At the end of February and beginning of March some events brought again in evidence the palace fight in the different forces of reaction, ultimately as an expression of the struggle between the fractions of the big bourgeoisie and landlords.Everyone struggling to impose their project of ‘salvation’ of the system of exploitation and oppression in the general crisis. From that deaf but active competition, the ACFA-High Command of the Armed Forces’ plan reinforces itself while Bolsonaro is isolated in the government on the whole, taking him to desperate attitudes. The fact that all the functions of power in the Planalto Palace (except the Presidency with the retired captain) have been occupied by generals clearly demonstrates that the military government is the de facto government.
The strengthening of the secret military government (led by ACFA through the occupation of the palace positions by generals of the active service and reserve) has produced an open situation of the Army generals’ government. The additional act has been the imposition of general Braga Netto – Rio de Janeiro intervenor, in 2018 -, in the position of Chief Minister of the Civil Office, expurgating the assemblyman, Onix Lorenzoni, who has been only formally in the function for a long time.
The plan of the ACFA, the ongoing military counter-revolutionary coup has been and is a preventive answer to the inevitable general raising of the masses started by the 2013/2014 revolts against the worsening of their life conditions, not only economic ones but social and political as well. Very much on the contrary of the coarse accusation of the opportunists of the false electoral left-wing that the upheavals were the beginning of the coup. The misleading PT project that used to make up the explosive crisis of the bureaucratic capitalism aiming at electoral objectives opened the doors to the brutal labour and pension “reforms”, turning precarious the public health services and education services with the objective to transfer more money to the bankers and get on with the privatization of those services, restriction to the rights and freedom of demonstrations and people’s organization, and the shameless traitor policies so fashionable. It was the collapse of the administration of the capitalist crisis by opportunism with its “desenvolvimentismo” and anachronistic populism, finally, the socio-democratic betrayal to the masses that created the culture broth served by the reaction to raise the head after decades of electoral farce and launch the country on the banks of the civil war.
It has been a long time that the Federal Supreme Court (STF) has been hooked up in the bayonets of the pro-coup generals and a thousand decisions comprove it as, for instance, the unprecedent and blatant designation of a general as a special advisor of the President. The main positions of the Executive are always directly in the hands of the generals. The tatic-operative interventions of the Armed Forces are becoming everytime more constant in towns and large regions as in the Amazonia, under the Guarantee of Law and Order (GLO) to “combat the fire” –, an improper farce to cover up underground operations against the peasant struggle.
The generals – a privileged bureaucratic caste – have an opulent life similar to the feudal bureaucratic persons. High salaries, considerable privileges, generous lifelong pensions extended to their families, very well covert corruption,etc. It is not a surprise that the ideology and anticommunist rancidity have been eternalized, rooted and cultivated in a corporation that maintain itself at the expenses of the blood and sweat of our people and nation. Under the statutes of “defending the motherland” and “sovereignty of the nation” that institution is the instrument for suffocating the legitimate aspirations of the people’s masses for a better life. It has been historically the tool of the landlords and big bourgeois and their imperialist masters in the genocide mission to stop with blood and fire the attempts to be carried out by the Democratic Revolution to sweep away this secular system of exploitation and oppression, servant to imperialism, mostly Yankee. Since the Republic Declaration this institution and its high command consider themselves the owners of the Republic, bestowing themselves the right of intervention at their discretion and cultivate fanatically such reactionary ideas.
Their only existing democratic movements were: the Movimento Tenentista (The Lieutenants Revolts), created as an anti-oligarchic for the young officers and the struggle of the soldiers against the high command, guardians of the landlords, barons of the Northeast, warlords of the South and the colonels of the Northeast and their feudal-corrupt governments, and that was eliminated by the 1930 counter-revolution; the establishment of the Força Expedicionária Brasileira (FEB) (Expeditionary Brazilian Force) to fight against nazi-fascism, used by the Yankees to push up the Armed Forces to the condition of their lackeys; and more limitedly the movement of officers and soldiers in the nationalist campaign for the national and state oil monopoly, the creation of Petrobras and Eletrobras which took the reaction to overthrow Getúlio Vargas, the president at that moment. In other words, a counter-revolutionary force that introduced its action in the Republic with the genocide of Canudos and Contestado and the coward murders and tortures against the combattants of the Levante Popular de 35 (The 1935 People’s Upheaval); against the peasants upheavals of Porecatu, Trombas e Formoso e Araguaia, just the main ones, and going through the militatry coups of 1945, 1954, 1964 and the ongoing coup, besides the shameful participations under the orders of theYankee imperialism in the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The Armed Forces and its high commands are, in the last term, the direct responsible for the situation of extended putrefraction in which the Brazilian nation has been lingering on secularly.
