Brazzil
Politics
November 2002
According to the well-known Brazilian philosopher and journalist Olavo de Carvalho, a former communist himself, since 1964 it is under way in Brazil a well planned and highly successful scheme aiming at establishing a communist regime in the country. This view was expressed in an interview on August 21st, last year, to Gaúcha Broadcasting Station, in Rio Grande do Sul State. The philosopher declared that, in Brazil, following the tactics devised by Lenin and refined by the Italian revolutionary Antonio Gramsci, many public offices, labor unions, public schools, the media and almost all organizations that influence public opinion have been infiltrated by reliable members of left wing political parties, mostly communists.
In all sectors of the government, as well as in the congress and houses of representatives of all 26 states and in about 5,000 municipalities of the country, most politicians came from former leftist movements, many of them ex-terrorists, including high rank officials. Even president Cardoso is a former leftist who lived in exile for many years.
Practically all unions are ruled by fanatical communists. The number of infiltrated agents among newspapermen and teachers is staggering. Especially in public schools, history is taught under the Marxist point of view and tapes dealing with class struggle, agrarian reform, colonialism, imperialism and other communist themes are exhibited to the students, who are asked to make compositions on these subjects.
According to Carvalho, this strategy of gradually changing the values of the society follows the ideas of the Marxist theoretician and founder of the Italian communist party, Antonio Gramsci. The strategy is to prepare the public mind in such a way that the transition to a communist society would happen naturally, in a painless way. Evolution, instead of revolution. The pain will be felt only when the communists reach power and the bloodshed begins, as has always been the case.
Even the last 1988 Brazil’s constitution, promulgated prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall, has been put to the service of Marxian principles, and grants amazing privileges to the Brazilian Nomenklature (highly paid public officials, as in the former USSR), such as the privilege of public servants to increase their own lavish salaries; the right not to be fired, simultaneously with the right to make strikes; public pensions ten times bigger than that of the private sector, and so forth. Instead of being an instrument for protecting the citizen, the leftist oriented constitution really creates privileged castes and protects them from the legitimate claims of the people.
In Brazil, communists are acting in three fronts. The labor union CUT has infiltrated members in the great majority of unions and is always supporting strikes and every kind of mass movements and riots.
There is also the rural branch, the MST (Landless Movement), which follows Mao Tse-Tung’s doctrines in performing guerrilla actions against farmers and ranchers in accordance with the basic communist program of abolishing the property right. The so-called “landless” peasants, heavily infiltrated by professional members of communist parties, are invading farms and even public organs, under the accommodating eyes of the government, who is buying huge areas and distributing them among the landless peasants, besides providing them with cash and other benefits. Money given by the government is used to fund more guerrilla actions.
The MST uses guerrilla tactics learned in Cuba and Nicaragua, such as using human shields (putting children and old people in front on the mob, to be hit first by the police, with propaganda dividends; executing detailed invasion techniques planned months in advance; invading farms at night, before holidays (to avoid judicial measures) and using a lot of vehicles, most of which were bought with money given by the government. The invasions may involve thousands of members, led by highly trained communist agents and they make tents, destroy fences and even sow the soil as rapidly as possible.
Urban violence is exploding in big cities, and all types of criminals may count on the protection of leftists political parties, who consider them their allies in the fight against the “bourgeois” (the capitalists). The alleged human rights are always claimed in favor of bandits, never in favor of their victims. Part of the Catholic church, the so-called Progressive Church, adopted a Marxian approach to social problems and has been used as “dupes” (useful innocents) by the leftist wing. Even Catholic masses have been transformed in communist indoctrination.
The communist movement has also its political branch, the PT (nicknamed “Labor Party”), led by the charismatic Lula, an ex-trade-unionist. Trained in Cuba on terrorism, Lula, who almost won the presidency of the country in the last three elections, finally won this time, due to the great success of leftist parties in the last municipal election, held in October, 2000. The PT won elections in almost 200 cities, including the most important city of the country—São Paulo. The winning São Paulo mayor celebrated her victory offering a banquet to hundreds of beggars and urchins from the streets of São Paulo. The Porto Alegre elected mayor, also from the PT, was inaugurated in office under the International anthem.
