The Brazilian Center for International Relations (Cebri) has just published “Memories”,. There are 368 pages of long interviews given to Gelson Fonseca Jr., Monica Hirst and Alexandra de Mello e Silva.
It is a lesson in diplomacy and public service, in the voice of a former secretary general of the , ambassador in Buenos Aires and Paris. When diplomats reminisce, they talk more about themselves. Azambuja talks more about his ideas and the ideas of others. He does this with a certain disembargatorization (word he used).
Azambuja was a great storyteller, funny, irreverent and even spicy. In interviews he made few concessions to lightness. Talking about Lula, he said:
“I think that one day Lula, as if he were a French king, should be numbered: Lula 1st, Lula 2nd, Lula 3rd, Lula 4th. The Lula who came to power is Lula 5th or Lula VI.”
Speaking of the general:
“The end of the Figueiredo government is one of the most melancholic moments in the history of Brazil. That physically deteriorated man, surrounded by people who manipulate him in a certain way. It is a diminished Brazil.”
His irreverence prevented him from being defined as a window-dressing diplomat. His memories reveal the thinker in that funny character.
Strange to the fashions of the House, he saw Brazil in his own way:
“I will try to summarize everything I have thought about foreign policy. I believe that Brazil has enough power to participate in the world’s exclusive design games, but it does not have the capacity to resist these trends. In other words, I do not believe that Brazil has enough power to create an obstacle to anything that will be born. What it has is the capacity to influence some aspects of what is being born. Therefore, it is not from the outside, joining a chorus that will be innocuous, but from the inside, influencing in a good way.”
In 1982, the wanted to invade Suriname.
Brazil condemned the idea, offered to calm the local dictator and warned:
“Brazil doesn’t like troops on its border.”
Talking about the pleasure he had at the embassy in Paris, he killed it:
“In France, almost every Brazilian goes expressly to do nothing.”
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