YOU MUST READ THIS! Colombia and the New Latin America

by FAG Wed Nov 20, 2002 14:12

BRAZIL: Lula the Squid's tentacles throttling the social movements

BRAZIL: Lula the Squid's tentacles throttling the social movements by Left
Anarchist Federation via Bikisha Media ? Wednesday November 13, 2002 at 04:00
AM [email protected]

The election of "Lula" as president of Brazil as viewed by the Left Anarchist Federation (FAG) which is very involved in that country's social movements at a grassroots level, including the Landless Movement (MST). Once again leftists around the world are duped by the right-wing-assured ascent of a supposedly leftist government, forgetting that Lula (which means "squid") swore before the elections that he would change none of Brazil's commitments to foreign capitalist interests.

LEFT ANARCHIST FEDERATION PUBLIC MESSAGE ABOUT PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION RESULTS
The victory of Lula and the defeat of the Brazilian left.

After four months of many negotiations, conclaves and broken-down alliances, the Brazilian State finally and officially knows who its new president is. A foreseeable result and all official political policy makers were prepared for the victory of the coalition led by the PT with Lula at front. It took twelve years and four candidacies so that finally, in his last attempt, the ex-factory worker was elected. Every four years, his speech became more and more moderate, his program got milder and milder and the alliances forged went more and more to the right. The second round of votes on Sunday, 27th October, 2002, was the crowning of a definitive turn to the right of the PT, a party that arose from social movements and from authentic syndicalism at the end of 70's, that had an ample popular base and an original proposal of socialism and democracy.

To consolidate the final transformation of this Party to the image of the
middle-class Social Democrat programme, an electoral and class alliance was
braided ranging from still authentic left-wing social movements (that
campaigned very much against their will) up to symbolic presence as
Vice-president of a textile industry businessman with investments abroad, Jose
Alencar, the PL (Liberal Party, linked to the Pentecostal Church and
charismatic renovation), Senator for Minas Gerais. In the second round of
voting, as was also expected, even one of the Trotskyist parties, the PSTU,
resolved to give "critical support". Arguing that the other side of the Right
was getting nervous and using terror in its electoral marketing (which was
true), Lula, his allies and critical supporters joined in an emotional
campaign that fled from firmly declaring that any kind of commitment with the
poor of the country would be established. They cried a lot and affirmed
nothing. The result: a peaceful transition, calm and quiet, with the
commitment of the PT and of its national leadership (not by chance a hegemony
of ex-Stalinists) to fulfil all of the contracts and commitments (IMF, IBD and
World Bank included). The elected offered clear signs to the financial market
(in fact, less than 1000 physical persons that run the speculative circuit in
Brazil) that their profits will not lower much, and all the politicians
reinforced the idea of institutional normality. In other words, since nothing
really is at play, the system and its institutions can function without worries.

Some factors have to be studied in depth. This "will and desire of change",
manipulated by the media and by official party policies, separates and
temporarily removes any chance of change in the real world, in the disputes
over serious themes and definitions, those that can alter the distribution of
power of the national elite and of the transnational companies that are their
allies. Within reformist prospects, it was possible, even in a conciliatory
way, to seek to obtain more, to liberate the social forces to dispute the
elections by putting to the public a programme of basic reforms in Brazil. The
same basic reforms, redistributing production and urban and rural lands, which
toppled populist President Jo?o Goulart on 1st April, 1964, when the Military
Dictatorship took over Brazil. They are these same basic reforms that marked
the non-alignment of Brazil in the international economic order and would have
lead a Lula government, if it had been elected in 1989, to be knocked down by
another coup d'et?t (by the Congress or the military). These minimal land and
production reforms, independent development, the social function of the land
and access to city rights (urban reform) that no government will apply either
in Brazil or in Latin America. This is because here, in the backyard of the
U.S.A., for us Latin-Americans, major structural reforms are more utopian than
a social revolution, and are more distant from the reality of the struggle
than a militant grassroots movement with its own program.

The week before the second round of elections, the cover of Veja (the main
weekly political magazine in Brazil) of the Abril-Civita Group (connected to
Rede Globo, the leading TV channel in Brazil, a subsidiary of the American
CNN), apart from being a pearl of electoral terrorism, was a straightforward
message of the national corporations and foreign capitals and interests acting
in Brazil. The magazine openly declared that Lula and the hegemonic currents
in the PT (that are the most moderated) will have to "secure" what they call
the "free radicals", or in other words: the minorities of the PT in social
movements which are already organising their opposition to the Lula government
and are even thinking of leaving the Party. In this way, neither Lula, nor the
PT, nor its coalition nor its right-wing allies cause fear or alarm in the
ruling class, in the political class and their leaders. There only remained
still one problem in the eyes of the elite: the danger of the PT and its
government moving the organised social forces towards a programme of conquests
and benefits through the bourgeois State. The PT leadership knew this very
well and in no moment of the campaign called the oppressed, workers,
proletariat, women, students and blacks to combat! The call was another, it
was aimed at everybody and at nobody, at the collective figures of capitalism
who do not want to say anything. It treated everyone equally (at least in the
world of law and literature) and called on "citizens, consumers, tax-payers
and voters" to vote, to pay taxes, to carry out an electoral campaign with
airs of patriotism, to carry coloured flags and banners and to stick stickers
on their chests. The people no longer exist for the PT (this is because for
the Right they never existed, and were always an object of control and
repression) as a mass and a class that is organised and struggles against the
enemy, they can be relaxed and assured with the Lula triumph. What exists are
just the citizens of a country that is found only on paper, that by chance is
called Brazil and with the touch of a magic wand stops being the land of
genocide and slavery -in the past and in the present, in the gaols and in
prisons, in the huts and shantytowns - and turns into "one of the greatest
democracies on earth."

