Re: American intention to split Brazil?

[crebello <crebello@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Nestor wrote:

> Other  interests are at stake, not the

> last of them the intention of the United States to destroy Brazil as

> an eventual rallying point for Latin Americans, or at least South
> Americans. Brazil shares Amazonian borders with the Guyanas (and
> Suriname), Venezuela, Colombia, Perú, and Bolivia. Controlling the
> Amazonia is, from the point of view of geopolitics, a way to control
> Brazilian eventual expansion to the Caribbean.
>
> It is not a matter of "subimperialisms" now. The recent moves of
> Chávez -who is proposing direct pipe line connection between
> Venezuela and Brazil- and the interest of the Brazilian military to
> have a saying in the Colombian process (a saying that strongly
> differs from the American one, because while Brazil is interested in
> peace in Colombia, a huge part of the American military are
> interested in a new, enlarged Viet Nam) are strong enough, IMHO, for
> the USA to begin seriously thinking of an intervention (under cloak,
> perhaps) in the Amazon Basin.
>
> I hope we can have interesting interventions from our Brazilian list
> members. This Amazonia issue is far from a minor one.
>
> Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
> gorojovsky@xxxxxxxxxxx
>

As usual, Nestor has presented the case superbly, and I do not now if I can add
something... But
the facts are that:

(1) The only reason for Argentina not joining outrightly the FTAA, after 
dollarising
its economy,
is exactly the existence of the Mercosur and the fact that the such 
dollarisation
would be
entirely harmful to Brazilian economic interests;

(2) Now, the existence of increasing economic exchanges between Brazil and both
Bolivia and
Venezuela - centered above all on pipeline connections (a natural gas pipeline 
between
Bolivia and
Brazil being scheduled to enter in operation this year) - will give room to 
increased
talk about
the creation of a Merconorte, as the northern counterpart of the Mercosur - 
that is, a
custons
union that would tie the economies of the N. South American countries to Brazil 
-
therefore
precluding further dollarisation and the inclusion of said countries in the 
FTAA.
Also, Venezuela
has a kind of common market with various Caribbean and Central American 
countries,
that would
gravitate around any future Merconorte. Add to this the increasing level of 
political
strife - in
very different proportions, of course - in Ecuador, Peru and Colombia, and we 
get all
kinds of
thereats to the prospects of a direct American economic hegemony through FTAA.

(3) Also, we have a more intersting problem...Until now, Latin American 
nationalism,
from a
leftist viewpoint, seemed to be a dead end, since it seemed to direct contradict
working class
internationalism.BTW, today, the Rio de Janeiro paper *Jornal do Brazil* 
published an
article by
the oldtimer nationalist, aged 103 - but still clear-headed - Barbosa Lima 
Sobrinho,
that went on
the point that, after the Bolshevik revolution, Trotsky had been the mouthpiece 
for
all kinds of
internationalist appeals, that, according to Mr. Barbosa Lima, could be nothing 
else
but a
naivety, since no national political community will surrender its own interests 
in
favour of an
alien community. The emergence of the Mercosur, however, creates the 
possibility of a
historical
relay between nationalism and plein internationalism, namely the possibility of 
a
supranational
nationalism based on the idea of the regional supranational interest, opening 
thus the
possibility
of somekind of a confederacy of Lat-Am. republics - eventually, a confederacy of
Socialist LA
republics, who knows?

(4) Of course, that does not means that Brazilian landowners should be allowed 
to burn
the
rainforest to their hearts' content. But any international action for the 
protection
of the
rainforest should have in mind the fact that such protection depends upon 
progressive
developments
in the internal political lives of Brazil and her neighboring countries, and 
not upon
some
"humanitarian" international intervention.

Carlos Rebello