By Emir Sader on April 14, 2022
Argentines do not understand how a Brazilian can hate Lula. How someone who made such good governments, who reduced hunger, poverty, and inequalities in such an unequal country, can there be people who not only do not love him, but also do not vote for him and, in addition, they hate him.
Brazilians do not understand how Argentines cannot love Cristina. Argentina had gone through the worst crisis in its history. After the hyperinflation, the crisis that led the country to have five presidents in one week, Néstor Kirchner and Cristina created governments that recovered the prestige of governing the country, renegotiated the gigantic debt they had inherited with the IMF, controlled inflation, and made the economy grow.
Lula and Cristina, however, are victims of the greatest hatred that has ever existed in our countries. Their opponents not only want to defeat them, but they also incite attacks against them. They not only want to see them arrested – as has already happened to Lula, without having committed any crime – they want them killed.
It seems that this is the only magic formula their adversaries -or rather, their enemies- have is to see them disappear from their lives, to erase them from their minds for good. As if they were plagues that torment them. Just when they thought they had gotten rid of Cristina, she returns as vice-president of a candidate chosen by her.
But this government should not be given peace. And the greatest offense that the media believe to spread against this government is to say that it is controlled by Cristina, as if she were defending diabolical interests.
It is necessary to demonize her in order to exercise hatred with all the fury of an oligarchic right-wing. To be able to spread lies on billboards and call for her death. It looks like the specter of Evita that the Argentine right-wing could never overcome.
And if they cannot have a majority against the government, the best thing to do is to foment internal divisions. They know that united Peronism usually wins and that, to be defeated, it needs to divide or be divided. If it cannot defeat the enemy, the Argentine right-wing plays the card of dividing it.
Seen from Brazil, what they are doing with Cristina and how Peronism runs the risk of being divided and being defeated again, just when Brazil can have Lula as president again; it seems to be the greatest nonsense.
The Brazilian right-wing, similarly, impotent to democratically defeat Lula, see the threats of an attack against the former president multiplying. It seems that the only way to get rid of this leader who speaks the language of the people, who has tormented the Brazilian right-wing for more than 40 years, is to eliminate him.
Cristina and Lula, Lula and Cristina, great popular leaders of their countries, leaders that so many other countries would like to have, see hatred spread against them. Women in a country famous for machismo. Poor and northeasterner in a country marked by the wealth of a few against the poverty of the vast majority.
What would Brazil be without Lula? What would Argentina be without Cristina? A dream of the oligarchies, a nightmare for the Brazilian and Argentinean peoples.
But why not simply confront them, without that hatred? Because the great majority of Brazilians and Argentines love them. They are loved because they represent them because they speak their languages because they satisfy their needs, and they take them with them when they govern.
The destiny of Brazil and Argentina merges with the destiny of Lula and Cristina. Life or death triumphs. Solidarity or selfishness triumphs. Love or hate triumphs.
Source: Pagina 12, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English