A (Neoliberal) “New World Economic Geography”: Latin American-Middle Eastern Relations in an Emerging Age of Multipolarity

This article first appeared in the SiC Report “The Global South in an Era of Great Power Competition. Click here to access the introduction and a full pdf download of the Report.

By Kevin Funk, Columbia University, kevin.funk@gmail.com 

Abstract: During Latin America’s turn-of-the-century “pink tide,” the region’s left-leaning leaders aggressively built alternative axes of South-South relations. This paper draws from this recent approximation to analyze current Latin American-Middle Eastern ties, particularly in light of the return to power of the key protagonist from this previous period of growing linkages, Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, as well as the recent boom in interregional trade — which has been driven largely by rising Middle Eastern demand for Brazilian agricultural products to fill the void left by Russian and Ukrainian exports. Though many analysts have described budding South-South ties as a hopeful sign of increasing Global South autonomy, I argue that the overwhelming predominance of agricultural goods, raw materials, and commodities in the Middle East-bound export baskets of Latin American economies signifies that these relations are particularly deleterious for the latter region from an environmental, developmental, social, and political perspective. Notably, the primary beneficiaries of contemporary interregional ties are Brazilian agribusiness companies that are contributing to Middle Eastern “food security,” particularly in the Gulf countries, by reproducing environmental and other forms of “insecurity” at home — through buttressing far-right political actors, promoting the dispossession of Indigenous peoples, and provoking widespread deforestation in the Amazon. Accordingly, current Latin American-Middle Eastern economic linkages contain little of the radical promise of past Third-World initiatives. Instead, they are reinscribing racialized class hierarchies, buttressing anti-democratic and inegalitarian actors and tendencies, and exacerbating the climate crisis.

Introduction

During Latin America’s turn-of-the-century “pink tide,” the region’s left-leaning leaders aggressively built alternative axes of South-South relations.¹ Such was the case vis-à-vis the Middle East, as in this period nearly every South American country defied Washington by extending diplomatic recognition to Palestine; the first-ever interregional summits were staged; and trade grew to such an extent that a leading Brazilian official claimed that a “new world economic geography” linked the regions. This paper draws from this recent approximation to analyze current Latin American-Middle Eastern ties, particularly in light of the return to power of the key protagonist from this previous period of growing linkages: Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. 

Focusing on Brazil, I analyze the drivers of this new boom period. These forces range from world geopolitical events and domestic political change to the growth and increasing protagonism of Latin American and Middle Eastern transnational corporations, and concerted efforts by Middle East-focused commercial organizations in the former region, many of which are led by Latin American business elites of Arab descent. Also relevant in this regard is the presence in the Arab region — and particularly the Gulf countries — of numerous commercial offices belonging to Latin American state trade and investment agencies.

In turn, this paper delineates the contemporary status and dynamic nature of Latin American-Middle Eastern trade. I argue, contrary to more sanguine accounts, that the overwhelming predominance of agricultural goods, raw materials, and commodities in the Middle East-bound export baskets of Latin American economies such as Brazil signifies that these relations are particularly deleterious for these countries from an environmental, developmental, social, and also political perspective.   

Finally, this contribution highlights the implications of Latin American-Middle Eastern relations for our understanding of world order and current shifts therein.      

Given the global repercussions of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the recent escalation in Sino-U.S. tensions and predictions of a “new Cold War,” and regional economic stagnation, it is commonly recognized that Latin American countries face a more challenging domestic and international scenario than they did during the early-2000s period of growing South-South ties. Nonetheless, in 2022 commercial flows between Brazil and the Arab region for the first time exceeded $30 billion, a 38 percent annual increase driven largely by rising demand for Brazilian agricultural products, such as wheat and corn, to fill the void left by Russian and Ukrainian exports. Notably, the primary beneficiaries are Brazilian agribusiness companies that are contributing to Middle Eastern “food security” by reproducing environmental and other forms of “insecurity” at home. 

Though many analysts have described budding South-South ties as a hopeful sign of increasing Global South autonomy, this paper advances a more nuanced argument: that is, while Latin American-Middle Eastern relations may contribute toward the construction of a more multipolar and decentered world order, to the extent that corporate actors are among the main protagonists and beneficiaries, today’s interregional linkages contain little of the radical promise of past Third-World initiatives. At least in their economic dimension, these relations do not represent a progressive alternative to an elite-dominated world order characterized by ballooning inequality, environmental degradation, and rising authoritarianism. Rather, presently existing interregional connections largely serve to buttress global capitalism (and the role of corporate actors therein), while also extending its reach deeper into the Global South and reshaping it through the rise of South-South chains of accumulation. 

Specifically, I argue for the importance of understanding the class forces and inegalitarian dynamics that underlay the contemporary Latin American-Middle Eastern relationship, which bears many neoliberal imprints. 

