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EXCLUSIVE: Interview with Brazilian Former Guerilla/Terrorist and Current Congressman Fernando Gabeira

Nelza Oliveira - 10/11/2005

Brazil is passing through one of the worst political crises in its history. The Workers' Party (PT) of President Luiz Inio Lula da Silva has been dogged by corruption scandals, accused of paying for the support of allied parties in the Brazilian Congress and using illegal and undeclared election funds. In this process, congressman Fernando Gabeira, 64, is gaining more and more support by defending ethics and the punishment of the politicians involved in the corruption scandal. Journalist and writer, former left-wing guerrilla, and founder of Brazilian Green Party, Fernando Gabeira was the first politician to withdraw his support to Lula da Silva's government and leave the PT. In 1969, Fernando Gabeira participated in the armed struggle and was a member of a commando unit that, during the height of the military dictatorship, kidnapped the U.S. Ambassador Charles Elbrick, to exchange for Brazilian politic prisoners. Gabeira recounted those events in the book that became the Oscar-nominated movie "Four Days in September.". Gabeira couldn't get a visa to attend the awards ceremony in Los Angeles, as it has been denied three times before because, according to the American government, he has been previously engaged in terrorist activities. Sent into exile, Gabeira returned to Brazil in 1979, thanks to a general amnesty. He recently led the movement that led to the resignation of the president of the Brazilian lower house of Congress Severino Cavalcanti, accused of demanding kickbacks from a businessman and defend a soft punishment for the politicians involved in the corruption scandal. This interview took place a day after the resignation of Severino Cavalcanti, on September 21st.



Q. Are you happy with this victory over Severino Cavalcanti?


A. I think it was, actually, a victory of the Brazilian people. Severino didn't express the progress level that Brazil has. On the contrary, he was the expression of the backwardness side, less promising of Brazil. What happened with his resignation was only an adjustment to the position of modernity level that Brazil demands.



Q. The whole process began with one sentence of yours in the lower house of Congress?


A. When Severino Cavalcanti defended a softer punishment for the politicians accused of corruption, I said that he was a disaster to Brazil and for the image of the country. Disaster to Brazil because there is several issues that he wasn't able to discuss due to his intellectual and human limitations. A disaster for the image of Brazil because it is not possible that a semi-literate politician be the president of the lower house of Congress and to establish contacts with a world, that is today much more internationalized and where the diplomatic role of a parliament is getting more and more important.



Q. What made you leave the PT?


A. I approached PT with the expectation of uniting the social struggle with the environmental struggle. PT represented for me a type of champion in the social fights. And I worked and I continue working in defense of the environment subjects, which are more and more interlaced with the social subjects. I imagined an alliance as there is already in Europe, among greens and social democratic with the perspective of transforming the country. But when PT became government I noticed that the party didn't have those characteristics of a democratic social party. PT deals with environment in the same way as the communists of the Eastern Europe do: development at any cost, independent of the environmental consequences. Besides, there was also an attempt to get rid of any type of contribution of people who thinking about Brazil. PT opted to move away the people that questioned the government; the party kept only those who were obedient. There was also the option for bribing part of the parliament to vote in favor of the measures that the government wanted to be approved. I had no other option than leave the party soon after its first months of governance and go to the opposition.



Q. The pivot of this crisis, accused of setting up the outline of corruption in the government, is the former-minister Josh Dirceu, one of the people that you freed in exchange of the American ambassador Charles Elbrick during the dictatorship. Isn't that ironic?


A. Very much. Actually, Dirceu occupied a very important role in the government, similar to a prime minister. He was the president's chief of staff and all the great themes of the country passed by his hands. Lula acted more as a queen of England, representing Brazil, traveling around the world, leaving the government's nucleus in Dirceu's hands, who maintained a systematic work to move away all the intellectuals from the government's proximity. He created more than 50 work groups that were under his orientation and couldn't handle them. He concentrated much more power in his hands that he has able to deal with, which is not very smart. Besides, he was devoted to set up this outline of corruption in the Parliament that ended up in alliance with corrupt sectors of the Right. What happened was a disaster from the point of view of morality and democracy because there was the bribe of congressmen in the Parliament, and from the point of administrative view because buried by groups of work that he couldn't control, none of the groups got to reach their objectives.



