Press statement by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva during President of Chile's visit

Well, I would like to greet my companion Gabriel Boric, president of the Republic of Chile. I would like to greet the ministers who are accompanying him on this trip to Brazil. I would like to greet the Brazilian ministers who are accompanying me to this meeting. I would like to tell my partner Boric the importance of this visit to Brazil, when we are celebrating 189 years of diplomatic relations, and when we are holding the first meeting after defining the year of friendship between Brazil and Chile, on April 22.

I am not sure if you know, but today was the day the Portuguese discovered Brazil. There are rumors that they already knew that Brazil existed — but, since history has to have a beginning, the beginning was April 22, 1500.

To me, this day is very important, not only because of the agreements and the protocols of intentions that were signed here. I think this meeting is important because of the political moment the world is experiencing. I do not know, my friend Boric is very young, but he has a lot of academic experience and he knows that, for almost 400 years, our countries were led to treat each other as enemies. Brazil turned its back on all of South America; Brazil looked to the European Union and the United States. South America also looked away from Brazil — looking to Europe and the United States. It was as if we were potential enemies. I always say that, before he became president, President Chávez worked at the Venezuelan Military Academy, and he told me that, for a long time, as an academic and professor, the classes he gave to the Venezuelan military were about Brazil being the enemy. It was Brazil that South America had to worry about, not the Spanish, who were colonizers, and much less the United States or the English. It was Brazil. And this happened in other countries too. When I became President of the Republic, I discovered — and I was just telling President Boric about this — that the first bridge in 500 years of history between Brazil and Bolivia was built during my government, in the city of Brasiléia, in the state of Acre. More importantly, the first bridge between Brazil and Peru was also built during my government, after 500 years.

This was the clearest demonstration that we had turned our backs on each other for a long time, flattering the rich and despising the poor, our partners. This is not very different from people's usual behavior. Today, if a person has a very poor relative, they do not even invite them to their birthday party or to their baptism. Because they usually invite the wealthier person.

And that is how Brazil was built for many years. Just to give you an idea, Boric, Chile established its first university in 1842, according to our colleague Alberto van Klaveren. In 1842. Brazil only established its first university in 1920 — just to highlight our submission, for so many years, to the colonizers who colonized us.

This is why I am obsessed with integration. I think that we, presidents of South American countries, should understand that we are very weak when isolated.

We were not born to live another 500 years as a poor country. We were not born to live another 500 years watching our countries being governed by 35% or 45% of the population, as if the rest of society were invisible. As those who do not see themselves. As those who only show up at election time to put those who ignore them in power for their presidential terms. It is this logic that young people, like you, and young people like me, who are not so young, can change. We need to change our understanding of politics.

We need to change our understanding of why we want to be president of the Republic. We need to change our understanding regarding the fact that we, on our own, will be very fragile. A country like Chile, a country like Bolivia, a country like Ecuador, a country like Uruguay, Brazil, even Brazil, which is a large country territorially, but economically and technologically is still weak compared to what it could be: when you negotiate with a great power, you become very vulnerable. It is like a leonine agreement, an agreement with clauses that only benefit the big ones, and nothing to the small ones. That is why, during the 2002 campaign, I was against the FTAA. Many people did not understand, but I was against the FTAA because I thought that only one country would benefit from the FTAA: Brazil. The rest would be under a policy of submission.

I am telling you this because you are finishing your four-year term as president of Chile. I think you were the youngest president in Chile. I do not think anyone as young has ever come out of the student movement's marches to become president of Chile. And I am the only president of Brazil who was reelected three times. So there is a certain similarity between the behavior of the Chilean people in voting for a young man like you, and the Brazilian people in voting for an old man like me.

There is a certain similarity. But one thing that can make us symbolize something new in South American politics is that we need to work very hard and very intensely on our integration. When we preside over a country, we do not preside over it ideologically.

I do not care if my opponent there or my opponent on the other side is president — if he is right-wing or left-wing. I want to know that he is the president of a country, and I want to maintain a relationship with him as a head of state. And that is why I need to create solid institutions that, regardless of the government, function well.

