Former Revolutionary About to Become Brazil’s President
Just one year after socialist revolutionary, Jose Mujica of Uruguay became president of that country, Brazil is ready to elect another former revolutionary to lead its government.
Dilma Rousseff, the daughter of Bulgarian immigrants is set to win Brazil’s next presidential election. Currently the prime minister of Brazil, she has risen quickly thru the political system and gained fame as she fought poverty and improved economic security for the poor.
Back in 1964, under the guise of National Security, Brazil’s generals took power and unleashed a reign of terror upon any group or person that sought equality and freedom from imperialism.
Ms Rousseff ended up in the clandestine VAR-Palmares (Palmares Armed
Revolutionary Vanguard). In the 1960s and 1970s, members of such
organisations seized foreign diplomats for ransom: a US ambassador was
swapped for a dozen political prisoners; a German ambassador was
exchanged for 40 militants; a Swiss envoy swapped for 70. They also shot
foreign torture experts sent to train the generals’ death squads.
Though she says she never used weapons, she was eventually rounded up
and tortured by the secret police in Brazil’s equivalent to Abu Ghraib,
the Tiradentes prison in Sao Paulo. She was given a 25-month sentence
for subversion and freed after three years. Today she openly confesses
to having wanted to change the world.
Her widely predicted victory in next Sunday’s presidential poll will be
greeted with delight by millions. It marks the final demolition of the
national security state, an arrangement that conservative governments
in the US and Europe once regarded as their best artifice for limiting
democracy and reform. It maintained a rotten status quo that kept a vast
majority in poverty in Latin America while favouring their rich
friends.
Let’s hope her election victory will bring about even more respect for those who’ve dedicated their lives to helping the poor and working classes.
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