Snubbing Chavez and Seducing Brazil Are Two Sides of Same Bush Game

George W. Bush’s trip to Latin America this month is the most ambitious attempt to reposition the United States in the region since the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas died in Mar del Plata in November of 2005. The trip, which includes Brazil, Uruguay, Mexico, Guatemala, and Colombia has a dual purpose: to counteract the growing influence of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in the region and to form a strategic alliance with Brazil for the production of ethanol. Although it may not appear on the surface, the two objectives are profoundly related.

“We have 80 million hectares in the Amazon that are going to be converted into the Saudi Arabia of biodiesel,” affirmed the Brazilian engineer Expedito Parente to the newspaper O Globo. Parente knows what he’s talking about – he is the owner of the first patent registered in the world for the industrial production of biodiesel.

In 1977, when he was a professor at the University of Ceara, he conceived of his project based on the use of oleaginosas such as soybeans and the mamona plant.

Today Brazil is the number-one producer of ethanol in the world, alongside the United States, and the two nations are poised to consolidate an alliance that will assure Brazil’s position as regional leader and global power.

Brazzil Magazine