Recent events in Honduras clearly highlight the moral inconsistencies of the so-called international community and the media, perhaps more than any other political issue in Latin America. Independent institutions in that country, including the Supreme Court, the Public Ministry, and the Congress, unanimously ruled in favor of ousting Manuel Zelaya from power due to his violations of the Honduran constitution. Despite this crucial fact, we have witnessed a universal condemnation of the new administration in Honduras. This condemnation comes relentlessly from all corners, across various parties, illustrating the essence of what it means to have an unelected global governance. Local authorities and their decisions are disregarded because it is the “will of the world” that a man attempting to dismantle democracy should be reinstated, as if nothing had happened.
If the collective reaction of the international community is not enough evidence of shared ignorance and total racism, then Brazil’s open interference in Honduran affairs deserves attention, especially as it occurs blatantly before the eyes of the world, with praises directed at the Brazilian president, the Latin version of Obama in terms of cult of personality. This is not Lula’s first time meddling brazenly in the domestic policies of other nations, as Venezuelans painfully know. Lula’s rise from poverty to wealth, starting in humble union ranks, has captivated too many flatterers, as he is often uncritically referred to as the savior of the new Latin American left. Lula represents the “good left, the progressive left,” which, entirely out of place, intrudes into sovereign affairs of nations to the delight and applause of the media and the international community. Given the current coverage, I felt compelled to speak with someone who really knows Lula, who has closely followed his career: a fellow Brazilian with firsthand knowledge, and I asked him a few questions. What follows is my interview with Olavo de Carvalho.
—Perhaps you remember, Olavo, that in November 2005, we were part of a small group invited to inform the former Under Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs in the United States, Tom Shannon, about the political situation in our respective countries. I vividly recall his warnings about Lula during that meeting. Over time, I must say I’m pleasantly surprised by the change in perception regarding Hugo Chávez. Back in November 2005, the DoS still held the notion that he was a democrat, supposedly akin to Lula. However, recent events in Honduras show that Lula is just as inclined to interfere in the internal matters of other countries as his Venezuelan counterpart. Yet, it would be hard to conclude, based on how the media portrays the Brazilian president, that this is the case. Therefore, considering you are Brazilian and have been monitoring your country’s politics for longer than most reporters have known about Lula’s existence, I would like to ask you a few things about him, starting with: why? Why do you think the media treats him so lightly? Most analysts and media perceive Lula as a moderate, a democrat. How does that align with, for instance, Lula’s foundation of the São Paulo Forum (FSP) at the personal request of Fidel Castro?
There is nothing there to reconcile properly. The image and reality are, in this case, in complete contradiction. The legend of Lula as a democrat and moderate is only sustained by suppressing the most significant fact of his political biography, the founding of the São Paulo Forum. This suppression sometimes stems from genuine ignorance, but in other cases, it is a deliberate cover-up. The Council on Foreign Relations’ Brazil expert, Kenneth Maxwell, even went as far as to openly deny the mere existence of the Forum, which was validated by another expert on the subject, Luiz Felipe de Alencastro, at a CFR conference. I need not emphasize the weight that the CFR holds among opinion-makers in the United States. When such an institution denies the most substantiated and documented facts of recent Latin American history, few journalists will have the courage to stand on the side of facts against the authority’s argument. Thus, the São Paulo Forum, the largest and most powerful political body ever existed in Latin America, remains unknown to the American public and, indeed, to the world at large. With this fact suppressed, Lula’s image as a democrat and moderate gains a semblance of credibility. Note that it has not only been in the United States where the media has covered up the existence and activities of the Forum. In Brazil, despite my having published the complete records of the entity’s assemblies and frequently citing them in my column in the prestigious newspaper O Globo in Rio de Janeiro, the rest of the national media either remained silent or openly contradicted me, accusing me of being radical and paranoid. When President Lula himself finally let the cat out of the bag and confessed everything, his speech, published on the president’s official website, was barely mentioned in any newspaper or television news. However, shortly thereafter, the name “São Paulo Forum” was incorporated into the government’s video advertisements, making it impossible to continue denying the obvious. They then resorted to damage control tactics, proclaiming, against all evidence, that the São Paulo Forum was merely a discussion club, with no decision-making power. The assembly records vehemently disproved this, showing that discussions turned into resolutions, signed unanimously by those present. Discussion clubs do not approve resolutions. Moreover, the same presidential speech I just referred to revealed the decisive role the Forum played in placing and keeping Mr. Hugo Chávez in power in Venezuela. Today, in Brazil, nobody ignores that I told the truth about the São Paulo Forum while the rest of the media lied.