The Political Economy of Latin American-Middle Eastern Relations

It is well known that Latin America and the Middle East have long been linked by migratory flows, the first wave of which brought an estimated 600,000 Arab immigrants, particularly from the Levant.² Among the many millions of Latin Americans who claim Arab ancestry are the current presidents of El Salvador (Nayib Bukele, of Palestinian descent) and the Dominican Republic (Luis Abinader, of Syrian ancestry), along with former of heads of state of Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras, and Brazil, globally famous cultural figures — including Shakira and Salma Hayek, both of whom are partially of Lebanese descent — and leading businesspeople (such as Mexico’s Carlos Slim, of Syrian ancestry). 

Arab Latin Americans are well represented among their respective countries’ business classes, and have founded numerous entities that promote interregional commercial relations. Most prominent among them is the São Paulo-based Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce, which is currently celebrating its 68^th year, administers a trilingual (Portuguese, Arabic, and English) online news agency, and has offices in Dubai and Cairo. It also serves as the headquarters of the fledgling South American Federation of Arab Chambers, which was founded in 2018.³ The efforts of such organizations — which, in some cases, include issuing export certificates, representing their respective countries in international trade expositions in the Arab region, planning state visits to Arab countries, and staging training workshops for Latin American businesses seeking to expand to new markets⁴ — have been fundamental in driving the post-2000 boom in interregional trade.⁵ Smaller though still consequential Arab-focused chambers also exist in countries including Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico. In turn, one of the nine international offices of the governmental entity ApexBrasil — the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency — is located in Dubai, with sites said to be chosen for their “strategical [sic] meaning to Brazilian enterprises” and “their importance in the establishment of a business focused network with Brazil.”⁶

While there is an extensive but lesser-known longer history of economic exchange between the regions — for example, with petrodollars from the Arab region reaching Latin America in the 1970s — it is only within the past few decades that commercial flows have reached significant levels. 

Between 1989 and 2012, trade between the Arab region and Brazil — the largest Latin American exporter to, and importer from, the region — increased by a factor of six,⁷ while overall South American-Arab trade more than tripled in the mid-late 2000s.^{8 9} By the early 2010s, annual Latin American trade with the broader Middle East reached tens of billions of dollars,¹⁰ with numerous Latin American countries generating a pronounced trade surplus by exporting large quantities of agricultural goods and other commodities (and, in Brazil’s case, a less financially significant amount of higher value-added items such as airplanes produced by Embraer) while importing oil, fertilizers, and specialty food items. During this period, Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds and state-owned enterprises also became significant investors in Latin America. For example, the state-owned, Dubai-based DP World, a major global trade logistics company, now manages port infrastructure in numerous countries throughout the region, namely Argentina, Brazil, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Peru.

This period of booming economic relations was accompanied — and, in part, generated — by a series of political initiatives: most prominently the Summits of South American-Arab Countries (commonly known by the Spanish and Portuguese acronym, ASPA), which brought together heads of state and high-level political officials from the Arab League and now-defunct Union of South American Nations (UNASUR). Four such summits were held successively between 2005 and 2015 in Brazil, Qatar, Peru, and Saudi Arabia, with Lula’s government serving as the major impetus and organizing force. As noted at the time by Celso Amorim  — who served as defense minister under Lula, foreign affairs minister under his successor Dilma Rousseff, and currently is Lula’s chief advisor — the ASPA summits represented the “first time” that “these two parts of the developing world were brought together.” Coinciding with his observation that “often leaders wave the flag and businessmen follow suit,”¹¹ a series of interregional business summits have been held both alongside and independently of ASPA, as have additional private sector-oriented events, such as the Global Halal Brazil Business Forum, the second iteration of which was staged in late-October 2023 in São Paulo. 

Notably, the final ASPA summit came at a moment of declining state interest in interregional ties. By the mid-2010s, the political pendulum in much of Latin America was swinging firmly to the right (with Rousseff herself removed in a parliamentary coup in 2016), and ascendant conservative factions in Brazil and elsewhere shared little of the left’s enthusiasm for South-South initiatives. Alongside the country’s ongoing political crisis, which would culminate with Jair Bolsonaro’s assumption of the presidency in 2019, Brazil was also by then feeling the delayed effects of the 2007-8 global financial crisis, which initially had left much of the region relatively unscathed. More importantly, China’s economic slowdown translated into significantly reduced demand for Latin American commodity exports. For its part, the macroeconomic scenario in much of the Middle East had also deteriorated, and many of the region’s regimes were too preoccupied with consolidating their domestic authority following the Arab Spring to devote significant attention to extra-regional affairs. 

A further would-be crisis emerged due to Bolsonaro’s stated ambition to follow the Trump administration’s lead by moving Brazil’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Though never concretized — in large part, it seems, due to pressure from business groups for whom the Middle East comprises an important market — the fear was that Bolsonaro’s machinations would severely depress interregional trade, if not prompt outright boycotts of Brazilian goods.¹² Instead, during Bolsonaro’s first year in office, the Arab region, taken collectively, went from being the world’s fifth- to third-largest importer of Brazilian goods, after only China and the U.S.¹³ Notably, with the subsiding of the cross-regional political relations of the “pink tide” period that had captured much scholarly attention and conventionally been interpreted as representing a desire for autonomy, independence from U.S. dictates, and a more decentered, multipolar world, commercial flows have come to dominate the interregional agenda to a greater degree. Currently, the private sector thus appears to be playing an even larger catalyzing role in fomenting these linkages than in the earlier period that Amorim described as often guided by state-led flag-waving. 

