Categoria: Idiomas

Consolidate our democratic and peaceful revolution

Leonardo Boff3 Comentários

Something fundamental in Brazilian history is at stake in the second round of the current presidential campaign: our first popular, democratic and peaceful revolution, realized through the vote, with the assumption to the Presidency of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva; Lula. It was not only a change of power but a change of social class. A representative of the impoverished and permanently marginalized reached the highest office of the nation. It was the fruit of the Labor Party, PT, (from its Portuguese name), its allies and the great combination of social movements and unions, and it has been furthered by Dilma Rousseff.

As the noted historian Jose Honorio Rodrigues said in his Conciliation and Reform in Brazil, (Conciliación y Reforma en Brasil, 1965): «the interests of the people were neglected by the leaders; hence the struggles, the rebellions, the bloody history, the commitment and conciliation. We have never had a revolution in the sense of transforming the economic structure, the land regime, the change of social relations. Given her disappointing leaders, the great success of the history of Brazil is her people».

Jose Honorio continues: «the victories of the people are objective and indisputable;… Brazil owes to the people political unity, territorial integration, crossbreeding, racial tolerance, religious homogeneity, psychosocial integration, an alive national sensibility that demands “abrasileramiento” of all foreign contributions» (p.121-122).

This revolution was inaugurated with Lula and Dilma, and it is not yet finished, but it must be consolidated and deepened. Let’s hope that these elections are not badly wasted by the victory of one who represents the old oligarchical politics, more interested in economic growth, the market and alignment with the globalized macro-economy, than in the destiny of millions of people lifted from poverty by the republican policies, and transformed into social subjects, who participate in society.

That is why it is important that Dilma wins, to guarantee, consolidate and enrich that inaugural revolution with a new cycle of transformations.

At the start of colonization, the official chronicler Pero Vaz de Caminha wrote that here «whatever is planted produces». The five centuries of history, still in the light of the European paradigm, show the truth of that claim. Here everything can produce and be produced to fill the table to satisfy the hunger of the whole world. What would preclude a New-Brazil-project, democratic, social, popular, ecological, ecumenical and spiritual?

The Brazilian people became accustomed «to confronting life» and to getting everything «in the struggle», that is, with difficulty and much effort. Why then would the Brazilian people not confront this great and final challenge that lies in their path? How can they not conquer it «with courage and strength», with a solidarian consciousness, and organization, in order to guarantee the power of the state, which already has 12 years, to infuse it with the true sense of forging the necessary changes, primarily for the most forgotten, and then for everyone, giving them sustainability, and guaranteeing for them a good future for the country?

That path has already been traversed, although much remains to be finished. Twice have newcomers assumed the centers of power. Fewer and fewer are the means by which the dominant elites can return to power, with their neoliberal project that has ruined the major countries and thrown a hundred million people in Europe and the United States out of work.

We associate with the lyrics of, The saga of the Amazon, by singer Vital Faria: «Only he is a singer who carries within the smell and the color of his land/ the blood stain of his dead/ and the certainty of the struggle of those who live». That struggle, we hope, will be victorious. The country will flourish in the splendor of her multicolored people, like our landscapes, that enchant our eyes. The words of a union leader in the somber days of the submission are on point: «They can cut one, two, or all the flowers, but they cannot prevent the arrival of spring».

The spring is already well advanced. And with the spring sun we want to celebrate the victory of the majority of the Brazilian people, by reelecting Dilma Rousseff.

If it cannot be now, the challenge will remain for the future. What must come to be has strength, and the day, that blessed day, will come, when it will be triumphant.

Free translation from the Spanish by
Servicios Koinonia, http://www.servicioskoinonia.org.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

The meaning of bioeconomy or ecodevelopment

Leonardo Boff3 Comentários

The current presidential elections have brought to the fore the question of development, a classic theme of the globalized macroeconomy. Either from ignorance or because the candidates realized that they would have to change everything, there was no mention of such crucial themes as the threats to life and our civilization, that could be destroyed by nuclear, chemical and biological processes, or by the planet’s ever increasing, eventually abrupt, warming, that, as many scientists suggest, would destroy much of the life we know, and could endanger the human species itself. As the Earthcharter puts it: «our common destiny calls us to a new beginning». No one has had that type of daring, not even Marina Silva, who brought up –to her great credit– the sustainability paradigm.

