Mario Maestri`s contribution to the Anti-imperialist Camp on Brazil
Mario Maestri was born in Porto Alegre, RS, 1948. Since 1967, when he was still a student, he took part at the resistance movement against the military dictatorship. He asked for political asylum in Chile from where he actively engaged in the revolutionary movement (1970-73). After Pinochet´s putsch, he asked political asylum to Belgium where he finished his studies in History at the Catholic University of Louvain discussing subsequently his dissertation on slavery in Brazil. He went back to Brazil in 1977, took actively part to the reorganization of trade unions and the Brazilian politics by founding in 1982 in Rio de Janeiro the PT. In 1988, after the repression of a teachers´ strike by the PT government of Rio Grande do Sul, he left the party. In 1995 he took part to the foundation in Porto Alegre of the Center for Marxist Studies. A communist without a party, he is actually a member of the political council of MST paper Brasil de Fato. He worked as a university teacher and published in Brazil, France and Belgium about 30 books on the formation of Brazilian society. In Italy he published I signori delle montagne on the Italian colonization (1875-1914) of the north-western region of the RS.
Mari Maestri will deliver a speech at the Anti-imperialist Camp in Assisi, Italy, from 1-7 September, 2003:
In 2001 Lula da Silva has run, for the fourth time unsuccessfully, for the presidency of the Republic of Brazil as a candidate of the PT [Workers` Party] and of the Popular Front. At this time the PT wasn´t anymore that anti-imperialist party whose foundation in 1982 had been strongly influenced by the rebirth of the workers´ struggles both in towns and the countryside, struggles which had begun in the years 1977-1979 when the military regime was still in power (1964-1985).
The victory of the neo-liberal world counter-revolution, at the end of the Eighties, along with twenty years inflation, de-industrialization, economic chaos, internationalization and privatizations have determined a heavy withdrawal and a weakening of the Brazilian social movement. The movement for the agrarian reform has been an exception.
In the last two decades the PT has gradually lost its anti-capitalist character transforming itself into a parliamentary social-democratic party, devoted to the conquest, the administration and the defense of the status quo and of the State. In the middle of 2001, the leadership of the PT abandoned the social-democratic distributive orientation and presented an electoral agenda aimed at a bourgeois development, which promised to respect all privatizations and international agreements and to support national industry.
Thanks to the demobilization of the urban social movement and notwithstanding the protest of left sectors of the PT, this new orientation was implemented by choosing as a candidate of the Popular Front for the vice-presidency Josà© Alencar, a big national entrepreneur of the textile industry.
At the beginning of 2002, because of the growing crisis of Fernando Henrique Cardoso government, some sectors of the big national and international capital thought they could find among the opposition a candidate able to grant the continuity of the neo-liberal agenda. To respond to the new situation, the leadership of the PT abandoned its bourgeois development agenda engaging itself deeper with imperialism and the financial capital, promising to pay all Brazilian national and international financial debts.
During the electoral campaign the Popular Front avoided taking any social engagement, limiting itself to some general promises, notably to rise occupation and salaries. On the other hand it assured to defend those neo-liberal reforms of Social Security, State Treasury and work legislation which Fernando Henrique Cardoso government could not complete.
Thanks to the support of right wing sectors, in the second round the PT won the elections. The victory strengthened the popular trust in Lula da Silva, the PT and the Popular Front and favored an effective politicization of the country, particularly of the most advanced social sectors.
Just after the victory, the PT leadership began to implement the engagements it had assumed, consigning the most important economic ministries – Finance, Industry, Agriculture, Economy – to direct or indirect representatives of the big capital. As president of the Central Bank was appointed a former manager of the Boston Bank, the second biggest world creditor of Brazil.
The neo-liberal orientation has been deepened by some financial measures as the over-remuneration of financial capitals – with effective interest rates higher than 14%; an exchange devaluation rate aiming at financing exports and depreciating imports; an over-exploitation of workers in private sectors, who were denied any rise in their minimum national wages, and a negative indexing of State employees´ wages; the interruption of social and public investments.
An offensive has also been launched for the approval by the Parliament of a Social Security reform which penalizes state employees and provides for the privatization of the Social Security system through private and semi-private retirement funds. The Social Security reform will be followed by a fiscal reform and the reform of work legislation.
After six months Lula da Silva has succeeded in consolidating national and international financial capital and in strengthening those sectors of the agro-industry which are producing for exports, while the production for the domestic market has fallen down, worsening unemployment, famine, urban violence and causing a general loss of wages value.
Both organically and extra-organically, the traditional parliamentary right is supporting the political choices of the Popular Front. There has been a remarkable switch of bourgeois deputies from the parties allied with the previous government to parties which support the Popular Front and Lula. The PSDB [Brazilian Social Democracy Party], the party of the former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, has lost a great number of deputies.
The rightists of the PT, physiologically linked to the administration of the State, are giving an unconditional support to the neo-liberal orientation of the Popular Front, while the center-leftists of Left Articulation, Socialist Democracy, Socialist Force and others are submitting themselves reluctantly but without any concrete resistance.
Despite the threat of being expelled from the party, a leftist sector of the PT, represented by senator Heloisa Helena and federal deputies Babá, Luciana Genro, Joà£o Fontes and others, has begun an internal and external opposition to the neo-liberal orientation. Guided by its principal leader, the nationalist caudillo Leonel Brizola, the PDT [Democratic Workers` Party] is distancing itself from the base of support of the government.
The social resistance movement is organizing itself with great difficulty. In the recent Congresses of the CUT [Unified Trade Union Federation of Brazil] and of the UNE [National Union of Students] collaborationist and integrationist proposals, respectively supported by the PT and the PCdoB [Communist Party of Brazil], have ruled.
The first reactions of the social movement have been the fight for the indexing of wages to inflation, organized by the central nucleus of Sà£o Paulo metal-mechanical industry workers who are particularly struck by the recession, and the strike of State employees which took place on the 8th July (55% adhesions).
The State employees strike and the threat of paralyzing the magistracy, an unprecedented event in Brazil, pushed the government to some small modification of the reform.
The increasing number of workers who leave urban suburbs for the country, mostly under the flags of the MST [Landless Movement], reflects the absence of any political mass class organization in Brazilian towns.
The strong mobilization of rural organized workers who are occupying lands and public buildings, expropriating goods during track transports, refusing to pay highway taxes, pushed the government to promise the MST some important concessions of land proprieties in the second semester 2003. With the exception of some food distribution and the appointment of public charges in the institutions linked to the agrarian reform to leaders of the movement, nothing more has been done till now.
The government has also tried to divide town and land workers by treating with more severity the urban social movement and the left wing PT dissidence and, on the other hand, by temporizing with the MST and by satisfying some demands of land workers.
Left wing sectors are promoting contacts and discussions for the formation of a new class party mostly through the unification of the Trotskyite PSTU [United Socialist Workers Party], which has no representatives in Parliament, some radicals deputies of the PT and some independents. As the main reservoir of class leaders, the MST keeps on the edge of this movement to preserve its political and organic links with the PT and the government.