The Russian Invasion of Ukraine and a New Boom Period in Latin American-Middle Eastern Exchange

These trends have continued into the present, particularly in the aftermath of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. As noted, Brazilian exports to the Middle East have increased dramatically following — and, in large part, because of — the Russian intervention. Accordingly, contemporary Latin American-Middle Eastern economic relations must be understood vis-à-vis the ways in which this war has refashioned global-capitalist exchange. This dynamic is salient for two reasons: first, it reveals that world geopolitical events (and in this case, events that are not driven by the U.S.) have the ability to shape the Latin American-Middle Eastern relationship; and second, it is leading to the further entrenchment of an axis of interregional, South-South exchange that is mostly based on commodities, with predictably negative consequences in Latin America. 

As a major “agro-food” power, the Brazilian economy relies heavily on imported fertilizer. Russia has served as an important source, with approximately two-thirds of Russian exports to Brazil in 2021 comprised of various kinds of fertilizers. This commercial axis has continued during the war, with Russia listed during June 2023 as Brazil’s fifth-largest overall source of imports, valued at $793 million.¹⁴ As of August 2023, Brazil was also cited as the world’s second-largest purchaser of Russian diesel.¹⁵ The importance of these economic linkages is evidenced by the fact that Moscow is home to another of ApexBrasil’s international offices. 

Though Brazil — like the rest of the Global South — has resisted calls to join the Northern-led sanctions regime, and has expressed few if any political reservations about trading with Russia, the war’s disruption of supply chains and accompanying price fluctuations have prompted domestic concerns about relying on imports to meet the needs of agribusiness. As of 2021, Brazil was importing approximately 85 percent of its fertilizers, about 20 percent of which was coming from Russia. Together with its ally Belarus, Russia also comprised 44 percent of Brazil’s potash imports. Accordingly, there is a clear economic logic for Brazil to diversify its providers, particularly to include less conflict-ridden partners. Here, various Middle Eastern countries are well situated to benefit, as between 2017 and 2021, Qatar, Algeria, and Iran were Brazil’s third-, fourth-, and fifth- largest sources of nitrogen, while Morocco and Saudi Arabia were its largest and third-largest suppliers of phosphate.¹⁶

A similar need for diversification has become apparent vis-à-vis oil, with refined petroleum accounting for 12 percent of Brazilian imports from Russia in 2021.¹⁷ That Russia, in late-September 2023, temporarily banned fuel exports to countries outside of the Eurasian Economic Union only reinforces the perceived need for commercial diversification, with Middle Eastern countries again well situated to benefit from any unmet Brazilian demand.   

In turn, rising prices for wheat and corn in particular, along with the reduction in Russian and Ukrainian exports of these crops, have led Middle Eastern countries — and others — to seek different providers, with Brazil serving as a natural alternative. It is in this context that Arab-Brazilian trade flows increased by nearly 40 percent in 2022, surpassing the unprecedented aforementioned annual figure of $30 billion. 

Accordingly, in the present geopolitical scenario, there is increased impetus for tighter economic relations between Brazil (along with other Latin American countries) and the Middle East, revolving primarily around growing Brazilian (and regional) demand for alternative sources of fertilizers and fuels, and Middle Eastern countries seeking new suppliers of agricultural products. These trade relations have already reached new heights, and could very well continue to do so. Yet the fact that they revolve so thoroughly around the exchange of commodities, as explored below, raises serious concerns for Brazil and the rest of the region, environmentally, developmentally, and otherwise.  

Further, there are hints of a return to active Brazilian political engagement with the Middle East. Lula, since his January 2023 return to the presidency, has already made an official state visit to the United Arab Emirates and met with Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas on the sidelines of the September 2023 UN General Assembly. Subsequently, he visited Saudi Arabia in November 2023 and Egypt in February 2024, during the latter of which he harshly denounced Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip. He has also continued to invoke the salience of South-South linkages, while again seeking to spur South American regional initiatives that could potentially serve as the basis for a Brazilian-led return to something akin to the ASPA summits. Yet for now, it is commercial concerns that are the main drivers of this new boom period in interregional ties. 

South-South Relations and World Order

In the context of rising tensions between the U.S. (and broader West) and both Russia and China, along with the latter’s increasing assertiveness in world affairs, and the planned expansion of the BRICS, it has become increasingly commonplace for commentators to refer to a decentered world order characterized by greater latitude for certain Global South actors.¹⁸

This perceived shift has provoked alarm for many in traditional Global North power centers, who fear both the decline of their own influence and the concomitant rising stature of potentially revisionist (and, in some cases, deeply illiberal) actors. Simultaneously, this rise in influence for the Global South has been met with widespread relief and satisfaction in the South (and among many critical analysts in the North), who welcome the erosion of a hierarchical and racialized world order based on a concentration of power and decision-making authority in certain hands. Nor is sympathy widespread in the South for a supposedly “liberal” order whose leaders have carried out numerous imperial invasions and coups, and often sought to remake the world in their image by imposing economic, political, and cultural models. 

