News you won't see in the Brazilian media: Cardoso's looting

[ocpagu]

From 1994 to 2002, Fernando Henrique Cardoso (FHC) was the president of Brazil, supported by an heterodox alliance of his supposedly "center-left" party (Social Democratic Party, PSDB) with two right-wing parties, the Liberal Front Party (PFL) and the Brazilian Labour Party (PTB), and the centrist Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (PMDB). Nicknamed "the prince of sociologists", FHC is widely regarded in the local media as the savior of the country, due to the creation of Plano Real, being also praised by his alleged competence, democratic spirit and ethical behavior.

In the real world, however, Cardoso was just one of the most prominent members of a club of Latin American puppet presidents that had no other purpose rather than adjusting their countries and submitting their peoples to the enslaving agenda of stateless neocons and criminal banksters based in the Wall Street / City of London real axis of evil: the Washington Consensus. As an Academic, Cardoso is known for formulating his own version of the dependency theory, in which he defends the idea that the best way for economic and social development of Latin America is becoming used to the idea of being dependent of the developed world and vehemently cooperating with their agenda in order to get more generous alms. As a politician, he's known for his disgraceful government. Interest rates of almost 50% (you can imagine how L-O-V-E-D he is by worldwide bankers), unemployment rate reaching 25% of the people, dozens of corruption scandals envolving members of his government (4 against Cardoso himself), etc. Among these 4 inquiries involving him, the most important is probably the bribe of congressmen to aprove the Constitutional amendment that allowed his reelection, which was proven true, but left unpunished (interestingly enough, his party always criticizes Chávez for doing in Venezuela the same thing that they did in Brazil - with one difference: Chávez didn't need to buy votes from congressmen to change the Constitution and get reelected). He did such a lousy government that he became responsible for doing something that everybody in Brazil thought to be impossible: Lula, the first Brazilian president from the working class, being elected.

Mexico's version of Cardoso, president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who sold his country to Carlos Slim, had to run away from his homeland to New York in a private jet to avoid his angry fellowmen. Gonzalo Sánchez Lozada, the Bolivian president that privatized the rain, had to escape his country hearing the shouts of "assassin" coming from the masses. Alberto Fujimori, from Peru, faced jail threats for the admited "briberization", as Joseph Stiglitz said. In Argentina, the name "Carlos Meném" is not pronounced for the popular belief that it brings bad luck. But, in opposition to his fellow neocon puppet presidents taht ruled the Latin American countries in the same period, Cardoso, instead of being in jail, is treated by the Brazilian press as our "greatest statesman ever". As impossible as it seems, nothing was ever published in Brazil about the real nature of his "government".

Until today.

A brave journalist named Amaury Ribeiro Jr. has finnally published his long-waited book: A Privataria Tucana ("privataria" being a neologism combining the words "privatização" (privatization) and "pirataria" (piracy) and "tucana" (toucan) a popular nickname of Cardoso's party, PSDB]).



The book took 12 years to be finished and is an impressive x-ray of Cardoso's administration and looting of Brazilian state companies disguised of "privatization". It's really frightening. The book explains some of the 626 criminal inquiries opened against members of Cardoso's government, ALL of them being swept under the carpet without any formal investigation. It explains why Cardoso had 95 ministers in 96 months of government and where the money from the "privatizations" went to. Money laundering, bribes, illegal lobby, buying of votes, involving top officials and figures of PSDB, mainly the former governor of São Paulo, José Serra, defeated by Dilma Rousseff in the 2010 presidential election.

According to the book, between 1994 and 1998, friends and relatives of José Serra, including his daughter, Verônica Serra, his son-in-law, Alexandre Bourgeois, and the husband of one of his cousins, Gregório Marín Preciado, were operating a complex scheme of money laundering and misappropriation of hundreds of millions of dollars of public funds, diverted to offshores and fiscal paradises. The mastermind behind this unprecedented corruption was the economist Ricardo Sérgio de Oliveira, one of the former directors of the public-owned Bank of Brazil.

The book also reveals that a company owned by Verônica Serra, named "Decidir.com" was investigated by the Federal Police for illegal breach of financial secrecy of 60 million (I said SIXTY MILLION) Brazilian citizens. The police official responsible for the investigation received threats by top officials of the government and the case was quickly swept under the carpet without being noticed in the press.

There are also new interesting facts about corruption scandals that had, at some point, become partially known, for example, the 26 billion reais from public funds that Cardoso donated to private banks in 1995, the bribe scandals involving Cardosos' ministers and the American company Raytheon during the creation of the the Amazon Surveillance System, the foreknowledge by top officials of the upcoming financial crisis in Brazil's bank system in 1999 that was ignored in order to benefit lobbysts of the government, etc.

Of course, there was no mention to the publishing of the book in the corporate press. All the big four media groups that control the Brazilian corporate press have carnal relations with PSDB and are largely financed through public funds granted by the government of São Paulo and the three Southern States that they have been controling for almost 2 decades. Brazilian private media receives 200 million dollars a year of public money by the PSDB state governments. Members of the PSDB, media barons and judges are already trying to obtain permission to censor the book. It's quite possible that they succeed.

