Brazil: AND – Political Act on 25th of April in Rio de Janeiro
We share an unofficial translation of the newspaper A Nova Democracia’s call for a Political Act, titled “Neither forget nor Appease: condemn the military coup yesterday and today!”. The act can be followed live via a YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l3Xa-b_Ovc
The act will be in Rio de Janeiro, on 25th of April, in the noble Hall of the Institute of Philosophy and Social Sciences – IFCS/UFRJ, at 5:30 p.m. (Brazilian time zone).
On the 60th anniversary of the 1964’s military coup, it is urgent that the genuine democrats, progressive and revolutionary people of our country to overwhelmingly and at once condemn the coup tendencies that is still present in society today, as well the appeasement and forgetting policies, which only strength the Fascists.
60 years ago, after more than a decade of conspiracies and interventionist maneuvers in the national political life, the High Command of the reactionary Armed Fores unleashed the military coup on the 31st of March of 1964. The coup generals and the ruling classes ‘establishment’ unleashed it, in collusion with the right-wing official political forces, maneuvered by the North-American imperialist interests in our Country and backed by the certainty that they would not face resistance from the government of this epoch. The biggest fear of the ruling classes, besides the reformist movements from João Goulart, was at the countryside: the Peasant Leagues were threatening to finish the agro-exporting, parasitic and coronelist latifundium.
These events are not a ‘trauma’ to be forgotten. Wanting to forget it, as the republic’s president Luiz Inácio and the far-right general Hamilton Mourão defended, obviously leads to repeating it. After all, it is not a healed wound: as it was shown on the 8th of January, the wound is still open, and without the right treatment. Even today, such as in the 1960’s, weeds of the coup are still growing in all the corridors and meeting rooms in the barracks.
The appeasement policy, carried out before and after the 1988 Constituent, generated the basis for new interventionist offensives from the High Command of the Armed Forces from 2015 onwards. At the end of the regime, there was not carried out a change in the curriculum and the National Security doctrine – which, under different names, are still in effect in the Armed Forces’ mentality, whom consider themselves the Moderating Power of guaranteeing the ‘democratic’ constitutional stability, and therefore, they consider themselves also in the position to define in which moment a break up is justified. But the coup tendency was not firmly faced, after 1988, the men who were the High Command were not even changed, the current ones being their continuation. Even the Constituent had repeated pressures and military maneuvers in order to approve Article 142 of the Constitution, which has an ambiguous writing, to serve, in the future, for new institutional break ups. If we seen the course of history, unfortunately, it is not surprising that we are facing a new coup d’état. A coup which was not fulfilled only because it did not have the approval from the North-American interests in the country, because they fear that a situation of general conflagration will be unleashed, specially at the countryside, where the struggle for democratization of access to the land for the poor peasants, specially in Amazônia Ocidental (Rondônia), was the most important stage of resistance to Bolsonaro’s military government.
The same vigorous appeasement policy is repeated from 1988, the genuine democrats, progressive and revolutionary people will confirm a new military crisis, which because of not being based in an undetermined basis, will be more serious and dangerous.
It is urgent that the genuine progressives, democrats and revolutionaries carry out a serious combat against coup tendencies, condemning the 60 years of the military coup of 1964 and the coup tendencies of today. As part of combating the appeasement policy (which is just a way of to get scared), we demand the Special Commission for the Political Dead and Disappeared to be reinstalled by the current government, as it is a felt demand by the relatives and of unique importance to lead the national political debates on the Fascist awful things of the military regime. It is necessary to defend the democratic freedoms, which are already scarce and under permanent attacks, by urgent mobilization.