Moreover, it is clear that Lula and his party, being the founders and strategic center of the Forum, had to maintain a low profile, allowing more peripheral members, such as Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales, to take on the more sensational roles. Hence the false impression that there are “two lefts” in Latin America, one democratic and moderate, and another radical and authoritarian. There are indeed two lefts, but they are more like the one that leads and the other that follows the orders of the first, risking its own reputation in the process. Everything the Latin American left has done in the last nineteen years was previously discussed and decided in the assemblies of the Forum, which Lula presided over, either directly until 2002 or through his deputy, Marco Aurélio Garcia, thereafter. The strategic command of the communist revolution in Latin America does not reside in Venezuela, Bolivia, or even Cuba. It is in Brazil.
Once the fact of the existence of the São Paulo Forum is suppressed, the even more artificial credibility of the “two lefts” legend took shape because the Lula administration cleverle focused its subversive efforts on education, culture, and moral regulations, which only affect the local population, while prudently maintaining an “orthodox” economic policy that reassured foreign investors and projected a good image of the country to international banks (a double-faced strategy inspired, incidentally, by Lenin himself). Thus, both the subversion of Brazilian society and the revolutionary endeavors of the São Paulo Forum managed to pass under the thick layer of praise for President Lula, unnoticed by international public opinion. Nothing illustrates better the duplicity of behavior I refer to than the fact that, in the same week, Lula was celebrated both at the World Economic Forum in Davos for his conversion to capitalism and at the São Paulo Forum for his loyalty to communism. It’s quite evident, then, that there is one Lula in local reality and another Lula for international consumption.
—Could you elaborate a bit on the type of organization that the FSP is and the democratic credentials of some of its members?
The São Paulo Forum was created by Lula and discussed with Fidel Castro in late 1989, founded the following year under Lula’s presidency, which he held for twelve years, nominally resigning to assume the presidency of Brazil in 2003. The organization’s goal was to reconstruct the communist movement, shaken by the fall of the USSR. “To reclaim in Latin America everything we lost in Eastern Europe,” was the proclaimed aim at the Forum’s fourth annual assembly. The means to achieve this involved promoting the unity and integration of all communist and pro-communist parties and movements across Latin America, while developing new, more flexible, and better-camouflaged strategies for seizing power. Practically since the mid-1990s, no leftist party or entity has remained unaffiliated with the São Paulo Forum, signing and adhering to its resolutions and participating in the intense activity of “working groups” that meet almost every month in many Latin American capitals. The Forum has its own magazine, América Libre, a publishing house, and an extensive network of websites discreetly coordinated from Spain. It also exercises unofficial control over numerous print and electronic publications. The speed and effectiveness with which its decisions are disseminated throughout the continent can be measured by its ongoing success in concealing its own existence for at least sixteen years. The journalistic class in Brazil is massively leftist, and even professionals not involved in any kind of militancy would be reluctant to oppose the instructions most media receive.
The body of members within the Forum comprises both right-leaning parties, such as the Brazilian Workers’ Party, as well as criminal organizations of kidnappers and drug traffickers, such as the Chilean MIR (Movimiento de la Izquierda Revolucionaria) and the Colombian FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia). The former is responsible for numerous kidnappings, including those of two prominent Brazilian businessmen; the latter currently virtually controls the cocaine market in Latin America. All these organizations participate in the Forum on equal footing, allowing when agents of a criminal organization are detained in a country, legitimate entities can immediately mobilize to assist them by organizing protests and launching campaigns demanding their release. Sometimes, the protection that legitimate organizations provide to their criminal partners goes even further, as occurred, for example, when the governor of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Olívio Dutra, an important member of the Workers’ Party, hosted a FARC commander as a state guest; or when the Lula administration granted political asylum to the liaison agent between the FARC and the Workers’ Party, Olivério Medina, and a public position to his wife. Previously, Medina had confessed to bringing an illegal contribution of $5 million for Lula’s presidential campaign.
The rosy image of Brazil painted abroad stands in stark contrast to the fact that between 40,000 and 50,000 Brazilians are murdered every year, according to the UN’s own findings. Most of these crimes are related to drug trafficking. Federal Judge Odilon de Oliveira found compelling evidence that the FARC provides armaments, technical support, and money to the largest local criminal organizations, such as the PCC (Primeiro Comando da Capital), which effectively governs entire cities while keeping their populations under a regime of terror. As I predicted after Lula’s first election to the presidency in 2002, the federal administration has since done nothing to stop this murderous violence since any government initiative in that direction would conflict with FARC’s interests and instantly turn the entire São Paulo Forum against the Brazilian government. In face of the massacre of Brazilians, which amounts roughly to the number of deaths in an Iraq war per year, Lula has remained strictly loyal to the commitment of support and solidarity he made with the FARC as president of the São Paulo Forum in 2001.