What we can say with certainty is that we cannot continue the way we are going. The price of our survival will be a radical change in the way we inhabit the Earth. The proposal of eco-development or a bio-economy, as Ladislau Dowbor and Ignacy Sachs, among others, suggest, encourages us to head in that direction.

One of the first to see the intrinsic relationship between the economy and biology was the Romanian economist and mathematician Nicholas Georgescu Roegen (1906-1994). Contrary to dominant thinking, this author, already in the 1960s, called attention to insustainability of growth, given the limits of Earth’s goods and services. He started talking about «economic reduction, for environmental sustainability and social equity» (www.degrowth.net). That reduction, better called, “growth”, means reducing quantitative growth in favor of the qualitative, in the sense of preserving the goods and services that future generations will require. In reality, the bioeconomy is a subsystem of nature’s system, always limited, and, therefore, it requires constant care by humans. Economics must obey and follow nature’s levels of preservation and regeneration (see Roegen’s theses in the 28/10/2011 IHU interview of Andrei Cechin).

A similar model, called ecodevelopment and bioeconomy is being proposed by, among others, the afore-mentioned PUC-SP professor of economics, Ladislau Dowbor, whose thinking is in line with that of another economist, Ignacy Sachs, a Pole, who for love became a naturalized Frenchman and Brazilian. Sachs came to Brazil in 1941, worked here for several years and now maintains a center for Brazilian studies at the University of Paris. He is an economist who by 1980 awoke to the ecological question, and is possibly the first to frame his reflections in the anthropocene context. That is, in the context of the strong pressure human activities place on the ecosystems and planet Earth as a whole, to the point of causing the Earth to lose her systemic equilibrium, which is manifested in extreme events. The anthropocene, then, would inaugurate a new geological era, with humans as a global risk factor, like a dangerously low and devastating meteor. Sachs takes into account that new data in the ecological-social discourse.

Dowbor’s and Sachs’ analysis combines economics, ecology, justice and social inclusion. Hence is born a concept of possible sustainability, still within the limitations imposed by the dominant mode of production, industrialist, consumerist, individualist, predatorory and polluting.

Both men are convinced that an acceptable sustainability will not be reached absent a sensible lessening of social inequalities, the incorporation of the citizenry as a popular participant in the democratic play, respect for cultural differences, the introduction of ethical values of respect for all life and permanent caring for the environment. If these requirements are fulfilled, the conditions for sustainable eco-development would be created.

Sustainability demands a certain social equity, this is, «a leveling of rich and poor countries» and a more or less homogeneous distribution of the costs and benefits of development. That way, for example, the poorest countries have a greater right to increase their ecological footprint (their need for land, water, nutrients and energy), to fulfill their requirements, while the richer countries must reduce theirs, or bring it under control. It is not about assuming the mistaken thesis of negative growth, but of finding a different path for development, decarbonizing production, reducing environmental impact and encouraging the application of intangible values such as generosity, cooperation, solidarity and compassion. Dowbor and Sachs emphatically repeat that solidarity is an essential aspect of the human condition, and the cruel individualism we are witnessing at present, an expression of the limitless competition and accumulative greed, resulting in a cancer that destroys the bonds of coexistence, making society fatally unsustainable.

They gave us the beautiful expression, «biocivilización», a civilization that gives centrality to life, to the Earth, to the ecosystems and to each and every person. From it arose the lovely saying, «The Earth of the Good Hope» (See, Ecodevelopment: to grow without destroying, [Ecodesarrollo: crecer sin destruir. 1986] and the interview in Carta Maior, 8/29/2011).

This proposal appears to be one of the most sensible and responsible ways of confronting the dangers facing the planet and the future of the human species. Dowbor’s and Sachs’ proposal; (http://dowbor.org) deserves to be considered because it shows great functionality and viability.
Free translation from the Spanish sent by
Melina Alfaro, volar@fibertel.com.ar,
done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

Elections in light of the anti-people history

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

There is nothing better than viewing the present elections in light of the Brazilian history of tension between the elites and the people. I will avail myself of the contribution of a serious historian, educated in Rome, Louvain, and in the USP of Sao Paulo, father Jose Oscar Beozzo, one of the most brilliant minds of our clergy.

Says Beozzo: «the basic question in our society is the right of the marginalized to life, which is always threatened by the abysmal inequality of access to life’s necessities and by the meager opportunities open to the great majority of the lower strata.

