Nevertheless the meaning of her declarations are more important than circumstantial or backstage information since they reveal the essential preoccupations of the United States’ diplomacy regarding our country. Ms Hrinak tried to cover the threats she was about to pose with tolerance—“The Bush administration has tried not to react to manifestations made by the Brazilian government that are critical of or diverging from Washington in issues not viewed as essential to the interests of the United States”. And she “advised” the Brazilian government to “carefully balance its opposition to United States’ positions”, as she still expects that Brazil and the United States may be good partners, despite ideological differences, as long as essential American positions are not opposed.

In her speech, Ms Hrinak emphasized the two situations where Brazil is expected to be submissively aligned to the United States’ positions:

Venezuela and Cuba, thus revealing that the United States view the situations involving the Bolivarian Revolution and the Cuban Revolution as central to its interests in Latin America. Ms Hrinak did not mentioned it, but we all know that the FTAA is part of those essential issues, while the opposition to it is one of the issues that the United States expects Brazil to “balance”. The US ambassador practically demanded the Brazilian intervention in the domestic Venezuelan issues in favor of the counter-revolution. “I have no doubt that Brazilians are discussing with the Venezuelan government the importance of respecting democracy, not only concerning fair elections. As we make advances in that process, we will see that Brazil is in fact the leader of the group of countries that are friends of Venezuela, leading all towards a democratic solution”. Well, the Brazilian leadership of the group of friends is only justified as long as it is exerted to help Venezuela to stably follow the course of building the achievements of the Bolivarian Revolution, which was achieved by means of elections—not only one, but three: two for the president of the Republic and one for the Constitutional Assembly. As long as the current episodes taking place in the neighboring country are concerned, it is nothing but another crisis fabricated by the United States and its internal agents. Expecting Brazil to try to convince the Venezuelan government to accept a fraud is improper.

As for Cuba, the ambassador—more emphatically—urged Brazil to join the United States’ positions: “It is hard to understand Brazil’s silence before the recent violations of human rights in Cuba”. Ms Hrinak repeats a worn-out discourse that is doomed to discredit in Brazil, since, aside from the explicit position of solidarity towards Cuba manifested by President Lula, it is worth remembering that the relations between Brazil and the Caribbean island are excellent since they were reestablished almost 20 years ago.

Ms Hrinak’s “advices”—with their threatening tone—may be better understood in the context of the evaluations of the Latin American juncture made by ultra-conservative sectors with influence in the White House, the Pentagon and the Department of State. The Heritage Foundation, one of the ideological sources of the Republican Party, has just published a work by analysts James Jay Carafano and Stephen Johnson, specialists in security and Latin America, referring to the subcontinent as the “Southern flank” of the United States, a region to which the superpower’s military and diplomatic interventionist efforts should converge by means of reestablishing the military “Command South” and the Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, and unburied remain of the Cold War, signed in Rio de Janeiro in 1947, serving as grounds to a long series of interventionist actions in the region throughout the second half of the 20th century.

Such right-wing interventionist delirious proposals are based on the diagnosis according to which there is a growing “terrorist presence” in Latin America developed by “at least seven Latin American terrorist groups, including three Muslim ones”.

The Heritage Foundation’s report concentrates its attacks on Cuba and Venezuela, accused of interfering in the “Latin American democratic processes”, and call the American diplomacy to “work coordinately with other governments to neutralize those threats”.

That was what the retiring ambassador tried to do with her “advices”. In order to reach a better position in the world and willing to give an effective contribution to the sovereign integration of Latin America, the Brazilian government, with its new foreign policy, will certainly disdain Ms Hrinak’s “advices”. But will certainly take into account those threats.