‘Bromance’: France’s Macron Tours Amazon Rainforest with Brazil’s Lula

French President Emmanuel Macron spent much of the week touring the Amazon rainforest alongside his Brazilian counterpart, radical leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Photos of the two enjoying each other’s company prompted widespread jokes about their “bromance” and inspired mocking memes.

Macron arrived in Brazil on Tuesday as part of a three-day official visit to the South American nation. The French leader participated in events held in the cities of Belém, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo before arriving in the capital city of Brasilia on Thursday, where he signed 21 agreements with Lula.

On Tuesday, Lula posted a message on social media stating that he was en route to the Brazilian island of Combu, located off the coast of Belem, in the Brazilian Amazon. The message was accompanied by a picture of Lula holding hands with Macron as both, dressed with white shirts, boarded a boat to the Brazilian island.

Other pictures taken on the official visit to the island of Combu show Lula and Macron holding hands, smiling, and waving. The pictures prompted social media users to joke the two presidents looked like “they just got married and are having a whirlwind honeymoon.”

The “bromance” between Macron and Lula prompted a multitude of social media commentary. French President Macron himself shared a meme that depicted both presidents photoshopped into the poster of the 2016 musical drama La La Land starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone. The meme replaces the Hollywood actors with Macron and Lula.

“Some people have compared the images of my visit to Brazil to those of a wedding, and I say to them: it was a wedding! France loves Brazil and Brazil loves France!” Macron said in a lengthy, Portuguese-language post on social media.

Macron continued his message with a brief account of his agenda in the cities of Belém, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo, noting that both countries have vowed to increase scientific, artistic and student exchanges and to “develop bilingualism with new French and Portuguese language sections.”

The French president also praised Lula for his election and for — according to Macron — the way Lula has “restored institutional balance,” which means “a lot” to France.

Lula’s predecessor – Jair Bolsonaro, whom Lula narrowly defeated in a contested October 2022 runoff election – endured a challenging relationship with the French president during his term.

In 2019, Macron, alongside a group of international celebrities, was at the forefront of a disinformation campaign that accused Bolsonaro of “destroying” the Amazon Rainforest. At the time, Macron – and celebrities such as singer Madonna, soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo, and Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio – shared years-old pictures of the Amazon Rainforest and pictures taken elsewhere, claiming them as proof of an ongoing wildfire emergency and accusing Bolsonaro’s policies of having caused the fires. 

In reality, some of the pictures were taken by a photographer who died in 2003, during Lula’s first presidential term.

Macron also led an international pressure campaign against Bolsonaro over the wildfires, threatening to block a yet-to-be-approved trade deal between the European Union and the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR) regional trade bloc.

The incident strained the relationship between Bolsonaro and Macron, prompting the former Brazilian president to urge Macron to “keep his nose out” of Brazil’s affairs. Bolsonaro then asked U.N. member states to help Brazil fight the “colonialist” Macron and denounced pressure from European nations to violate the South American nation’s sovereignty.

In contrast to Macron’s claims of Lula having “restored institutional balance” in Brazil, a group of Brazilian lawmakers led by Bolsonaro’s son, incumbent lawmaker Eduardo Bolsonaro, denounced in a U.S. Congress hearing on March 12 a persecution and censorship campaign led by Lula’s government against dissidents.

Deputy (equivalent in Brazil to a U.S. representative) Eduardo Bolsonaro during a demonstration on Brazil’s Independence Day on September 7, 2021, in Sao Paulo, Brazil. (Amauri Nehn/NurPhoto via Getty)

Lula described the relationship between France and Brazil as “a bridge between the Global South and the developed world, in favor of overcoming structural inequalities and a more sustainable planet.”

“Brazil and France are determined to work together to promote, through democratic debate, a shared vision of the world,” Lula said after his bilateral meeting with Macron in Brasilia. “A vision based on the priority of production over unproductive finance, solidarity over selfishness, democracy over totalitarianism, sustainability over predatory exploitation.” 

According to the Brazilian government, France is the third largest investor in Brazil, with around $38 billion invested. In 2023, bilateral trade reached $8.4 billion, of which $2.9 billion represented Brazilian exports to the European nation.

Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.