By Carlos Tautz*
To fully understand the danger that Moro represents for Brazil, it is necessary to start from the conceptual key of geopolitics
At half time since Sergio Moro was installed in the Ministry of Justice, Lava Jato (LJ) was resurrected on Friday, April 24, in the fullness of its political-media nature. On that date, the former judge and historical head of the LJ abandoned Bolsonaro's ship, resuming original allies and putting in motion the 21st century UDN strategy, which he has operated in the LJ since 2014. Moro connected his resignation to the timing of the news production of Organizações Globo and hegemonized the narrative about the abandonment of the ship by Jair Bolsonaro. On top of that, he used his sibilant prosody to assert that the President governs for his own sake and gave resignation the air of a heroic mission. Result: a stamp of betrayal of morality was placed on Bolsonaro's forehead to CBF, which guides lavajatistas and bolsonaristas, and advanced a few houses in the 2022 campaign against its main opponent.
The Lava Jatista script for the resignation was like this: Moro spoke for about 40 minutes (see here), without contestation, at 11 am on the 24th. He filled his testimony with serious accusations against Bolsonaro and made his version prevail alone in the news widely hegemonized by the various Globo vehicles until 17 pm that day, when, Bolsonaro, visibly tearful and defensive , he pronounced, also without disputes (see here).
Since that Friday morning, the editors of the National Journal (JN), the most watched journalistic program on Brazilian TV, already did their best in the edition that aired that night, as has been the habit of the traditional Brazilian family since 1969. When speaking in the morning, Moro gave Globo enough time to confirm throughout the day, in all its media, the anti-Bolsonaro version that would be fully validated at 20 pm in the extended version of JN – in general, the JN is 40 to 50 minutes long. On that date, it broadcast more than 1h30min to some 40 million viewers.
The present and future messages issued by Moro&Globo on JN were clear:
A) the mythical hero of the JL is back – the same one who, in a year and four months at the Ministry of Justice, had ignored the disappearance of Fabrício Queiroz, the murders of Marielle Franco and militiaman Adriano da Nóbrega and the pandemic flu; It is
B) the former judge scheduled a reunion: “Regardless of where I am (sic), I will always be available to the country”.
The second leak of messages from the President of the Republic
The pro-Moro JN was epic. He validated Moro unquestionably and dared to open the program in a way that is little used in television journalism, by recovering images of Bolsonaro in 2018 promising carte blanche to the former judge at the Ministry of Justice. And, in order not to lose the habit acquired in the LJ, he published a message from Bolsonaro to Moro on WhatsApp without authorization from the occupant of the Planalto Palace. For the second time in four years, the duo Moro&Globo illegally leaked a communication from a President of the Republic.
Using a powerful means of communication to embarrass opponents and disrespect legal rules in political disputes, based on appeals for an alleged fight against widespread corruption, is exactly the recipe that Operation Hands Clean used in Italy in the 1990s. example who, 10 years before starting JL, praised the method in an article published in Journal of Legal Studies, of the National Council of Justice.
His resignation was planned to reverberate inside and outside Brazil. Internally, the ex-Minister retreated his bases and accumulated forces to take up arms in 2022 in the dispute for the Presidency of the Republic.
International allies quickly supported Moro. On the 25th, the BBC Brazil correspondent in Washington published interview with Drago Kos, head of the anti-corruption working group of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in which the executive threatened: “Brazil will have to explain what is happening”, referring to Moro’s departure.
Kos will hold an online conference in June to monitor the case of Brazil, after having spent two weeks in 2019 in the country to assess Brazilian performance in the fight against corruption. This endorsement is one of the preconditions for Brazil to join the large private apparatus of hegemony that is the OECD, totally guided by the USA. By the way, on the 30th, another OECD missile hit Bolsonaro: a leaked report (see here) with criticism of the Brazilian government's policies in the areas of combating corruption and protecting the Amazon.
This is not little and deserves attention. The two biggest current aspirations of the Bolsonarist Itamaraty are Brazil's accession to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the OECD – both controlled by the US.
Threat to the integrity of Brazilian territory
Comparing the class relations that support Bolsonaro and Moro, it is seen that the President represents the rise of a broad and diffuse consortium of occasional coup plotters, with no defined project, mixed with the lower clergy of politics and retail businesses, supported by the masses. of vaulted bearers of the most abject moral and religious values. And, of course, the collective support of the Armed Forces, tolerant of mafia militias linked to the President's family.
