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10/09/2009

The Brazilian embassy in the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa feels like a place under siege. Police are posted in front of the building, and inside more than 70 people are living in crowded conditions. They wait in lines to use the bathroom, stand around in the garden and the inner courtyard and are camped out in storage rooms and offices. Scenes resembling a black market take place in the hallways, as cigarettes are traded for mobile phone chargers or soap. Towels are in short supply.

In the vestibule in front of the ambassador's chambers, several journalists share a single air mattress, while correspondents for a Honduran radio station sleep in the archives. A man wearing a cowboy hat -- Manuel Zelaya -- occasionally pokes his head through the door to encourage his supporters to persevere.

Three months ago, Zelaya, the president of the small Central American country of Honduras, was ousted in a coup. On Sept. 21, Zelaya made a surprise return to the Honduran capital, where he sought refuge at the Brazilian embassy. It is unclear how he managed to return to Honduras from where he was staying in neighboring Nicaragua. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva allegedly learned that Zelaya planned to seek refuge in the embassy only half an hour before his arrival there. According to the Brazilian foreign minister, the beleaguered Zelaya's life was in danger.

That was over two weeks ago, and Zelaya, operating essentially from Brazilian territory, has used that time to organize a resistance movement against those who carried out the coup. In doing so, he has catapulted Brasilia into the center of a sensitive conflict. Honduras could now turn into a test case over whether Brazil can live up to its role as a leading regional power.

Important Player

Thanks to da Silva, who is widely known as Lula, the largest country in Latin America is now an important economic player, and yet it has kept a low profile so far on international conflicts. Since the country was founded 187 years ago, non-intervention in other countries' internal affairs has been considered a central tenet of Brazilian foreign policy. The diplomats at the Itamaraty, as the country's Foreign Ministry is known, have enjoyed a reputation of efficiency and almost excessive caution, avoiding political partisanship at all costs.

In Honduras, the gentle giant is showing its claws for the first time. Coup leader Roberto Micheletti had given the Brazilians an ultimatum to hand over his rival within 10 days. President Lula responded by saying that Zelaya could remain in the embassy for as long as he wished. The Foreign Ministry supported his decision, noting that Central America falls within Brazil's sphere of interest.

In the past few years, Lula has systematically expanded Brazil's influence abroad. He has sought allies to support Brazil's bid for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, upgraded the country's outdated armed forces and fueled a new nationalism at home. He has formed alliances with China, India and South Africa. According to Lula, the G-20 group, which includes emerging economies, has finally ousted the exclusive club of the seven leading industrialized nations. "The G-7," he said, "is dead."

From the Brazilians' perspective, the financial crisis marks the beginning of a new political order. "We are marching toward a multipolar world," says Lula's foreign policy adviser Marco Aurélio Garcia, "and South America will be one of those poles." Lula, says Garcia, is seeking to form an alliance of all South American countries, and he is determined to no longer tolerate coups like the one in Honduras. "For decades, we have turned our backs on our neighbors, and yet we have more borders than almost any other country." says Garcia.

Garcia, a bearded professor from the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, is one of the architects of Brazil's new foreign policy. His office in Brasilia is only a few rooms away from Lula's offices. During the period of Brazil's military dictatorship, Garcia went into exile, and he later advised Lula's Workers' Party (PT) on international issues. Critics deride the aging leftist as a Brazilian Rasputin, and they accuse him of being the one who arranged for Zelaya's return to Honduras, together with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Garcia denies the accusations.

The New Gringos

There is a reason for his denial. The Lula administration wants to avoid creating the impression that it is positioning itself to become a US-style peacekeeping power. In smaller South American countries, the new Brazilian self-confidence is greeted with mixed feelings, and local politicians in Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay are already stirring up resentment against the "new gringos" from Brazil.

Brasilia owes its rise to the status of regional power largely to Lula's tremendous support at home. Under his administration, millions of the country's poor have ascended into the ranks of the lower middle class. The financial crisis struck Brazil much later than most other countries, and Brazil was also one of the first to emerge from it. The economy is growing, inflation is under control and the Brazilian real is one of the world's strongest currencies.

Lula celebrated a symbolically important triumph last Friday, when the International Olympic Committee chose Rio de Janeiro to host the 2016 summer games. The ensuing state of euphoria in the streets of Brazil was partly due to the perception that Lula had outdone US President Barack Obama, who had traveled to Copenhagen to campaign -- unsuccessfully, as it turned out -- on behalf of his native Chicago.

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• Part 1: Brazil Flexes Muscles over Honduras Crisis
• Part 2: Popular at Home