The US and Israel’s Planned Takeover of Latin America Hits a Big Snag

President Lula’s “mathematically difficult” electoral victory has put a huge spanner in the works of the US’ Donroe Doctrine.

On Sunday, Brazil staged one of the most dramatic electoral comebacks of recent history. Incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva managed to beat Flávio Bolsonaro in the run-off of the presidential elections with 64,256,232 votes (51.8% of the vote share) to Bolsonaro’s 59,826,041 votes: a difference of more than 4.4 million votes.

Such an outcome seemed almost impossible just three weeks ago, when Bolsonaro won the first round with 47.03% of the votes to Lula’s 45.16%. Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party, including three members of his family, captured an additional 23 seats in the lower house and nearly doubled its Senate seats, mostly at the expense of centrist parties.

As we noted in our October 9th post, “The US and Israel Are Just One Electoral Victory Away from Achieving Strategic Dominance Over Latin America“, following Bolsonaro’s surprise upset in the first round, most political analysts seemed to agree that even Lula, who hadn’t lost a runoff since 1998, had his work cut out for him:

The first-round winner has never lost a Brazilian presidential runoff. That said, the first round has never been this close before.

As the Brazil-based English football pundit Tim Vickers put it: “mathematically difficult, but politically possible.” If anyone could pull it off, it was Lula, whose victory cements his legacy as the first Brazilian president to be democratically elected for four terms. He also managed to pull off a huge, unprecedented swing of over 5.5% in only three weeks.

His opponent, Flavio Bolsonaro, initially responded to the defeat much like his father did in 2022 — by refusing to accept it. Later on in the day, he effectively threw in the towel minutes after President Donald Trump indicated he would not intervene on his behalf.

Around the same time, Brazilian judge Alexandre de Moraes, who is suspected of serious irregularities due to his close relationship with Daniel Vorcaro, a banker imprisoned for a massive fraud scandal, demanded that Flavio, who is also under investigation over his possible involvement in a money-laundering scheme, to surrender his passport.

However, if the measure was meant to prevent Flavio from leaving the country, as his brother, Eduardo, did last year, it doesn’t seem to have worked: according to Infobae, Flavio crossed Brazil’s southern border into Argentina on Tuesday morning using his national ID card and is now reportedly on his way to the US, where he plans to apply for political asylum.

The Mother of All Comebacks

As many are noting, Lula did not just defeat Flavio Bolsonaro on Sunday; he defeated:

• Presidents Trump, Netanyahu and Milei, who had all supported (though in the case of Trump, not formally endorsed) Bolsonaro and mobilised the power of their respective State machinery to ensure their candidate won. The US and Israel have meddled in multiple elections in Latin America over the past two years.
• O Globo, Brazil’s biggest media corporation, which backed Bolsonaro to the hilt after Lula passed a decree banning online gambling in the weeks leading up to the first round of the election. O Globo has significant interests in Brazil’s online gambling sector.
• US big tech giant Meta, which did everything it could to restrict pro-Lula messages and content on its Facebook and Instagram apps while boosting content promoting Bolsonaro. Also, a study by the Eko organisation found that AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, and Meta AI, were almost universally directing users towards right-wing candidates.
• Wall Street, whose banks and payment card duopoly, Mastercard and VISA, are rightly terrified of Pix, Brazil’s free-to-use digital payments system, which Lula has refused to modify to the their tastes.

As the title of this post and the AI-generated picture below suggest, Lula’s victory represents the first major strategic setback for the US and Israel’s planned takeover of Latin America, which we will discuss in short order.

But first, how did Lula pull off this historic comeback?

There are, I believe, three main reasons, though readers better acquainted with Brazil may know of others.

1. Online messaging. Following Lula and his Worker Party’s first round drubbing, a little known deputy called André Janones created the WhatsApp channel “Lula’s Army”, whose number of followers would surge from 50,000 to 10 million in just three weeks. The goal of the initiative was to control the online messaging for the election as well as saturate opponents’ publications with comments or counter-disinformation narratives.

Janones argued that progressive election campaigns in Latin America had made the mistake of responding to their rivals’ digital provocations with elaborate, lofty speeches, as if we still lived in an analogue world. Instead, he called for combating disinformation campaigns using the same tools as populist-right parties: vertical content, attention-grabbing headlines, plain language and appealing directly to the feelings of the audience.

