By ALEXANDRE ARAGÃO DE ALBUQUERQUE*
For two months the president, over whose head 136 requests for impeachment hover, prepared an authoritarian event to commemorate September 7th.
in the classic The open veins of Latin America, the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano (1940-2015) makes a critical analysis of the process of conquest and exploration of our continent spanning five centuries of our history. Since the arrival of Christian white males in our lands, everything has been transformed into European and, later, US capital, allowing the nations of the northern hemisphere to permanently accumulate our riches in their hands. The mode of production and the class structure of each place have been successively determined by exogenous power, aiming at our dependent incorporation into the gears of global capitalism.
In Brazil it was no different. The myth of the proclamation of national independence in which Emperor Pedro I, sword in hand, exclaims his cry on the banks of the Ipiranga stream, was nothing more than directly transferring our external dependence from Portugal into the hands of England. The slave-owning socioeconomic system was maintained, as well as the imperial authoritarianism legally based on the Constitution granted by the emperor in 1824, when the Constituent Assembly was dissolved in 1823, quelling with swords, rifles and cannons, with bloodshed, the Pernambuco reaction in 1824 and other insurrections libertarians that lasted until 1848. Therefore, this is the basic tripod through which the “independent nation” will develop – external economic dependence / slave system / political authoritarianism – favoring the privileges of the native colonialist class – the Casa Grande – and updating them throughout history to the present day through new political architectures.
On September 2021, 136, we had another unique authoritarian moment in the history of Brazil. For two months, the President of the Republic announced and prepared a mass event with his bubble of supporters, to take place in a concentrated and strategically chosen way in the cities of Brasília–DF and São Paulo. The legal-political scenario stands out: over the head of the head of the Brazilian Executive there are XNUMX impeachment requests shelved by the President of the Federal Chamber, sugar mill deputy and cattle rancher from Alagoas Artur Lira (PP-AL). In addition, her children are the subject of investigation on suspicion of using financial corruption schemes with the use of public money and for acts of systematic production of “fakenews” and hate speech against the Brazilian democratic system and authorities of the republican powers, having been authorized by Justice the breach of banking and tax secrecy of his son Zero Dois.
In the Brasília concentration, the president stated: "Either the head of that Power (Judiciary) fits yours, or that Power can suffer what we don't want". “Whoever acts outside of it (the Constitution) fits in or asks to leave”. “The Federal Supreme Court (STF) has lost the minimum conditions to remain within that court”. “All of us here, without exception, are the ones who will say where Brazil should go”. "All of you took an important oath: to give your life for your freedom." “As of today, a new story begins to be written here in Brazil”. “This portrait is the ultimatum for everyone who is in Praça dos Três Poderes where we must go”. “I ask that you listen to me today at 16 pm. there on (Avenida) Paulista”. “Tomorrow I will be with the Council of the Republic, together with ministers, for us, together with the presidents of the Chamber, of the Senate and the Federal Supreme Court, with this photograph of you, to show where we all must go”.
At the concentration on Paulista (Sao Paulo), he raised the tone: “Get out, Alexandre de Moraes, stop being a scoundrel”. "Decision of Mr. Alexandre de Moraes, this president will no longer comply". “He (Alexandre de Moraes) still has time to take care of his life. He no longer exists for us.” "Also say that it is not a person from the Superior Electoral Court who will tell us that this process (electoral election) is safe". “More and more we are conservative”. "Tell the scoundrels that I will never be arrested".
One wonders: in his mind, what new story would be written from that date on? What would he have in mind when announcing the convening of the Council of the Republic? What concrete consequences did he intend to impose by stating that the STF had lost all conditions to remain within that court? And when a possible court decision arrives declaring the arrest of his son Zero Dois, how will he react, since for him “Alexandre de Moraes (the constitutional figure of the magistrate and the judiciary that Alexandre de Moraes represents) no longer exists” ?
Casa Grande tried to resolve the issue quickly, with the support of the corporate media, calling on the well-known and skilled Michel Temer to put a warm cloth on the issue by writing a Official Note to the Nation, signed by the president, forcing him to cower and retreat from his authoritarian threats manifested in the public square. After all, it needs to be preserved because it continues to deliver “milk and honey” promised in the campaign to Financial and Agrarian Capital, following the script of the Coup installed in 2016. One wonders: what kind of reckless agreement would have been agreed upon in this dissimulated and mediatic movement?
In addition to the Note, there were also demonstrations by its supporting generals. Among them, the general head of the Institutional Security Office (GSI), Augusto Heleno: “Some facts left many of us disheartened. This cannot happen. Our president has a formidable political sense. We will complete a thousand days of government without any corruption scandal (sic!). Let's go ahead. United and confident. Brazil above all. God above all,” said the general on Twitter.
As for the head of the GSI in the Temer government, General Sérgio Etchegoyen, considered by analysts to be the Golbery of the 2016 coup, “some STF ministers have lost track of the role they have to play”. As usual, generals are masters of criticism and clumsy when it comes to producing self-criticism. According to the statement of the two generals, the president does not only think with his ineptitude to produce his threats; there is a corporation that strategically supports it.
*Alexandre Aragão de Albuquerque Master in Public Policy and Society from the State University of Ceará (UECE).