The Argentine president, Alberto Fernández, makes a state visit to Brazil on Monday to celebrate the most strategic diplomatic relations in Latin America that, this Sunday, celebrate their 200th anniversary. If the relations between the two countries began with a war, today they are recognized worldwide as an example of integration.
Márcio Resende, RFI correspondent in Buenos Aires
On Monday, Argentine President Alberto Fernández will be received by President Lula at the Planalto Palace, on a state visit. Brazil and Argentina form a strategic alliance for regional integration and international insertion, but the two countries have not always been united.
On June 25, 1823, the United Provinces of the South or United Provinces of the Río de la Plata, today Argentina, was the first country to recognize the independence of Brazil and its system of monarchical government, unique in the entire American continent.
This international recognition came about in a letter written by the then government minister of the United Provinces of the South, Bernardino Rivadavia, to the first chancellor of the Empire of Brazil, José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva.
But in addition to expressing that “the government of Buenos Aires celebrated the independence of Brazil with the greatest satisfaction,” the Argentine minister indicated that he “wanted to definitively discuss the evacuation of the Banda Oriental,” today Uruguay.
Seven years earlier, in 1816, the current Uruguay, called “Banda Oriental” by the United Provinces of the South and Cisplatina Province by Brazil, had been occupied by the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarve, and incorporated into Brazilian territory.
However, Argentina, whose declaration of Independence took place in 1816, but only received its first recognition in 1821, precisely from Portugal, understood the occupation as an invasion of its territory.
“Your Excellency Minister of State and Foreign Relations of the Cabinet of Brazil, this Government has celebrated with the greatest satisfaction the Independence of Brazil and the establishment of a Government that responds to its needs,” began the letter dated June 25, 1823.
The letter was taken by the first diplomatic representative of Buenos Aires to the capital of the Empire, Rio de Janeiro, to “establish relations between the two governments.” The Argentine priest José Valentín Gómez thus became the first foreign diplomat in independent Brazil.
Relations began on August 5, 1823
On August 5, Valentín Gómez introduced himself to José Bonifácio. If the letter marks the formalization of the first international recognition of the Independence of Brazil, this meeting seals the formal beginning of diplomatic relations between the Empire of Brazil and the United Provinces of the South. However, these relations were not friendly.
Valentín Gómez tried to start negotiations for Brazil to withdraw from Uruguay, but the objective failed. Emperor Pedro I was determined to maintain the right bank of the Río de la Plata due to the strategic and port importance of Colonia del Sacramento and Montevideo. Therefore, in May 1825, he appointed Antonio José Falcão da Frota “political agent of the Empire of Brazil”, but the diplomat also failed in his goal that the United Provinces of the South renounce the Cisplatin Province.
On November 4, 1825, Argentina broke diplomatic relations with the Empire of Brazil. On December 10, 1825, Brazil formally declared war on the United Provinces of the South.
The war with Argentina would last three years, until August 27, 1828, and after the peace agreement, with the mediation of England, Uruguay would be born as a buffer state.
A full alliance would only begin in 1985
This climate of war and mistrust has been maintained throughout history until, in the 1980s, the two countries, with recently recovered democracies, sealed a full alliance, the embryo of regional integration.
The most crucial step towards this alliance was the disclosure of nuclear secrets. In a unique case in the world, in 1991, the two countries created the Brazilian-Argentine Agency for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials (ABACC), exchanging the race for the nuclear bomb for mutual trust. It was a point of no return in the integration process.
Since then, the period of greatest distance between the two countries was between December 10, 2019 -inauguration of the current Argentine president, Alberto Fernández- and December 31, 2022 -the last day of government of the former Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro-. For three years, for ideological reasons, Bolsonaro and Fernández have not held face-to-face bilateral meetings.
However, since Lula won the elections last October, Alberto Fernández has met with his Brazilian friend five times, this Monday being the sixth. The seventh meeting is already scheduled for July 4, during the Mercosur Summit.
physical union
During the previous visit of Alberto Fernández to Brasilia, on May 30, Brazil formalized the financing for the construction of a gas pipeline from the Argentine reserve of Vaca Muerta, the second largest shale gas field and the fourth largest unconventional oil field in the world. , to southern Brazil.
Brazil and Argentina have also intensified their electricity integration, which allows one country to exchange energy with the other in times of higher demand in one and higher production in the other.
If in the recent past even the railway gauge was different to prevent one country from invading the other, for 40 years everything has been done to strengthen a strategic alliance, a platform for international insertion of both countries.
In the commercial field, Brazil is the main market for Argentine products and, although for Brazil Argentina is currently the third market, Argentina is the country that buys the most industrialized products from Brazil, the ones that generate the most jobs for Brazilians.
