Expand the social base and overcome formal democracy. Those were the objectives set by the Brazilian Workers' Party (PT) since its foundation in 1980 from trade union movements, left-wing groups opposed to the military dictatorship and sectors of the church linked to liberation theology.
A heterogeneous party in its composition and in its doctrines, separated both from the refounding of the historic Communist Party and from the social democratic tradition of the Socialist Party or the Workers' Party, but which soon positioned itself as the main formation of the Brazilian left.
The PT was born with the endorsement of the union mobilizations of the 1970s, from which its main leaders came, including a young Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, although its popularity and its territorial implantation beyond São Paulo stemmed precisely from that diversity of its bases.
That transversality was also what made its message soon go beyond the borders of Brazil to rise as a formation capable of overcoming the discourse of Marxism-Leninism, even though its sympathies towards the Cuban regime were explicit from the beginning, and without any connection with the guerrillas operating throughout the region.
In addition to fighting in the Brazilian presidential elections since 1989 –the first after the dictatorship– and becoming a serious alternative to the conservative candidates, the PT also aspired to become the vanguard of a new Latin American democratic left since the Foro de São Paulo, created in 1990 by left-wing formations from all over the continent.
Its objective was to establish common strategies against the neoliberal policies that were imposed on governments throughout the continent, largely following the privatization recipes of the International Monetary Fund during the leadership of Michel Camdessus, with an orthodoxy that wreaked havoc in Mexico. during the Tequila Effect of 1994.
Lula was a great promoter of this forum and of spreading the PT's message throughout the region and did not hesitate to attend all kinds of political and trade union activities and even gave political training courses through the Ecumenical Center for Popular Education, an organization linked to grassroots Christian movements –Catholic and Protestant– with implementation in various countries.
It is in one of these courses where he gave the lecture in 1995 that we offer in excerpts, when the PT was struggling from the opposition to avoid the privatization plan of the Government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso. In it, Lula lays the foundations for that renewed popular and broad-based left that would end up settling not only in Brazil, where the PT ended up winning the elections in 2003, in the fourth candidacy he led, but in much of Latin America.
“The Brazilian situation is not different from the situation in Latin America, mainly Argentina and Mexico. The fundamental difference is that Brazil is a more structured country from an industrial point of view and its economy is larger, since we have a GDP of almost 500,000 million dollars. It is an economically more important country than Mexico, but I would say that there is no much difference in the policies that can be carried out in Brazil or any other country in Latin America, with the exception of Cuba.
”Now we are experiencing a very delicate moment in the implantation of neoliberalism in my country and in our continent. In Brazil we are even discussing the reform of the Constitution to privatize public companies considered by us as strategic companies for the maintenance of our sovereignty. This is the case of Petrobras, which is our public oil company. Telecommunications and the rest of the Brazilian energy sector, mainly the large hydroelectric plants, are also in this process.
”We know perfectly well that the neoliberal policies and the dismantling of the State have as their immediate objective the collection of funds to be able to pay the internal public debt to the bankers, and this would be the case in Brazil as it was in Argentina and Mexico under the direction of the Fund. International Monetary.
”The main argument of our governments is that the State is incompetent to be present in the economy, because it spends its money very badly and manages its companies very badly. In other words, the State must be separated from the economy so that with the money collected from privatizations it can invest in education and health. This argument has been used in Argentina and Mexico, but what we are seeing is that in both Argentina and Mexico most companies have already been sold and neither education nor health has improved.
”On the contrary, what we have seen is that privatization has not had any positive results except for the companies that the state companies acquired and how in Argentina, for example, the sale of telecommunications companies did not go to any private company, but also state-owned companies from European countries such as Spain, Italy or Mexico.
”In Brazil we are aware of a document from the Spanish government that is directing its Ministry of Communications to acquire all the telecommunications companies that are sold and privatized by the Latin American rulers, because the volume of business in the sector is in the coming years of about 200,000 million dollars. This is a clear case of domination.
”Petrobras is probably one of the most modern oil companies in the world and Brazil has the best technologies in the world for deep-sea exploration. Logically, its competitors are interested in controlling the exploration and distribution of oil of a company like this one.
”This is especially when the rich countries are not oil producers. But even as a producing country, the United States does not have reserves that can sustain its development model and it is not surprising that Mexico has now been forced to subordinate its oil company and oil resources to the US economy.
”Because of the value we have in this law of the market, the first thing we must do in Brazil and in all of Latin America is create an internal market, and that means making all of society participate in the economy, because in Brazil we have 150 million inhabitants, but our domestic consumption market is just over 35 million Brazilians. There are more people excluded from the development process than are participating in development. My candidacy for the PT wants precisely to open the economy to the whole of society.
”Latin America is going through a very difficult moment, because it is the moment of defining each one of the Latin American countries as a sovereign nation. The countries that have implemented the theory of the International Monetary Fund so far have only solved the financial problems, but have not solved the social problems. On the contrary, with each passing day, social indicators are showing that social problems are getting worse in all Latin American countries.
”We are in favor of the full integration of Latin America, but that integration cannot be thought of from Mercosur, from the point of view of capital, but from the point of view of citizens. In the same way that bilateral agreements must also be considered from a social point of view.
”Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina have a minimum wage that is double the Brazilian minimum wage and at the same time, Argentines, Paraguayans and Uruguayans do not have the technological conditions to compete with the Brazilian industry. Because our industrial products will arrive at a cheaper price in Argentina than what can be produced there and the agricultural products of Argentina will arrive in Brazil at a cheaper price than those offered by Brazilian farmers.
”To resolve it, we need, in Brazil and throughout Latin America, a greater organization of the popular movement and the trade union movement, and we need to have a common organization stronger than all the leftist political parties. Because now we have a very divided left and it is very difficult to convince all these movements to unite around a single candidacy or a single party.
”As long as we don't achieve it, the left will have a lot of difficulties winning elections, speaking with one voice, and we are facing all the internal and external economic power. In my opinion, it depends on the ability to establish a common front, without the parties having to give up their identity, so that we can win the elections. This is what we have been trying to do since the moment we created the São Paulo Forum, which is a forum where we bring together all the leftist parties in Latin America.
”Regarding the trade union movement in Latin America, we must say that it is also fragile and weakened, although in Brazil we have a strong representation of the Central Única de los Trabajadores, which has become the largest trade union center in Latin America. However, in Brazil we only have an average of 25% of unionized workers. And what is more serious, neither the leftist parties nor any trade union movement is represented today in the Government. In this scenario, politics in Latin America is exclusively about implementing neoliberalism.
”The weakening of the left in Latin America also affects the Catholic Church and its progressive sector. In Brazil, the pope did the conservatives a favor to defeat the progressive church and in São Paulo our cardinal, Paulo Evaristo, has been weakened in his political action as the diocese has been divided into several new dioceses. This phenomenon of conservatism in the church has not only happened in Brazil, but also in other Latin American countries and the progressive church or the so-called liberation theology has been greatly weakened.
"For its part, the evangelical church is growing a lot in Brazil and its progressive sector is supporting our campaign in 1994, but this same evangelical church was a great obstacle in the 1989 campaign and still has a very conservative sector, although thank God I think that a progressive sector is beginning to emerge that is taking a political option to be part of our left. We even have an evangelical senator, comrade Benedita da Silva, who is also the first black woman elected as a senator of the Republic.
”Democracy in Latin America is a perverse democracy. Democracy, for us, is the right to work, the right to a salary, the right to education, the right to housing, the right to health… something that we still do not have in Latin America in decent conditions.”