In turn, references to the North, South, and North-South divide have increased dramatically in recent years. This is the case among Western commentators who fret over rising Global South agency in world affairs and the lack of adherence by Global South states to the sanctions regime against Russia,¹⁹ as well as among Southern state actors themselves, for whom the term — in its less cynical iterations — expresses a legitimate desire to break free from Washington’s “hegemonic interferences,” as the then-Argentine foreign minister put it after the country’s 2010 recognition of a Palestinian state.²⁰ Here, I explore the valence of the notion of the South, and South-South relations, vis-à-vis the current deepening of Latin American-Middle Eastern linkages. 

The term Global South has drawn criticism for the lack of precision in its geographic referent (for example, Australia and New Zealand are in the South but not the Global South); the political heterogeneity (from liberal democracies to despotic regimes) and economic diversity (from the world’s most destitute countries to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, which rank near the top of global lists of per-capita gross domestic product) of those generally included therein; and a perceived lack of shared interests, goals, or policy agendas. For some left-wing critics, the term also unhelpfully obscures the class-based social divides that cut across state borders.²¹ 

In a recent intervention, Aude Darnal takes a negative approach by defining the South’s essence as revolving around a lack of agency in international affairs. As she argues, it “is the most multifaceted and neutral label available to refer to states that have historically been relegated to the margins of the world order.”²²

Yet this definition also frays. China is often included as part of the Global South, and has adopted the label for its own geopolitical purposes. In the words of the country’s vice-president, spoken during the 2023 UN General Assembly: “As the largest developing country, China is a natural member of the Global South. It breathes the same breath with other developing countries and shares the same future with them.”²³ Yet China is also a founding and permanent member of the UN Security Council. Further, while the International Monetary Fund and World Bank are indeed bastions of exclusionary U.S.-European global economic governance, their de facto authority has decreased alongside the rise of China, which since 2017 has been “the world’s largest official creditor.”²⁴

India, too, has strategically deployed this category, with Narendra Modi’s far-right, Hindu nationalist government hosting a virtual “Voice of the Global South” summit in January 2023.²⁵ In Brazil, Lula has often deployed the rhetoric of South-South cooperation over the course of his administrations. This emphasis, as materialized during his previous terms through flurries of diplomatic initiatives, the opening of new embassies, and interregional summits involving Africa and the Middle East in particular, also reflects a desire for Brazilian leadership within a bloc of marginalized states.  

Yet the notion that South-South relations entail a normatively positive decentering, the erosion of imperial hierarchies, and the generation of egalitarian and cooperative bonds of solidarity²⁶ does not comport with the principal material realities of actually existing economic relations between Brazil and the Middle East.²⁷

The Domestic Consequences of Brazil’s Middle East Ties

While Amorim previously enthused, during the last boom period, that the dramatic growth in interregional commercial exchange was inaugurating “a new world economic geography” in which “to get from Brazil to Cairo, you won’t need to pass through Washington and Paris,”²⁸ this understanding can obfuscate the extent to which interregional linkages are shaped by the economic agendas of dominant groups. Accordingly, such celebratory rhetoric may give the false impression that Brazil’s foreign policy toward the Middle East or elsewhere is formulated autonomously from domestic class forces.²⁹

This paper presents an alternative interpretation that highlights the centrality of capitalist interests for explaining and making sense of these growing ties. That is, I argue for the need to view Brazilian- and Latin American-Middle Eastern relations as a manifestation of a global, neoliberal trend toward the free circulation of goods and capital, and as driven by the profit motive, with predictably deleterious economic, political, social, and environmental consequences.

Brazil is the world’s biggest exporter of halal meat, and South American produce and agricultural goods — everything from apples, grapes, pears, orange juice, almonds, avocadoes, and wine to farm-raised salmon — line supermarket shelves in the Gulf countries and beyond. For its part, São Paulo-based JBS is “the world’s biggest meat producer.”³⁰ While in recent years the Middle East and Africa have comprised over 10 percent of its exports, that figure is set to increase owing to JBS’s 2022 purchase of processing plants in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as the fact that the company has established its own “distribution” network in the aforementioned countries and Kuwait.³¹

The region, in other words, is a vital part of the “food-security” strategy pursued by numerous Middle Eastern countries. These include the United Arab Emirates, which imports between 80 and 90 percent of its food.³² Additionally, Emirati companies have invested in numerous agricultural assets in Latin America. 

In turn, what are the effects of this would-be “new world economic geography” in Latin America itself, and what do they reveal about Global South capitalist actors? Here, two issues are of particular note: first, the social, environmental, and economic implications of the operations of agribusiness, and second, the political role played by these companies. 

