Over the past year, U.S. President Joe Biden has deployed top administration officials to meet with their Brazilian counterparts and convey a simple message to President Jair Bolsonaro: Don’t derail Brazil’s democracy.
Top officials from the White House, Defense Department, State Department, and even the CIA have held meetings and calls with Brazilian officials to try to head off any efforts by Bolsonaro to subvert the results of the country’s heated presidential elections.
The diplomatic surge comes as the right-wing populist Bolsonaro faces off against left-wing candidate and former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in a hotly contested runoff vote in what has proved to be one of the most divisive elections in the country’s history. The latest polls show Lula with a slight edge over Bolsonaro.