—Why do you think global media failed to notice that Lula’s presidential campaign was illegally financed, with $3 million, from Fidel Castro, as reported by Veja?
In light of such facts, it is always advisable to consider the concentration of media ownership worldwide that has occurred in recent decades, as described by reporter Daniel Estulin in his book about the Bilderberg group. Even the most distracted readers have not failed to notice how the dominant global media’s opinions have homogenized over recent decades, making it difficult today to perceive any difference between, say, Le Figaro and L’Humanité on essential issues, such as “global warming” or the rise of new leaders aligned with the project of a global government, like Lula or Obama, for example. Now more than ever, it has become easy and quick to create an impression of spontaneous unanimity. And since the CFR proclaims that the São Paulo Forum does not exist, it is only logical to expect that the São Paulo Forum will disappear from the news.
—Other analysts have absurdly argued that foreign intervention, imperialism in other words, never characterized Itamaraty’s politics. In light of Lula’s direct intervention to help Chávez overcome the Venezuelan oil workers’ strike in 2002-03, by sending tanker trucks with gasoline, how would you explain such flagrant ignorance?
The traditions of Itamaraty, however praised in the past, no longer hold any significance. Today, the Brazilian diplomatic corps is little more than the militant tuxedo of the Workers’ Party. At the same time, the intellectual level of our diplomats, which had been a source of pride since the times of the great Baron of Rio Branco, has noticeably declined, to the point where today, the intellectual direction of the class is in the hands of geniuses of ineptitude, like Samuel Pinheiro Guimarães. It is not surprising then that our ambassadors now act as mere agents of the São Paulo Forum everywhere. It cannot be said that this properly expresses Brazilian imperialism, for our Ministry of Foreign Affairs does not hesitate to sacrifice the clearest national interests at the altar of a more sublime value, which is the left’s solidarity in Latin America. There is no Brazilian imperialism, only the imperialism of the São Paulo Forum.
—Do you believe that Marco Aurelio Garcia is behind Zelaya’s return to Honduras, as has been alleged? If so, it is evident that a member of the FSP is coming to the rescue of a fallen comrade, but what does Brazil gain from it?
The Brazilian government denies any involvement, but Zelaya himself confessed that his return to Honduras was previously arranged with Lula and his right-hand man, Marco Aurélio Garcia. It’s clear as day that this grotesque installation of Zelaya in the Brazilian embassy is an operation of the São Paulo Forum.
—Given that Tom Shannon is now the U.S. ambassador to Brazil, would you reiterate what you told him about Lula and his accomplices in November 2005, or would you advise otherwise?
Tom Shannon did not heed us properly in 2005, and this was undoubtedly one of the reasons for the worsening of the Latin American situation. He likely read the speeches of Maxwell and Alencastro at the CFR and thought that such a prestigious institution warranted more credibility than a handful of obscure Latin American academics without public office or political party. Unfortunately, we—not the CFR—were the ones who were right.
—Finally, as with Chávez, has Lula caused enough institutional damage to retain power, or will he hand over power democratically?
Presidential power alternation has lost its significance, as the two dominant parties, the Workers’ Party and the Brazilian Social Democracy Party, act concertedly and, despite minor differences in administrative economics, remain equally loyal to the global strategy of the Latin American left. Lula himself has celebrated as a great victory for democracy the fact that only leftist candidates will run in the 2010 presidential elections, as if the monopoly on ideological control of society were a grand democratic ideal. On the other hand, the most prominent leader of the so-called “opposition,” former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, has already acknowledged that there is no substantive ideological or strategic difference between his party and the Workers’ Party, but simply a scramble for offices. It matters little who wins the next elections, as in either case, the direction of the Brazilian government will remain unchanged: socially and legally surpassing subversion; economically, moderation to placate foreign investors. The only difference that may arise is in the security domain, should José Serra, a candidate from the Brazilian Social Democracy Party, win since, despite being just as leftist as the Workers’ Party, he does not formally belong to the São Paulo Forum and is therefore free to act against organized crime, something Lula could never do. As governor of São Paulo state, Serra has been the only Brazilian political leader to pay attention to the slaughter of his compatriots. It’s still too early to know if he can replicate what he did in his state, but the real fact is that he would like to.