Angered by the Lula administration’s refusal to back down in the face of the Trump administration’s overt attempts to interfere in Brazil’s presidential elections this October, the State Department informed Brazil this afternoon that the visa of its Ambassador to the United States, Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti, has been revoked. Viotti has been Brazil’s ambassador to the U.S. since 2023. U.S. and Brazilian media report that anonymous State Department officials have let it be known that Ambassador Viotti is not being expelled yet, in the expectation that the Lula government will bow to State Department demands.
Brazil’s actions have offended the State Department in two ways. First and foremost, by refusing to quickly accept the State Department’s choice for U.S. Ambassador to Brazil, who was nominated in June. The Trump administration had not bothered to name any ambassador to Brazil since it took office in January 2025, but with Brazil’s elections coming up, Secretary of State Marco Rubio named his personal friend Daniel Perez – a fellow rightwing Cuban-American Republican whose claim to fame was presiding over the Florida state legislature, with no diplomatic experience. Furthermore, the State Department refused to adhere to international diplomatic protocol which requires that a country submit the name of its choice of ambassador to the receiving country for its approval in advance (known in diplomatic language as the “agrément"). Brazil’s Foreign Ministry responded to this breach by stalling granting his acceptance.
When Rubio then tried to send two State Department officials down to Brazil on a trip coordinated by the team of the leading opposition presidential candidate, Flavio Bolsonaro, with the intent of questioning the integrity of the Brazilian electoral system, Brazil denied them their visas.
