He Who Does not Fight Does not Win

By Dr. Watan Jamil Alabed on April 30, 2024

A Dialogue with the leader of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) of Brazil, João Pedro Stédile, who addressed the scenario of the left in Brazil, the need for international articulation in defense of just causes and the confrontation with imperialism.

The Latin American left is not in conditions to confront the capitalist crisis and is in debt in the sense of discovering new forms of struggle to propose structural changes in the masses, assured the leader of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) of Brazil, João Pedro Stédile.

For the workers’ leader, the leftist forces in the region are still very much trapped in institutionalism, with elections, and this may take some time until a new generation of fighters emerges, with other practices, another vision of the world and a new soul.

In exclusive statements to the pan-Arab channel Al Mayadeen, the economist by training, addressed the scenario of the left in Brazil, the need for an international articulation in defense of just causes and the confrontation with imperialism.

According to the fighter for the rights of Brazilian workers, it is necessary to abandon individual issues and bet on integrationist social policy projects and programs.

The social advocate insisted on the urgency of the unity of the entire world working class to confront capitalist globalization and the presence of transnational corporations.

A faithful follower of the left-wing revolutionary processes in Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and of South-South cooperation, Pedro Stédile also addressed the domestic scenario in Brazil, the administration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the support for the cause of the Palestinian people.

How do you assess the position of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the Brazilian left in the political scenario of America and at the international level?

Lula was very persecuted in the past. They put him in jail and prevented him from running for office, but we managed to get him out of jail, where our movement played an important role, because we also stayed 580 days in a vigil, camped in front of the jail. And after his release, the conditions were created in Brazil to generate a broad front with which we managed to defeat fascism and elect him president.

And for that Lula was very important, because he would be the only candidate who would have enough strength to defeat the extreme right, and even so we won by two points. But it was also a broad front government, where many forces of the bourgeoisie, of the right and of the progressive left are inside.

So, this is Lula’s government, of class composition. On the other hand, the government took over a completely dilapidated State, because the modern fascists want the minimum State, they are not interested in a strong State, because all their policy is to favor the transnational corporations.

These were the companies that financed the coup against Dilma Rousseff and then imposed the government of Jair Bolsonaro. Just as it was the gringo, Israeli and Mossad companies that put Javier Milei in Argentina.

So, that is the nature of Lula’s government, one cannot expect much. Besides, in these coalitions, the capitalist crisis continues and also affects Brazil, and the Lula Government with this nature does not manage to have a project for the country, a program that can point to a future.

The policies that Lula is promoting in this year and a half are still palliative, they do not lift the workers out of poverty, they do not fight social inequality, and that is why we continue with 30 million Brazilians going hungry and with another 70 million who have no steady job, no fixed income, no labor rights.

The scenario in Brazil is very difficult. In Brazil we all know that President Lula never assumed himself as a man of the left in the sense of being anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist, he is a humanist and a trade unionist.

Of course, he has a social sensitivity of wanting to help the poor, but it is not enough to want, we must generate conditions, accumulate forces and above all, motivate people to organize themselves to fight.

Now, on our side, on the left, in Brazil we have a very complex situation. The institutional left that participates in the parties and that even participates in the Lula Government, are kidnapped by the electoral logic, they only put their energies into electing deputies, for that institutional life.

The left parties in Brazil have abandoned as energy, as resources, the political will to organize the working class and the social struggle, and those who continue to do so are the popular and trade union movements, which are part of the left in the generic sense, but are not the main political forces of the country.

And here the main challenge is that since we suffered a very big defeat with the advent of the crisis of capitalism in 2014, then the imprisonment of Lula, the coup against Dilma, the rise of Bolsonaro, the genocide of Covid-19, which took us almost a million Brazilians; all that affected the working class.

Today we are in a historical period of decline of the mass movement, and that affects, because when the masses do not fight, there is no change in the correlation of forces. Our position as a movement, more than anything else, is to put our energies into organizing the people and the social struggle, so that this becomes a permanent process of accumulation of forces.

What is the reality of the trade union class in Brazil?

– In Brazil we have, out of the total population, 140 million workers, half of them have jobs, they are minimally organized in unions so in some form, at least they have labor rights. But, there are another 70 million who are on the street, who are abandoned, who do not have a steady job, who do not have a steady income, and this part is abandoned even by the left. We do not know how to organize them, the only thing we know is that they live in the periphery of the city, that most of them are young, that most of them are women, that most of them are black, and that they suffer all kinds of repression from the State.

Of course, we have a very big deficit, the sector of the people that is organized and has class consciousness is very small. For example, even of the 70 million who have jobs and are formalized, only

nine percent are unionized, so this generates a low level of critical consciousness and, therefore, a low level of political participation.

How is the left generally positioned in Latin America?