Bolsonaro, everytime more cornered, is handcuffed by the generals’ handling. The situation of his son, Flávio Bolsonaro, ( who was caught in flagrante delicto and was prevented from being denounced by the tacit consent between far right-wing and right-wing) and obliged to low the tone. Although Bolsonaro and the far right-wing’s offensive during the first months of government (first semester of 2019) have declined and bolsonarism passed to offensive, Bolsonaro and the extrem right-wing have despaired and started with very serious provocations.
It has been bolsonarism, through spurious links with small extremist fascist groups, that has fostered the chaos in Ceara, coating it as a struggle for the police salaries to demonstrate force and to chantage the ones who are isolating Bolsonaro in the government with the threat to set the country on fire. They have soon seeked targets whose attacks have an echo in the people’s fury. That is why he has summoned a demonstration for March 15th against the Congress and the Federal Supreme Court and, even with his backward step – with the pretext of pandemia, when in fact it was by ACFA pressure – he will certainly look for other forms. In a purposeful visit to USA to flatter the Yankee Armed Forces South Command, he declared in his sensationalist style that the first round of the 2018 elections has been rigged and he had won the electoral farce with more than 50% of the ballots. That was a clear demonstration of the threats to lead a coup and dispute the military troops with the high command.
The ACFA, a coup plotter as well, tries to submit Bolsonaro politically, forcing him to finish the mandate under its “ legality, legitimity, stability” guidelines. That would be the best situation to try to take the country out of the deep crisis, boosting the bureaucratic capitalism by means of overexploitation of the people, creating a new political regime with more power concentration in the Executive and hardening the criminal laws, militarization and repression to people’s protests to conjure the danger of revolution: these are his three reactionary tasks. In case he does not submit himself, a B plan would probably be to urge him to resign, allowing to come into evidence his and his sons’ rottennesses, as for instance, their link with Fabrício, the missing corrupt, Adriano, a militiaman and Marielle’s coward murder, cases so far locked up in the generals’ hands, to take him to impeachment process. And, ultimately, ACFA can simply depose the president, a fact that would produce commotion in many sectors and disturb seriously the stability, particularly sensitive, of the discipline of the military forces with very serious consequences.
About the military crisis in our country, one can never forget the history of this institution and its corporativism. The last serious split was the Movimento Tenentista (The Lieutenants Revolts) that was developed till the undefeated Coluna Prestes (a social rebel movement, 1925/1927. NT) that with its demobilization in Bolivia has divided the Tenentismo. The reactionary hierarchy of the corporation was re-established with the 1930 counter-revolution; and with the 1935 People’s Upheaval and the raft of the integralists (fascists. NT) the complete restoration of the old bureaucratic-landownership State order of the Estado Novo has happened. In 1964, when the polarization between the legality of Jango’s reformist movement and the counter-revolution led by theYankees drove the troops to the edge of the split and civil war, the legalist generals, under the command of the troops and in motion, on behalf of “not dividing the corporation because of the polititians”, have left behind their legality precepts and united in the coup with the high reactionary and fascist officers of the three forces. It was the imperative of a law of the military history of the country, under imperialist rule, according to which the reactionary Armed Forces only become united and keep united under reaction. This indicates that, however one reaches a certain confrontation between military extreme right-wing and right-wing and however commotion it may cause, they will reach an agreement in the reaction, in the mildest or most fierce military coup and as quick as possible. Those who only centre in Bolsonaro and responsiblize him for the whole present evil are, in practice, legimizing the military government hidden in the mildest coup. The democracy in our country can only be achieved by the revolutionary road.
And the masses are not passsive, those hived off in the slums, in the poor districts, factories, trade, transports, administrative services and countryside. Devastated all the time, they are tired of so much exploitation and rotteness. They fight, according to their level of consciousness and organization, and most of them in an atomised manner but waging struggles everyday more combative and violent, many times having to confront the electoral opportunism and the corrupt trade union mob. Petrobras’ strike, for instance, once more was betrayed and peddled. No requirements answered after more than ten days without working, after combative fights in the base. On March 18th, the public employees and some other workers will be mobilized. According to those trade union leaders it will be one more feast to wear out Bolsonaro, to accumulate electorally and, anyway, fed up with the masses! People are tired of being used.
There is not one single moment either in the metropolis or in the corners of the nation where the masses are not launching their shout of hatred to the attacks of this old order of exploitation and oppression and to their polititians. The smallest of the everyday problems of the masses is enough for creating mobilizations with fire barricades in the streets and highways, buses fire and demonstrations. It is necessary to raise more the fusion of the revolutionary movement with these struggles through the class line in the relentless work of agitation, propaganda, organization and mostly through the irreconcilable and implacable struggle against the class enemies and all the opportunism. It is necessary to do more and better. It is the duty of the true democrats and revolutionaries to raise the masses against the “reforms”, the crisis and the scammer reaction.