Meanwhile, the press is trying to make the 8th minister of Dilma Rousseff fall: Fernando Pimentel, the trade and industry minister. The accusation? Earning money (1 million reais) as a private consultant during the time he did not work for the government. The 26 billion reais looted from public funds by Cardoso? Not a word about it.

[Judi Lynn]

1. Thanks for posting this information here. It's going to be a great asset

to those of us who want to find out more about Brazil.

Thanks for sharing specific areas which will help us grasp the politics, and history. It's truly appreciated.

As it's late when I saw your post, I'm going to study this material after a night's sleep. It looks completely worth everyone's attention.

[ocpagu]

3. And thank you for your interest in this topic, Judy.

It really deserves attention, as it is symptomatic of the real nature of the "neoliberal wave" that swept Latin America in the 1980s and 1990s and its devastating effects that only now are being reversed by the present leftist governments of these countries. Neoliberalism is a social and economic disease.

[Peace Patriot]

2. Wow! Sounds like a must-read book.

A couple of thoughts: The looting of Brazil and the SILENCE of the Corporate Press about it reminds me of the massive, mindboggling looting of the U.S., by the War Profiteers--incredibly including the Vice President of the U.S.'s own company, Halliburton--and by the Banksters and Transglobal Corporations with virtually NOTHING in the Corporate Press about what has really gone on.

It also strikes me that the rightwing political parties here and there are equivalent to gangters, the main difference between Brazil and the U.S. being that Brazil was able to elect REAL leftist governments--headed by Lula da Silva and now Dilma Rouseff--who have moved their country toward fairness and social justice (and into a South America-wide leftist alliance), whereas here the left end (majorityist end) of the political spectrum does not exist in our Democratic Party leadership. We have no FDR-like champion and we CANNOT elect one with the far rightwing-connected ES&S/Diebold controlling 80% of the voting machines in the U.S. with 'TRADE SECRET' programming code. One of the things that Brazilians need to look out for is Diebold inroads into Brazil's election system. Privately controlled e-voting is EXTREMELY BAD. It will end Brazil's democracy as it has done here. I've only heard of limited inroads of Diebold's riggable votiing machines in Brazil but as Brazil grows more prosperous Brazilians may become prey to this fascist/corporate method of control, thinking that it is 'modern," "efficient," "advanced." I hope Brazilians don't get suckered by this the way our people have been.

[ocpagu]

5. It is indeed. Got my edition yesterday and can't stop reading.

Corporate press, everywhere, operates like a real mafia, with no other goal than defending status quo. As Paul Virilio once said, "the press is the only power that has the privilege of creating its own laws, at the same time that it defends the pretension of not being submitted to others". The hope for a change in the political and economic structure worldwide lies on the people understanding that they are not clients of corporate press, but merely produtcs.

I also share your worries about electronic voting and, indeed, there's a huge propaganda aimed at making Brazilians buy the "modern, efficient, advanced" argument. This question has raised concern among leftists, with journalist Paulo Henrique Amorim being the most ferocious critic of this system.

In 2010 elections, Amorim pointed to possible frauds caused by eletronic voting in three Brazilian states. In Paraná, a governor (from PSDB) that was falling in polls was elected, after prohibiting the publication of polls. In São Paulo, a senator (from PSDB) that was completely unknown to the people and did not even appeared among the 5 top competitors to the Senate in the polls was elected, without any plausible explanation and against all commons sense. And in Maranhão, the poorest state of Brazil, a member aristocratic family that controls the local politics for almost two centuries and whose defeat in the elections had been forecast by all polls was elected with a difference of 4,000 votes (among 4 million voters).

In fact, a couple of years ago, the Brazilian congress aproved a law that established compulsory fiscalization auditing for electronic voting. Each vote computed in the machines would generate a supporting document that would be kept by the citizens and the Electoral Justice to facilitate auditings, when necessary. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court rejected the law, following the argument of electoral prosecutor Sandra Cureau that the supporting document would be illegal, for supposedly desrespecting the secrecy of the vote granted by the Constitution.
[br />Sandra Cureau became known for her role in the 2010 elections in Brazil for doing everything she could to favor PSDB and harm the worker's party.

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If you put her name in Google images you might have an idea of how much loved she's in Brazil after that.

[ChangoLoa]

4. You are a Latin American and a leftist. You should know about dependency theory

which is the basis for almost every single leftist movement conceptualization in our region. From Allende to Chavez.

And BTW a marxist theory too, based on historical/ dialectic materialism. A direct inheritance from Marx and Engels.


It is certainly not this:
"his own version of the dependency theory, in which he defends the idea that the best way for economic and social development of Latin America is becoming used to the idea of being dependent of the developed world and vehemently cooperating with their agenda in order to get more generous alms"

Did you write this???