We cannot depend on the president. “Ah, today Lula is there, I am participating in something. Tomorrow Lula is not there, Brazil does not participate. Today Boric is there, he participates, tomorrow Boric is not there, he does not participate”. Trade policy, cultural policy, politics, the geopolitics of the world should not be contingent on occasions. They have to be perennial. And we need to build institutions that provide security for the exercise of democracy regardless of who is the president of the Republic. What will Brazil be like when I am no longer president? If the far right comes here. What will Chile be like if the far right comes into Chile? And so it is for all countries.

Let us look at the difference between the United States, from Biden [Joe Biden, former US president] to Trump [Donald Trump, US president]. What has changed in this world? That is what we need to think about to consolidate two things. First, democracy. Second, multilateralism. Third, free trade. Look at this fantastic thing, Boric: the trade relationship between Brazil and Chile has reached around 11 billion dollars.

Many people here in Brazil, many ordinary people, many journalists, even if you ask them, think that Brazil's biggest trade is with France, England, Italy. There are only two European countries that have more trade than Brazil and Chile: Spain and Germany.

As for the rest, the trade flow between Brazil and Chile is bigger than all of them. As was the case with Argentina. When I took office in 2003, the trade balance flow between Brazil and Argentina was 7 billion dollars. When we left the Presidency, it was 39 billion dollars. Our trade relations with South America were worth 15 billion dollars. When we left, it had reached 89 billion dollars.

This shows that part of the solution to our problem is in our hands, it is close to us, it is with our partners. And often, due to a cultural issue, due to a dispute that none of us knows how it started, we have a certain inability to make things happen quickly. From now on, my companions, we need to set goals.

A meeting like this, each protocol that we sign, has to have a goal. It has to be met by a certain date. Because, otherwise, bureaucracy will not carry anything out. Otherwise, instead of scheduling a meeting tomorrow, they will postpone it for next month. Instead of scheduling it for next month, they will schedule it for next year and time will pass. And people do not realize that bureaucrats are eternal.

The presidential mandate has an expiration date. You had a date when you took office — and it will expire in November, when your term ends.

This is inevitable, because it is constitutional. So another president will come in, and we do not know if he will have the same good relationship that we have regarding Brazil, or vice versa, that Brazil will have with Chile. So it is important that we discuss democracy very seriously.

It is very important that we discuss integration. The presidents that seemed conservative at the time — Sarney [José Sarney, former president of Brazil] and Alfonsín [Raúl Alfonsín, former president of Argentina] — had the courage to create Mercosur. Neither of them were progressive, but they had the competence to understand the need for integration.

Argentina is close to me, Chile is close to me, Uruguay is close to me, Paraguay is close to me. Why can't I strengthen my negotiations with them? Why can't I try to sell more and buy more? Why can't I discuss integration with this bioceanic corridor that Simone Tebet [minister of Planning and Budget] presented to us?

The planet has been the same for millions of years, the Pacific is there, the Atlantic is here. And why is it that only now, 160 million years after the existence of the planet or who knows how many millions of years, we have decided to discover that it is possible to create a bioceanic corridor between us?

These are the things that have to change our capacity for governance when we take on the responsibility of governing a country. I dream of integration. I am not from the time of the dream of a great America, I am not from the time of our liberators who won independence. I am a new liberator. In other words, I discovered that integration is needed because Chile is there, Chile is close to me. Another country in ASEAN is very far away. Paraguay is there, close to me. Uruguay is there, Ecuador is there. If there are no roads, there are rivers.

If there are no rivers, there are airports; if there are none, there are roads and railways. But we need to take advantage of this to make our economy grow. I cannot imagine why no country in Latin America has become rich. Why don't we have a country like the Netherlands? Celso [Celso Amorim, chief advisor to the Special Advisory Office of the President of the Republic], you who are the dean, you who are the dean of this plenary session: why don't we have a country like the Netherlands? Norway? Denmark? Austria? Why haven't we had any country like the Nordic countries that have grown from a scientific and technological point of view? Why isn't Mexico like Canada? Why is Mexico poorer and Canada rich?

Why are there only poor countries in Central America? The United States could have financed development in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. There, neighbors, there, everyone could be a satellite of extraordinary development. No: everyone remains poor.