Regarding the former, over 70 percent of Brazilian exports to the Arab region during 2022, which amounted to $17.7 billion, consisted of agricultural products, most prominently meat and grains.³³ While beyond the scope of this paper, the country’s arms sales to the region are also significant, and by the mid-1980s, Brazil — then the world’s sixth-largest weapons exporter — was already selling military equipment throughout the Middle East, including to the Iraqi, Saudi Arabian, and Egyptian regimes.³⁴ More recently, “Made in Brazil”-stamped tear gas canisters were fired against Arab Spring protestors by the Hosni Mubarak regime in Egypt, while Brazilian cluster munitions have been used during the ongoing war in Yemen by the Saudi-led coalition.³⁵

For its part, Brazilian agribusiness is strongly linked to environmental degradation. As a recent paper soberly puts it, “Brazil is the world’s largest beef exporter…and the sector has a notable environmental footprint, linked to one-fifth of all commodity-driven deforestation across the tropics.”³⁶ Citing the estimate that up to 90 percent of the Amazon’s deforestation is related to the cattle industry, the New York Times notes that, “Tropical deforestation for meat production is a double whammy for the climate, replacing biodiverse carbon sinks with clear-cut land full of methane-belching bovines.” JBS is also reported to be “one of the biggest consumers of cattle raised on newly deforested land,” with some of its suppliers also alleged to be illegally operating within legally established Indigenous lands and conservation zones.³⁷ The same article cites a 2022 study by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, which finds that, despite JBS’s stated “net-zero” commitments, the company’s greenhouse gas emissions soared by over 50 percent between 2016 and 2021, and currently exceed those of Italy.³⁸

Accordingly, Brazilian-Middle Eastern economic exchange, which is largely based on agricultural exports and other commodities, is producing profoundly negative consequences for Brazil’s ecosystems and exacerbating the global climate crisis. In turn, large Brazilian agribusiness companies are generously subsidized by taxpayers, at the expense of smaller producers,³⁹ and are further entrenching monoculture agriculture and longstanding extractivist tendencies. 

This axis of South-South relations is particularly deleterious in these regards. The specific commercial entanglements between Latin America and the U.S. have long (and often justly) been criticized in the former region by dependency theorists and others for stunting industrialization and engendering “underdevelopment” within this expanse of “Washington’s backyard” and global capitalism’s “periphery” (or “semi-periphery”).⁴⁰ Yet while Brazil’s single largest export product to the U.S. is oil (at just over 10 percent, per 2021 figures), a significant portion of its U.S.-bound export basket consists of manufactured goods, including various kinds of aircrafts, construction and other vehicles, and parts for the preceding. In turn, manufactured goods comprise an even larger share of Brazil’s exports to its largest Latin American trading partners.

In contrast, Brazil’s export profile vis-à-vis many of its other Global South (and Global North) trading partners is much less diversified and more heavily skewed toward agricultural goods, commodities, and raw materials. In the case of the Middle East, products such as meat, soybeans, sugar, corn, gold, and iron ore predominate. Further, per the same year’s figures, just shy of 80 percent of Brazil’s exports to China — its largest export market by a considerable margin — consisted of iron ore, soybeans, and crude petroleum.⁴¹ While these growing commercial axes are not inflected with the same history of U.S. interventionism, Brazil’s current trade flows with countries often labeled as part of the Global South are engendering even more immediately apparent environmental and developmental harms. This reality of deleterious consequences is too easily occluded by the normatively positive sheen that often accompanies the South-South label. 

The domestic social consequences of Brazil’s agribusiness-dominated export economy, for which the Middle East is again a highly significant market, are also noteworthy. As a BBC Brasil report observed in the context of the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, “The Brazilian countryside is a living contradiction: the country is the second largest food exporter in the world, yet three of four rural households experienced food insecurity.” It goes on to note that the problem is not precisely a lack of food, but the question of who has access to it, especially in the context of Brazil’s role as a global supplier.⁴² In a world defined by class difference, food security for some may thus go hand in hand with food insecurity for others.

Agribusiness also plays an outsized (and controversial) role in Brazilian politics, with magnates and large companies in this sector serving as key protagonists in promoting a far-right agenda. Of particular interest to these actors, unsurprisingly, is a relaxation of environmental regulations, the undermining of state capacity to enforce them, and reducing Indigenous land rights. Regarding the latter, it was Brazilian agribusiness that spearheaded a recent legislative effort to prohibit the recognition of these lands if the Indigenous groups in question were not occupying them in 1988, when the country’s post-authoritarian constitution came into effect with a legal guarantee of such rights. Further, after the Supreme Court’s 9-2 ruling against this proposal in late-September 2023, it has again been agribusiness and its associated farm lobby that has sought to challenge this decision by securing the passage of legislation to impose the aforementioned time limit, as well as by seeking a constitutional amendment. While Lula vetoed several of the bill’s parts after its subsequent approval by the Senate, this was overridden by the mostly agribusiness-friendly Brazilian congress in December 2023, and has since come into effect.      

