Lula's triumph in Brazil
Diego Martin Velazquez Caballero
Although the difference between Lula and Bolsonaro is not like that of 2006 between the left and the right in Mexico, an important fracture is beginning to appear in Brazil that affects our country and Latin America. Although the victory of the Brazilian left tries to get into the sack of populism, this is not the case; It is important to remember the technologies and spaces for collective action, including the geopolitical actions that the Latin American giant implemented as a hopeful and different model of what Heinz Dieterich proposed as the socialism of the 21st century.
It is particularly worth remembering the technology of participatory budgets and the ideas of sociologists Leonardo Avritzer and Boaventura Do Santos. The alternation in the country where the most beautiful soccer in the world is played brings back pleasant memories of the debates in the doctorate of history and regional studies at the Institute of Historical-Social Research of the Veracruzana University. Is it participatory civil society, social movements taking power, populism or new government?
We do not know, even when the influence of Liberation Theology is also delimited in the influences of someone who represents one of the most important leaders in Brazilian history. The governments of the Labor Party were successful by generating technologies of participation and collective action different from a centralized government that pretends to be right in everything because good intentions and ethical conditions are on its side. There is also the negative side of the trajectory of the Brazilian participatory model, the corruption derived from neo-extractivism and the deadly economy of commodities that various governments of the continent promoted to survive against the market and Yankee imperialism.
The change in Brazil is an impact on the geopolitical condition of the continent, the North American carelessness will cause the development of the BRIC and Mercosur, to the horror of the liberal right and political science. Thinking from the south makes sense now more than ever. Simón Bolívar will never be like George Washington, just as the Mexican constitution of 1824 will never work for a country like ours because there are no gringos here, there are Mexicans.
The triumph of Luis Ignacio Lula Da Silva invites us to reflect critically on civil society and acquire the courage to build it seriously, not through the farce of conservative businessmen and religious who kidnap it. And also, to think about geopolitical strategies to develop a defense against the United States that increasingly resembles the Aztecs that Hernán Cortés found.
The best of luck to the South American brother who influences so much good in Latin America.