Brazzil
February 2002
Opinion
Harvest Time
It's funny to listen to President Fernando Henrique
condemning kidnappings. This is the same
man who
humiliated the nation vouching for the release of
kidnappers condemned to almost 30 years
in prison.
Janer Cristaldo
"This has gone too far now," said President Fernando Henrique Cardoso commenting the murder of Santo André mayor Celso Daniel. Elastic notion of limits that of the President. There were 307 kidnappings in São Paulo last year alone. Does it mean that almost a kidnapping a day does not constitute a limit? The brutal murder of a lady, released by her captors and soon after shot on her back in front of her own house, would still be far from the limit? The narcotraffic, which controls the favelas (shantytowns) and decides which days are holidays or mourning days, and when schools or businesses should be closed, would not be a limit?
Every indication tells us it is not. Because, in his magnanimity, the prince of sociologists has a generous notion of limit. The kidnappings and murders committed by terrorists who wanted to transform Brazil in a huge Cuba not only were granted amnesty but also saw their authors been regally rewarded with public appointments and fat retirement packages.
We don't need to go far. Let's start with Justice Minister, Aloysio Nunes Ferreira. A member of the PCB (Partido Comunista Brasileiro—Brazilian Communist Party) he opted for the armed struggle joining the ALN (Aliança Libertadora Nacional—National Liberating Alliance), Carlos Marighella's (1911-1969) terrorist group for whom he worked as a driver.
Marighella, if nobody can remember, is the author of Manual do Gerrilheiro Urbano (Urban Guerrilla's Manual) translated into several languages in Europe and the Italian Red Brigades and German Baader-Meinhoff's pillow book. (In Stockholm, in full Nordic democracy, I found a translation of the manual into Swedish.) He was killed in 1969, in a police ambush and today he is revered as a saint by the Left.
In August 1968, Aloysio Nunes—whose codename was Mateus—took part in the Santos-Jundiaí postal train robbery. In October he helped rob the Massey-Ferguson armored truck. That same year he traveled with a false passport to Paris where he was in charge of coordinating the connections of Cuba with Brazilian communists. There he joined the French Communist Party and conducted negotiations with Algeria's President Boumedienne so that Brazilian communists could get military training in that country.
After the 1979 Amnesty Law, he returned to Brazil where he was elected assemblyman, vice-governor and member of the House of Representatives by the Left. Dear friend of Fidel Castro, after a visit to Cuba last year, the dictator went to say goodbye at the airport and accompanied him to the airplane for the farewell as homage to his revolutionary past.
The international agitprop, robber and guerilla, Marighella's partisan and confidant of dictators, with the peculiar cynicism of the leftists when they get to power, recently declared to journalist Ana Paula Padrão:
"In other occasions—I remember—during the military regime, the repression services were able to dismantle the PCB, the PC do B (Partido Comunista do Brasil—Communist Party of Brazil), the ALN, the VPR (Vanguarda Popular Revolucionária—Popular Revolutionary Vanguard), the MR-8 (Movimento Revolucionário 8 de Outubro—Revolutionary Movement October 8). Wouldn't they be able to handle these criminals who today carry out seqüestros relâmpagos (lightning kidnappings) and this kind of action?"
In fact they can do this, Mateus. The problem is that when these groups are broken apart, the criminals become ministers.
Not less interesting is to listen to Fernando Henrique condemning kidnappings. This is the same Fernando Henrique who humiliated the nation in the face of a sordid campaign in the international press financed by a rich family from Canada and vouched for the release of their little kidnapper children, condemned to almost 30 years in prison by the Brazilian Justice.
Lula, the presidential tetracandidate (four-time candidate) from the PT (Partido dos Trabalhadores—Workers' Party), rushed to pledge his solidarity to the victim's entourage and took part in a march for peace. José Genoíno, PT's president, talks about Rota (special operation groups similar to the SWAT teams in the US) in the streets and about life sentences. The mob of PT affiliates, who went to the funeral of the mayor, asks for the death penalty, something that doesn't exist in Brazil. A security program of the PT proposes a New York and neo liberal project, the zero tolerance. Who was the flag bearer for these causes a mere two years ago? Former São Paulo governor Paulo Maluf, who was called a fascist for defending them. It happens that the elections are getting close and you need to get in tune with what the voter wishes.
When Abílio Diniz was kidnapped, the tetracandidate had another kind of talk. He rushed to mediate the negotiations between kidnappers and police in order to guarantee the physical integrity not of the industrialist, but… of the kidnappers. Fernando Henrique Cardoso, plus his Justice Minister at that time, José Gregori, plus the Church, plus the PT and institutions linked to the infamous Human Rights try their best to free the Canadians. When the country's government, the opposition leader plus the Church fight for the release of kidnappers, what kind of message does the public get? Only one: kidnapping can be profitable and can remain unpunished.
The contemporary reader perhaps won't remember, but the Left was the one that introduced this species in Brazil. In the name of murderous utopias, they started to hijack planes and kidnap diplomats. Their dialogue was not with people, but with states. Bow all the nations down before Brazil: plane hijacking has Brazilian patent, it's our genuine finding. In the short period they stayed in prison the kidnappers exercised a pedagogical function teaching their techniques to the common criminal. And now they complain about their students' progress.
The tolerance of the Left towards kidnapping was always obvious, at least up to last week. Has anybody heard the PT condemning the Colombian FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia—Colombia Revolutionary Armed Forces), which use kidnapping as their privileged strategy for obtaining funds? I've never heard. What I saw was the gaúcho (from Rio Grande do Sul) PT government roll out the red carpet to receive a FARC's thug. He not only was received with honors close to those bestowed on chief of states but also went around talking in conferences throughout Brazil schools, in communities administered by the PT.
The kidnappings from the past don't constitute crimes for theses gentlemen. In this astonishing country, where the defeated write the present history, they are considered heroic and patriotic acts. Even horrendous crimes had noble connotations. The vestals that today feel shocked by the brutal execution of Celso Daniel, didn't show any horror in the face of another also brutal execution, that of the unfortunate soldier that Lamarca executed, prisoner and defenseless.
No one from the Left would ask life in prison or the death penalty for the murderer of a companion in arms. Au contraire, Lamarca today is installed in the gallery of the Fatherland's Heroes, enjoying the same status as a Tiradentes (martyr for the independence of Brazil from Portugal, who was hanged in 1799). No one in the Left went to offer solidarity to the dead soldier. But there are projects to impose to the school curricula the life and work of this holy man, captain Carlos Lamarca.
The thinking of the Left has created a cultural broth in which criminals are not criminals anymore, but victims; in which the land invader is hero and the landowner who defends his property is an outlaw; in which Luis Carlos Prestes (legendary head of the Brazilian communist movement who died in 1990 at age 92) is holy and Che Guevara becomes a saint.
Harvest time has come.
Janer Cristaldo—he holds a PhD from University of Paris, Sorbonne—is an author, translator, lawyer, philosopher and journalist and suffers São Paulo. His e-mail address is cristal@baguete.com.br
