During the month of April, Dilma Rousseff, the ousted president of Brazil, engaged in a speaking tour across the east coast of the United States. She spoke at nine different universities which included stops in Providence, New York City, and Washington, D.C. Her talks revolved around last year’s impeachment and what the future holds for democracy in Brazil.
On April 14, Rousseff concluded the tour at the City University of New York’s Murphy Institute for Labor Studies. The event quickly filled to capacity as Brazilians and members of various political groups from all over the tri-state area came to hear her speak. Luan Santos, a Brazilian living in the U.S., traveled from New Jersey to make it to the event.
“My family in Brazil supports Dilma and so do I,” she explained. “I hope this helps raise awareness for what happened to her and what is currently going on in my country’s government.”
An assault on democracy
The impeachment of Rousseff was a clear violation of the democratic rights of Brazilian citizens. After her re-election as the Worker’s Party candidate with 54.5 million votes in 2014, the opposition party, PSDB, immediately tried to claim the election was fraudulent. While these accusations proved to be unfounded, the PSDB continued a campaign aimed at slandering the Worker’s Party and the administration of Dilma Rousseff.
Much like in the U.S., the major news media in Brazil is controlled by a select group of elites. All the main media conglomerates are owned by five powerful families. They launched a campaign in collusion with the opposition to paint the Worker’s Party as corrupt. This was during a time of a significant economic downturn in Brazil and people were looking for someone to blame. The right wing forces in the National Congress and the corrupt judiciary branch took advantage of this climate to initiate an impeachment process against President Rousseff. In truth, it was a coup.
She was suspended from office on May 12, 2016 and Michel Temer, a former U.S. intelligence informant, took power. All of Dilma’s ministers were removed from office and replaced, resulting in the first time since 1979 Brazil had a government without women, and a government ministry body made up exclusively of white men. The new government began its neoliberal attack on various social and workers rights right away. Temer’s “Bridge to the Future” aims to reform pensions, eliminate social programs, stifle political diversity in the school system, and undo environmental protections.
The U.S. government immediately recognized the coup government and helped to normalize it on the international arena.
Corruption has long plagued the entire Brazilian political establishment — the Workers’ Party included — and Brazil’s working class still faced major economic and social injustices under the country’s capitalist system. At the same time, the Workers Party government managed to achieve big victories, moving over 40 million people out of poverty and the country was taken off the U.N. Global Hunger Index. But the impeachment was clearly unconstitutional, undemocratic, and completely hypocritical coming from the corrupt opposition. In June of 2016, during the impeachment process, a CNT/MDA poll showed that 65.2% of Brazilians felt that the corruption in the Temer administration would be either the same or even greater than that of the Rousseff administration.
Eduardo Cunha, one of the main politicians who orchestrated the ouster of Rousseff, was just recently sentenced to 15 years in prison after a conviction related to his own government corruption.
Solidarity movement to defend democracy in Brazil
Rousseff’s talks in the United States often discussed her own impeachment, but more importantly addressed the ongoing fight for democratic and worker’s rights in Brazil. Many felt that this was the most important takeaway from hearing these speeches.
Defend Democracy in Brazil is a group heavily involved in raising consciousness about this issue in the United States. They were the main group organizing the talk at CUNY’s Murphy Institute. A main organizer with DDB told Liberation that groups like this one had become active around the world to denounce: “Not only the inadequate judicial process that ousted President Rousseff, but also the prosecution of former President Lula da Silva (also of the Workers Party) who is a victim of lawfare — the use of violence through the law. The assault on many social rights, which were just achieved for the first time in Brazil, are threatened and many have been dismantled. This has economic and human consequences that must be denounced,” she explained.
The aims of the organization, she continued, are to work “within the local and global spheres of consciousness, through media and policy making, even boycotts of the illegitimate government of Michel Temer, to revert the coup and achieve democracy once again. We have received enormous support from congress men and women, European parliament members, institutions like CUNY, Brown University, various unions, parties such as the PSL, and individuals including Brazilian and U.S. citizens. We hope to continue to get more and more support.”
This is a very important time for Brazil and what plays out there will have enormous effects on the Americas and the rest of the world. Brazil has the eighth largest economy in the world, making it a prime target for the neoliberal agenda. Policy shifts towards neoliberalism and U.S. imperialism in Brazil will affect the position of BRICS, an alliance of emerging economies that some hoped would counter U.S. and Western European hegemony.
Most critically, the far-right has been surging worldwide and across Latin America they are utilizing media campaigns, direct sabotage, institutional connections and violence to weaken and overthrow all progressive advances and governments. Masking themselves as opponents of corruption, and taking advantage of people’s real hardships, they seek to reimpose the rule of the oligarchies, banks and corporations. Class-conscious workers and revolutionaries around the world cannot stand idly by.