And everyone is a nomad, because everyone wants to travel to the United States to see if their lives improve. After helping to build American wealth, a president comes along who treats them as enemies. Latin Americans are now all enemies. Everyone leave, because the United States belongs to the United States.

But didn't those Latin Americans help build it? Did they help build it?

So these are the things we need to think about. And this agreement that we signed here, Boric, is just the beginning of a story between you and me.

You still have five months left in your term. I still have a year and six months. A year and seven months. I still have a good amount of time. But I think that, in the short time that you have, we need to be able to do what we have not been able to do until now. First, we need to convince our people of the importance of this.

I had an extraordinary relationship with Uribe [Álvaro Uribe, former president of Colombia]. Uribe was a right-wing man, but he was part of UNASUR. And we got along very well.

Piñera [Miguel Piñera Etchenique, former president of Chile]: I really miss my relationship with Piñera. When Piñera was president of Chile, I was no longer president of Brazil. He welcomed me at La Moneda and came to São Paulo to visit me at my office. And he said to me: “Hey Lula, do you want to be president again?” I said: no. He said: “Well I do.” And he became president again.

Our relationship was very good. He did not need to like Chávez, or Chávez to like Toledo, or Toledo to like Alan Garcia, or Alan Garcia to like Rafael Correa, or Lula to like... No one needed to like anyone. We were not talking about marriage. We were talking about geopolitical relations, relations between states. And that is it. Either we learn this, or we will continue to be poor for 500 years. We need to make a qualitative leap.

What will Chile be like without copper? What will Brazil be like without oil? What will Brazil be like without its powerful corporate agriculture or family farming? We need to think, diversify our relationships, seek new partners, new learning experiences — otherwise we will continue to be poor for another century. For how many years has the Catholic Church existed? Two thousand years? And for the first time a Latin American Pope, in the most Catholic region in the world? Something is wrong.

Boric, when I went to compete in the Olympics, for Brazil to win the Olympics in 2016, can you believe that we discovered that, in the whole of Africa, a continent with 54 countries, there were fewer delegates than Switzerland? Because these institutions were not made for us — they were made for the colonizing countries. So Italy had five delegates, in the national COB, Switzerland had five delegates, China had one.

So, why am I saying these things? Because, the thing is, we need to realize this when there is a president of an important country like the United States who decides to establish a discussion in favor of a protectionist policy, contrary to everything that has been said to us since the 1980s. Globalization, free trade, that is, everyone only talked about free trade and globalization, and suddenly none of this is valid anymore. What is valid is protectionism. You do not want a cold war and I do not want a cold war. I do not want to choose between the United States or China. I want to have relationships with the United States, I want to have relations with China. I do not want to have a preference for one or the other.

The ones who should have preferences are my businesspeople who want to do business with their businesspeople. But not me: I want to do business with everyone.

I want to sell and buy, sell and buy, sell and buy, make partnerships. That is what I want you to take away from Brazil. Brazil has the role – because of its size, because of its economic importance – of being an inducing country.

I always say, maybe this word is not correct, generous, but I say that Brazil has to be generous. Brazil cannot compete for positions with our brothers in Latin America. “Ah, Brazil wants a little position in the OAS. A little position…”. Brazil does not have to compete. Brazil, in itself, is already great. Brazil does not need this competition. Brazil needs to support the things that are being carried out by the best possible people.

That is why, Boric, you are invited to come to the BRICS later this year, in July. I think you should go to China, to the meeting with CELAC. Let us try to see if we can, with Celso's friendship in China, get you to have a bilateral meeting with Xi Jinping, so that you can show that a country’s greatness does not arise from its territorial extension — a country is great because of the dynamism of its politics, its culture, its people, and Chile has a lot of greatness.

You know that Brazil is eternally grateful to Chile for everything Chile did for the Brazilians who were persecuted by the authoritarian regime in 1964. That is why, my dear companion Boric, I want you to leave Brazil, after lunch, after the debate with the businesspeople, with the certainty that our relationship will never be the same again. We have an obligation to make it better, better and better.

Thank you very much, my dear.