The Doctor and the Monster - Brizola and the Middle Class

Once, back in the 80s, specifically in 1982, when direct elections for governors were held in Brazil for the first time since the 1964 coup, I was talking to my father about that year's elections and questioning why we couldn't also vote for president. I was 22 years old, and that civic experience was unprecedented for me, as was openly discussing politics in the streets and at university, and seeing people—young, adults, and elderly—demonstrating themselves without any problems, for example, with the police.

I lived in Rio de Janeiro, in the Flamengo neighborhood, and its streets were full of campaign flyers, advertisements on lampposts, fire hydrants, newsstands, building walls, residents' windows, and covered in banners and pendants. Back then, electoral rules weren't as strict as they are today; even campaigning near polling stations was allowed, as was wearing t-shirts, caps, and flags near or even in front of the polling places where voters cast their ballots. It was truly a civic celebration, which leads me to emphasize and remember that Brazil, until then, was a country that had not yet experienced the Diretas Já movement of 1984 and the promulgation of the progressive 1988 Constitution.

However, let's go back to the beginning. "Dad, why didn't the government allow presidential elections?" He looked at me and replied: "Because the government doesn't want to open things up completely, much less lose the presidential election, since it knows it will lose to the opposition in some states. The amnesty allowed the return of many leaders who have votes, and the government will do everything slowly."

The amnesty occurred in 1979 when exiles began to return to Brazil. The private media practically ignored this historic and extremely important event. The political process was deliberately slow. The cynical and hypocritical motto of General Ernesto Geisel's government was: "Slow, gradual, and safe opening." The bourgeois private business press gave notoriety to this draconian definition, as its headlines served as a warning to the opposition, the left, and the exiles. This was the practice of those who usurped freedoms and democratic, constitutional, and civilized legality.

The objective was to prolong the existence of the nefarious dictatorial regime as much as possible and, consequently, create conditions for the continued power of the military and civilians who had illegally entrenched themselves in the Palácio do Planalto (Presidential Palace) since 1964. After all, the dictatorship was not only military, but also civilian, with the acquiescence, cooperation, and complicity of the Marinho family's business organizations and other families of entrepreneurs in the private media sector.

Leonel Brizola, at the time the most emblematic politician of the opposition, won in Rio de Janeiro, and for the first time in my life, through the Proconsult scandal, the SNI (National Information Service) and Rede Globo (Globo Network), I clearly perceived that the right wing, the Brazilian oligarchies heirs of slavery, are capable of a sordidness and perversity that would leave the devil humiliated and ashamed of his acts and actions, considering them worthy of an amateur.

For me and for many others, labor-led governments that assume power and fail to implement a regulatory framework for the media are like putting their heads in a lion's mouth. The Brazilian business sector, which owns the means of production, and the ideologically conservative and socially reactionary, cruel, and prejudiced middle class are savage and have shown, without a doubt, throughout history, what they want and how they see the world and Brazil, which they portray as a place for a privileged few.

These are social groups that dislike change, even if it benefits them, because they are bound to ideological aspects and concepts and prejudices instinctively ingrained and learned over generations and in the environments in which they live and were raised. When they do not understand historical, political, and governmental issues, they ridiculously and confusedly believe that their values ​​are in danger, and consequently, they transform into beasts, devoid of mercy and tolerance, especially when in public, because at home or with their social groups, they are generally docile, kind, and candid.

It is the middle class that carries and disseminates the single thought of an oligopolized media, which in Brazil and Latin America wants to impose a dictatorship of the press, in a relentless battle against labor governments and the freedom of expression of those considered its enemies. Individualism as a survival value, sectarian and supposedly VIP. The realization of a neoliberal world, which diminishes the space of the public and increases the space of the private. Exclusion. Repulsion and hatred of inclusion, and therefore, of the people and the masses. The middle class that cries while watching soap operas and mistreats the domestic worker and the building's janitor. The measured and calculated option for barbarity. The observation and faithful image of the true story of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" — "The Doctor and the Monster".

When Lula fell ill with cancer, the middle and upper classes—the same ones who marched against President João Goulart and who currently participate in artificial anti-corruption marches similar to the "Cansei Movement"—infested social media and the letter sections of newspapers and magazines with crude, stupid, extremely cruel, and somewhat fascist messages and insults. They were simply merciless towards the former president. Many readers and internet users wished for the death of the labor politician, who included 40 million Brazilians in the middle classes D and C, in addition to facilitating access for the "traditional" middle class to airports, payroll loans, the purchase of automobiles, homes, and electrical and electronic goods, as well as definitively democratizing public universities, which until then were clubs restricted to the children of a class that detests social programs and the social ascension of the poor, but loves to take out government loans to travel to the USA and Europe and then, upon returning to Brazil, show off as if they were cosmopolitan.

The traditional middle class fiercely defends, with atrocious selfishness, what it considers to be the first to lose—perhaps everything related to its benefits in life, such as public universities and the consequent market reserve of mid- to high-level jobs guaranteed by the establishment. This establishment, wisely, has understood the middle class to be racist, separatist, and elitist because it is, without a doubt, the spokesperson for a stratified society, as well as the ideological framework of the conservative owners of the means of production, being their most important and powerful ally. It is the status quo, sedimented in privileges, convenient moralism, and the repression of those who attempt or aspire to break through the crystal dome of the wealthy classes, that infamously relativizes life in society and public affairs, demonstrating the ignorance and savagery of those who consider themselves "superior" and "well-born."

I'm going back to Brizola.

The labor leader spoke out at the time and denounced the "gorilla-like" behavior of the generals and the Federal Police, as well as the vile coup carried out by the Globo Organizations(?), which undoubtedly represent those who for centuries have considered themselves the owners of Brazil and fight daily to keep their privileges intact. They are so cruel and devoid of reason that, in order to perpetuate themselves in power, they delayed time and wounded the body of society at the cost of the pain of its soul and its material misery, which, irremediably, makes me believe that our "elites" treat the people and workers as second-class citizens, without rights, but with duties, which is to serve and work to fill the pockets of the rich with money, without, however, being able to complain to have a better quality of life, that is, a civilized and just one.

Leonel Brizola, a Maragato and Labor Party member, a revolutionary by heritage and ideology, whose origins are in the pampas of Rio Grande do Sul, confronted the military dictatorship once again and accused Proconsult—an IT company contracted by the Rio de Janeiro Regional Electoral Court to tally the votes—of committing fraud. The role of the coup-supporting broadcaster known as Rede Globo was to equivocate, confuse the public about the political and electoral crime, and thus give a connotation of "legality" to Rio de Janeiro and Brazilian society. The right-wing coup plotters couldn't continue the charade, and the man from Rio Grande do Sul who suffered the longest exile ever endured by a Brazilian was elected governor of Rio de Janeiro by the PDT (Democratic Labour Party). Banned from setting foot on Brazilian soil for 15 years, Brizola was consecrated by the ballot box. The monsters of the doctor in those days were defeated. That's it.