por Isaac Bigio
Análisis Global
Dilma Rousseff
On the first day of January, when the largest island in the Caribbean commemorates the fiftysecond anniversary of the revolution that put in place the only non-capitalistic economy in the West, the largest Latin American country (Brazil), is being taken over by its first ruler who belonged to a Castroinspired guerilla movement.
Dilma Rousseff, who was imprisoned from 1970 until 1972 and accused of being one of the leaders of the Plantation Vanguard Armed Revolutionaries, has become the first female president in Brazil’s history after having arrived in the palace by means of votes, not guns.
She, just like Uruguayan President Pepe Mujica, Bolivian Vice-President Alvaro Garcia and the governing parties of Nicaragua and El Salvador, comes to power by undergoing an inverted evolution, unlike Castro, their inspiration.
When, at the end of 1958, a series of strikes and an overwhelming crisis led to the fall of the corrupt dictatorship of Batista, Fidel’s relatively small insurgency had the benefit of a power vacuum. At that time he proclaimed himself to be opposed to communism and a proponent of introducing, into Cuba, a constitutional system similar to that of the United States.
However, the Castro brothers applied a series of reforms and nationalizations that brought about a conflict with Washington, first by becoming admirers of Moscow and then bytransforming their democratizing movement into a communist party that imposed a planned economy.
Fidel Castro
In order to create several fronts against the U.S., Havana began to promote armed conflicts on both sides of the Atlantic. Che Guevara first began to fight in the Congo and ended up being defeated and killed in Bolivia.The 1973 coup in Chile demonstrated the tendency of those years of the Cold War, during which the White House refused to allow any Latin American country to become closer to the Kremlin.
When, in 1979, the Sandinista guerillas triumphed in Nicaragua, the Castro brothers triumphed in Nicaragua, the Castro brothers asked Ortega not to emulate their system and also to accept a market economy and a multi-party state. When, in the years from 1989 to 1991, the Soviet bloc disintegrated and the Sandinistas lost an election, Havana became isolated. To confront this problem, the Castro brothers approached the European Union, made concessions to the free market and pressured the Latin American left to govern by means of constitutional processes.
Everywhere the Castro brothers asked the old guerillas to reinsert themselves in the system, although in Colombia they didn’t succeed. The model was followed in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, in all of which countries nationalistic strong men sought reforms that overturned the neo-liberal market policies.
The former Castro-like guerillas, such as Dilma or Pepe, even “moderated” their positions more than the ALBA (Bolivian Alliance for the People of Our America), and advocated social democratic policies.
The more her atheistic and subversive past is revealed, the more Dilma speaks of her Catholicism, of her pro-life beliefs and of her opposition to same-sex marriage.
Dilma will not carry out nationalizations like ALBA has. Instead of making Brazil into a new Cuba, she will try to make Cuba and ALBA profitable for Brazil. Her strategy will be to continue the policies of Lula: to make her nation a bridge between those who promote free enterprise and those who are left-wing populists.
( T r a n s l a t e d by Mark Carney)