Q. What are your expectations to the country now?


A. There are three possibilities. The first one is to have all the politicians involved in the corruption scandal punished and that the government doesn't fall but deteriorate progressively until the elections of 2006. That is the tactic of the largest opposition party, the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB), that wants the government to deteriorate slowly so that in the elections of 2006 it can be replaced easily. The second is the possibility of the impeachment of Lula. Because once the president was involved in that process, it is necessary that he constitutionally be responsible for his acts. But that hypothesis is not the strongest in the moment. The third possibility is to maintain the government under monitoring of the society, a government under suspicion that goes until the end extremely controlled. We would create commissions in the society to follow the government actions, including mobilizing people on the internet to control it.



Q. Is the last one the alternative for you?


A. Yes. It's the alternative of taking the government to the end without giving prestige to it. The idea of seeing a government deteriorating is not good for me. When a government begins to deteriorate it loses its vital functions in some point. And when it happens, the ones that suffer most are the poor people. We can see, for instance, that a slight mistake in New Orleans took despair to the poorest population. It is necessary the Brazilian government keeps work until the end and we can end this experience of the PT in the power in a worthy and civilized way and begin another era to Brazil assimilating the lessons that we've learned. The first lesson is that the Berlin Wall is falling in Brazil with delay because we see now that the workers don't have the messianic role that is attributed to them by the intellectuals. The changes in Brazil won't have the workers in privileged role anymore. They will be just one more part of those changes. Besides, we now see that the use of principles of organization from the last century, as the democratic centralism, is a disastrous, forcing people to have all the same positions as it was decided by the party. That was useful at the beginning of the XX century in Russia but it is not at the beginning of the XXI century. The media acted very well. We had in this crisis a very larger participation of the population through television and Internet. Those two elements increased the level of conscience, of perception and of surveillance of the politics in Brazil. It means that the democracy in Brazil will come out stronger.



Q. Do you think President Lula can continue exempting himself from any blame as he has been doing since the beginning of the crisis?

A. I find it hard for him to keep this role until the end, but everything indicates that he is trying to. He fakes that the corruption scandal has nothing to do with him, that he was betrayed by people and by practices. He doesn't have the courage of saying the people's name that he supposes to have betrayed him. I think perhaps he gets to maintain that position until the end, but the longer he maintains that position, more stress he will suffer. He will have to choose among the stress of the omission, not talking about the subject, and the stress of the recognition of the guilty.



Q. Do you intend to launch a new book?


A. Yes. Perhaps next year or at the end of this year, when I will be completing 50 years of public life. I intend to tell these 50 years of history, which is also an intervention in the contemporary history of Brazil. It is also a certain way to evaluate my mistakes, which were not few.



Q. Are you still forbidden from entering in the United States?


G. Yes. My relationship with the United States is a distance relationship. After the attacks of September 11, I don't believe that I will ever be able to enter in the United States. The country is very much traumatized. But at the same time, I maintain a contact with the country through the reading of newspapers, of magazines, of Internet, of the American culture. Whenever is possible, the American ambassador visits the lower house of Congress. We have discussions inside the commission of international affairs, which I am member of, about the situation of the world, including the American. I believe that although I cannot enter in the United States, I have a reasonable level of information on the country. I have a relationship with the American culture that doesn't depend on the governments. I began to like the United States through the language, the writers, and the musicians. In spite of not entering in the United States, I feel that perhaps I know more about the country than the ones that enter there. And let the life and the world run and see the paths we have ahead. I can say today that my admiration for the United States, for the American people, continues. The only thing that the Americans have to understand is that we are friends, which sometime is not very clear for them. As, for instance, when we are against the war in Iraq. It was a gesture of friendship that was understood as a hostile gesture, but today the wise people of the United States understand that when we placed ourselves against the war of Iraq was because we knew that this was bad to the United States.