“Lula’s Army” became a massive turnout machine, as explains an article by Payday Report that was featured on yesterday’s Links page:

It… threw massive parties that brought joy to a movement when Lula was trailing, including massive 1-million-person rallies on Copacabana Beach. Those rallies motivated people to go out and find those votes. For more about how this dynamic worked, check out our video from the 1-million-person rally on Copacabana Beach.

https://youtu.be/3TSlurJm7Tw?si=lcCFKmEQ9i7e6wHr

Crucially, Lula radicalised his messaging in the weeks before the run-off, rather than tempering it to appeal to moderate voters, as most left-leaning candidates tend to do. There was also a clear focus on the existential threat a Flavio Bolsonaro presidency would pose to basic pillars of Brazilian society (bolsa familia welfare payments, the public health system, public education, the Amazon rainforest).

The results speak for themselves. Turnout on Sunday was 80.8 percent, nearly 2 percent higher than the previous round. While Bolsonaro gained three million additional votes between the first and second rounds, Lula gained a whopping 10 million.

2. Flavio’s abject flaws as a candidate. Between the first and second rounds of the election, Flavio was clearly going to be stress tested, and his weaknesses quickly became apparent, says Vickers. Those weaknesses include his murky business dealings, his lack of professional experience (outside of his father’s bubble) and his links with paramilitaries and rogue law and order professionals.

3. Flavio’s “Nine Fingers” Jibe. Presidential elections are often decided by fleeting moments of inspiration or ignominy. In this case, it was the latter.

During the second of the two presidential debates, just two days before the second round vote, Bolsonaro mocked Lula’s “nine fingers”. He said that Lula, with one hand, gave to the people and then stole everything he could with his nine fingers. It was a catastrophic misjudgement on Bolsonaro’s part given that Lula lost the small finger on his left hand in an industrial accident aged just 17.

After Lula responded in the only appropriate manner — i.e., grossly offended — Bolsonaro had little choice but to apologise. As the Mexican journalist Témoris Grecko notes, it was Bolsonaro’s arrogance that sealed his fate (machine translation):

He, who has never worked and who owes everything to his father, made fun of someone who had to work since he was a teenager and lost a finger because of it. The “nine-fingered” thing is a joke that Bolsonarism laughed at… until it killed him with votes. It also gave Lula the perfect opportunity to show who represents privilege and who represents the worker.

4. The Trump-Netanyahu-Milei connection. In his comments to the media after casting his ballot, Lula draped his speakers podium with the Brazilian flag and then pointed to it and said: “We’re going to live in a country where the respected flag is this one, because on the other side they campaigned with this flag, but they want to govern with the American flag. We campaigned with this one, govern with this one, and win or lose with this one.”

Given how long a shadow Washington — and, of course, Israel — have cast over elections in Latin America over the past two years, the prospect of much greater US (and Israeli) meddling in Brazilian affairs was probably already on quite a few voters’ minds.

There is also the Milei connection. As readers may recall, Argentine President Javier Milei intervened in Brazil’s elections before the first round by calling Lula a “thief” and a “prisoner” at a campaign event for Flavio Bolsonaro. Like Santiago Abascal in Spain, Bolsonaro has repeatedly spoken of emulating Milei’s “chainsaw” economic model in Brazil.

The problem for the likes of Bolsonaro and Abascal is that that economic model is now showing serious cracks, despite the $82 billion in bailout money the Argentine State has received from multilateral lenders and the US treasury over the past two years. Even Wall Street banks and the Anglo-American financial press are beginning to sound the alarm.

As the Spanish commentator Cesar Vidal pointed out, tongue firmly in cheek, how could Bolsonaro possibly lose if he had the support of Trump, Netanyahu and Milei?

An Uphill Struggle

Incidentally, as of Monday afternoon Milei was the only Latin American leader yet to recognise Lula’s re-election. This is perhaps unsurprising given he bet the future of Argentine relations with its biggest trade partner (of the past 35 years) on a Bolsonaro victory. Now that Lula has won a fourth term, Argentina faces an even more uncertain economic future.

It’s also true that Lula will face an uphill struggle getting legislation through a Congress dominated by right-wing parties, including Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party. Per AP, “if right-wing and centrist lawmakers unite, they will command a simple majority in the 513-seat lower house and could even assemble a supermajority in a broad alliance to change Brazil’s constitution.”

