John Baeyens

Joao, Ana and Joana for the patient guidance. More on Portugal later, let’s focus on Brazil for now. I have been writing extensively on my views on and belief in Latin America. This text of Dirk Verhofstad being a good summary of the context.
I am a strong advocate of the idea of a Latin American Union. Don’t confuse a Latin American Union with the proposed FTAA.
Most North Americans have no clue what/where Latin America really is, yet the politicians do have a clue.
They are smart enough to understand the threat, potentially undermining the superpower role the US currently has.
Overtime Latin America will become more dominant of course. They have primary resources (oil, food, minerals,…), young people, educated people, increasingly strong bonds with the EU and Azia.

But as Anita’s rightly told so, we should look at this matter in a broader perspective. This speech of Brazilian president Luize Inacio Lula da Silva, addressing the general Assembly of the United Nations gives a more balanced perspective on the challenges and opportunities of Latin America.

In a way it’s strange that we Europeans, as ex-colonists of Latin America know so little of the region. Yesterday I saw the Brazilian film “Four days in September” (original title, “O Que E Isso, Companheiro”), which I can highly recommend. September 1969, a group of radical young leftists wanted to twist and shake the repressive military dictatorship. They held quite a party by abducting the US ambassador of the streets in Rio and helped him hostage for four days, eventually forcing the Brazilian government to release 15 political prisoners. As Europeans our scholar curriculum is not exactly telling much of what happened in the 70s in Latin America.

Oh, I lied, we Europeans do know Brazil. By just writing ‘Brazilian hotties’ my hit rate on this site will double tomorrow (all coming from EU and US). Even though I’m of course only referring to this special Athens Olympic hotness (yes, volleyball was hot on European TV channels when green/blue/yellow was ruling).

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