By LUIZ WERNECK VIANNA*
The central focus of the Democrats is to create conditions to guarantee the preservation of the electoral calendar
Could it be that Brazil is just like that, indifferent in the face of injustice, stoned without raising a finger in protest at the evils inflicted on it, silently swallowing offenses, anomic, abulistic, and that we were completely mistaken when we imagined it, not so long ago , full of energy and excited to achieve great things? When we lost the links that linked us to our greatest and their exemplary deeds, such as those of Mario Andrade, Drummond, Bandeira, Villa Lobos, Portinari, Niemeyer, Rondon, the lieutenants of 22, the Column of 24, those of Teatro de Arena, with Guarnieri and Vianinha, and with all those who left in their wake the promise that a fair and solidary society would flourish here?
Something very serious has happened here, so that we find ourselves in the miserable situation of the Bolsonaro regime, enemy of our past, of its traditions and institutions, which not only wants to demean them but also to eradicate their memory for whose sinister purpose it already conspires for its perpetuation. Such a malevolent result is not just the result of the unfortunate circumstances that saw us born as a nation marked by the stigma of large estates and slavery, which still torments us, because throughout our history, including recently, we have had opportunities to seek beneficial alternatives, which we lost for negligence.
The elections now at hand provide us with yet another opportunity for us to, this time, remove the liabilities that continue to haunt us, opening the way to what is new in our society that obscurantist forces are striving to repress. The scenario ahead, unlike 1964, inscribed as we are in American geopolitics, presents possibilities for a coalition of democratic forces to find its time and its turn and successfully face the reactionary frond in full articulation. The clash between them takes place in the field of politics, mainly electoral, a more promising terrain for democratic oppositions than for their opponents, who seek, aware of this, to take it to other spheres as evident in their attacks on the electoral process and its institutions.
In this sense, the central focus of the democrats is to create conditions to guarantee the preservation of the electoral calendar and to present themselves in the elections with candidacies capable of expanding, within the limits of the possible alliances that allow them to be successful at the polls, and, more than that, through their scale, remove any attempts to prevent its conclusion.
The alliance between Lula and Alkmin is certainly a good start towards this end, but it is not enough, the seriousness of the risks to which we are exposed requires the incorporation of all the living forces of society, from trade unions to social movements, not to mention associations of students, university and high school students, a yeast always present in our freedom struggles, capable of evoking in their manifestations what made Brazil Brazil.
*Luiz Werneck Vianna is a professor at the Department of Social Sciences at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio). Author, among other books, of The Passive Revolution: Iberism and Americanism in Brazil (Revan).
