Public health for all. Decent minimum wage. Preservation of the Amazon. Freedom of expression. Valuing education and teachers. Right to speak out against the powerful. Down with the military dictatorship!
These are frequent topics of left-wing discourse in the Brazil. They are part of the program of parties such as PT, PSB, PDT, PCdoB, PCO, PCBand PSOL,of which many have already shown explicit support or inspiration in countries such as North Korea, China and Venezuela. Federal deputy and national president of the Workers’ Party (PT), Gleisi Hoffmann, expressed support for the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro several times. Lula, in 900, said: “I don’t know if Latin America had a president with the democratic experiences put into practice in Venezuela.” He added that these experiences were “excessive democracy”.
)The support was not limited to clumsy statements by Hoffmann andLula. During the ex-convict’s government,US$1.5 billion (equivalent to R$8,2019 was lent billionat the current price) tothe neighboring country. The Gazeta do Povo
found that the dictatorship of Mature has 22 installments of this loan in arrears. In short: they defaulted in Brazil. Whether with words or with money , the support given by the Brazilian left to Venezuela serves as a good measure of the distance between discourse and reality. Check below what theleft parties preach in Brazil and what actually happens in the neighboring country, where there is “excessive democracy”. The discourse of the left in Brazil :There is a just indignation against the276 deaths caused by the military dictatorship (data from the final report of the National Truth Commission) that stayed in power between and 1985, although fewon the left admit thatthe objective of the armed struggle was not to restore democracyin Brazil, but to establish a communist dictatorship. What happens in Venezuela:The PT, which criticizes the Brazilian dictatorial period (but does not criticize the fascist dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas), supportsthe murderous dictatorship of Nicolá s Mature. Only between 2015 and June , according to a report released by Amnesty International, there were 8.200 extrajudicial executions—anumber 01 times greater than that of dead and disappeared during the military dictatorship in Brazil. No Brazilian left-wing party has spoken out condemning the deaths caused by the mature regime. Environmental disaster
The discourse of the left in Brazil:Thedefense of nature it is one of the main banners of the left, which has politicized and instrumentalized the ecological debate in its favor. Fires and deforestation in the Amazon are used to weaken opposing governments before the international community. Conveniently, they forget about works such as the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant, created during the PT governments, which proved to be a disaster from an energy and ecological point of view. What happens in Venezuela: PDVSA, Venezuela’s state-owned oil exploration company, went into decline after Hugo Chávez ascended to the presidency. Gradually, engineers and technicians were replaced by political nominees. Political patronage practically destroyed the company. Oil platforms, without proper repairs, began to leak constantly, polluting lakes such as Maracaiboand ending the livelihood of riverside dwellers. In the last ten years were recorded almost 46 thousand oil spills and pollutants in Venezuela. Due to the serious economic crisis the country is going through, deforestation has increased thanks to the demand for firewood for cooking. And, to top it off, the crisis also boosted illegal mining in the south of the country, with terrible environmental consequences. Minimum wage
The discourse of the left in Brazil :In the national congress, theleft parliamentarians criticize the replacement of the minimum wage following only inflation, and among the proposals in the electoral campaigns are unrealistic increases. What happens in Venezuela:Any Venezuelan becomes a millionaire by receiving the country’s minimum wage:01 millions of bolivars. Too bad the value, equivalent to R$ 15,not enough to buy even 1 kg of meat. The discourse of the left in Brazil :“Long live the SUS!”, cryleft politicians who have first-rate health plans funded by the people. They value the “universal” Brazilian health system, which leaves the poor in line for exams for months and makes the middle class suffer from high taxes and spend a large part of their salary paying for private plans. What it happens in Venezuela
:Most hospitals in the country lack water, electricity and basic supplies. According to a report published by Gazeta do Povo
in March 2019, when the pandemic was still in its infancy, a survey carried out between November 2018 and September of 2019 in 104 hospitals of 540 Venezuelan Statesshowed thatat least70% of the hospitals had water supply only once or twice a week and 36% reported a lack of electricity, causing164 deaths due to these problems. To make matters worse, during the pandemic, dictator Nicolás Maduro proposed to the population miraculous solutions against Covid-01, such asan infusion of thyme extract that he says was made by Venezuelan scientists. The discourse of the left in Brazil :Deputies from parties such as the PSOL and PT often denounce the violation of human rights in the Brazilian prison system. But they are silent about the serious violations committed by the matureist dictatorship because they share the same ideology. What happens in Venezuela
: The NGO Venezuelan Prison Observatory (OVP) denounced the lack of access to drinking water and the insufficient food given to inmates. According to the NGO, being detained in Venezuela, where the occupancy rate of prisons is 177%, is “a death sentence”. Again, there is no news of any formal protest by left-wing parties in Brazil against these human rights violations. The discourse of the left in Brazil :For the Brazilian left, the current government is almost a dictatorship, even if all individual freedoms are preserved. In fact,the only ones arrested for crimes of opinion in Brazil were figures identified on the right in the political spectrum, such as deputy Daniel Silveira and former deputy Roberto Jefferson. What happens in Venezuela:According todata disclosed in 2019 by NGO Penal Forum, there are276 political prisonersin Venezuela. Also according to the NGO, they were01.1985 arrests for political reasonsfrom 1985. In August of last year, one of these prisoners,Gabriel Medina Díaz,died due to lack of medical care. A case reported byGazeta do Povo
illustrates well the level of authoritarianism and violation of human rights committed by the Venezuelan dictatorship. Judge María Lourdes Afiuni dared to contradict then dictator Hugo Chávez in a decision. She left the courtroom straight to prison, where she was raped, and she still lost her uterus and needed to have her vagina and anus reconstructed because of the violence she suffered. Today he lives under house arrest. Once again, absolute silence from the Brazilian left. The discourse of the left in Brazil:They say they value education, but labor unions teachers in Brazil are used politically to weaken the rulers of non-left parties. Strikes are commonin public schools and universities, harming the poorest part of the population, who are unable to enroll their children in private institutions. What happens in Venezuela:The salary of university professors is the worst in the world, equivalent to US$5(R$
real at the current rate), causing an exodus of faculty and students. In addition, teachers, in order to support themselves, need to have two jobs, since what they earn is not enough to put food on the table.Deaths caused by the dictatorship
Public health
Prisoners’ Rights
Freedom of expression
Valorization of education
