lo-de-alla.org

“Brazil’s solutions won’t work for Mexico”

[Translation of an article from La Jornada of Mexico City for September 4. See original here.]

By Arturo Cano

The subject is Brazil, that “miracle” so admired by Mexicans of the left and the right, of the top and the bottom. And João Pedro Stédile, founder and leader of the Movimento dos Sem Terra (MST – Landless Workers’ Movement) of Brazil talks about it: “Mexicans think that we have solved all our problems and we haven’t even solved the soccer problem.”

Stédile has been in Mexico for only a few days now but he knows this country well because he was here a few decades ago as a graduate student in the Universidad Nacional. With that familiarity, he is surprised that Mexican governors and intellectuals never tire of talking about Brazil and Petrobras as models. “Don’t take us as a model for anything. You are okay here with the Under-17 [World Cup soccer games],” this white bearded man says laughingly, looking like a university professor, the descendant of Italian immigrants, born in Rio Grande do Sul where Brazilians, he agrees, look like Argentines and Uruguayans. (more…)

[Translation of an article from La Jornada of Mexico City for November 6. See original article here.]

by Arturo Cano

Salvador de Bahía, November 5 – The election of Dilma Rousseff has unleashed a wave of racism in Brazil. And not because the president elect is the daughter of a Bulgarian immigrant, a communist who became moderately wealthy, but because in the northeastern region, the poorest and the darkest of the country, the vote for the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT – Workers’ Party) candidate was substantially larger than that for José Serra, candidate for the Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (PSDB – Brazilian Social Democrat Party).

On every side, traces of racism and regionalism are surfacing: “Do São Paulo a favor: hang a northeasterner.” The sentence urging the killing of inhabitants of the northeast of Brazil because “they are not people” was written by law student Mayara Petruso on Monday morning. By then it was known that the PT candidate had gotten the majority of the 12 million votes in the north and the northeast of the country that made the difference. Petruso, in the southern city of São Paulo, voted for Serra. (more…)

Three articles

Dilma makes amends with Catholics and evangelicals

[Translated from Hora do Povo of São Paulo for October 1. See original article here.]

The candidate of the Para o Brasil Seguir Mudando [So Brazil Will Continue Changing] coalition, Dilma Rousseff, held a meeting with representatives of catholics and evangelicals on Wednesday, September 29, in which she made a statement denying defamatory messages spread through the internet that accuse her of declaring that not even Jesus Christ could take this election away from her and that she would favor abortion and marriage between persons of the same sex.

“I reject totally statements that claim I used the name of Christ to say that not even he could defeat me in this election. It is slander, it is villany,” she said, emphasizing that these attacks represent a “defamatory campaign” against her candidacy. “These rumors come from the political underworld and are typical of the end of a campaign,” she declared. (more…)