José Paranhos, the Baron of Rio Branco, was Brazil’s Foreign Minister from 1902 to 1902. During his leadership of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he elevated Brazil’s prestige and prominence in South America and shifted the country’s alliances from Great Britain to the United States. In 1905, the United States established an embassy in Rio de Janeiro and Brazil did the same in Washington. In 1906, U.S. Secretary of State Elihu Root attended the Third Inter-American Conference in Rio de Janeiro. In this public statement of Brazil’s foreign policy that was published in a leading Brazilian journal, the Brazilian Minister of Foreign Affairs outlines his country’s policies and explains the reasons for establishing close relations with the United States.

The last meeting of the Pan American Congress was in 1901 in Mexico. In these five years, great international events have been so varied and grave that in the political ideas of our continent one notes a sudden change, originating in a lively sentiment of the universality of its destiny, which inspires and aggrandizes the conscience of the American peoples.

In this important variation of principles, of which the additions made to the Monroe Doctrine by President Roosevelt already impress us, there is surely much of interest for the coming conference in Rio de Janeiro.

Our age has witnessed the most illustrious congresses, and the right to deride the declarations of principles of these international conferences is justified by the repeated deceptions inflicted on the human spirit by the failure to execute those principles.  .  .  .

It is probable, however, that the Pan American Congress will have important results. With the intense necessity which the American nations have of assuring their international existence, they are formulating a collective ideal of a continent which wants to participate with Europe on the basis of equality. It is to be hoped that the declarations of the Congress will express perfectly the intimate aspirations of the American nations. Therefore, the fact that an all-American conference is meeting ought not to lead to the conclusion that America is challenging Europe and that its collective sentiment is hostile to European progress or ideals. What America wants is equality in international law, which up to now she has enjoyed, and the sovereignty of her nations to be as respected as that of the European nations. What America refuses is any attempt to apply the so-called African principles to any portion of this free continent. This territory cannot be touched by European greed or conquest. America only wants to be conquered peacefully by that culture which is the glory of Europe, the dignity of the human spirit. Absorbing with the surprising forces of our physical world the energies of the white race, we aspire to attract to this side of the ocean the illuminating wave of European genius. But any violent form of domination, no matter what it be, will be energetically repelled by the Americans with one vibration of sentiment which will unite all of these different countries and will manifest itself like an electrical discharge penetrating the atmosphere heedless of boundaries. We are certain that an American law different from the European law will not be proclaimed in the Conference; what there is and will be is the same law of one civilization which seeks to include all people without distinction of climate or race.

Relative to this continent the greatest service given by the Monroe Doctrine is the liberty which it assures to the development of the forces of each American nation.

Without fear of external and unjustified violences, not even provoked by savagery and corruption, each American nation can attain the maximum of its development within the protection of that doctrine, which in the history of political ideas has an amazing and singular destiny. A simple doctrinaire principle rarely is seen to transmute the course of others reputed more natural; and instead of the expansion of the strong, the elimination of the weak, the occupation of the uninhabited regions—the dominant theory since the discoveries of the sixteenth century—in America, at any rate, there has appeared a new principle of respect for the independence and sovereignty of all nations, a principle which England followed since Canning and only came to repudiate in the Transvaal War. But in South America no one needs to fear the transformation of the English policy because the Monroe Doctrine is not an abstraction. It has for its base the prodigious ascendency of the United States.

Latin America has nothing to fear from Anglo-Saxon America. The United States is a nation of English origin and principles and therefore beneficial for the civilization of other people because the sentiment of individualism is so much a part of their race that English or North American imperialism, if it should manifest itself, never would be the same type as German or Latin imperialism which seeks to destroy and annihilate everything, contorting everything, in order to create from the incompatabilities and irreconcilables the same kind of country in all the regions of the world. Nothing, absolutely nothing, in the policies of the United States would be able to cause uneasiness to the national sensitivity of the other American countries. Just the opposite, these nations find in the preponderance of the first nation of the continent support for their causes and aspirations.

If at any time some nation showed itself unhappy with the American Republic, it was when President Roosevelt proclaimed that the Monroe Doctrine could not serve as a protection for policies of bankruptcy and international piracy.

Brazil, which is solidly in favor of this honest interpretation of Monroeism, prides itself on the spontaneous and affirmed friendship of that American nation and of its great president. There is no friendship more coveted in the world. England proclaims this friendship as unbreakable and in order not to break it submitted to the Cleveland message, considered as an ultimatum, in which the United States appealed to arbitration in the question between British Guiana and Venezuela. The German emperor, whose sagacity and power the entire world recognizes, sent his brother Prince Henry of Prussia to visit the American Republic, and requested Miss Alice Roosevelt to christen a German cruiser built in the United States. France, Russia, Japan, whatever their systems of alliances, aspire to count on the good will of the United States as a factor of capital importance. The Peace of Portsmouth was the culminating point of that marvelous prestige.

In the diplomatic history of Brazil there is no trace of any occurrence, as always happens in international life, which could be interpreted in a manner to weaken our friendship with the United States. During the Empire the three unpleasant incidents of Condy Raguet in the First Empire and of Wise and Webb in the Second were resolved with honor for Brazil, without the intervention of any other country, by the American government, which disapproved of and punished its agents. And the emperor, who had no motives to keep resentments of such incidents, went to the United States in 1876 and returned from there full of amazement and stimulation. During the Republic our approximation with North America was predetermined.

As proof of how much the good will of the United States has served us, it is sufficient only to refer to the Oyapoc dispute arbitration which was due in a great part to the certainty in Paris that Brazil would not be isolated in case of a new attempt at military occupation. Only a few months had passed since Cleveland made his ultimatum.

The quick reciprocity with which the American government raised the rank of its representation in Rio de Janeiro and the initiative it took in the selection of this capital for the meeting of the next Pan American Congress are significant demonstrations of a good and comforting friendship.

If the political reasons were not sufficient to emphasize the importance of the meeting in Rio de Janeiro, the presence in our country of the Secretary of State of the United States, Mr. Elihu Root, is sufficiently expressive to be considered as an event of great importance in our time. He is not a delegate; he is a member of the American government who will for the first time in history visit another nation. Brazil receives the honor of that distinction because the United States knows that it has won our loyalty and friendship.

Accompanying the American Secretary to Brazil will be Mr. Joaquim Nabuco, our Ambassador in Washington.

After an absence of seven long years, during which time he has ennobled the name of Brazil, that eminent statesman, of whom all Brazil is proud, could not return to his native land at a more significant or auspicious time.

Mr. Root comes from a truly amazing country. His eyes may not be dazzled by our small material progress, but his American philosophy will surely be pleased to note the new phenomena in the Brazilian nation: activity, energy, and hope.

Transformed by science and energy we want to assure our nation a preeminent place among the American nations. Our collective duty is to realize that high ideal of a wonderful land which emigrant races, desirous of peace and work, are making of Brazil. It is necessary that in the face of those industrial and scientific problems we are not overcome by any of those political evils which so greatly hurt the South American nations. There is nothing more ridiculous and extravagant than the manifestations of dictators, the pronouncements, the revolutions for possession of power, the military demagoguery. The foreigners who are coming to honor us will certainly be surprised at the change in our temperament. We will not delude them with a mistaken notion of Brazilian progress. We present instead the reality of our achievements.

Jornal do Commercio  (Rio de Janeiro, December 11, 1905), p. 2.