Brazil's socialist frontrunner sent secret emissary to meet with the Biden administration in Washington

Brazil’s left-wing presidential favorite – former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva – sent his emissary, Sen. Jaques Wagner, to quietly meet with Biden administration officials in Washington last month, two sources familiar with the matter revealed on Wednesday.

According to a Reuters report, the previously unreported meeting between the Brazilian lawmaker and State Department officials is part of an effort by Brasilia and Washington to “overcome lingering wariness of each other ahead of October’s election,” which polls show Lula is favored to win against conservative President Jair Bolsonaro.

The stated purpose of Wagner’s U.S. trip was to attend the Brazil Conference hosted by Brazilian students at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While speaking at the event on April 9, Wagner spoke on Lula’s behalf and said Brazil was in the midst of an “environmental crisis,” adding that environmental issues “will be central to his government.”

However, the secretive nature of Wagner’s visit to Washington serves to show the skepticism still felt by Latin America’s left towards the United States. Lula, a former union leader, was previously jailed on corruption charges and has long maintained that U.S. investigators collaborated with the Brazilian prosecution in order to achieve his imprisonment.

His weariness of engaging Washington is highlighted by last November’s high-profile tour of European capitals where the former president publicly appeared with the leaders of France, Germany and Spain.

Washington, for its part, has openly criticized Lula’s public support for the Latin American dictatorships in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua – which Washington has previously qualified as “undemocratic.” The Biden administration has also been careful of getting too close to Lula for fear of appearing to favor one candidate over another, sources revealed.

Although the specific details of Wagner’s discussions with U.S. officials remain unclear, the sources maintained that they talked about Lula’s platform and how he would approach U.S. relations. They also noted that when the Biden administration previously met with Lula’s team, they focused on environmental issues, a subject that Lula’s administration previously identified as a key friction point between Bolsonaro and Biden.