Brazil’s new foreign policy is promising

(Photo: Eraldo Peres – AP)

Judging from what Brazil’s foreign minister, Jose Serra, suggested in an interview, Latin America’s biggest country will make a major change in its foreign policy: It will no longer be an unconditional supporter and ideological ally of Cuba, Venezuela, and other authoritarian regimes.

Serra — a veteran politician and former presidential candidate who has served as governor of Sao Paulo, development minister and health minister — told me that Brazil’s new government of interim President Michel Temer will place a much greater emphasis on the defense of human rights in the region.

“There will be a new foreign policy, ” Serra told me in a telephone interview. “The [central] idea will be that Brazil’s foreign policy must serve the interests of the nation, and not that of one party or one ideology, as has been the case in recent years.”

Under suspended President Dilma Rousseff — who is undergoing an impeachment process — and her predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Brazil had supported some of the world’s worst human-rights offenders.

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