– To understand the situation in Latin America, we have to take a broader, historical look. When there was the crisis in the Soviet Union and the rise of financial capital that globalized and imposed neoliberalism on us in the 90s, a complete dispersion of the left and the living conditions of the working class was generated. We lost 10-15 years there, where we were under permanent defeat.

Neoliberalism did not solve the problems of the people, of the working class, and the problems sharpened the contradictions. That made it possible then that, at the beginning of the year 2000 with the victory of Comandante Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, we managed to win the elections in several countries, but in most of the countries that progressive governments won, they were not the result of a rise of the mass movement either, it was much more a reaction against neoliberalism.

From 2000 to 2014 there was a great ideological confrontation in Latin America and that generated a dispute that appeared in the governments and in the left around three projects, there was the neoliberal project subordinated to the U.S. empire, where there were some countries with their governments and the left dominated.

Then, there was another sector that was progressive and against neoliberalism, therefore, it was in favor of strengthening the State, but they were not anti-imperialist. And in that period, the countries that stood out with that line were Argentina and Brazil.

And there was a third project, which was the project promoted by Chávez and which he called ALBA to oppose the project of imperialism, of neoliberalism, the FTAA, and around the ALBA project, with the leadership of Chávez from Venezuela, not only the progressive government of Bolivia, but also the progressive government of Ecuador, of Venezuela, of Nicaragua joined in, of Ecuador, of Venezuela, of Nicaragua, of Cuba, but a great alliance of popular movements was generated, we even called ourselves ALBA Movements, which was a way of not only adhering to the ALBA project, but also of doing militancy against the other two.

ALBA did have a content as an anti-imperialist project, a project of popular integration and not only of governments. And also, it was positive that at that time conditions were generated to produce other continental articulations promoted by Chávez, such as CELAC, which is very important as an institutional articulation to oppose the OAS. And also, at the South American level, there was an impulse for UNASUR as an economic space.

With the capitalist crisis since 2014, with the Venezuelan oil crisis, with the death of Chávez’s leadership and other difficulties that arose, Latin America, since 2014 until now, is immersed in a crisis, in which none of the three projects can be a proposal.

Neither the neoliberalism of the Americans is a solution to the problems. Neoliberalism is no longer a project, because the transnationals, faced with the crisis of capitalism, have appealed to the fascists of the extreme right, which was not present in the previous period.

The neo-developmentalist, progressive project, which was Argentina, Chile and Brazil, also went into crisis. Hence, what I explained before, it is very difficult any change in Lula’s government. So, the same project that wants to be anti-neoliberal, but does not want to be anti-imperialist, is in crisis. Perhaps Mexico still maintains a certain viability as a project.

The ALBA project also, unfortunately, entered into crisis, because the countries do not have the resources, because it did not manage to broaden its political base and the same four or five original countries remained and only the Caribbean islands were added, making a total of 10 countries, but in Latin America there are 34 of us.

The ALBA Project is also in a period of decline, and all this analysis I am making leads us to read the reality, that since there is no economic solution and there is no clear economic project, neither for the bourgeoisie subordinated to the gringos, nor for the working class, what we know is that Latin America will continue, perhaps for 10, 15 years, with a historical period of great political instability, where everything can happen in the space of the governments. And that is why sometimes a progressive government is elected, and as it does not make policies in favor of the people, then comes the extreme right, as it happened in Brazil, as it happened in Argentina, as it happened in Peru, as it happened in Ecuador.

The scenario of the left in Latin America follows more or less the same pattern as in Brazil. The Latin American left is very low in terms of program to face the capitalist crisis, because now is the time to present an anti-capitalist program. It does not matter the cut, if it is socialism, if it is popular…, but it has to be anti-capitalist, capitalism is not going to solve the problem of the masses.

The left in Latin America, with rare exceptions of some parties, I say left as a popular force that is organized in various forms, is in debt with a program that confronts the capitalist crisis, that proposes structural changes for the masses.

The left is in debt in the sense of discovering new forms of struggle, new forms of organization of the people, above all in those two sectors I referred to before, the workers of the periphery and the youth. It is still very much trapped in the institutionalism, with the elections, and that may take some time until the mass mobilization also moves the left and then a new generation of left, of fighters, with other practices, another vision of the world and a new soul emerges.

What is the role of the elite of intellectuals, journalists, thinkers, philosophers, politicians and leaders in this scenario of crisis of the left?

– The problem of intellectuals in Latin America, in general, in generic terms, is that this sector, which in reality are petty bourgeois who live around the university, around the media or institutionalism, were co-opted by neoliberalism, not as an ideology, as a project, but by habits.

They became very individualistic, they only think about their careers, very consumerist and they abandoned the social political practice. But it is true, there are many courageous intellectuals who are still organic and, therefore, reflect from the leftist organizations and the working class in general, but they are a minority. Much worse than in some other times when there was a more important presence of organic intellectuals, then, today we have almost no organic intellectuals, we have intellectuals.

Are they far from public policies?

