Most Latin American leaders avoided open confrontation with Washington after past interventions

Evidence

President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva had just taken over as the country’s president and declined to help the US president with the invasion. As Lula tells the story, he told George W. Bush: “My only war is on hunger.” A former metalworker and union man, his Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) had built roots in Brazilian society, embraced ideological pluralism and “participatory democracy,” and was proudly left-wing. But Lula was not going to start an open fight with the United States, either. Over the previous century of intervention, most Latin American leaders had learned to avoid those conflicts if they could. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 123