Neither the will to change nor the civic reformist campaign grasps our
reality. The country has been in a recessive cycle for over four years,
unemployment is at its highest point in history, we are returning to a cycle
of inflation, salaries have lost purchasing power over the eight years of the
triumvirate in Brasilia that follows the commands of Washington and the IMF:
Fernando Henrique (government), Pedro Malan (the economic arm) and General
Alberto Cardoso (the military leader).

In one of his first difficult and serious interviews, the almighty national
president of Social Democracy (PT), the lawyer and Stalinist Jose Dirceu
recognised all this reality and affirmed what they would and would not do. He
said on Rede Cultura (a famous programme of interviews on State TV) that his
government will treat the National Congress as arena of debates and
negotiations and that they will achieve what they can without breaking any
international contract or commitment, giving first place to maintaining a
financial surplus (that is, maintaining taxes), leaving barely any finances
for the Executive, and attending to the interests of the alliances struck over
the campaign (with businessmen, with the right-wing PFL, with sectors and
oligarchies of the also right-wing PMDB, and with European capital). When
asked about which measures would be taken against the social movements that
wanted to make demands and fight against the federal government (even though
this is a Social Democrat government), Jose Dirceu did not stammer and
immediately proclaimed: "In these cases, we will apply the severity of the
law!" In other words, comrades, once again they have proven that the
anarchists were right. Once the bureaucracy has sat down on the throne, with
power centralised in its hands, it represses and persecutes just like any
right-wing party. Even here in the urban areas of Rio Grande do Sul, how many
homeless squats are violently expelled by the Military Brigades? A recent
example: on 8th November, 250 families were expelled from a squat in Porto
Alegre, with ostensible violence from the "security workers" (the PT now calls
repression like this). However, if the popular movements are seduced with the
offering of posts and departments, there they will always be treated well,
they will always toss out a few baskets of food or any other donation to
silence the mouths of the dissatisfied and that's the end of matter. That
means, comrades, that our problem is much deeper, and that the lives of the
oppressed do not change or improve with a "sensible man" occupying a part of
bourgeois power (the presidency).

Dear comrades, an analysis like this could go on forever, because examples
that show the contradiction between the social talk of justice and the actual
practice of left-wing governments have filled thousands of pages. But this is
not what concerns us now. We want to call on the authentic militant
socialists, those who are in grassroot struggles (modest, humble but militant,
like us), on class struggle fighters and on the people of Brazil, on left-wing
organisations, popular movements and unions to mark a model and programme of
struggle and demands, no matter which government is in power.

2003 will be the year of ALCA (Latin American Free Trade Area) trade
negotiations and this is already our first banner! We should fight for the
immediate moratorium of foreign debt, and for the suspension of internal debt!
For taxes on companies, builders and real estate agencies (urbanising
shantytowns and creating policies for the homeless)! For a land reform based
on struggle, occupying and taking over the lands of the owners of large
estates! For the autonomy of decision and public funds for all public
education (elementary, high school and university students)! For the expulsion
of the USA from the Alc?ntara no Maranh?o military base! Against Plan Colombia
and in solidarity with Latin American revolutionary movements.

We will never gain our liberation following the rules of our enemies. For the
oppressed of Brazil, for the more than 100 million of black Brazilians, for
all of the working class to free ourselves from the whip, from hunger, misery
and violence will be by our own devices and nothing else. We believe that only
the struggle of the people can liberate, and that only ourselves, political
organisations and social movements of organised people can show the road to
follow! It is urgent and necessary that we build a unity of struggle as people
and as class. The popular struggle cannot be towed behind an elected
bureaucracy. Little matters what we do on any October Sunday, when we are
obliged to vote, what matters is our daily militancy in popular movements, in
the cities, shantytowns, schools, factories, in the neighbourhoods and in the
street!

EITHER YOU VOTE LIKE THOSE ON TOP OR YOU FIGHT LIKE THOSE BELOW
Building PEOPLE'S POWER!

FederaÁ?o Anaquista Ga?cha (FAG)
October 2002

HEALTH AND ANARCHY!
Luciana - FAG Secretary of Relations
Tel. + (51) 32112476 / 91484391
http://www.fag.rg3.net
[email protected]
postal address: cx postal 5036
CEP 90040-970
Porto Alegre
RS, Brazil

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by Tom Thu Nov 21, 2002 02:44

great article thanks!