– They were co-opted in their life practice. And that is why we should not expect from them reflections that lead us to change, they no longer want change, and the organic intellectuals who want change are a minority, but it is true that many of them have presented their reflections for the organizations to discuss what changes are necessary.

In the midst of the Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip and the demands for a Palestinian state, how is the Palestinian cause seen in Brazil? Is it possible to increase cooperation relations in terms of struggle, of combative spirit? 

– We were ideologically formed by the influence of the Cuban Revolution, its leaders, its thinkers, by the influence of the Nicaraguan Revolution, which was in 1979 and greatly influenced the struggle of all Latin America. Also at that time there was an ideological influence of liberation theology, which is that Christian aspect that linked the belief, the faith that the peasants have because of their religious practice, like any other people, with the need for liberation.

And that was important, and those currents that I am citing, whether of classical thinkers, or of leaders such as Fidel Castro, Ernesto Che Guevara, or of revolutionary processes such as Cuba and Nicaragua, helped us to incorporate from the birth of the movement, the conception that it is not possible to fight against capitalism, against the latifundia, against patriarchy, against colonialism, without internationalism.

Internationalism for us is a principle, it is not only the motivation to show solidarity with the peoples who struggle, it is more than that, it is an identity. All the working class of the world is the same, we only change the passport, our enemies are the same: capitalism.

In times of the globalization of capital, which comes through the dollar, through transnational corporations, through financial capital, the working class of the whole world will not succeed in liberating itself if we do not join forces to confront the same enemy.

From the beginning of the movement we have this identity with Palestine, with the people of Palestine, because they are in the first trench against Zionist colonialism, against capitalist exploitation, and because in a certain way you fight for land, for your territory, the Palestinians are the landless of the Middle East, and we in Brazil, who are landless, are the Palestinians of Brazil, because the situation is the same.

We fight for territory, for rights, for popular autonomy, so, we always had that sympathy for the struggle of the Palestinian people, and we always, in some way, tried to connect, which is more than support and solidarity.

As MST we always pushed for the two organizations in Palestine that involve people from the countryside, be it women or peasants, to participate through the peasant route, which is our international articulation.

We always encouraged our militants to participate in brigades to go and harvest olives in October in Palestine. Then, we had to campaign because the ticket was expensive, but we have managed to send 20-30 people every two years.

That is a lesson for us. It is not going to harvest olives, it is going to see how the government of “Israel” behaves, it is going and seeing the daily struggle of the Palestinians for their resistance, and when he returned he became a different person, as if he had taken a great course of political and personal training and commitment to the Palestinian people.

That is why every time the conflict in Palestine increases, we try to do something that can symbolize or can be a testimony of our fidelity, of our loyalty, of our solidarity with the Palestinian people.

But that is the way it is with all peoples. Now we are very concerned and we say: Our Palestine, our Gaza, is Haiti, because the same barbarism they are imposing in Gaza, they are imposing it in Haiti.

Just as we try to denounce in Brazil the repressive hand of the Government of “Israel”, because they continue to sell weapons, above all, weapons of mass repression, which they test on the Palestinians and then take them to the periphery of Brazil to beat the poor.

There are several weapons there that were sold by the Israelis, just as it was public and notorious that the Mossad and the intelligence services of “Israel” were from the beginning supporting Bolsonaro. It was the Mossad who lent Bolsonaro large computers installed in Taiwan or Ireland, to use from there the networks without control, and they made a real massacre on the people without conscience of Brazil, and managed to win the elections.

That same tactic was repeated now with Milei, clearly linked to Zionism and supported by the intelligence of the Mossad of “Israel”. And in other Latin American countries the same thing happens, such as Guatemala, where the Israelis have always had a strong presence underneath.

So, we try to use the negative facts of the invisible hand of Mossad and Zionist capital, to show our people that the struggle is international.

What message do you convey to the people of Gaza and to all the Resistance in Palestine?

Our message, which is not mine, it is of the MST, and we do it in practice, not only in rhetoric, is to tell them that we are with them and to resist. We know that this costs a lot, a lot of lives, a lot of sacrifice, but there is no other way. Try to resist, and we, from Brazil, what we can do is to join them, whether in thought, sending food, doing counter-propaganda against Zionism. The best way to be in solidarity with the resistance is also to fight in our towns against the companies of “Israel”, against Israeli capital.

For example, in Brazil, the biggest company that sells beer is of Zionist capital, which is controlled by the Safra Bank, which is Zionist. So, we must wage the struggle against these Zionist companies that also exploit the Brazilian people.

Comrades, comrades, resist, only one thing is certain, it may take some time, a month, two years, 10 years, but victory is certain. He who does not fight does not win, and your right and dignity is the certainty that you will win, and with you all the peoples who fight will win.

Dr. Watan Jamil Alabed, is a Palestinian doctor and graduate of the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) in Havana.

 

Source: Cuba en Resumen