The alienated sovereignty

Image: Eugênio Barboza
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By JAIR PINHEIRO & JOHN KENNEDY FERREIRA*

Brazil was never an independent country

According to the newspaper Valor Econômico, in the edition of October 27, 2021, for General Braga Neto “privatization of Eletrobras and Petrobras in no way affect sovereignty”. For those who alienated the interests and, consequently, the destiny of Brazil to US imperialism, the affirmation is a necessity, almost a self-defense. Strictly speaking, Braga Neto is not the first general from that field of deliveries to manifest a surprising and alienating vision of sovereignty; others before him have expressed (and probably others still will) the opinion that sovereignty is merely one of territorial integrity. Therefore, they can give up economic planning instruments, as is the case of an energy company.

The basic idea of ​​the destination community, as the main content of the nation, simply disappears. However, this disappearance is not a fortuitous event, as a community of destiny is everything that Brazil has not been since 1822.

Our hyperlate construction assigned to the oligarchy and bourgeoisie a political exclusivity over the State and an autocratic praxis that reveals itself as a permanent watchdog for those from below and prevents, therefore, the active incorporation (not subordinated, a mere typist of the electronic ballot box) of the popular classes to the political system and the ability of the State to sovereignly decide the destinies of that nation, without vexatious subservience to the Northern Empire because, supposedly, we have always been on their side. as the then commander of the Navy, Admiral Ilques Barbosa Junior, stated that our destinies are aligned with the USA, proclaiming that “Brazil faced 'three world wars' alongside the USA (Isto É 09/01/2019). By the way, the famous maxim of the former Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, is that “the USA does not have friends, it has interests”. However, our generals think they are their little friends.

This subordinate view is linked to ideological interests and subaltern economic ballasts prevailing within the economic elite and the Brazilian bourgeoisie.

This alienating view of sovereignty works not only to distance the popular classes – the Fariaslimers have free access to Brasília – from the debate on major national issues, but also to wage a war (sometimes open, sometimes veiled) against labor and social rights.[I]. The war is open in the massacres of native peoples, armed attacks on quilombolas, the poor on the outskirts, movements of the homeless and landless, riverside people, assassinations of social leaders, etc., which were never sufficiently investigated; is veiled in the supposedly modernizing discourses that support a legislative production of destruction of labor and social rights, advocated by the famous Uma Ponte para o Futuro[ii], political program by coup leader Michel Temer, effectively revoking Title VIII of the 1988 Constitution.

As no war is improvised, at least on the part of the attacker, since the attacked can be surprised, this one was also meticulously planned, even though the set of actors who concerted the anti-national and anti-popular conspiracy embodied in the legal-media-parliamentary coup is heterogeneous -military. In the first phase of the coup, between 2016 and 2018, parliament and the media represented the public face of the coup plotters. In 2019 and 2020, the Military Party, well accommodated in the government, represented this public face and the manifestations of its leaders indicate that they were behind the events the whole time.

With the government failing, as was foreseeable by any analysis that is not tied to the shallow vulgarities of the so-called market, the Military Party[iii] emits signs of abandonment of the nefarious figure he had chosen to carry out his project, without giving up the project[iv]. That is, they continue to bet on the shallow vulgarities of the market, although they have no successful historical example to rely on.

The beloved homeland is hostage to these reactionary forces, the Republic has been historically protected by military forces since 1889. The challenge for the popular forces is to take back political initiative and rescue the idea of ​​the homeland as a community of destiny with sovereign decision-making power over that destiny, which, evidently, demands the broadest democracy, a concept that goes far beyond typing a number into the electronic ballot box, requires broad participation in the debate on major national issues and mechanisms for effective control over government officials.

In the year in which the bicentennial of independence is celebrated, it is time to popularize the theme of national independence. A sheltered and miserable people, despite the natural riches of the territory they occupy, is not independent. A people that is afraid of the guard on the corner, because he has a license to kill, is not independent.

A people that cannot freely celebrate its diversity, because silencing difference is conceived as a unit, it is not independent. This is all that must be proclaimed in the bicentennial of independence; de facto independence, not a mere juridical-political separation from the metropolis.

* Jair Pinheiro Professor of Political Science at UNESP-Marília.

*John Kennedy Ferreira is a professor at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at UFMA.

 

Notes


[I] Jair Pinheiro. “The Coup and the War on the Working Classes”. In: Social Struggles, São Paulo, Vol. 23, no. 42, p. 109-123, Jan/Jun. 2019.

[ii] Ulysses Guimarães Foundation, October 29, 2015. Available at:

[iii] Marcelo Pimentel Jorge de Souza, “The word convinces and the example drags”. In: João Roberto Martins Filho (org.). The Military and the Brazilian Crisis. Sao Paulo: Alameda, 2021.

[iv] In addition to the famous tweet by General Vilas Bôas, then commander of the Army, on 07/04/18, threatening the STF, I cite some examples of the Military Party's engagement in building the tragedy that befalls us. The unusual launch of a presidential candidacy at AMAN: Bolsonaro is welcomed by AMAN aspirants (NOV/2014) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MW8ME9S87SI

General Santos Cruz on campaign: “Bolsonaro represents democracy, represents freedom; Haddad represents the dictatorship, represents fascism, represents Nazism, represents racism, division of the country into colors, regions, etc., so it's time to choose the giant has woken up…” https://twitter.com/JJaimeBr/status/1457102189877415937  and, in a warning tone, as if what he was saying had foundation, Major General Ajax Porto Pinheiro talks about what's to come for Brazil !!!; 14 Oct. 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAFhQT21vBo

Finally, a journalistic article that strangely did not resonate in Brazil: Bolsonaro president, the secret project of the military summit, available at: https://www.letrap.com.ar/nota/2018-10-5-20-42 -0-bolsonaro-president-the-secret-project-of-the-military-summit

 

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