Let Lula Lead!

BAYAN is one with the international community in standing with and commending President Luis “Lula” da Silva for swiftly and decisively overturning the right-wing Bolsonarista mob that stormed Brazil’s Congress, Supreme Court and presidential palace on 8 January 2023. We salute the people of Brazil for defeating the menace of Bolsonaro’s fascism through the ballot.

 

The lax security that police forces exhibited while far-right extremists invaded and wrought havoc on government buildings shows that this is not an independent protest organized by “disenfranchised” citizens who rejected Lula’s electoral victory. The failed insurrection was orchestrated by Bolsonaristas in government who were backed by the United States. The intervention of US Imperialism in Brazilian society is no clearer than in the case of Lula’s leadership.

 

Lula’s presidency from 2003-2011 marked a progressive turn in Brazil’s economy and politics. Of poor peasant origins, Lula came of age as an informal worker and later on, a union leader. He led Brazil’s large union of metal workers and took a decisive role in radicalizing government unions. His two-term presidency was closely aligned with that of Fidel Castro’s Cuba and Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela in upholding social welfare programs, anti-neoliberal economic policies and a construction of a region independent of US economic and military diktat.

 

Lula’s 2022 electoral victory came after tremendous challenges to his leadership, which included US-backed criminal charges leveled against him. This was followed by a wrongful imprisonment for over a year. The people’s movement behind Lula’s political fortunes and fortitude is part of the growing Latin American mass movement against US imperialism. In the last four years, this vast regional entity includes at least eight countries whose progressive leaders rose to the highest seat of power through their latest elections— Cuba, Venezuela, Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Peru and Brazil. The same countries have also been the target of US sanctions, economic blockade, covert and overt regime change operations and war.

Lula spearheaded Brazil’s active role in alternative economic integration blocs such as the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). BRICS expansion and consolidation including 1) a move to BRICS Plus to include countries in Southeast Asia, West Asia and North Africa; and 2) the de-dollarization of the world economy with multiple banks already in place, are seen by US Imperialism as a dangerous threat to its global economic dominance.

 

As nations and economies are pulled to different directions by US rival countries like Russia and China and no longer subjected under the sole control of US-led multilateral institutions like the IMF-WB and GATT-WTO, progressive leaders like Lula are in the position to define the direction of the multipolar world we currently live in. Historically, this direction is carved out and defended by peoples’ struggles worldwide as a forward march toward national liberation, an independent foreign policy, economic political and military independence, peace and prosperity for the peoples oppressed by imperialism.