Harvest Time

The São Paulo Forum gathers together radical leftist political parties and criminal organizations, and it is making the socialist revolution in Latin America.

Given the accomplished fact of the downfall of the USSR, the São Paulo Forum has been the most powerful initiative for reorganizing the international Communist movement since 1990, and, in Fidel Castro’s words, “for reconquering in Latin America what was lost in Eastern Europe.” Convened by the Cuban dictator and the then Brazilian Workers’ Party’s presidential candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Forum gathers together legal Communist (and pro-Communist) parties, committed to the struggle for cultural and political hegemony in their nations, and armed organizations involved in kidnapping, terrorism, and drug trafficking. Among the latter, the FARC, whose connections with the Brazilian drug market have been proved by the arrest of the Brazilian drug lord Fernandinho Beira-Mar, is a standout. There are also double-faced organizations, simultaneously legal and illegal, like the Chilean Communist Party, whose armed wing had something to do with the kidnapping of the Brazilian businessman Washington Olivetto.

Perhaps my readers will at first find strange a meeting in which legally organized parties fraternize with criminal gangs. But, actually, this association is just another application of the old Leninist rule that, in the revolutionary struggle, legal and illegal means should be combined together.

In fact one of the advantages of an international alliance is that it allows that a promiscuous mix of moralist rhetoric and drug trafficking, beautiful ideals and the brutality of kidnappings, humanitarian sentimentalism and organized terror (a mix so clear and evident on a continental scale, and in meetings of the Forum) appear disguised and nebulous when seen from the standpoint of each separate nation. That is to say, through the employment of Argentineans to take action in Mexico, Bolivians in Brazil, or Brazilians in Chile, the most obvious connections become invisible to the eyes of the local public opinion. As a result, the legal parties remain above any suspicion, and the mere suggestion that they should be investigated is rejected as an intolerable offense, even when the arrest of criminals gives full proof of the intimate connection between organized crime and leftist politics on the continent. And the criminal identity of the left becomes still more patent when the arrest of criminals is followed, by some magical coincidence, by a fast and effective mobilization of the left’s “decent” and official leadership in favor of the criminals under arrest.

The São Paulo Forum has been holding regular meetings since 1990. The tenth one took place in Havana, Cuba, in December 2001. Mr. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was there. Therefore to deny that he is politically associated with the organizations that signed the declarations of the Forum is to deny the validity of a Brazilian presidential candidate’s signature on official documents of international relevance. As Vasconcelo Quadros wrote in the March 2002 issue of Isto É magazine: “Brazil shelters a clandestine network for supporting international guerrilla organizations which are involved in kidnappings, bank robberies, and drug trafficking.” In a country in which a phone call given to a swindler is enough to make a politician fall under police suspicion, the national refusal to investigate a criminal connection officially recorded on public documents is surprising at least.

What is even more surprising is that, among so many pundits, police officers, politicians, and military officials (all of them allegedly very intelligent), nobody can (or wants to) see a logical connection between those facts and Dr. Leonardo Boff’s statement, reported by the newspaper Jornal do Brasil of August 23, that with the coming election, “the time for the Brazilian revolution has arrived. The sowing has already been done. Now it is harvest time.” Or did the retired friar not mean anything of the sort when he used the word “revolution,” it being nothing but a naïve figure of speech? The massive and obstinate refusal to realistically face the present situation can be explained by the fact that this situation is indeed a dreadful reality, the sight of which would be far too traumatic for the delicate nerves of an effeminate bourgeoisie, a class terrified to the point of no longer acknowledging the reality of the evil that terrifies it.

Psychologically kidnapped by some nameless Marxism that has taken over the country, the ruling class is already ripe for performing its role of a docile, smiling, and helpful victim. But, please, do not think that with these remarks I here give my support or opposition to any of the candidates for the presidency. Consider this: the four candidates—the differences among them are irrelevant—have the same ideology, and any one of them, when elected, will not be able to rule the country without the support of at least one or two of the other three. From this point of view, then, the coming presidential election is actually a one-party election, in which the ruling party has been subdivided into four temporary tickets. That is why Dr. Boff did not say that the revolution will be inaugurated with the victory of this or that candidate, but with “the election” itself—it does not matter who will be the winner.

At least from the psychological point of view, that revolution has already begun: ideological uniformity, once accepted as the normal state of affairs in democratic politics, is enough to virtually outlaw, as “right-wing extremism,” any word henceforth said in favor of free-market capitalism, the United States of America, or Israel. And whoever says anything in favor of one them regularly receives death threats, some of which no longer even take precautions to be sent as anonymous messages: they are out there, for anyone to see, on internet sites and cause no scandal at all. Dr. Boff is right: the sowing has already been completed. It is harvest time.

But, of course, all of this is certainly a mere figure of speech. And to see any malign intention in such innocent words, that would be a scandal.