Coup and national destruction

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By JOSÉ RAIMUNDO BARRETO TRINDADE*

Resuming the most recent historical nexus becomes a necessity, and defending the central thesis of the 2016 coup d'état and its logic is essential

We arrive at this 2023 carnival in a new context of Brazilian social dispute, the plot of the last six years must be part of this necessary historical memory. Historical revisionism acts quickly, such as the military-business dictatorship of 1964, the coup movements of 2016, quickly begin to be revised and the liberal-bourgeois press divulges and ideologically wins the population towards “historical normality”.

The accelerated review of this last historical event (2016) is explained by the acceleration of the circulation of ideas and facts that social networks and high-scale communication have imposed on us in recent years.

Resuming the most recent historical nexus becomes a necessity, and defending the central thesis of the 2016 coup d'état and its logic is essential. Thus, the article that follows makes three movements that I hope its reading is necessary for historical memory and action in the coming months: (i) it resumes recent history; (ii) develops the meaning of the institutional breakdown of recent years and; (iii) ponders the contradictions of the current laughable time, that is, the uncertainties of the next post-carnival time of 2023, always remembering the happiness of finally, after seven years, having a happy carnival, odes to Lula and memory of the damned “TemeNaro ” (fusion of Temer and Bolsonaro).

In April 2018, Lula's arrest established the second cycle of a coup that started in 2016, the components of this process of breaking the imposition of interests, imposed the inexistence of rules for Brazilian institutionality, which they pompously called a "bridge to the future" , which meant the destruction of the very logic of national sovereignty.

Abject figures such as Michel Temer, Jair Bolsonaro, Sérgio Moro and Jorge Paulo Lemann, united around a central logic: the most vile spoliation of any capacity to produce local wealth, see now the scandals of Lojas Americanas and the transfer of dividends of Petrobras, also a scandal, even by the standards of Brazilian peripheral capitalism, a pure disgust.

The historical significance of the 2016 coup, similar to 1964, took place around five structuring meanings, now very clear, since history always gives us the clarity of the naked past, and now the “princes” are naked: (i ) the coup was against work: in the distributive sense and in the organizational sense; (ii) the coup was against national sovereignty, in the sense of strengthening the conditions of national dependence, destruction and delivery of national companies, such as Petrobras and Eletrobras; (iii) the coup was against organized movements, in the sense of an agenda of negation of social movements (such as the MST and MTST) and the disorganization of the Brazilian left; (iv) the coup was for the definitive destruction of original populations, as is now proven in relation to the Yanomami genocide and; (v) the blow was to maintain the financialized pattern of the Brazilian economy, in the form of neoliberalism without a public budget, other than the payment of interest on the state debt.

First, the blow was against work, whether in the distributive sense of income, or in the organizational sense of social and workers' movements, which implies that the center of the established conservative and authoritarian logic aims to replace the historical conditions of superexploitation of the labor force. work, denying and destroying the regulatory apparatus of labor relations, the social contract established in recent decades and demobilizing workers' organizations (unions and independent movements).

It is worth denoting that the advances, even if limited by the PT governments, were the result of a long accumulation of forces around the popular resistance movements, and the accumulated capacity in the fight against the dictatorship established a higher level of social regulation, including leading to concessions important by the ruling classes, especially in aspects of labor rights and social security, which was recorded in fundamental chapters of the Federal Constitution of 1988, precisely these chapters that have been deeply attacked in recent years.

The average real salary grew in the period from 2003 to 2014 at a rate well above the previous three decades, especially in detachment from the 90s, markedly by losses for the various segments of workers (formal and informal). This real change in average earnings can be seen by comparing minimum wage values ​​in dollars: in 2000, a minimum wage bought approximately eighty dollars; in 2014 it bought approximately three hundred and twenty dollars.

Still regarding the distributive aspect, it is worth noting the positive impacts on the profile of poverty rates and the inclusion of an important portion of the Brazilian population within the limits of access to mass consumer goods. Thus, the recomposition of the minimum wage according to the rule approved in 2004 (monetary correction added to the average GDP growth of the last two years), added to the large-scale compensatory policies of the Bolsa Família program and universal social security policies (rural and other benefits of continuous provision) produced a significant retreat of poverty and social inequality, thus the proportion of poor people drops to less than half in the period from 2003 to 2011, going from 22,6% to 10,1% of the national population and the inequality measured by the Gini coefficient falls for the first time in Brazilian history below 0,53 in 2011.

