This is CBS Eye on the World.

Here's John Batchelor.

Welcoming Ernesto Aruja, former Foreign Minister of the Republic of Brazil, now in Cairo to report to us on Latin American successes and ambitions and challenges.

This is the New World Report.

We begin with Ernesto's time as foreign minister for the Bolsonaro government

and his visits to two of the three former colonies, one still a colony, along the north-eastern

South American coast, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana, those three all border Brazil

and all have elements of the Amazon forest in them.

Most recently, within the last decade, a major oil discovery off the coast of Guyana stretching into Suriname

leads to the conclusion that these small states, the population of Suriname is about 630,000 estimate, these small states

are enormously well financed for the future, indefinite future. It's the light, sweet crude,

that has been discovered. There is tension between Venezuela, the large state, and Guyana,

and perhaps Suriname, but I'm unfamiliar with the politics of the area.

Right now we have statements from the most recent election in Suriname that it was very close, almost a tie between the two major parties.

And that can be an indication of a healthy democratic representation for the future.

But I want to travel there through Ernesto's eyes. Ernesto, a very good day to you.

You've been to Paramaribo. That's the capital of Suriname. What is it like? What is the ambiance? I imagine Graham Green wondering around making proverbs. How did you find it? Well, John, good evening. It is a fascinating

region, Suriname, Guyana, but a very challenging region for Brazil and for, I mean, the whole region, and especially for the Guyanese and the Srinamis.

So because it's very isolated, of course, it's continuous to Brazil, but they're continuous to Brazil.

But in an area that where you basically have deep and almost intact

Amazonian jungle.

So they, of course, they are turned into the Caribbean, but also they are different from

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