The victory of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — a long-time ally of Havana and the Castro family — marked the first stumble for President Donald Trump’s administration in its efforts to isolate Cuba and facilitate the region’s ongoing transition away from hard-left governance.
The Brazilian leftist’s victory is a stand-out among recent Latin American elections that have swung towards a pro-American right-wing. He has expressed solidarity with the Cuban government, and his post-election speeches have prominently rejected American hegemony. Now, the Communist government will likely court Brazil as a major patron to replace fallen allies like Venezuela
“The election of Lula is not gonna make democratizing Cuba any easier. It’s gonna make it harder. It’s a tragedy for 10 million Cubans,” Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told the Washington Examiner.
Cuba, located just 90 miles off the coast of Florida, has been economically isolated by U.S. sanctions since 1962. Combined with ill-fated social policies implemented by the communist government, these penalties have resulted in a public economy plagued by fuel shortages, a severe dearth of medical resources, and a recurring lack of food.
Since the beginning of the current administration, Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have twisted the screws on Cuba to such a breaking point that the island has fallen into an undeniable humanitarian crisis.
Lula, alongside fellow progressives Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, reaffirmed a continuous stream of aid to the communist nation earlier this year. The Brazilian leader denounced Trump as a “warlord” and demanded the “blockade must stop, and Cubans must be allowed to continue their lives.”
Melissa Ford Maldonado, director of the Western Hemisphere Initiative at the America First Policy Institute, told the Washington Examiner that while Cuba will seek further relief from Brazil to keep their country functioning, it will probably be too little too late.
“Brazil is a big economy. Brazil is a big country,” Maldonado said. “But I don’t think that it will be enough.”
“I don’t necessarily think that the administration is just going to throw its hands up because Brazil might be possibly supporting Cuba,” she continued. “Obviously, Brazil has an economic size that matters, but for the people that are speculating whether Brazil’s going to come in and replace Venezuela’s former role — I think it’s going to take a lot more than just what it’s been giving, which are these expressions of solidarity recently.”
Former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro governed his country as a patron state of Cuba for years. Venezuelan aid and trade opportunities — tied to a wider black market with the likes of Russia, China, and Iran — gave the Cuban communist government some breathing room amid the sanctions.
Maduro was kidnapped by U.S. special forces in January and now faces trial in New York on charges of narco-terrorism related to alleged cooperation with drug cartels. Venezuela has been transformed into a puppet state of the U.S., ostensibly until a legitimate election can be held to select his replacement.
If Lula were to try to fill Maduro’s shoes, he would be begging for punishment by Washington.
“[Brazil] would have to take some serious measures, which would include seriously expanding oil shipments, financing, investments, real assistance [to Cuba]. And we’ve not really seen any of that yet,” Maldonado explained. “That would include a lot of commercial and diplomatic costs that I am not sure that Brazil is ready for or is ready to accept. It’s increasingly isolated in the Western hemisphere.”
One weapon the United States could easily use to bludgeon the Lula government is Flavio Bolsonaro, the failed opposition leader who has been granted a visa by the White House after losing the weekend election. He is the son of imprisoned former Brazilian president and prominent Trump ally Jair Bolsonaro.
Alleging that the election was compromised by political malfeasance and unprecedented intervention by the nation’s highest court, Bolsonaro has declared himself the true president of Brazil. A public letter published Wednesday indicates he will be operating a government-in-exile from the U.S.
“I want to say, not only to my 60 million voters but to the Brazilian people, that I am the elected president and that the criminals who stole Brazil’s election are part of a criminal organization that has established a tyranny,” he declared in the letter.
Trump has thus far withheld a direct endorsement of Bolsonaro’s campaign or claims to presidential legitimacy, but simultaneously suggested that Lula’s victory was “rigged.”
“We gave [Bolsonaro] a pass to come into the country, so we’ll see — but I won’t get involved,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday. “It was a very strange election. I thought they were treated very unfairly and I didn’t take a position in the election, as you know, but when I see something that’s inappropriate, I bring it up.”
Bolsonaro still commands the respect of approximately half the Brazilian voting public. If Lula crosses a line in his support for Cuba and the White House wants to make his life difficult, empowering the right-wing opposition leader’s crusade would be an easy method of sowing chaos.
Fireworks at UN
Meanwhile, U.S.-Cuba relations hit a belligerent and physically violent boiling point on the floor of the United Nations this week, endangering international solidarity for the island.
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz gave an address to the international body on Tuesday comparing Cuban citizens’ gasoline shortages to the Castro family’s mega-yachts, and the public’s crumbling healthcare system to communist officials’ Rolex watches.
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla stormed toward the podium during the speech, accusing Waltz of lying and insulting his nation.
“Back up!” Waltz chided his Cuban counterpart as U.N. officials tried to restore order. “Back up, ambassador. Back away. This isn’t Havana. You’re not going to intimidate me.”
Cuban First Secretary Richard Tur de la Concepcion shoved and attempted to grab the phone of a Waltz spokesman on the sidelines of the speech.
The U.S. government immediately dropped the hammer on Tur, moving to strip him of his diplomatic privileges and send him back to Cuba.
“These overbearing communists who did not brook any defense, who will not hear anything they don’t like — they thought they were in the middle of Havana,” Gonzalez told the Washington Examiner. “They wanted to stop Waltz from saying things they didn’t agree with. This is how they behave in Havana, and they thought they could behave in the United States that way. And no, they cannot.”
Waltz’s clash with the diplomats occurred ahead of a vote to condemn the long-standing American sanctions on Cuba, an annual motion which usually draws near-universal assent — and the diplomatic blunder seems to have damaged Cuba’s support. While the motion still carried as usual, the number of affirmative votes compared to last year plummeted from 165 to 130, with key member states like Italy and Germany abstaining for the first time in decades.
“I’m satisfied that so many countries now, including major economies like Korea, like Germany, and others have shifted their position,” Waltz said after the resolution. “Diplomacy takes time, but now that we’ve had a tripling of countries that have shifted, we expect that to only to continue to grow.”
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The midterm elections and the muddled war against Iran have forced many in the administration to divert its focus from the communist nation in the short term. But Rubio stands out among top officials as the statesman who has never let the issue be ignored for long, emerging as a sort of boogeyman in the rhetoric of Latin American leftists.
“He is a Cuban descendent from Miami, so he hates Cuba […] he hates Brazil,” Lula said of Rubio during a speech in August, calling the secretary an “anti-Latin American.” The Brazilian president claimed Rubio was dangerous because he often acted in contradiction to negotiations previously made with Trump.
Meanwhile, some Latin American outlets have propagated a narrative that puts Rubio at the center of Bolsonaro’s escape — coordinating passage with the governments of Argentina and Ecuador to spirit the right-wing leader into American arms. There has been no independent verification of these claims, but the characterization reflects the influence the secretary is perceived to hold in the region.
Trump mused on Rubio’s effectiveness while speaking to an audience in Corpus Christi, Texas this week — threatening to send him to Cuba after the Iranian conflict is resolved.
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“Perhaps, when we’re done with Iran, on the way back, we’ll drop Marco in Cuba. We’ll send him there with a parachute,” Trump joked. “We’ll drop him right in the center of Cuba, and he’ll solve this problem in two minutes.”
Brazil will need to decide if they want risk being in Havana if Rubio makes his landing.