Dear RN list, Feb. 3
Four days have gone by since I sent you Michel Chossudovsky's article on
Brazil's IMF-sponsored economic disaster.
Right afterwards, our friend and CDR (Citizens for a Democratic Renaissance)
correspondent, César Roberto Magellan sent that posting to several lists. He
prefaced it with a call for Brazilians to extend the strategy of the MST
(Movimento Sem Terra, the landless peasants movement) to all of Brazil. It
was a call to revolution, to people to refuse to pay the debts Brazil is now
saddled with and to prevent the privatization of any more of Brazil's
infrastructure.
I then sent César Roberto's preface to several people because, if Brazilians
are really to stand up to those who have stolen what is rightfully theirs,
we must be there in solidarity with them. I wanted to ask people how we
might do this.
I think the answer to the question lies within each one of us, choosing to
do what we can, where we can.
As a starting point, please take the time to follow what is happening in
Brazil and to correct errors that will inevitably be broadcast by the mass
media about the situation there.
Below is a message César Roberto send us which can help us understand.
As is so often the case with messages from César Roberto, there is this
delightful humour right in the midst of grim truth. See below.
all the best, Jan
****************************************************************
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1999 13:33:15 -0200
To: •••@••.•••
From: •••@••.••• (R. Magellan)
Subject: (ing) BRAZIL: SOROS RULES
This Tuesday morning Armínio Fraga Neto, the Soros man in Brazil, overplaced
Francisco Lopes as the new president of the BCB -- the Brazilian Central
Bank. The nomination of a Soros agent for the second financial federal
function in importance is going to backfire against president Fernando
Henrique Cardoso. It will be another nail in his political coffin, since
indignation has been the most common first reaction at the left and, to a
lesser extent, at the right too. According to the well informed JB radio, of
Rio de Janeiro, Soros's first words of "surprise" recommend Brazil to prove
now to be a trustworthy __partner__ of the international financial
__community__. Bad joke!
Finance Minister Pedro Malan, the closest ally of US banks in Brazil, has
menaced to resign if he could not be allowed to fire Lopes. President FH
Cardoso, that is pathetically being weakened each passing day, accepted the
former's ultimatum.
Lopes had just overplaced about two weeks ago Gustavo Franco as president of
the BCB. Lopes was the mind behind the recent devaluation of the real,
though Franco, an ultraorthodox neoliberal, sternly opposed it.
Once in office, Lopes soon entered into a public collision course with the
Argentinian president Carlos Menem as this latter required financial
compensations from Brazil over the real devaluation affair and strongly
advised the Cardoso team on the needing of a semiconfiscation of debts
through dollarization and on the adoption of the currency board system (the
so called Bonex plan as applied in Argentina). Menem even suggested that
the whole Latin America substitutes the US dollar for its national
currencies as soon as possible. To this last remark Lopes wittily answered
in an interview: why Menem doesn't propose outrightly that we all adopt the
Constitution of Puerto Rico?
So, the dismissal of Francisco Lopes was another victory of neoliberal
colonialism over the Brazilian people. Oh, needless to say that Menem often
thinks that he is the Viceroy of Latin America too...
In solidarity,
Roberto Magellan
Paix entre nous, guerre aux tyrans (....)
Ouvriers, paysans, nous sommes
Le grand PARTI DES TRAVAILLEURS. (L' Internationale)
