By RAÚL ZIBECHI*
With Biden there will be more color revolutions in Latin America
The shapes change, but the background remains the same. Instead of the wall, restrictions on immigrants and Donald Trump's extreme speech, Joe Biden's correct statements about democracy, women and people of African descent will come. Instead of blatant militarism, the color revolutions conceived by Open Society of Soros to promote regime changes that favor his interests.
The clue was given by Thomas Shannon on January 1st in an open letter to the Brazilian media. Shannon was the US Ambassador to Brazil in the Obama administration and had been Under Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs under George W. Bush.
Shannon's letter entitled "The Soft Truth About an Old Partnership" was published in Crusoe Magazine (https://bit.ly/2LLldiB), which now operates as an independent and anti-Bolsonarist journalism, but whose founders played a prominent role in the lawsuit against Lula that resulted in his arrest and the removal of Dilma Rousseff, operating at the time from the influential website O Antagonista.
Shannon begins his letter by assuring that the relationship between Brazil and the United States is one of the cornerstones of diplomacy in the XNUMXst century. Next, he examines the similarities between their societies, concluding that the president-elect (Biden) knows Brazil and Latin America well, ensuring that no US president began his term with such knowledge and experience in the region.
In the second part of her missive, Shannon makes a fierce attack on the government of Jair Bolsonaro, for having done everything to complicate the transition in the bilateral relationship, expressing her preference for Trump in the recent elections, and for having criticized Biden, who asked in a debate a more energetic action by Brasilia against deforestation.
For Shannon, it is unacceptable that Bolsonaro has repeated the unfounded accusations of fraud by President Trump in the US elections, as he interprets them as an attack on US democracy and the future Biden government.
But the most serious begins next. Shannon tells the government what to do about three issues (the pandemic, climate change, and China's position on 5G networks) and then threatens. This is something that will not be easily forgiven or forgotten, concludes the diplomat.
Some may rejoice, even on the left, at Bolsonaro's disapproval of the new US government. For my part, both the silence of the Workers' Party of Brazil and that of Lula himself show the difficulties of the left in the face of the current upheaval in the White House.
This is not about Jair Bolsonaro, but about our countries, about the sovereignty of nations. The president of Brazil must be condemned and removed by his own people. He has all the merits for society to mobilize to remove him. But that the empire threatens with new color revolutions is bad news. Now they will be able to attack far-right governments, but they will continue against everything that is put in their way, whether conservative or progressive.
The operation to overthrow Bolsonaro already has considerable support from the media and institutions. The Brazilian Bar Association, which played dirty against Lula and called for Dilma's removal (https://bbc.in/3soJjAA), is now promoting Bolsonaro’s removal. Its president, Felipe Santa Cruz, declared that the pace of the process will be dictated by pressure from the streets, calling, in fact, for popular mobilization (https://bit.ly/3q5ntQS).
For the democratic right, the one that bets on the defense of the environment with cosmetic measures, that adorns Biden's office with women and people of African descent, but continues to support police/patriarchal violence, the time has come to put a brake on the extreme right. Bolsonaristas did the dirty work against the left, but they are no longer useful. Same thing with Trump.
To understand this turnaround, just remember the Central American wars, where the Pentagon first supported military genocides and then promoted centrist options, such as Christian democracies, to recompose the scenario in the face of the strong attrition of the coup leaders in Guatemala and El Salvador.
If Trump's term was abominable, Biden's will be no less. Let us remember the war in Syria, the liquidation of the Arab Spring and the invasion of Libya, promoted and managed by the team that now returns to the White House.
In Latin America, the illegitimate dismissals (coups, say others) of Manuel Zelaya (2009), Fernando Lugo (2012) and Dilma Rousseff (2016) took place under the progressive government of Barack Obama (2009-2017). Let's not forget about Trump. But also that, from Biden's hand, nefarious characters like Victoria Nuland, organizer of the coup and subsequent war in Ukraine, are returning.
* Raúl Zibechi, journalist, is a columnist for the weekly Brecha (Uruguay).
Translation: Fernando Lima das Neves.
Originally published in the newspaper The Journey.
