Latin American crisis and the disturbing and dangerous internal crisis in Brazil

When the Vietnamese Communists decided in the mid-1980s to open up to the world, they proclaimed that andmercantile economy, the free marketthey were not attributes of capitalism but a conquest of humanity and which, therefore, what they called “market phobia” should be abandoned.

It was the second “capitalist” model in Asia “Reform and opening up” after the huge breakthrough that China had given that name a decade earlier.

The Latin American left or supposed left, with important exceptions, has ignored those mutations that, in little more than a generation, have led the Southeast Asian country to go from being a net importer of rice to becoming a the second largest producer in the world surpassed only by India and has a global market of nearly one hundred countries.

From this part of the world other experiments have been attempted which, among other things, were very far from those results. With the added effect that the failures have reinforced the demagogic and personalistic models limited democraciesplebiscitary and patrimonial, as in Venezuela or Argentina among other regions,

The absence of development, the collapse of the accumulation system and widespread poverty have necessarily imposed a limit on this easy scheme. So, for now, precarious hints of a are emerging change of stage in the region.

Until recently, the untouchable dogmas of the populist experiment are being discussed by new karmas such as fiscal balance. The flag of the government still in the infancy of the Chilean Gabriel Boric and of the not yet constituted Gustavo Petro in Colombia, they are slightly more sophisticated capitalist forms that warn of the explosive danger of inequalities but also of the urgency to guarantee growth and care for public finances.

What’s coming to Brazil

There have been significant antecedents of this behavior in the past: the last 20 years of government in Bolivia where the economy, although not so much politics, you deserve adult care contrary to the decline of its partners in the “Bolivarian axis”. Also the Uruguayan case and in particular the Brazil of Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Lula da Silva until January 2011 when the mediocre government of Dilma Rousseff took office and everything fell apart.

As for Brazil, it is interesting to look at that regional context with regards to projects, frustrations and possibilities why the election campaign has just begun presidential elections that will take place in a couple of months. It is clear that there was no room for dogmatic fantasies. Although with limitations pragmatism dominates.

A paradox of the scene is that the most stubborn populism has remained on the side of Jair Bolsonaro’s government, which will seek a second term and, in the best of ways, threaten to repeat denier barbarism of Donald Trump with his defeat and the attack on the Capitol if the votes drive him out of Planalto.

In this scenario, two interesting and didactic questions emerge. Last year, Bolsonaro’s finance minister Paulo Guedes, a monetarist economist at the Chicago School cabbage, decided to burn his own books and proposed exceeding the public spending limit to fund a social welfare program that would allow improve the election performance of the president.

On July 1, the Senate and Deputies approved it two weeks later “Silver plane” of Social Emergency, popularly known as “tax bomb” or “kamikaze” and that he had the Protestant support of the Workers’ Party and the rest of the opposition.

It will be $ 8 billion for the Help Brazilthe program that raised the famous Bag for the family of Lula intended for very poor people. The benefit will go from the current 80 to 120 dollars plus aid for the purchase of gas cylinders and subsidies for truckers and taxi drivers. It also includes a chapter on retirement benefits.

All just over two months before the elections. All very obvious. Recall that during the coronavirus epidemic, which killed more than 600,000 people in Brazil, the government maintained an assistance program for those who could not work that allowed Bolsonaro to raise a support greater than 40 percent.

That device was severely frozen in January last year and as a result support for the president collapsed. Today, according to an average of the polls, he has 29/30% of consensus against 45/47% of Lula, who could beat him even in the first round. Hence the president’s urgency.

Lula was trapped by his opponent’s populist maneuver and could not refuse to support a social assistance program in the midst of the crisis that is shaking the country. But he did so by denouncing with a certain naivety that “It’s an electoral project ” and he reproached that “Bolsonaro believes that with this he will be able to buy the people”.

It is possible, many of his sympathizers in the region would tell him, including the ruling Argentine Kirchnerist party that has left its mark on these mechanisms of distributing money to collect votes. paradoxes of history.

Lula’s politics

The other question is more sophisticated and little known, but clearly exposes the presidential candidacy of the former metal worker. In the PT there is a debate among its economists, mostly contrary to last year’s legislation protecting the independence of the Central Bank, overflowing with $ 360 billion in reserves.

These critics argue that such rules tie the president’s hands to macroeconomic policy. But not everyone in the PT agrees with these objections. The most prominent of the dissidents is Lula da Silva. “The central bank must commit to Brazil, Not with me”he told a group of reporters closing the debate.

The agency Reuters some time ago recorded the opinion of two political advisers of the former president, who predicted that this law will not change if the president wins the elections in October. Privatizations will also not be revoked.

During his two terms, in which he pursued an orthodox economic policy, the president of the Central Bank was the former CEO of the Bank of Boston, Henrique Meirelles, an award-winning liberal in the U.S. This is his view.

On these positions is based the limit of Bolsonaro’s electoral argument, which lightly states that the polls will choose between capitalism and communism. On 11 June the agency Bloomberg reported a leak from the White House which recorded that the Brazilian president had told Joe Biden, in his recent bilateral in Los Angeles, that in a possible second government he would defend “the interests of the United States. in Brazil”.

He said this in opposition to Lula, who instead, he argued, “defend Brazilian interests”, presumably, neutrality in the face of US geostrategy, including the war launched by Russia against Ukraine or the NATO agenda.

A few weeks ago, Lula sent her former Defense Minister, Jaques Wagner, to the United States a small advertised mission. The former official went to a meeting with the US foreign ministry to clarify that the PT candidate is systemic and pro-market. But, in addition, to compromise Washington like guarantor of Brazilian democracy against the risks that creep into the country.

The problem in Brazil is that the distance that polls now show is likely to be narrowed by the effect of that opportunistic social benefit plan. If the differences narrow, the threat that Bolsonarism of provoke a crisis in the manner of those triggered by Trump in the United States if the poll results are negative.

The president and his three sons, all lawmakers, denounced the Electoral Tribunal for one possible fraud with electronic ballot boxes. The president just repeated it in front of the community of diplomats in Brasilia, which he warned without proof of the lack of confidence in the polls.

In that message, which shocked foreigners, he asked the electoral authorities to accept the recommendations of the Armed Forces they propose, as if extravagance were possible, parallel control during elections.

A few days ago, former President of the Higher Electoral Court, Nelson Fachin, warned Washington that there could be “Even more serious events than the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021”.

This column knows that the Supreme Court and other Brazilian judicial dependencies, with the resignation of not finding alternatives, are preparing to a scenario of extreme coup leaders. Lula disagrees again. You say that the only thing that exists for now is the “terrorist confusion” that Bolsonaro emits. Similar to what the Democrats were saying about Trump and his complaints.
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