Brazil and the USA: Similarities in Urban Development

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  Introduction My dissertation focused on the Brazilian production and reception of representations of the United States as a growing model of modern society in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Based on the analysis of parliamentary debates, newspaper articles, diplomatic correspondence, books, students' journals, and textual and pictorial advertisements in newspapers, among other historical documents, my findings indicate that the United States emerged as a new axis of reflection on the meaning of modernity for Brazilians well before the historical break traditionally chosen by historians as a landmark in the development of the United States as a modern world. By doing so, a gap in historiography has been identified: there has been no comprehensive examination of the United States' influence in Brazil previous to that historical watershed, as well as prior to Brazil's first republican regime's open relationship with the US government. My findings also challen
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Brazil and U.S.: Partnership or Rivalry?

 President Barack Obama is getting ready to meet with his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva, later this month. One of the most important questions that his administration needs to answer is how the US and Brazil can improve their bilateral relations while also being partners and rivals in hemispheric and global affairs. In the United States, Brazil doesn't get as much attention as its "BRIC" peers, Russia, India, and China. However, with a population of almost 200 million, Brazil has a lot of strengths. The country makes more than a trillion dollars a year in gross domestic product. After ten years of strong growth driven by exports of goods and services, new oil fields have been found that could make Brazil one of the top ten oil suppliers in the world. Brazil already has the biggest biofuel business in the world.

Beyond the numbers, Brazil has become a major player in a wide range of global problems and has grown its influence in the region


As the largest continental powers in their own parts of the Western world, the United States and Brazil have had a range of relationships with each other over the years. In the past, a more closed-off Brazil tried to work around the US, and the US, worried about Brazil's possible regional influence, tried to keep Brazil from interacting with the rest of the Americas. The US and Brazil started to find common ground and shared goals in their relationship more recently, especially near the end of the Bush administration. However, this did not resolve many of the underlying problems. The Americas Project at the Center for American Progress asked the two authors of this report to look at the dynamics at the heart of U.S.-Brazil relations, including places where they might clash and overlap. They were asked to look at the possibility of two countries working together while also looking at the opposite tendencies toward partnership and rivalry. David Rothkopf and Kellie Meiman are both respected experts on ties between the United States and Brazil and between hemispheres.

Meiman is now the head of the Brazil-Southern Cone practice at the international consulting firm McLarty Associates


He has worked as a Foreign Service officer in Brazil, as the director of the US Trade Representative Office for Mercosur and the Southern Cone, and as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations' Task Force on Latin America. Rothkopf has been a member of the Council on Foreign Relations' Task Force on Latin America and the Department of Commerce's deputy under secretary for international trade policy. He is now president and CEO of Garten Rothkopf, an international advisory firm that focuses on emerging markets, and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The authors were asked to look at the possible pros and cons of the two countries' relationship and suggest sensible U.S. policy options while the Obama administration thinks about how to best deal with the so-called "country of the future" at what looks like the start of the future. The authors were asked to make stronger assumptions than they normally would have about the direction Brazil might want to take relations. This was done to show how different paths could be taken in one of the most important bilateral relationships the US has in the Americas right now. It's clear that the writers mostly agree on what problems and chances U.S. policymakers face, and they also make similar suggestions for how policy should go forward. We hope that the research in both papers will be interesting and useful to the people who read them.

Brazil has always been friends with the United States


We've always liked a lot of American things. In our writings, it's often said that the USA was a shining example of freedom and modernity around the world. To as early as the late 1800s, wealthy Brazilian families were already giving their kids names that were based on famous Americans. From 1926 to 1930, we even had a president called Washington Luís Pereira de Sousa. He was 57 years old when he took the oath of office. We expected to be treated like friends, which is the main thing that has always made this friendship worst. We didn't even expect to be treated equally; being friends was enough for us. The US, on the other hand, never showed Brazil any respect. The US has been meddling in our politics since 1944, supporting at least two coups against our democracy. They have also spied on us, destroyed our industry, killed our scientists (Alcântara Air Base disaster), and paid for our culture and politics to become unstable. The United States sees everyone as an enemy. The Americans don't have any friends; all they want to do is control, pay, or punish everyone who comes after them. Then, when they find out that not everyone idolizes them, they feel "hated."

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