Brazil’s army is very brutal, even more so since the coup of- T here’s lots of killing and violence, one striking example being
the murder of a couple of dozen peasants w ho took over some land
in one of the northern regions. W hen I w as in Brazil, informal
judicial proceedings w ere being held about these murders, because
the formal judicial system hadn’t done anything about them.
You met w ith people in the W orkers’ Party.
It w as very interesting. Brazil’s Workers’ Party is the largest
labor-based party in the w orld. It has its problems, but it’s an
impressive organization w ith a radical democratic and socialist
thrust, a lot of popular support and lots of potential. It’s doing many
important and exciting things.
Lula [Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, 1944–, founder and leader of the
Workers’ Party and president of Brazil, 2003–2010] is extremely
impressive. If Brazil’s presidential elections w ere even remotely
fair, he w ould have w on them. (It’s not so much that votes w ere
stolen but that the media resources w ere so overw helmingly on the
other side that there w asn’t a serious election.)
Many w orkers have also become organized into rural unions,
w hich are very rarely discussed. T here’s some degree of
cooperation betw een the landless w orkers and groups in the favelas
. Both are linked in some fashion to the Workers’ Party, but the
people I asked couldn’t say exactly how. Everyone agrees that most
of the landless w orkers support the Workers’ Party, and vote for it,
but organizationally they’re separate.
W hat w ere your impressions of Chile?
I w asn’t there long enough to get much of an impression, but it’s
very clearly a country under military rule. We call it a democracy,
but the military sets very narrow bounds on w hat can happen. You
can see it in people’s attitudes—they know there are limits they
can’t go beyond, and in private they tell you that, w ith many
personal examples.