On the international scene, Bolsonaro does not demonstrate any organic connection with foreign governments or with consolidated international movements, such as the one with which the American publicist Steve Bannon tried to seduce Trump, Bolsonaro, Le Pen, Salvini et caterva. There is nothing consistent between these people.
Brazil's atavistic approach to the US is due to Bolsonaro's submissive nature and disgusting flattery for Trump. To become President, Bolsonaro only surfed the international wave of the right and the extreme right, whose election owes much to the illegal collection of online data, which was used to convince the electorate through proposals of narrow morality allied to the fear that the middle class has any minimally changing proposal.
Geopolitics to understand the danger
Moro is of another quality. And to fully understand the danger it represents for Brazil, it is necessary to start from the conceptual key of geopolitics, a discipline that, in short, guides the study of States settled in large portions of territories – as in the Brazilian case.
The proven links of repeated submission, by you and your subordinates in the LJ, to the Department of Justice, a body subordinated to the White House and which, in the USA, has functions similar to those of the Federal Public Ministry in Brazil (see BBC article), place enormous distrust on Moro. He appears to be a kind of Trojan Horse for US interests, which has a real chance of reaching the Presidency of the Republic in Brazil. Whether in 2022 or later, because the former judge is old enough to run for several elections.
Electing Moro would have unparalleled geopolitical importance for the US, which has always felt to some extent threatened by the simple existence in South America (the first circle of its global hegemony) of a country like Brazil: extensive and territorially unified, with a population of hundreds of millions of inhabitants who speak the same language, have a single currency and who have never faced national separatism that effectively threatened their territorial unity. In addition, of course, to Brazil owning a series of elements of nature (fresh water, biological diversity, sunlight, oil, minerals, etc.) human species.
From Operation Brother Sam to the delivery of the base in Alcântara
Threats to the territorial integrity of Brazil by the US already exist in concrete terms. In 1964, the then governor of Minas Gerais and owner of the late Banco Nacional plotted to overthrow constitutional President João Goulart. Magalhães Pinto wanted civil war to divide Brazil. He would declare Minas a “belligerent state” and receive logistical and military support from the 4 US Marines who were on the coast of Brazil, ready to invade the country with the support of the submissive and traitorous elite of the Brazilian Armed Forces. The whole plan became known as Operation Brother Sam and is registered in the Research and Documentation Center of the Getúlio Vargas Foundation.
Now, at least two other cases are examples of concrete US advances. Bolsonaro supported and supports both, but has not yet demonstrated the ability to lead either process. Both are under the guidance of the military elite represented in their government, which also did not bring them to term, despite the long history of willingly voluntary submission by Brazilian high officials in relation to their peers in the US.
The first major recent threat to the unity of the Brazilian territory had its public apex in 2016 under the coup leader Michel Temer. According to BBC Brazil, “American troops were invited by the Brazilian Army to participate in a military exercise on the triple Amazon border between Brazil, Peru and Colombia in November of this year. According to the Army [Brazilian], Operation America United will have ten days of military simulations conducted from a multinational base made up of troops from the three border countries and the United States”.
Register: it was the first time that American troops set foot, at least officially, on the Brazilian portion of the Amazon basin.
The possibility of these troops permanently settling in a US enclave on Brazilian territory is open, and stalled in the National Congress, since Bolsonaro resumed in March 2019 an agreement to hand over the aerospace base of Alcântara (MA). The plot was already tried in the government of another hand-in-hand, former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, but it did not go ahead. Strictly speaking, the US does not want, nor need, another aerospace base. Alcantara's real value to Washington is military and strategic. It would be a way for the US to keep troops in the territory of its greatest threat in South America, in addition to being, due to its geographical position in front of Africa, a way to control the entire South Atlantic and strategically approach the Gulf of Nigeria, where there are huge oil reserves similar to the Brazilian pre-salt layer.
These two dangers of Brazil’s territorial division – dangers even greater than the risk of social upheaval under Bolsonaro, because they are irreversible – seem to make more sense in a possible Moro government two years from now. He has already developed organic links with the US, the hegemon globally, and, internally, it has superior acceptance even to Bolsonaro (see article in FSP).
Bundled in supports resulting from the nihil obstat of the USA, where he has the connections demonstrated here, in addition to internally maintaining a permanent alliance with the Globo Organizations and other reactionary forces, Moro would be a political force capable of organizing around himself such social cohesion that the half-left that represents us would not be able to not even outline opposing arguments.
This is, deep down, the problem that worries the most.
*Carlos Tautz é doctoral student in history at the Fluminense Federal University (UFF).
