No 11 (2024)

The Portuguese economy approached the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution (25 April 2024) in relatively good shape. According to international analysts, the country has ceased to be the “sick man” of Europe, as it was called at the turn of the first and second decades of the 21st century, and is experiencing a “golden period” of its economic history, in particular, thanks to factors such as structural modernization, growing exports and increasing inflows of foreign tourists. But the normalization of the country’s economic situation was based on tough measures within the framework of the policy of “fiscal asceticism” carried out after the crisis of 2008-2009, and these measures cost dearly to millions of Portuguese, whose financial situation has significantly worsened and remains unstable to this day. The country also paid an expensive social price for financial and economic stabilization in the form of emigrants, whose number by 2020 exceeded two million people (about 20% of the population). Moreover, unlike previous waves of emigration, when unskilled workers left, now the bulk of those leaving the country are educated specialists. But this is just one of the new challenges to which Portugal will have to find an answer in the context of geo-economic upheavals occurring in Europe and the world.

The article deals with the main aspects of the ideology of the President of Argentina Javier Milei and his first actions as the leader of the country. The author addresses the peculiarities of the new president’s worldview in the context of the country’s foreign policy. Based on the analysis, the author draws a conclusion about the degree and quality of the incumbent president’s influence on the foreign policy of Argentina.

The war for independence on the territory of modern Bolivia lasted for 15 years. It was a war of military liberation campaigns, patriot uprisings, and guerrilla movements that made the territory of this colony of Spain a place where no royalist victory guaranteed tranquility. Charcas was a place where the vast majority of the population belonged to the indigenous Amerindian peoples, Aymara and Quechua, on whose labor the welfare of the colony and the wealth of the metropolis were built. The fate of Bolivian independence largely depended on the position of this majority. The Indians were an important actor in the Charcas War of Independence, the fate of the warring parties depended on their position, but they never took sides, but acted in accordance with their opportunistic interests, entering into ad hoc alliances with the Creoles, Mestizos, and Spaniards. Their goal was to maintain a "pact of reciprocity" with the white world, whether with the Crown, whether with the Patriots, which implied the preservation of Indian autonomy and guarantees of limited exploitation. The goal of the Indians was their survival as a communal people, the recognition by the new political forces of the special rights and interests of these peasant peoples. They managed to defend this special "project" within the framework of cardinal changes of the times of the War of Independence, so the restoration of the old regime by republican governments just a couple of years after the declaration of independence of the countries did not cause discontent and indignation of the Indian population.

The text is devoted to a comparative analysis of the poems by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, Giosuè Carducci and Joseph Brodsky, dedicated to Emperor Maximilian I. The approach to the figure of the hero, his presentation and the ideological background of the authors are compared.

The review examines a collective monograph prepared in the Institute of Latin America of the Russian Academy of Sciences under the guidance of N. Kudeyarova. The book touches on a number of problems of the Antarctic Treaty System functioning and the activities of Latin American states involved in the Antarctic agenda. Special attention is paid to the analysis of legal issues, as well as history of Antarctic policy of the Latin American countries and South Africa.

The article analyzes the key aspects of Brazil's new environmental policy. The relevance of the issue is due to a noticeable transformation in the approaches of the previous government of Jair Bolsonaro (2019–2022), when obligations to protect the Amazon rainforest and reduce greenhouse gas emissions were actually ignored, and the current cabinet of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (2003–2011; 2023 – present). Lula da Silva’s return to the presidency, the statements and steps he took in the first months of his stay in power indicate that the environmental agenda has become a priority both in domestic policy, which meets the interests of the sustainable development of the country, and in foreign policy, which is shown in a balanced and consistent position on protecting national interests and the interests of the global South at various international platforms, for a sustainable future of the planet.