The gesture of the Brazilian president that captured everyone’s attention (Photo: capture)
His habitual rejection of the use of the chinstrap left him even more exposed. Without any protection on his face Jair Bolsonaro could not hide his obvious tiredness, or perhaps his boredom, when Alberto Fernandez gave his speech this Thursday during the virtual summit of Mercosur.
The Argentine president exhibited for 20 minutes from the Bicentennial Museum. And at one point, the Brazilian president could not prevent his eyes from closing. It was a simple and direct gesture. Tiredness, or boredom, washed over her body and the yawn rose to her throat.
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To conceal, Bolsonaro he put his hands together and quickly covered his face to hide the obvious physical signs that were opposed to the speech of the Argentine head of state. The image was unmistakable: the eyes closed, the mouth hidden, the face rigid.
The gesture coincided just when Alberto Fernández spoke of the necessary consensus that should prevail among the countries of the bloc, haunted by a serious institutional crisis after the decision of the Uruguayan government to unilaterally negotiate trade agreements with third countries, something that Brasilia clearly supports.
Fernández argued at the time that consensus is the backbone of the regional pact. Bolsonaro’s gestural response made his government’s position clear.
But that was not the only moment in which the Brazilian president was somewhat distracted. On several occasions, he seemed to be more attentive to what was happening around him. Sometimes he held his head with his hands and other times he put on his glasses to read messages left by his collaborators
// Alberto Fernández defended the regional integration of Mercosur amid the growing tension with Uruguay: we must negotiate together without giving up the consensus
What happened at the summit
This Thursday’s virtual meeting served to transfer the pro tempore presidency of the group from Argentina to Brazil.
In his speech, Alberto Fernandez asked to “negotiate together without resigning the consensus ” and made a call “for dialogue and harmony.”
At the meeting, the profound differences between the Government and Brazil and Uruguay, which kicked the board recently announcing that it will start negotiating trade agreements outside the block. Formally, at the meeting, the President passed the pro tempore ownership of the bloc to the Brazilian Jair Bolsonaro.
The responses of Uruguay and Brazil
In turn, the Uruguayan president Luis Lacalle Pou Y Jair Bolsonaro they responded to the president Alberto Fernandez.
Lacalle Pou defended the decision to negotiate extra-zone agreements and said that “the world is going very fast and Uruguay is going there.”
“Hopefully we will all go together,” he said and affirmed that his country has an “openness vocation, like Mercosur” and that everyone must “continue to advance with the European Union”.
// In the middle of the Mercosur meeting, Jair Bolsonaro told Alberto Fernández how the final of the Copa América between Brazil and Argentina will come out
Bolsonaro, in turn, said in his speech that “the persistence of impasses and the use of the consent as an element of veto and the attachment to archaic visions and defensive politics they will only have one effect: to consolidate skepticism and doubt as the true energizing potential of Mercosur ”.
In addition, he mentioned some axes of what will be the pro tempore presidency of the bloc, which Argentina transferred to him: “We will continue working to rescue the original values of the bloc, associated with the opening up and the search for greater integration of our economies in the regional and international value chains ”.