Thus, one of the first measures taken by Michel Temer's coup government was to destroy labor regulation and seek to demobilize and disorganize unions. Among the most striking points of the change in labor legislation are: (a) the flexibility of the employee-boss relationship, where decision-making in collective agreements exceeds the provisions defined in the constitution with regard to vacation time (divided into three times) and rest during the working day (from two hours to at least 30 minutes); (b) the extension of the workday from 8 hours to 12 hours per week; (c) the approval of intermittent work, where the worker is paid for the day or daily work; (d) now the termination of employment contracts can be done without union approval; (e) the union tax ceases to be mandatory; (f) end of the obligation to hold companies accountable for paying the worker's transportation; (g) benefits such as allowances, premiums and allowances are no longer included in remuneration, therefore not included in labor charges; plus many other changes.

The 2016 coup was against national sovereignty, in the sense of strengthening US hegemony and increasing the conditions of national dependence. In this case, the interaction of the coup takes place in the context of the reorganization of international capitalism. The emergence of West Asian capitalism led to a repositioning of US hegemony, demanding a reoccupation of strategic peripheral spaces, the main one being Brazil.

As a consequence, three movements can be observed: (i) the tone of reprimarization of the economy becomes State discourse, assimilating the primary-export pattern as a long-term development model; (ii) autonomous or medium-technologically developed industrial segments are sold or reprocessed according to the logic of US capital, such as the incorporation of Embraer by Boeing and subsequent return as a capital bloodhound; (iii) the national oil production structure is dismantled, undoing the industrial complementarity of Petrobrás, in order to privatize it and transfer to exogenous capital the technological control of prospecting in deep waters, at the same time that it is undone in a predatory manner of the pre-salt oil fields.

The alleged illogicality of the movements outlined above can only be explained by the complete subordination to the international circuit of capital and the establishment of a new phase in the Brazilian economic dynamics of return to a condition of mining-agrarian-exporting semi-periphery. The coup, therefore, is established as part of an imperialist order that seeks to recompose the hegemonic economic and territorial power of the USA.

The 2016 coup was against organized movements, in the sense of an agenda that negated social movements (as in the case of the MST and MTST) and weakened the Brazilian left. These two fronts of attack are political constraints that express themselves very quickly in the undoing of the institutional texture and the rapid establishment of authoritarian fronts.

The military occupation actions in Rio de Janeiro, the murder of PSol councilor Marielle Franco, the criminal suicide of UFSC rector Luiz Carlos Cancellier, and the arrest of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, were elements of this movement, once again military. - business scammer. In 1975 we had the “produced suicide” of Vladimir Herzog, in 2017 the suicide of Luiz Carlos Cancellier. These last six years were as intense as the moments produced by the dictatorship, or perhaps it was a cursed breath of those years.

The blow of 2016 was the resumption of growth in capital profit rates and maintenance of the financialized pattern of the Brazilian economy. Released data show that there was no economic growth and the variation in percentage volume of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) showed growth rates much lower than the previous period.

Source: IBGE – Annual National Accounts. Access at: https://sidra.ibge.gov.br/tabela/6784#resultado

 

Models centered on a financialized pattern of economy are of low intensity of growth and impoverishment of the population, as shown by data from the governments of Fernando Henrique Cardoso and now Temer and Bolsonaro. The coup was for the achievement of Bolsonaro's speech in terms of the end of millenary civilizations like the Yanomami.

These people (high-ranking military and businessmen) think that everything is primitive if they don't buy trinkets in Miami or reason according to their logic of a “killer God”. In recent days, what is primitive has become visible: the arrogance, violence and the project of social extermination of these people, making fun of the death of Yanomami children and violating works by Di Cavalcanti.

Bad people, who historically always existed, but who now seem to be flowing down the sewer pipes of history. So we hope, we'll see! In the post-carnival period, we will have to have the capacity to fight for humanity in Brazil. Defend the Yanonami, the workers of every Brazilian metropolitan center, the peasants, every black, indigenous, mestizo or white woman in every corner of this country. This becomes a national construction project. We are left with a project of national sovereignty, and that is up to all of us!

*Jose Raimundo Trinidad He is a professor at the Institute of Applied Social Sciences at UFPA. Author, among other books, of Six decades of state intervention in the Amazon (Paka-armadillo).

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