusi- ness superpower, supplying half the world’s soybeans, one-third of its oranges and ranking first in export of chicken parts, in addition to its more traditional dominance in sugar, coffee and tobacco. At the same time, Brazil boasts pockets of relatively sophisticated industry; for example, it ranks fourth globally in production of civil aircraft, many of which are used by regional U.S. air carriers. Partly because of its dimensions, partly because of its history, culture and language, Brazil is an anomaly in Latin America. Portugal gave Brazil its language and also the institutions of the Braganca monarchy and legalized slavery, both of which endured until the end of the 19th century. Portugal also bequeathed to Brazil a more accommodative social and political style than that of Spain, helping to hold it together as Spanish America splintered. Lacking obvious mineral wealth — at least until the discovery of gold in the 18th century — Brazil evolved as an essentially plantation economy. Lacking native labor for these plantations, it imported huge numbers of African slaves from an early date, resulting in a pop- ulation that is at least half of African descent and a cul- ture renowned for its African roots. Finally, as Portugal’s resources ebbed, royal land grants came to be used as a means to administer the interior; this led to a dispersion of authority which persists to this day. That history helps to explain the central government’s struggles to curb human rights abuses and environmental destruc- tion in the Brazilian outback. A “Real” Country Many foreigners know Brazil best for its mass-marketed “fantasy indus- try” — its music, films, TV soap operas, plastic surgery and, of course, the annual bacchanalia of Carnival week. The country’s show-biz pro- wess may even promote an unfair image of frivolity; the idea that “Brasil n’est pas un pays serieux,” in Charles de Gaulle’s famous line. This is a calumny that ignores the society’s significant accomplishments in consequential areas — such as its audacious and dramatically successful anti- inflation plan of the early 1990s, its pioneering of deep- water oil drilling technology, its success in combating HIV/AIDS, and its achievement of energy indepen- dence using sugar-based ethanol and new offshore oil and gas exploration. One of the biggest Brazilian turnabouts in recent years has been the country’s transformation from the poster child of the 1980s debt crisis to a stable and reli- able player in the international financial system. The change took hold during the Fernando Henrique Cardoso administration of the late 1990s, but has con- tinued under Cardoso’s successor, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva. Despite his leftist roots, Lula has impressed the global financial community by maintaining — even tightening — Cardoso’s fiscal and monetary policies. Brazil’s external position has become so strong that the government was able to pay off its $15 billion IMF loan last December, two years in advance of its due date. So if inventiveness, technical skill and external eco- nomic probity are not Brazil’s problems, what is? The pri- mary answer is the country’s weak political institutions. The country’s massive, often unresponsive bureaucracy, its dysfunctional political parties and sometimes irrespon- sible legislature all render Brazil highly vulnerable to offi- cial corruption and scandal — in turn disrupting progress on the reform and development agenda. The follow-on effects, abroad and at home, are to undercut the Brazilian government’s credibility, sour the investment climate and threaten the stability of its currency (the real) on world financial exchanges. F O C U S 28 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / A P R I L 2 0 0 6 Mark Lore was a Foreign Service officer from 1965 to 1997. His overseas service was in South America, Africa and Europe, including a tour as deputy chief of mission and chargé d’affaires in Brasilia from 1992 to 1995. His final assignment was as professor of strategy and policy at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. His current activities include serving as course chair for the Brazil/Southern Cone region in the Area Studies division of the Foreign Service Institute. Partly because of its dimensions, partly because of its history, culture and language, Brazil is an anomaly in Latin America.