Harvest Time

Olavo de Carvalho
O Globo (Rio de Janeiro), September 7, 2002

After the downfall of the USSR became an accomplished fact, the Forum of São Paulo has been, since 1990, the most powerful initiative taken to restart the international communist movement and, in Fidel Castro words, "to regain in Latin America what was lost in East Europe". Summoned by the Cuban dictator and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Forum joins the legal Communist (and pro-Communist) parties, engaged in the struggle for cultural and political hegemony within their nations, and armed organizations involved in kidnapping, terrorism and drug traffic. Among the last, the outstanding one is Farc, whose connections with the Brazilian drug market were proven with the arrest of Fernandinho Beira-Mar. There are also double-faced organizations, both legal and illegal, like the Chilean Communist Party, whose armed wing had something to do with the kidnapping of Washington Olivetto.

Perhaps the readers will at first find strange a meeting in which legally organized parties fraternize with criminal gangs. Actually, this association only repeats the old Leninist rules that recommend the joining of legal and illegal means in the revolutionary struggle. In fact one of the advantages of the international alliance is to allow that the promiscuous mixture of licit and illicit ways, of moralist rhetoric and drug traffic, of beautiful ideals and the brutality of kidnappings, of humanitarian sentimentalism and organized terror- a mix so clear and evident in continental scale, and at meetings of the Forum- that it appears disguised and nebulous when seen from the perspective of each separate nation. Using Argentineans to act in Mexico, Bolivians in Brazil or Brazilians in Chile, the most obvious connections become invisible to the eyes of local public opinion: the legal parties continue above any suspicion, and the simple suggestion of investigating them is rejected as an intolerable offense, when the arrest of criminals shows full proof of the intimate association between organized crime and leftist politics in the continent; identification that becomes still more evident when the arrest of such persons is followed, with magical coincidence, by the quick and effective mobilization, for the criminals, of officials and "decent folk" of the left.

Since 1990, the Forum of São Paulo has been meeting regularly. The tenth meeting took place in Havana, Cuba, in December, 2001. Mr. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was there. To deny therefore that he is associated politically with the other entities, signatories to the declarations of the Forum, it is to deny the validity of the Brazilian presidential candidate's signature on official documents of international relevance. As wrote Vasconcelo Quadros in the "Isto É" of March 2002, "Brazil shelters a secret network of support of international guerrilla organizations employed in kidnappings, bank robberies and drug traffic". In a country in which any phone call to a swindler is enough to place a politician under police suspicion, a countrywide refusal to investigate a link enshrined in public documents it is, at least, surprising.

Still more surprising is that, among so many journalistic commentators, policemen, politicians and the military, all them reputed as intelligent, nobody gets-or wants-to establish a logical link between those facts and the declaration of Dr. Leonardo Boff, in "Jornal do Brasil" of August 23, that with the next election "the time for the Brazilian revolution will have arrived. The sowing was already been done. It is harvest time". Or, when using the word "revolution", didn't the retired clergyman mean anything of the sort, and that all was innocent hyperbole?

The massive and obstinate refusal to face with realism this state of affairs can be explained by the fact that he constitutes a dreadful reality, whose vision would be too traumatic for the delicate nerves of a bourgeoisie dandy, terrified to the point of no longer admitting the reality of the evil that terrifies him. Psychologically kidnapped by a nameless Marxism that permeates the air, the dominant class is already ripe to act its role of docile, smiling and helpful victim.

But, please, don't think that with those remarks I am acting in favor or against any candidate to the Presidency of the Republic. See this: four candidates, with token differences, have the same ideology, and any one of them, when elected, cannot govern without the support of at least one or two of the other three. It is therefore of a single slate election, subdivided into four temporary denominations. Perhaps what Dr. Boff will not say is that the revolution will be inaugurated with the victory of candidate x or y, but with "the election" itself-no matter who wins. From the psychological point of view, at least, that revolution has already begun: the ideological uniformity, once accepted as the normal state of the democratic politics, is enough to virtually outlaw, as "right wing extremism", any word henceforth said in favor of liberal capitalism, of the USA or of Israel. Who says it receives regular death threats, no longer with the precaution of delivery as anonymous messages: they are to be seen on internet sites and cause no scandal. Dr. Boff is right: Sowing has already been done. It is harvest time. But all this certainly is mere hyperbole. Yes, it would be a scandal to see some malign intention in such innocent words.