It was a coup, yes, there's no use crying about it!

It was a coup. There's no hiding the fact that this happened in 2016, when President Dilma Rousseff, a notoriously honest woman, was ousted by a scheme orchestrated by the National Congress, led by the then-Speaker of the House of Representatives, Eduardo Cunha. A notorious corrupt politician, the Rio de Janeiro congressman was soon after impeached for breach of parliamentary decorum and imprisoned, convicted by the full Supreme Federal Court (STF) for corruption and money laundering, among other crimes.

Almost seven years after the tragic historical event that tarnished Brazilian democracy and destroyed part of the economy, leaving hundreds of thousands of workers to fend for themselves in a bleak landscape of uncertainty, insecurity, unemployment, and impoverishment, there is an attempt to pretend that there was no coup. This was only the beginning of a Brazilian catastrophe. The return of widespread hunger, the deterioration of the social situation, the dismantling of practically all public policies, and the collapse of sovereignty would follow in its wake.

The strategy is to let things be forgotten, following the time lapse that began with the coup conspiracies set in motion by the inflammatory, irrational, and unpatriotic speeches of then-Senator Aécio Neves (PSDB-MG), who questioned his defeat at the polls in 2014. In doing so, he betrayed the country, plunging it into all the horror it has experienced since then. There is also investment in the strategy of waging a war of narratives, in which the coup plotters' position, to counter the undeniable facts, is that an impeachment took place.

Fiscal maneuver

However, there was no crime of responsibility. According to the 1988 Federal Constitution, impeachment can only occur in cases of crimes of responsibility. Even a child knows this. And lacking one, the coup plotters, with the backing of the Federal Court of Accounts (TCU), the Public Prosecutor's Office, and the Judiciary, chose to invent that Dilma committed fiscal irresponsibility. Nothing could be more ridiculous, cynical, and even laughable – if it weren't tragic. Years later, several coup plotters admitted that there had been a coup, including former President Michel Temer himself.

A large part of the population, which witnessed the 2016 coup, knows what happened, and there's no point in struggling, as if trying to enforce a revisionist process, and retelling history from a supposedly hegemonic point of view. The current government has already demonstrated an effort to ensure that historical events prevail as they actually occurred. Therefore, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is making things clear by calling Temer a coup plotter in an official statement made in Uruguay.

The battle over narratives waged since 2015 will therefore continue, as the mainstream media and sectors of the elites want to solidify the idea that there was a legal impeachment, and not a coup. This time, those persecuted and violated more than six years ago – now back in power – will have a better chance of clarifying the truth of the facts to society, another unfortunate chapter in our epic. It is necessary to use the past as an important marker in the present struggle against those who work to destroy the dignity of this nation.