Insider

Brazil’s former foreign minister to head embassy in Canada

foreign minister canada carlos frança
Carlos França. Photo: Arthur Max/MRE

Carlos França, who served as Jair Bolsonaro’s foreign minister and attended a putschist meeting at the presidential residence in 2022, has received the diplomatic agrément to become Brazil’s next ambassador to Canada.

In a press statement released Thursday, the Foreign Affairs Ministry said this will be Mr. França’s first time as head of a foreign mission.

A career diplomat, Ambassador França took over as foreign minister in March 2021 after his predecessor Ernesto Araújo, a far-right conspiracy theorist, picked a public fight with China, Brazil’s largest trading partner.

In October 2020, Mr. Araújo said it would be “good” for Brazil to become an international “pariah” rather than being a guest at the “feast of the self-serving cynicism of the globalists.” 

Mr. França, along with other colleagues such as former Environment Minister Joaquim Leite and former Education Minister Milton Ribeiro, was part of a second wave of Jair Bolsonaro cabinet ministers who were less vocal on social media about cultural issues but followed the same policies.

In July 2022, Mr. Bolsonaro hosted foreign ambassadors for a chat at his official residence in Brasília. During the meeting, he threatened to stage a coup in Brazil. Mr. França attended the meeting and sat with other cabinet members.

Mr. França was a freshman to Ernesto Araújo in Brazil’s diplomatic academy, graduating in 1991. He rose to the rank of ambassador in late 2019 and served as Mr. Bolsonaro’s presidential adviser before being given a job in the cabinet.

Mr. França’s nomination to lead Brazil’s embassy in Ottawa is pending Senate confirmation.