As Fiorella Isabel notes, this is one of the reasons why so many members of the liberal classes like Lula — not only is he safe enough to the social democrats in Europe and the West but also because Brazil’s right-wing Congress is going to be controlling him at every turn:

People shouldn’t place their ideals on Lula. Though he started more radically, he’s not a revolutionary and never was to begin with.

But in LATAM the choice is between that and a paramilitary fascism. If you don’t understand this and that it is not the United States your analysis is moot. It’s not Trump vs Biden here, so don’t look at it that way. A Lula victory didn’t erase his bad policies on Haiti or Venezuela but it does put a damper on the Donroe Doctrine of Epstein takeover of Latin America, full of Zionism and total Milei-style destruction.

Brazil is the largest economy in Latin America. The aim was to hand it to Bolsonaro so the Epstein regime could reign in totality. For now, that’s not going to be the case. It doesn’t erase Lula’s failures but it does hold off a complete take over.

What many Western leftists don’t grasp is that in countries like Brazil, where some people don’t have power, water access, roads and basic needs met, sometimes the ideals of many who live in the west fall flat, especially the ones in the US. We can’t even elect milquetoast candidates like Lula and then lecture Brazilians about politics and judge Venezuela so harshly.

We all see what’s happening in Latin America. But please go live there for a week, without luxuries and tell me how your ideas do when you’re constantly under interventions, sanctions, impoverished, and dealing with not having enough food or water.

So, while Lula may struggle to get many of his policies through Congress, particularly the more populist ones such as his presidential decree banning online gambling and a proposed debt relief plan, the alternative outcome — a Flavio Bolsonaro presidency — would have been infinitely worse, not just for Brazil but for Latin America as a whole and arguably the entire world, given Bolsonaro’s plans to trash legislation protecting the Amazon rainforest.

As we noted in a previous post, a Bolsonaro-run Brazil would have been the feather in the cap of the US and Israel’s neo-colonial designs for Latin America. Because of its size, its economy and its international influence, Brazil was the most important piece missing from the US’ latest project of regional hegemony.

Brazil’s incorporation into the US’ sphere of influence would have given Washington a heavyweight partner to advance its security agenda, push out China from the region and possibly even Brazil from BRICS.

It would have also expanded US access to strategic resources, presumably at discount prices. Bolsonaro had already pledged to join Trump’s Shield of the Americas. In June, a public letter from Marco Rubio to Bolsonaro implicitly suggested that the latter had offered to put his transition team at Washington’s disposal should he win.

Brazil’s Rare Earth Bounty 

To give an idea of what sort of deals may have emerged from such a close “collaboration”, a judge in Colombia has ordered President Abelardo de la Espriella to reveal the contents of a memorandum of understanding he allegedly signed with US Secretary of State Marcos Rubio in September. According to a leaked document, the Colombian government…

• Is obligated to notify the US before selling or opening bids on any rare earth or other critical minerals. The United States will essentially get to decide who can and can’t exploit the country’s wealth.
• Is required to deliver a geological map to the United States, opening the way for the US military and industry to inventory (and control) all of Colombia’s strategic reserves.
• Has pledged to deregulate and accelerate mining permits so that US multinationals can exploit Colombia’s resources. That includes a commitment to legalise fracking.

In the case of Brazil, Bolsonaro had already committed to pursuing strategic cooperation on rare earth minerals with the US before a single vote was cast. One of the 21 US conditions for tariff relief set out by the Trump administration a year ago was privileged access for US firms to Brazilian critical minerals.

This is of vital import to the US given Brazil boasts the second largest known reserves of rare earth minerals after China. Those minerals are essential for making magnets used in missiles, electric vehicles turbines and other technological equipment. Brazil also produces around 90% of the world’s niobium, used in aircraft engines, rockets and military equipment.

This provides Brazil with strategic leverage that other countries in the region do not have. In September, Lula’s government, concerned about the control of Brazil’s strategic resources, accelerated the approval of a law to strengthen supervision of the sector. The government’s goal is to attract capital without losing the ability to decide how and by whom Brazil’s mineral wealth is exploited.

But Lula is nothing if not a pragmatist, especially when it comes to Brazil-US relations. This partly explains why USA Rare Earth, a company with U.S. government participation, was given the go ahead to acquire of Brazil’s Serra Verde for $2.8 billion in September. The operation involves one of the few mines outside Asia that produce the four rare earths needed for those magnets.