As Caio Prado Junior teaches us, our unequal society rests on four pillars that are hard to dislodge: a) that ownership of the land is concentrated in the hands of the few, such that there is no “free” or “available” land for those who work it, or for those who were its original owners, the indigenous peoples; b) the predominance of monoculture; c) that production is focused on the foreign market (sugar, tobacco, cotton, coffee, cocoa, and now soy); d) the regime of slave labor.

Independence from Portugal did not alter any of those pillars. Those who at that time dreamed of a different Brazil proposed a change from ownership of large tracts, to ownership of small plots, in the hands of those who worked the land; from monoculture to polyculture, from production for the international market to production geared towards local consumption and supply for the domestic market; from slave labor to free family work. This could be done in small regions peripheral to tropical monocultures, in the Gaucha and Catarinense mountain ranges, with German, Italian and Polish colonists, in a more democratic form of property ownership.

The large slave owners were strongly opposed to all those measures, and they crushed by fire and sword the popular uprisings that in any way looked towards democratization of the economy, politics, and above all, of labor relations. Suffice it to recall some of those revolts: the insurrections of the Males slaves in Bahia, the Balayada in Maranhao, the Cabanagem in the Amazon, the Playera revolt in Pernambuco, and the Farroupilha in the South.

The Revolution of the 30, with its nationalist tendencies, moved, if only partially, the country’s axis from foreign markets towards the domestic; from a model of agrarian exports towards one of substitution of imports; from the dominance of the coffee exporting elites of the Minas/Sao Paulo pact towards new leaders in the zones of production for the domestic market, such as those of rice and jerky of Rio Grande del Sur; from the restricted vote to the “universal” vote (except for the illiterate, still the great majority of adults at that time), from the exclusively male vote to women’s suffrage; from labor relations dictated only by the power of the masters towards regulation, at least in the industrial sphere, with the creation of the Secretary of Labor and of labor laws focused on the working class.The unavoidable dominance of the landowners within their properties could not be touched by labor regulations, which only occurred after 1964 with the Rural Labor Statute.

Getulio established a policy of appeasement between the classes, and of “cooperation” between capital and labor, the workers and the captains of industry, aimed at industrialization and the defense of national interests.

In the current electoral campaign, certain media have created the slogan: “Out PT”. They seek to end the dictatorship of the PT and to restore the “dictatorship of the financial market”. What really bothers them? Corruption and the “mensalon”?

As I see it, what bothers them are the democratizing measures, notwithstanding all their limitations, such as the Pro-Uni, the quotas in the universities for students coming from public schools rather than from particular colleges; the quotas for those whose grandparents came from the warehouses of slavery; agrarian reform, still inadequate to the task; the demarcation and official sanctioning of continuous areas of Yanomami land, opposed by a half dozen rice producers, backed by agro-business and a unanimous chorus of landowners, and all the social programs such as Bolsa Familiar, Light for all, My House, my Life, More Doctors, and more.

These critics never were annoyed when the State paid the tuition of young students from rich families whose children received a good education in private schools, making it easier for them to access free education in the public universities, which deepened the inequality of opportunity. For courses of medicine, those studies cost the state from six to seven thousand reales a month. Those families never protested the “handouts” given the rich, which they considered to be their “right” based on their merit, rather than a pure, and scandalous, privilege. They are the same doctors who refuse to practice in the interior of the country, or the favelas that lack even a single physician.

Those who raise their voices, saying that everything is going bad in the country, in spite of improvements in the minimum wage, the creation of millions of jobs, the widening of social policies geared to the poorest, the creation of More Physicians, oppose the policies of the PT that seek to assure citizens’ rights, to widen the democratization of society, to struggle against privilege and above all, to put some limits (insufficient in my point of view) on profits and the dictatorship of financial capital and of the “market”.

This is the reason for my vote for another project of country, that attends to the demands always denied to the great majorities. For that reason, I voted for Dilma in the first round and will do so again in the second, with respect for the other options».

I join in this interpretation, and in the vote for Dilma Rousseff.