I don't have a lot of time right know, so I'll take from your own link (try to see which authors contributed to its formulation, many of them were major marxist theorists of their time):

"Two other early writers relevant to dependency theory were François Perroux and Kurt Rothschild. Other leading dependency theorists include Herb Addo, Walden Bello, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Enzo Faletto, Armando Cordova, Ernest Feder, Andre Gunder Frank, Walter Rodney, Pablo González Casanova, Keith Griffin, Kunibert Raffer, Paul Israel Singer, and Osvaldo Sunkel. Many of these authors focused their attention on Latin America; the leading dependency theorist in the Islamic world is the Egyptian economist Samir Amin (Tausch 2003).

Later, world systems theory expanded on dependency arguments. It postulates a third category of countries, the semi-periphery, intermediate between the core and periphery. The semi-periphery is industrialised, but with less sophistication of technology than in the core; and it does not control finances. Capitalism in the periphery, like in the center, is characterized by strong cyclical fluctuations.
The rise of one group of semi-peripheries tends to be at the cost of another group, but the unequal structure of the world economy based on unequal exchange tends to remain stable (Tausch 2003).
Tausch (2003) traces the beginnings of World systems theory to the writings of the Austro-Hungarian socialist Karl Polanyi after the First World War. In its present form it is usually associated with the work of Immanuel Wallerstein.

Ever since the capitalist world system evolved, there is a stark distinction between the nations of the center and the nations of the periphery.

Former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, when he was still a social scientist, summarized his version of dependency theory as follows:

1)there is a financial and technological penetration by the developed capitalist centers of the countries of the periphery and semi-periphery;

2)this produces an unbalanced economic structure both within the peripheral societies and between them and the centers;

3)this leads to limitations on self-sustained growth in the periphery;

4)this favors the appearance of specific patterns of class relations;

5) these require modifications in the role of the state to guarantee both the functioning of the economy and the political articulation of a society, which contains, within itself, foci of inarticulateness and structural imbalance.<14>"

Do you understand what inward development and import substitution mean? Breaking the cycle of financial and technological dependence, maybe?

[ocpagu]

6. I do.

Cardoso and Faletto's version of dependency theory was the object of my thesis at college.

The dependecy theory in Brazil can be divided in three different groups, with completely different approaches. One formulated by André Gunder Frank, Rui Mauro Marini, Theotonio dos Santos, O. Caputo and Pizarro; a second group leaded by Celso Furtado and Osvald Sunkel; and a third, created by Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto. The three of them had completely different ideas about the understanding of capitalism in undeveloped countries. And the three of them were quite different from the other interpretations of the traditional approach of dependency theory as tributary of Marx thoughts.

Unlike the other groups, Cardoso and Faletto's version of dependency theory did not look for references in history, much less traditional culture. They simply ignored Marx and based their ideas entirely in a supposedly observation of problems of Brazilian economic structure of the 60s.

While the other intelectuals based their ideas in the understanding that foreign capital was an enemy, Cardoso OPENLY defended that the Brazilian industrial bourgeoisie shouldn't look for any kinds of ruptures with the agrarian oligarchies, much less with foreign capital. He defended that the Brazilian bourgeoisie should be allied to foreign capital, if not in the control of private companies, at least in the capital acumulation process. In his writings, Cardoso admits that he believes the Latin American countries would never be able to compete with developed countries in fair conditions. He OPENLY defends a submissive role from the Latin American governments as a way of sharing part of the profits constantly leaving the undeveloped worlds through market alliances between Latin American financial and industrial elites with the American and European elites. The "dependency theory" of Cardoso is known as nothing but a local early version of... neoliberalism. Neoliberalism disguised of "marxist theory", as well as his right-wing party is disguised of central-leftist. A strategy that really is not able to deceive anyone with a functional brain.

No wonder 40 years later he wrote, about his theory: "Forget everything that I wrote".

If you can read Portuguese, please see this article about Cardoso's dependecy theory published by the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo:

http://www.pucsp.br/neils/downloads/v7_martins_sotelo.pdf

"Breaking the cycle of financial and technological dependence" has never been the object of Cardoso's theory. He doesn't even talk about these subjects in his books. This was the agenda of Getúlio Vargas, whose government Cardoso abominates.

When Cardoso defends "modifications in the role of the state", he's advocating for free-market. When he calls for "the political articulation of a society", he's advocating in favor of a consensus among the local and foreign bourgeoisies. That'll be pretty obvious to you if you read the article I pointed to you.

If you want to discuss the subject further, I'll be right here. It's one of my favorites.

[ChangoLoa]

7. I understand your point

I thought you were talking about the whole dependency theory... didn't read carefully enough what you had wrote.

And certainly I don't consider Cardoso to be a leftist. But still, equating him with Friedman and the monetarists (neoliberalism is a disguised term itself) seems to be quite a jump.

I won't pretend Lula maintained his exact economic policies as the Brazilian center and right-wing do. Obviously, the social programs organized by his coalition had a major impact on many aspects.

But let me ask you a question: what major differences of approach in their political economy do you identify?

And finally: do you consider that the only left is the revolutionary one? Is there a reformatory left for you?

"Breaking the cycle of financial and technological dependence": any example of a revolutionary government that has managed to do so?

[ChangoLoa]

8. By the way

I read the article, did you write it?