More broadly, agribusiness comprises one of the three key sectors of the Brazilian electorate — along with right-wing religious voters, and those motivated by gun ownership and “law-and-order” messaging — that propelled Bolsonaro to the presidency. Throughout his term but also since Lula’s reelection, agribusiness has backed Bolsonaro’s anti-democratic, illiberal, and environmentally destructive agenda. For their part, some of Brazil’s smaller agricultural companies are further suspected of providing financial assistance to far-right rioters and coup-mongers in support of their January 8, 2023 invasion of federal buildings in Brasília and attempt to provoke Lula’s removal from office, including by allegedly helping to pay to bus in out-of-town agitators.⁴³

Insofar, then, as Brazil’s economic relations with the Middle East presently revolve heavily around agricultural and other commodity exports, they are contributing toward deforestation and global heating, entrenching monoculture and extractivism, deepening domestic inequality and food insecurity, and buttressing far-right revanchism. 

Conclusions

Through analyzing the diverse constellation of forces that is both cultivating and reshaping Latin American-Middle Eastern relations, particularly in economic terms, this paper sheds light on an increasingly important axis of contemporary South-South ties.

Further, it highlights the implications of these linkages for domestic Latin American (and especially Brazilian) societies, but also, more broadly, for our understanding of world order, and present-day shifts related to the rise of Global South states and actors, as well as South-South relations. 

Writing in the mid-1980s, the prominent realist International Relations theorist Stephen Krasner argued in a well-cited book that the then-Third World was locked in a “structural conflict” against the liberal international order.⁴⁴

In the context of the current boom in Latin American-Middle Eastern economic exchange and other axes of South-South relations, I argue against the essentialist tendency to view these ties as inherently involving “opposition” to or “resistance” against the existing world order. This paper also challenges the notion that contemporary South-South relations are necessarily normatively positive.

Indeed, if Brazil’s relations with the Middle East comprise a “new world economic geography” in the making, they represent a world-making project that largely lacks the impetus to promote egalitarian alternatives that motivated past Third-Worldist mechanisms such as the Non-Aligned Movement or the proposal for a New International Economic Order. Rather, and whatever the political motives, Brazil’s current elite-driven relations with the Middle East can be understood, in large part, as reflecting a business-friendly vision that is reinforcing (if not worsening) many of global capitalism’s most adverse consequences through a partial reshaping of its geographies of accumulation.   

Accordingly, viewed from a critical political economy perspective, South-South relations can reinscribe racialized class hierarchies, buttress anti-democratic and inegalitarian actors and tendencies, exacerbate the climate crisis. Further, they can involve the provision of lethal aid to authoritarian regimes and fuel international conflict.

As the Brazilian International Relations scholar Tatiana Berringer has argued, it is necessary to highlight “the class interests that [have] directed the international action of the Brazilian state,”⁴⁵ as well as that of others throughout the region and beyond. 

Especially during times of greater connectivity, possibilities exist for such ties to again play a more liberatory role, whether politically, culturally, or economically — for example, through greater cross-pollination between the regions’ civil society actors⁴⁶ and social movements.⁴⁷ But this lofty ambition can only begin to be realized if South-South relations are configured around notions of solidarity, egalitarianism, and freedom as opposed to profit-seeking and extractivism.

Footnotes

1: Despite my reservations about these terms, as briefly noted below, I use “North,” “South,” “Global South,” and “South-South” (along with “West”) throughout (and without quotation marks) as shorthand and in line with the current conventional wisdom surrounding how to categorize the world’s states. For critical but nuanced commentary on the North-South categorization scheme, see: Funk, Kevin. 2015. “The Global South Is Dead, Long Live the Global South! The Intersectionality of Social and Geographic Hierarchies in Global Capitalism.” New Political Science 37(4): 582-603. https://doi.org/10.1080/07393148.2015.1089031.

2: Civantos, Christina. 2016. “The Surprisingly Deep Centuries-Old Ties Between the Middle East and Latin America.” Americas Quarterly. February 5. Accessed October 1, 2023. https://www.americasquarterly.org/fulltextarticle/the-surprisingly-deep-centuries-old-ties-between-the-middle-east-and-latin-america/.

3: Rocha, Alexandre. 2018. “Nasce a Federação Sul-Americana de Câmaras Árabes.” ANBA (Agência de Notícias Brasil-Árabe). April 3. Accessed October 1, 2023. https://anba.com.br/nasce-federacao-sul-americana-de-camaras-arabes/.

4: Karam, John Tofik. 2007. Another Arabesque: Syrian-Lebanese Ethnicity in Neoliberal Brazil. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 36-37.

5: Funk, Kevin. 2022. Rooted Globalism: Arab-Latin American Business Elites and the Politics of Global Imaginaries. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

6: See: http://www.apexbrasil.com.br/en/where-we-are (accessed January 11, 2024).

7: Carrieri, Marcos. 2013. “Further Space for Growth.” Brazil-Arab News Agency. March 25. Accessed January 30, 2016. http://www2.anba.com.br/noticia/20002528/special-reports/further-space-for-growth/.

8: Al Jazeera. 2009. “Arab-Latin American Ties Hailed.” March 31. Accessed May 31, 2014. http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/03/2009331131144938569.html.