If the US is to reduce its dependence on Chinese supply chains, it needs access to Brazilian rare earths, regardless of who is president in the Palácio do Planalto. According to sources cited by Mining.com, “US government agencies and private investors have continued to pursue opportunities in Brazil despite the introduction of the critical minerals policy and uncertainty surrounding the presidential election.”

Yet the Trump administration is still yet to recognise Lula’s victory. In a brief statement on Monday Trump said it “looked like another rigged election”, which is a bit rich coming from the president of an administration that has engaged in massive election meddling across multiple Latin American countries.

Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon urged Trump and Rubio to cut off relations, “and shut down everything with Brazil”, including trade. Which, let’s face it, is within the realms of the possible, especially if Rubio is in the driving seat.

This, I believe, is the main reason why Brazil’s stock exchange crashed 13.8% yesterday and its currency tanked over 8% against the dollar. International investors and speculators were expecting Bolsonaro to win, thus unleashing a massive wave of extractivism, as we have already seen in Argentina. They would have therefore positioned themselves to profit from that shift — a shift that is no longer going to happen, at least not to the extent expected.

At the same time, the City of London and Wall Street have the means to punish Brazil’s financial markets as a way of bringing Lula back into line. The Financial Times sent a message through its editorial board yesterday: cut spending, appoint a market-friendly finance minister, and bow to the demands of the financial markets, or else…

It’s impossible to know how long the rout might last, or how deep it may go. The Mexican-Lebanese geopolitical expert Alfredo Jalife believes that now might be a great time to pick up Brazilian assets given that China, the world’s second biggest creditor nation, is unlikely to let its fellow BRICS founding member suffer a financial crisis.

That, of course, is not investment advice.

Another country that is yet to recognise Lula’s triumph is Israel. On Monday, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar recalled that Lula had accused Tel Aviv of committing genocide in Gaza . By contrast, his rival, Flávio Bolsonaro, is considered “a friend of Israel,” Saar said during a discussion on social media with the leader of the main national opposition, Yair Lapid.

Benjamin Netanyahu was also counting on a Bolsonaro victory. In a statement after the first round, the prime minister’s office said they are trying to “resume the deep friendship between the two countries, as part of the transformation taking place in Israel’s relations with the countries of South America and the strengthening of ties that the prime minister is spearheading with leaders throughout the continent.”

After the elections, the general response in Israeli media was also one of acute disappointment.

“Israel followed the elections with special interest, not only because of Brazil’s size and influence in Latin America, but also because both candidates presented diametrically opposed approaches to Jerusalem,” noted, for example, the influential economic site Globes.

For Israel, the publication added, “a Bolsonaro victory could have ended several years of tense relations, while Lula’s victory leaves relations on a collision course.” An op-ed by Lawrence Maximo in the pro-Netanyahu Times of Israel echoed that sentiment, averring that Lula’s victory “cements the rupture between Brazil and Israel”:

Lula crossed a red line with Israel: besides being declared persona non grata by the Jewish state, he profaned and disrespected the memory of 6 million Jews and their families, equating Israel with the Nazi regime, peddling the fantasy of an imaginary genocide propagated by the global left, and turning terrorism against Israel into narratives of resistance. Lula is the embodiment of this contemporary antisemitism, the same one that fills the streets of Europe and the university campuses of the US.

Given a choice between rupture with Israel or de facto control by a colonial, supremacist political project, most Brazilians would presumably choose the former — at least those who are not evangelical Zionists. Unfortunately, their number is growing at breakneck pace.

There are also understandable concerns about how much Lula will be able to achieve given the domination of Congress by the Bolsonaros’ Liberal Party and other right-wing factions as well as over who will replace Lula next time round, in 2030. Similar concerns have been raised about Claudia Sheinbaum’s eventual successor for Mexico’s 2030 general elections.

But those concerns are for another day. Today, let us just enjoy a brief but deep sigh of relief. The US and Israel’s hostile takeover of Latin America has hit a major stumbling block in the form of Brazil, a country that is perhaps too big to tame. For the moment, Latin America’s two super powers still maintain some degree of national sovereignty, despite Washington and Tel Aviv’s best efforts. And that is good news for everyone.