Free translation from the Spanish sent by
Melina Alfaro, volar@fibertel.com.ar,
done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

A sickness called fundamentalism

Leonardo Boff7 Comentários

Everything healthy may become ill. Religion, contrary to what critics such as Freud, Marx, Dawkins and others contend, is part of a healthy reality: the search by the human being for the Ultimate Reality, that gives final meaning to history and the universe. That search is legitimate and is found in the oldest expressions of the homo sapiens/demens, but it also has unhealthy expressions. One of them, the most frequent now, is religious fundamentalism, that is also found where a unique form of thinking reigns in politics.

Fundamentalism is not a doctrine in itself, but an attitude and a form of living a doctrine. The fundamentalist attitude appears when the truths of its church or its group are understood as the only legitimate ones, to the exclusion of all others, which are deemed erroneous and therefore to have no right to exist. Those who imagine that their point of view is the only valid one are condemned to be intolerant. This closed attitude leads to contempt, discrimination, and to religious or political violence.

The niche of fundamentalism is historically found in the Northamerican Protestantism of the late XIX century, when modernity emerged not only in technology, but also in democratic forms of political coexistence and the liberalization of customs. In this context a strong reaction arose within the Protestant tradition, loyal to the ideals of the «founding fathers», all derived from the rigors of the Protestant ethic. The term fundamentalism is linked to a collection of books published by Princeton University for Presbyterians under the title, Fundamentals: A Testimony of Truth, 1909-1915.

This collection proposes an antidote to modernization: a rigorous, dogmatic Christianity founded on a literal reading of the Bible, considered infallible and unequivocal in each and every word, because it was considered to be the Word of God. They opposed all exegetic-critical interpretation of the Bible and the application of its message to the present context.

Since then, this fundamentalist tendency has been present in Northamerican society and politics. It gained religious expression in the so-called «electronic Churches», that use modern means of tele-communication, covering the country from coast to coast, and that have similar churches in Brazil and elsewhere in Latin-America. They combat liberal Christians, those who practice a scientific interpretation of the Bible, accept the contemporary feminist and gay movements, and defend the decriminalization of abortion. All that is interpreted by fundamentalists as the work of Satan.

The political side assimilated the religious, marrying it to the political ideology of «manifest destiny», created after the United States confiscated territory from Mexico. According to that ideology, it is the divine destiny of Northamericans to bring to all peoples, clarity, the values of private property, the free market, democracy and rights, as John Adams, the second President of the United States, asserted. According to the popular and political version, Northamericans are «the new chosen people» that will bring everyone to the «Land of Emmanuel, seat of that new and singular Kingdom that will be given to the Saints of the Highest». K. Amstrong, In the Name of God, (En nombre de Dios, Companhia das Letras, São Paulo 2001).

That political-religious amalgam has led to the arrogance and one sided vision of international relations found in Northamerican foreign policy, that is still prevalent under Barack Obama.

We find a similar type of fundamentalism in extremely conservative Catholic groups, that still claim that «there is no salvation outside of the Church». They are eager to convert the greatest number of people possible, to save them from hell. Some evangelical groups, especially in sectors of the charismatic churches with their TV programs, engage in fundamentalist disparagement, particularly with regard to the Afro-Brazilian religions, because they consider their celebrations to be the work of Satan. This results in frequent exorcisms and even invasions of terreiros to «purify them» from the Exu.

Fundamentalism in both Catholic and some evangelical groups is most visible in the moral questions: they are inflexible on the issues of abortion, same sex unions, and women’s struggles for freedom in decision making. They foster true ideological wars in the social networks and the means of mass communication against all who discuss such questions, even though they are part of the agenda of all open societies.

Sadly, we have a candidate to the presidency of Brazil, Marina Silva, who adheres to a type of fundamentalism, namely, Biblicism. She maintains a literal reading of the Bible, as if the solution to all problems could be found there. As Pope Francis put it so well, rather than a warehouse of truths, the Bible is an inspiring source for beneficial human initiatives. The Bible must be held in our brains to illuminate reality, not in front of the eyes, to obscure it.

The Brazilian State is lay and pluralist. It welcomes all religions without adhering to any. According to the Brazilian Constitution, no given religion may impose its points of view on the whole nation. An authority can have religious convictions, but must govern through the laws, not through these convictions. There are four Gospels, not just one. They coexist through the diversity of interpretations they give to the message of Jesus of Nazareth. It is an example of the richness of diversity. God is the eternal coexistence of Three Divine Beings, that through love form one single God. Diversity is fecund.

Free translation from the Spanish by
Servicios Koinonia, http://www.servicioskoinonia.org.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.