9: MercoPress (Montevideo). 2012. “Brazil/Arab World Trade Soared More Than 28% in 2011, Reaching 25.13bn Dollars.” January 31. Accessed May 31, 2014. http://en.mercopress.com/2012/01/31 /brazil-arab-world-trade-soared-more-than-28-in-2011-reaching-25.13bn-dollars.

10: Daoud, Arezki. 2016. “Energy Cooperation with Latin America: An Arab Perspective.” In Saddy, Fehmy, ed. The Arab World and Latin America: Economic and Political Relations in the Twenty-First Century. London: I. B. Tauris. Pp. 207-223.

11: Amorim, Celso. 2011. “Brazil and the Middle East: Reflections on Lula’s South-South Cooperation.” Cairo Review of Global Affairs 1(2): 48-63.

12: Instead, the Bolsonaro administration settled for opening an ApexBrasil office in Jerusalem in 2019.

13: ANBA (Agência de Notícias Brasil-Árabe). 2020. “Árabes se tornam 3º maior destino da exportação brasileira.” January 29. Accessed February 18, 2020. https://anba.com.br/arabes-se-tornam-3o-maior-destino-da-exportacao-brasileira/.

14: See the figures compiled by the Observatory of Economic Complexity, available at: https://oec.world/en/profile/country/bra (accessed October 1, 2023).

15: Bloomberg News. 2023. “Brazil Binges on Russian Fuel Like Never Before.” August 17. Accessed October 1, 2023. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-17/brazil-binges-on-russian-fuel-like-never-before-as-moscow-seeks-new-markets?embedded-checkout=true.

16: Colussi, Joana and Gary Schnitkey. 2022. “War in Ukraine and Its Effect on Fertilizer Exports to Brazil and the U.S.” farmdoc daily (12):34, available at https://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2022/03/war-in-ukraine-and-its-effect-on-fertilizer-exports-to-brazil-and-the-us.html.

17: See, again, the trade figures compiled by the Observatory of Economic Complexity, available at: https://oec.world/en/profile/country/bra (accessed October 1, 2023).

18: See, for example: Heine, Jorge. 2023. “The Global South Is Forging a New Foreign Policy in the Face of War in Ukraine, China-US Tensions: Active Nonalignment.” The Conversation. June 16. Accessed October 1, 2023. https://theconversation.com/the-global-south-is-forging-a-new-foreign-policy-in-the-face-of-war-in-ukraine-china-us-tensions-active-nonalignment-207078.

19: Prys-Hansen, Miriam. 2023. “The Global South: A Problematic Term.” Internationale Politik Quarterly. June 29. Accessed October 1, 2023. https://ip-quarterly.com/en/global-south-problematic-term.; Patrick, Stewart and Alexandra Huggins. 2023. “The Term ‘Global South’ Is Surging. It Should Be Retired.” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. August 15. Accessed October 1, 2023. https://carnegieendowment.org/2023/08/15/term-global-south-is-surging.-it-should-be-retired-pub-90376.

20: Forero, Juan and Janine Zacharia. 2011. “Palestinians Seek Global Recognition through South America.” Washington Post. February 17. Accessed May 31, 2014. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/16/AR2011021602232.html.

21: Funk, Kevin. 2015. “The Global South Is Dead, Long Live the Global South! The Intersectionality of Social and Geographic Hierarchies in Global Capitalism.” New Political Science 37(4): 582-603. https://doi.org/10.1080/07393148.2015.1089031.

22: Darnal, Aude. 2023. “The ‘Global South’ Is Real. Deal with It.” World Politics Review. September 28. Accessed October 1, 2023. https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/global-south-countries-term-brics/?share-code=U83Zn87XcdIQ.

23: Anthony, Ted. 2023. “China, at UN, Presents Itself as a Member of the Global South as Alternative to a Western Model.” Associated Press. September 21. Accessed October 1, 2023. https://apnews.com/article/un-china-global-south-general-assembly-d8620e4502757c4de9ab41543f14eccb.

24: Behsudi, Adam. 2023. “The ‘Rift Is There.’ China vs. the World on Global Debt.” Politico. April 11. Accessed October 1, 2023. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/11/china-lending-imf-world-bank-00090588.

25: Anthony, Ted. 2023. “China, at UN, Presents Itself as a Member of the Global South as Alternative to a Western Model.” Associated Press. September 21. Accessed October 1, 2023. https://apnews.com/article/un-china-global-south-general-assembly-d8620e4502757c4de9ab41543f14eccb.

26: Funk, Kevin. 2018. “Between Freedom and Futility: On the Political Uses of Corporate Globalizing Discourses.” Journal of Cultural Economy 11(6): 565-590. https://doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2018.1477687.

27: Funk, Kevin. 2023. “Globalizing Latin American Studies: New Frontiers in Latin American-Middle Eastern Exchange.” Latin American Research Review. https://doi.org/10.11606/9788569229032.

28: Karam, John Tofik. 2007. Another Arabesque: Syrian-Lebanese Ethnicity in Neoliberal Brazil. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 174.

