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News > Brazil

Far-Right Homage: Bolsonaro Visits CIA Before Meeting Trump on First US Visit

  • Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro participates in a Brazil-U.S. Business Council forum to discuss relations and future cooperation and engagement in Washington

    Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro participates in a Brazil-U.S. Business Council forum to discuss relations and future cooperation and engagement in Washington | Photo: Reuters

Published 18 March 2019
Opinion

During Bolsonaro’s clandestine visit to Langley, the President spoke with CIA Director, Gina Haspel, about international affairs of the region.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro showed the world who’s really the boss by visiting the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Headquarters in Virginia Monday prior to meeting President Donald Trump, on his first official visit to the U.S.

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“No Brazilian president had ever paid a visit to the CIA,” Celso Amorim, who served as foreign minister under former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, told AP, adding that it “is an explicitly submissive position.” 

The clandestine chat was announced by his son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, in a tweet saying the meeting was “an excellent opportunity to talk about international affairs of the region with technicians and experts of the highest level.” 

A rather ominous fact, since the CIA has been involved in numbers of assassinations, military coups, and interventions around the globe with special regard against progressive governments in Latin America. And quite fitting comment as the three-day visit underscores Bolsonaro’s embrace of U.S. influence in Latin America to confront what he calls a communist threat against democracy.

A theme the far-right populist leader insisted on Sunday declaring he “always dreamt of freeing Brazil from the dirty ideology of the left.” Combine this to his well-known praise of the Brazilian dictatorship, which caused forced disappearances, torture, and killings over two decades, and the CIA does not make such an “unexpected” place to visit after all. Especially as he was accompanied by Brazilian Justice Minister Sergio Moro, the same judge that led the lawfare strategy to carry out the soft-coup against ousted Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, and has been allegedly linked to working for the agency. 

After this chat in Langley, he is due to meet like-minded President Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday to discuss a range of issues, including ways to increase U.S. private-sector investment in Brazil and also the ongoing interventionists actions against Venezuela. Bolsonaro has stated that he supports Trump’s policies and the fact that he wants “to have a great Brazil just like Trump wants to have a great America,” has dubbed him the nickname “Trump of the Tropics”.

Yet this public admiration is even surprising to the U.S. A senior administration official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity, said “even the friendliest of Brazilian governments was never really that friendly. Here we have now a government in Brazil we truly consider an ally.” A remarkable claim as the 1964 coup and Brazilian Dictatorship was fully backed by the U.S. government and even received direct assistance from the CIA, as the National Security Archive (NSA) revealed in 2014. 

Leaving the controversy aside Bolsonaro’s first official visit marks a complete alliance to the U.S. strategy and plans for the region, in which Brazil hopes to play a pivotal role. 

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