Nothing could be worse for the Lula Government than the sixtieth anniversary of the military dictatorship that will be celebrated on the 31st. Lula has found himself between a rock and a hard place and all the demonstrations already organized have been cancelled. On the one hand, the president has to maintain peaceful relations with the military, many of whom, for the first time, are being questioned by the police and could end up in jail. They are those accused of having supported Bolsonaro's adventure of a new military coup like the one in 1964.
Lula had already decided to recreate the Commission on the Dead and Disappeared from the 1964 coup that had been abolished by his predecessor, the coup leader Bolsonaro. He surely has information that public opinion is unaware of about the climate of tension that exists in the Army and he has been blunt: “I don't want to stir up the past. There is nothing to celebrate. We rather need to invest in pacification.” The response, however, to Lula, by 150 associations of the Brazil Coalition for Memory, Truth and Justice, Reparation and Democracy, has stated that remembering the 1964 coup “is not removing the past but discussing the future.”
Some relatives of the dead, tortured and disappeared have accused Lula, who has canceled all demonstrations on the anniversary of the coup, of “having cowed before the military.” At the same time, Lula strives to defend his prudent attitude towards the Army at a time of such tension. “What I can't do is always be grinding. “This is a moment in the country's history and I want to look forward.” And he recalled that “the military has never been as punished as it is now.” Lula added, referring to the military of Bolsonaro's Government: “Everyone, everyone who is proven to have participated in the attempted coup, will be judged.”
In turn, the Ministry of Human Rights of the current Government had already prepared the slogan to remember the 1964 coup: “Without memory there is no future”, but Lula ended up backing down and is being accused of being more concerned with today's coup. that of 1964. The professor at the University of Rio de Janeiro Francisco Texeira has criticized the idea of turning the page and affirms that this rush to forget the military coup of '64 “will lead to leaving the page blank.”
In turn, a powerful voice, that of Joao Vicente Goulart, son of the president deposed by the military in 1964, which led to 20 years of military dictatorship, has stated to the media that “this lack of interest on the part of to make known to new generations the blood that Brazil shed in the fight to reestablish democracy,” and added: “Lula likes to be supported but he seems not to be interested in our martyrs of the coup.”
The controversy is complex and acidic at the same time. One cannot, on the one hand, forget that Lula came to power for the third time by a handful of votes against the coup plotter Bolsonaro and that in his two previous governments he always managed to swing his relations with the military by trying to shower the institution with benefits. and always maintaining an open dialogue with them.
On the other hand, the sensitivity is understandable not only of the relatives of the victims of the dictatorship but of all those who continue to fight for democratic values. This after the sad experience of Bolsonaro's presidency, which not only tried to return to the caves of the coup but also mocked the dictatorship of '64. According to him himself, the sin of the military at that time was not having killed at least 30,000 more people and having wasted time torturing them instead of shooting them at once.
Bolsonaro and his sheriffs went so far as to consider that the 1964 military coup was a “democratic movement.” Just what he tried and failed to achieve thanks to the fact that Lula ended up humiliating him at the polls with his victory.
However, not all members of the Workers' Party, the PT, have agreed with Lula's decision to cancel all the demonstrations already planned for the 60th anniversary of the dictatorship. The president, however, has stuck to his guns. He recalled that some of today's generals “had not yet been born when the coup of '64” occurred, and that the dictatorship of '64 “is already part of the country's history.”
The current Minister of Defense, General José Mucio Montero, who was one of those who confronted Bolsonaro when he was preparing the coup, has explained that his task, at Lula's express request, was to avoid military demonstrations on the anniversary of the dictatorship. . He said bluntly: “There is nothing to celebrate. “We need to invest in pacification.” It was Lula's echo of “I don't want to remove the past,” which could be translated as: “The present is enough for me.” A present in which all the polls reflect a drop in popularity of his government while the Bolsonaro extreme right tries to reorganize and refuses to die.
Follow all the information from El PAÍS América in Facebook and xor in our weekly newsletter.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
_
#60th #anniversary #Brazil39s #military #dictatorship #puts #Lula39s #government #trouble