Brazil May Close Down Embassies in Africa and the Caribbean

[Judi Lynn]

Brazil May Close Down Embassies in Africa and the Caribbean

Published 17 May 2016 (6 hours 22 minutes ago)

The Foreign Ministry, under coup leader Michel Temer, said it wants to reduce government expenses.

Jose Serra, the new foreign minister under the interim president in Brazil, has requested a cost analysis of 17 embassies and diplomatic delegations opened since 2003 in the Caribbean and Africa, according to local newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo, with an eye toward closing them to save money.

According to the Foreign Ministry, the average cpst of running an embassy in an African country ranges from US$200,000 to US$250,000 a year, or 4 to 8 times less than it costs to run an embassy in a European country.

The Brazilian embassy in Portugal, for example, costs around US$4 million each year.
Diplomats have said that closing smaller offices would not help with the ministry’s budget problem.

The offices were opened under the presidencies of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and the recently removed Dilma Rousseff. Serra was a presidential candidate in 2002 and 2010, losing to bot Lula and Dilma.

Serra has strongly criticized Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua for denouncing the expulsion of Brazil's elected president. These countries have said they are against what they see as coup and continue to support Rousseff, who they see as the legitimate head of state..

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Brazil-May-Close-Down-Embassies-in-Africa-and-the-Caribbean-20160517-0040.html

(Short article, no more at link.)

[MisterP]

1. Brazil's had a long diplomatic relationship with Africa

it's not just to work to reverse the legacy of slavery (Portugal got its enslaved people direct from Kongo/Angola) but to work on common South Atlantic interests (since Brazilian geopolitics revolves around oceans as well as continents) and to bring these countries into its orbit

Brazil even proposed a South Atlantic Treaty Organization (but it saw Argentina as a bigger threat than any Soviet ships and wanted Britain in which Argentina refused and Reagan wanted South Africa in which Britain would've refused had it been in and he and Britain wanted Chile in which would've upset Argentina but balanced the table for Brazil)