Source: Politics<\/p>\n
Brazil has won a record five World Cups, but the most important match it has ever played may have been an exhibition match against Haiti that was meaningless in sporting terms but has had a long influence on each country\u2019s politics.<\/p>\n
On Aug. 18, 2004, Brazil\u2019s players drove through the streets of Port-au-Prince in armored personnel carriers, World Cup champions greeted like liberators. Two months earlier, Brazil\u2019s military had arrived to lead a multinational peacekeeping force established by the United Nations following a bloody coup d\u2019\u00e9tat.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve only seen such joy in the eyes, the exuberance of the eyes, when we paraded in Brazil after winning the World Cup,\u201d coach Carlos Alberto Parreira said<\/a> afterwards. \u201cI will never forget this moment.\u201d<\/p>\n The team was accompanied<\/a> to the U.N.-hosted friendly match that followed \u2014 \u201cThey play, peace wins,\u201d went the slogan<\/a> \u2014 by Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva, then in his first term as Brazil\u2019s president. More than two decades later, Lula is back in office, now cemented as the most accomplished leader the world\u2019s left has seen in the 21st century. His approach to foreign policy, say observers, was shaped partially on the soccer pitch that day in Port-au-Prince.<\/p>\n \u201cIt showed he was trying something different as a diplomatic tool,\u201d said Mauricio Savarese, an Associated press political reporter in S\u00e3o Paulo who has researched the legacy of the 2004 game. \u201cThat match at the time was a symbol of Brazil\u2019s soft power. You really showed how Brazil could win hearts and minds with a policy that was not exactly bowing to the United States or to the China or to Russia, but independent.\u201d<\/p>\n The match, designed to build goodwill between a shell-shocked population and its benevolent occupiers, began after players from the two national teams unfurled a pre-match banner that read \u201cSocial Justice is the True Name of Peace.\u201d The peacekeeping mission represented an early commitment to \u201ccontinental solidarity,\u201d as Lula defined it in a speech the following year<\/a> to up-and-coming diplomats where he cited the Haiti mission as an example of \u201cnon-indifference.\u201d<\/p>\n Lula was feeling his way toward a foreign policy<\/a> centered around South-South Cooperation and the BRICS alliance of emerging markets. Lula has used that role as de-facto leader of the democratic developing world to, with mixed results, position Brazil as a leader on climate change \u2014 it hosted last year\u2019s COP30 in the Amazon city of Bel\u00e9m \u2014 and a mediator when thorny international conflicts arise. It has a position of official neutrality in the Russia-Ukraine war<\/a>, so as to serve a potential role as mediator, as it did when partnering with Turkey<\/a> in 2010 to broker a nuclear-fuel swap with Iran.<\/p>\n That same year, an earthquake hit Haiti, killing over 100,000 people<\/a> while injuring and displacing millions more. It also destroyed the headquarters of the U.N. Stabilisation Mission in Haiti, even as Brazil led a post-disaster humanitarian relief effort<\/a>. The experience further deepened ties between the two countries, as Brazil introduced a humanitarian-visa program for the first time<\/a> to welcome Haitians fleeing the devastation; it has since been extended to Syrian war refugees, as well. One historically Italian neighborhood<\/a> in S\u00e3o Paulo is now known as Little Haiti.<\/p>\n The broader peacekeeping mission began to resemble a military quagmire in humanitarian garb<\/a>: Brazilian troops were blamed for human-rights violations<\/a> and a cholera epidemic<\/a>, while doing little to improve the overall security situation. For Lula and his proteg\u00e9e Dilma Rousseff, the Haiti project became a political liability, in both Haiti and Brazil.<\/p>\n As the two nations prepare to face off against one another in Philadelphia on Friday, Lula is not expected to be in attendance. Instead his travel schedule this week was built around the G7 summit in France, in which Brazil participated as one of five \u201cpartner countries<\/a>\u201d \u2014 a reflection of its increased global standing over the past few decades. If Lula shows up at one of Brazil\u2019s matches later in the World Cup, it will likely be with a domestic audience in mind rather than a foreign one: he is in the midst of a reelection campaign for his fourth term, against a son of his longtime antagonist Jair Bolsonaro.<\/p>\n \u201cI doubt that anyone is going to vote for him just because he\u2019s recognized abroad as a key leader,\u201d said Savarese, Brazilian political journalist who wrote the book \u201cDilma\u2019s Downfall<\/a>.\u201d \u201cBut of course that helps with some moderates, which are a very thin part of Brazil\u2019s electorate, and they\u2019re going to be decisive in October\u2019s election, that is also one of the things that tips the balance in his favor, as is being seen as this pragmatic leader who can also be respected even when he\u2019s speaking about issues that clearly don\u2019t affect as much in Brazil\u2019s daily life.\u201d<\/p>\n That day in Haiti, not yet a global figure, Lula confronted one limit on his power. He reportedly asked his team<\/a> not to score too many goals, in the interests of goodwill. The players did not oblige, winning 6-0, including an astonishing solo effort<\/a> from Ronaldinho.<\/p>\n