29: Funk, Kevin. 2016. “How Latin America Met the Arab World: Toward a Political Economy of Arab-Latin American Relations.” In Tawil Kuri, Marta, ed. Latin American Foreign Policies towards the Middle East: Actors, Contexts, and Trends. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Pp. 11-36.

30: Gelles, David. 2023. “Grilling the World’s Biggest Meat Producer.” New York Times. September 28. Accessed January 11, 2024. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/28/climate/grilling-the-worlds-biggest-meat-producer.html.

31: Coyne, Andy. “JBS Beefs up Middle Eastern Presence with Factory Deals.” Just Food. May 5. Accessed January 11, 2024. https://www.just-food.com/news/jbs-beefs-up-middle-eastern-presence-with-plants-acquisition/?cf-view.

32: Tanchum, Michael. 2022. “The UAE’s Food-Security Plans Have Made It a Global Market Player.” The National (Abu Dhabi). May 6. Accessed October 1, 2023. https://www.thenationalnews.com/weekend/2022/05/06/the-uaes-food-security-strategy-has-made-it-a-global-market-player/.

33: Mano, Ana. 2023. “Brazil Exports to Arab Nations Hit 33-Year High, Agro Products Prevail.” Reuters. January 19. Accessed October 1, 2023. https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/brazil-exports-arab-nations-hit-33-year-high-agro-products-prevail-2023-01-19/.

34: Riding, Alan. 1984. “Brazil Signs Saudi Arms Deal and Hopes for More.” New York Times. October 14. Accessed October 1, 2023. https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/14/world/brazil-signs-saudi-arms-deal-and-hopes-for-more.html.

35: Muggah, Robert and Nathan B. Thompson. 2017. “The Trouble with Brazil’s Expanding Arms Trade.” Defense One. April 18. Accessed October 1, 2023. https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2017/04/trouble-brazils-expanding-arms-trade/137123/.

36: Zu Ermgassen, E. K. H. J. et al. 2020. “The Origin, Supply Chain, and Deforestation Risk of Brazil's Beef Exports.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 117(50): 31770-31779. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2003270117.

37: Gelles, David. 2023. “Grilling the World’s Biggest Meat Producer.” New York Times. September 28. Accessed January 11, 2024. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/28/climate/grilling-the-worlds-biggest-meat-producer.html.

38: DeSmog. 2022. “World’s Largest Meat Company, JBS, Increases Emissions in Five Years despite 2040 Net Zero Climate Target, Continues to Greenwash Its Huge Climate Footprint.” April 21. Accessed January 11, 2024. https://www.iatp.org/media-brief-jbs-increases-emissions-51-percent.

39: Corcioli, Graciella et al. 2022. “Missing the Target: Brazil’s Agricultural Policy Indirectly Subsidizes Foreign Investments to the Detriment of Smallholder Farmers and Local Agribusiness.” Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 5: 1-15. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2021.796845.

40: Antunes de Oliveira, Felipe, and Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven. 2023. “Back to Dakar: Decolonizing International Political Economy through Dependency Theory.” Review of International Political Economy 30(5): 1676-1700. https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2023.2169322.

41: Figures from this and the preceding paragraph are again derived from the database of the Observatory of Economic Complexity, available at: https://oec.world/en/profile/country/bra (accessed January 11, 2024).

42: Carrança, Thais. 2021. “Em meio à exportação recorde de alimentos, seca e pandemia agravam fome no campo.” BBC Brasil. June 2. Accessed October 1, 2023. https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/brasil-57296843.

43: Faiola, Anthony et al. 2023. “Brazil’s Military Blocked Arrests of Bolsonaro Rioters, Officials Say.” Washington Post. January 14. Accessed October 1, 2023. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/01/14/brazil-riot-investigation-military-collusion/.

44: Krasner, Stephen D. 1985. Structural Conflict: The Third World against Global Liberalism. Berkeley: University of California Press.

45: Berringer, Tatiana. 2023. Brazilian Bourgeoisie and Foreign Policy. Leiden: Brill.

46: Ferabolli, Silvia. 2021. “Space Making in the Global South: Lessons from the GCC-Mercosur Agreement.” Contexto Internacional 43(1): 9-31. http://doi.org/10.1590/S0102-8529.2019430100001.

47: Funk, Kevin. 2013. “The Political Economy of South America’s Global South Relations: States, Transnational Capital, and Social Movements.” The Latin Americanist 57(1): 3-20. https://doi.org/10.1353/tla.2013.a705975.

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Kevin Funk is a Fellow in the Committee on Global Thought, a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science, and an affiliated faculty member of the Institute of Latin American Studies at Columbia University. He specializes in global political economy, Latin American-Middle Eastern and South-South relations, and urban studies, with a focus on Brazil and Chile. Funk is the author of Rooted Globalism: Arab-Latin American Elite Consciousness and the Politics of Alternative Imaginaries (2022, Indiana University Press). Funk received his Ph.D. in Political Science, with a Latin American Studies certificate, from the University of Florida. He is also a Senior Researcher with Security in Context.