Lula celebrated the victory taking about two hundred of his comrades in a visit to his mastermind, Fidel Castro, in Cuba. Many of Lula’s followers, including the president of the party, have already been before on the island, to be trained in guerrilla and terrorism techniques. Lula even offered Fidel Castro a title of Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Campinas, in the second greatest city of the Sate of São Paulo, which is an institution well known for the its concentration of leftist adherents.
So far Brazil has survived a series of attempts of taking over the power by the communists, in 1935, in 1964 and in 1968. A recent book by Professor Denise Rollemberg, from the University of Rio de Janeiro State, published in academic spheres, focus on three attempts by Fidel Castro to settle guerrilla movements in Brazil. Severe measures, including the establishing of an authoritarian regime had to be implemented in order to prevent the taking over of the government by the left wing revolutionaries.
Signs of the “painless” communization of the country are visible only to trained eyes. The top-heavy government is already capturing about one third of the GDP as taxes, most of which are distributed among the members of the local Nomenklature, scarcely returning as benefits to the tax payers. The number of public servants is always on the increase and new competitive examinations are advertised almost daily in the newspapers. Even a leftist-oriented constitution has been promulgated in 1988 to easy the way to leftist taking hold of the government
Hundreds of new public employees are also being admitted by politicians, which means that bureaucracy is increasing while the productive sector is dwindling. To meet increased expenses, the government is always increasing taxes, which are a deterrent to economic development. Each time, there are less people producing wealth and more people in the payroll of the government, as in communist countries. At the same time, tax collecting organs from the government, eager for money, furiously chase evading tax payers, most of them evading tax payments because it is impossible to survive paying all the almost sixty different taxes that are levied by the government. This will result in the closing of many business enterprises, whose former employers will have to look for positions in the government, resulting in an even greater decrease of the productive sector and in the increase of the bureaucracy.
The federal government made some privatization but many privatized organs have been bought mainly by public servant’s pension funds. The privatized companies, formerly belonging to the federal government, now are owned mostly by public servants pension funds.
Some foreign investors, afraid of the progress of leftist political parties, avoid making investments in the country and many local entrepreneurs are planning to leave the country now that Lula is the new president. Lula is clearly against privatizing programs and states that he intends to nationalize foreign companies, to revert privatized companies to the government and levy heavy taxes on “great fortunes”. Of course he has the intention of not paying both the internal and the foreign debt.
Olavo de Carvalho stresses that, as usual, leftist parties preach one thing and practice another. Publicly they praise democracy, freedom, social justice, equality and economic progress. However, if we look at their program, available through the internet, it will be obvious that their intentions are exactly the opposite. Before going to pay homage to Fidel Castro, Lula declared that people who think that he and his party is abandoning former communist ideas are completely wrong.
Their ultimate goal still is to establish a dictatorship of one party, with absolute power in their hands and complete restriction to any demonstration of individualism. The party’s program, as expected, favors all forms of collectivism. Freedom will be extinguished in Brazil and it is probable that other Latin countries will follow Brazil’s example.
Brazilian communist activists have not moved one inch from their original Marxist ideas. They even admit publicly (in their Internet site) that their intention is to resort to violence in order to reach their goals of socializing the country. The party program also declares that the PT party is just a branch of the international socialist program.
Though all over the world communism is seen as a black page of history, marked by bloodshed and economic failure, in Brazil it is being hailed as the solution of all problems of the country, strictly in accordance to Marxian canons.
If Cuba, with an area of only 114,500 square kilometers, is such an inconvenient country, imagine a communist Brazil as a replica of Cuba, however with 8,500,000 square kilometers and a population of about 170 million people?
Huascar Terra do Valle is a Brazilian lawyer and writer and can be contacted at huascar.bhz@terra.com.br