The contest between Washington and Beijing for influence in Latin America has moved to the center of Brazil's presidential campaign. A confidential report by the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (Abin) raised to a "criticality level" the risk of influence and external interference by the United States in the 2026 election. The document's disclosure on Saturday (19) pushed sovereignty and non-interference into the campaign debate, in the week that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva addresses the opening of the United Nations General Assembly.
For Brazil, the warning lands in the closing stretch of the race between Lula, of the Workers' Party (PT), and Flávio Bolsonaro, of the Liberal Party (PL) and son of former president Jair Bolsonaro. The two are in a tight race, according to the latest Datafolha poll released on Thursday (17), with days to go before the first round. The report makes no claim of tampering with ballots or of a changed outcome. Abin's assessment is that political, economic and diplomatic pressure could interfere with the institutional environment and public debate during the election.
Titled "Ameaças ao processo eleitoral de 2026" ("Threats to the 2026 electoral process"), the report was sent in late August to the presidency, the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), which runs Brazilian elections, and the Justice Ministry. Columnist Mônica Bergamo of the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo revealed its contents on Saturday, and Brasil de Fato reported further details. According to the document, there is a "tendency toward an escalation of pressure on Brazil" and a "selective intensification and reconfiguration of the pressure exerted by the US", though within a historical pattern of American influence in the region.
The map of interests
In Abin's reading, the pressure from Washington fits the strategy of Trump's second administration to reassert US hegemony in Latin America. The report cites strategic documents released by the US government between November 2025 and May of this year that list as goals reducing the influence of rival powers and blocking their access to the region's "strategic assets, natural riches and infrastructure". China appears as one of the main targets of that policy, and the agency assesses that Washington seeks to expand its control, directly or through private capital, over those resources.
The document gives special attention to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also serves as national security adviser. In Abin's reading, his policy for the region has an ideological component: pulling Latin American countries away from China and promoting a domestic political reorientation "through support for the rise of conservative governments". In a US Senate hearing in June, Rubio said the region now counts several governments "friendly" to the United States under Trump's second term and named Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela as exceptions. The report also records statements in which he blamed Lula personally for tariffs imposed on Brazilian products, on the grounds that Brazil had not negotiated "in good faith"; for the agency, that personal framing has the potential to echo in Brazil's public debate during the election. Abin also argues that Brazil is a target of these pressures precisely because it defends its autonomy.
The election and the UN speech
Lula flew to New York on Sunday (20) and speaks on Tuesday (22) at the opening of the 81st General Assembly. By tradition, Brazil has opened the sequence of speeches since 1955, and Trump speaks immediately after; the Brazilian government says a hallway encounter between the two is possible. Aides told G1 and Folha that sovereignty and non-interference will feature in the address, with no direct mention of Trump. The internal guidance calls for "polite" language, able to send messages to other countries the government believes are trying to sway the election, such as Argentina and Israel, without creating open confrontation.
The American presence in Brazil's political imagery was visible even before the report: a giant Trump puppet and US flags appeared among protesters at a Bolsonarist rally on September 7 on Paulista Avenue in São Paulo, Brasil de Fato reported. The document's disclosure then amplified the theme online. According to Folha's data column Encaminhado com Frequência, with figures from the consultancy Palver, just over 40 percent of the messages about Lula and the United States between September 13 and 20 dealt with sovereignty and interference; on Saturday, with the report out, the topic jumped 140 percent on messaging apps compared with the weekly average.