[Marxism] Frei Betto: "Welcome" Mr. Bush

["Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Brazilian author Frei Betto's essay has appeared all over the net and
probably 
in many print publications, in addition to the Cuban Juventud Rebelde where
it 
appeared here as an opinion column on Nov. 2. There's a large delegation of
Cubans participating in the protests in Argentine against Bush's visit which
will
take place later today. Massive security precautions including the
mobilization of
thousands of troops have been made to protect Bush from what are expected to
be
the vigorous expressions of public opposition to Bush and his policies and
wars. 
 
Betto has written many books and essays, most prominently FIDEL AND
RELIGION, 
his booklength interview with the Cuban leader on that important subject. He
was a 
member of the Workers Party government led by Lula during the first several
of
its years in office. He is one of the best-known international figures of
the Brazilian 
left and an uncompromising  supporter of  the Cuban Revolution. He came to
Cuba 
in February of this year to present a collection of his writings on Brazil
and the many
contradictions of its development path. It was published here in Havana by
the Juan 
Marinello Institute, a local think-tank. His presentation was attended by
the Brazilian
ambassador to Cuba, a former priest and underground guerilla fighter
himself.
 

Walter Lippmann, CubaNews
http://www.walterlippmann.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews
===================================================================

PROGRESO WEEKLY
November 3, 2005

"Welcome" Mr. Bush
By Frei Betto

Alai-amlatina Service (Latin American Information Service)
http://www.progresoweekly.com/index.php?progreso=Frei_Betto&otherweek=113108
4000

President Bush: Welcome to a sovereign country called Brazil. As
President Lula has already shown, we don't want the FTAA and we have
a government that backs Chávez's Venezuela and Fidel's Cuba. We were
a colony of Portugal for 322 years, so we know what it is to produce
wealth for the benefit of others.

Even today the Brazilian people work very hard in order to pay the
e(x)ternal foreign debt contracted by our elites without asking our
people. Our tributary burden is one of the highest in the world, 36%
of the GNP; our annual interest rate is more than 19%; every year our
government spends (on interest payments of the debt) more than ten
times the budget for new investments. Officially, our primary surplus
is 4.45%. Actually, it's over 5%, because our government's economic
pundits believe in all faith that the god market can produce the
miracle of the nation's welfare without any structural changes, such
as agrarian reform. And I'm not saying that it is our problem,
because the IMF, which you order around, controls our economy. I
don't know of a single country that has left poverty behind thanks to
the IMF.

I come to ask for peace. Twenty-eight hundred years ago a Jew called
Isaiah claimed that there will be peace only as a consequence of
justice. You believe that peace will come by the force of arms. But
war is the terrorism of the wealthy, as terrorism is the war of the
poor. Wasn't the U.S. defeat in Vietnam enough? One million people
died in that war, 50,000 of which were Americans. Sooner or later
your country will have to leave Iraq with no pride left, loaded with
the burden of thousands of young Americans (many of them Blacks and
Latinos) doomed to death because they believed that what is good for
the United States is good for the world.

Your country has only 6% of the world's population. Yet it controls
50% of the planet's wealth. You have never asked for democracy in
Saudi Arabia, where there are the greatest oil reserves in the world,
because that country's autocratic government follows Uncle Sam's
policy, although it's the source of bin Laden and the terrorists that
blew up the Twin Towers. Last year, the spending of the whole world
on weapons was almost $900 billion. The United States spent almost
half of that sum ? $390 billion. Only $50 billion a year, until 2015,
would be needed to eradicate hunger in the planet!

Why does death deserve more money than life? Isn't there something
wrong in that rationale? Why does capitalism place private property
above human life and the collective welfare? Why do 5 million
children under 5 years of age die every year while the wealthy
countries give less than 10% of the money they spend in arms for
international cooperation?

You should know that 86 million people have died in wars since 1940.
The two atomic bombs, which your country dropped on the innocent
populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, evaporated almost 100,000
lives and left a wake of cancer that stretches to the present in the
offspring of the victims. Most of them young people. Around two
thousand U.S. troops have died in Iraq in that insane war re-launched
in 2003. Your father invaded that country in 1991, and the result
embarrassed your nation in such a manner that you felt the obligation
of repeating the gesture, with the hope of toppling Saddam Hussein.
So you did, but the resistance of Iraqis has challenged, to the
present, your country's military might. Among civilians, some 130,000
Iraqis have died from attacks by the United States in 1991. Thanks to
arms supplied by the U.S., including chemical weapons, particularly
at the time of the Iraq-Iran war, Saddam killed some 200,000 Iraqis.

Recently, I visited your country. In Utah, many persons asked for my
impression of the United States. I said that the difference between
your country and mine is that in the U.S. you are convinced that
there is no happiness without money. And my people are happy without
money. It's enough to have the five "Fs": feijoa (beans), flour
(farinha), faith (fe), soccer (futebol) and party (fiesta). That
irrational search for wealth is what prevents the people of the
United States from feeling solidarity towards the poor of the world.
We all saw what happened to many Blacks and poor people of New
Orleans during the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina. They were
forsaken, until you responded when you perceived that, in the eyes of
the world, the king was naked. And as a bonus, one of your advisors
had the gall to suggest abortion for Black women as a measure of
reducing poverty in the United States.

"Welcome", President Bush, to the nation of the future. We want to be
fraternal friends of the people of the United States, without having
the CIA threatening our democracy, as in 1964, when it helped to set
up a dictatorship that lasted 21 years, and to have reciprocity in
our trade relations, with full respect for our sovereignty.

Frei Betto, a writer, is the author, among other books, of Típicos
Tipos (A Girafa), Jabuti Prize, 2005.

Copyright 2005Š Progreso Weekly, Inc.
  




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