“Lula’s leadership in Brazil is unquestionable.”

Interviewed by Crismar Lujano

Ahead of the 9th #CLACSO2022 Conference, the Peruvian sociologist and political scientist Monica BruckmannProfessor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, analyzed for CLACSO.tv the current role of Latin America at a time of great hegemonic changes in the world system.

From a perspective of guiding current transformation processes, Bruckmann points out that “Latin America is having a decreasing relative weight, especially when compared to the last five years of Latin American politics with the decline of the progressive wave and the spaces for integration, coordination and development of public policies at the regional level.” 

Bruckmann, coordinator of the CLACSO Working Group on Geopolitics, Regional Integration and the World System, elaborated on the former influence of Latin America in spaces with great weight in the processes of global economic transformation, using the example of Brazil in the BRICS: “Brazil was always very clear that its participation in the BRICS was not just the participation of one Latin American country, but of the entire continent, and especially of South America.”Along these lines, he laments the disintegration that occurred from... “a conservative vision that gives little importance to a sovereign vision of integration.”

Regarding the Latin American electoral context in 2022, the Peruvian sociologist highlights the importance of the Brazilian presidential elections in October due to their continental dimension and the historical capacity of the Amazonian country to accelerate or decelerate processes of regional integration and coordination with broad impacts on the world system.

Thus, Bruckman states that “Lula’s leadership is unquestionable; he is establishing himself at a fairly high level of preference, and some pollsters even predict him as the winner in the first round.”But he qualifies this by noting that everything will depend on “how alliance policies develop in both the left and center-right camps,” Meanwhile, there are sectors working, albeit with difficulty, to build a third candidacy, a "third way" that will compete for votes with Lula and Jair Bolsonaro, who also have a significant following, even within some popular sectors.