#dilma

Thank you for worrying, things in here are really tough. Yesterday I went to a protest in the Paulista Avenue in São Paulo and it helped me a lot to stay hopeful.

For those of you who don't know, Bolsonaro supporters invaded and destroyed the Alvorada Palace, the oficial residence of the president. They called it a protest, when in reality it was terrorism and an attack on democracy. Those are the same people that did the n4zi salute and refused to accept the result of the elections.

I've seen people compare what is happening in Brazil to what happened in the USA when Trump lost to Joe Biden and I understand that the comparison makes it easier to understand, but it's important to know that this situation was already predicted by anyone who studied brazilian history. It was only a matter of time and if we keep ignoring the real reason behind this, it won't stop. So, i'll try to explain a little more about it in a simple way.

Brazil went through a military dictatorship that began in 1964 and ended in 1985. During this time, innocent people were killed by the military. The opposition was silenced, censured, women were raped, people were tortured. Those who were against it and survived were lucky, but many lost friends. Til this day, many people were never found. Our current president, elected by the people in a honest election, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula), was one of the people who fought against the military. He was chased and tortured but he survived and because of people like him, we are now living in a democracy.

The fact that we don't talk about the military dictatorship is why some people don't even recognize it as a dictatorship. Many people still defend it. Bolsonaro defended it. He was a huge supporter of the military and already gave many interviews saying that the military's only mistake was "not killing enough". After the end of the dictatorship no museums were made in memory of the victims. Supporters and even some tortures like Colonel Ustra were never arrested.

Lula was president from 2003 to 2011. After he left the presidency, Dilma Rousseff was elected the first female president of Brazil. She was one of his great friends and also part of the same political party as him, the Worker's Party (in portuguese: Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT).

Dilma also fought against the military with Lula. She was also tortured and luckily survived (and without ratting out any of her teammates!!). She was president from 2011 to 2016. In 2016, she suffered a political coup. They called it an impeachment but 94,7% of the  congressmen who voted her out were being investigated for corruption because of her. There was no reason for an impeachment, there were no proves that she was corrupt. Her mistake was to try to fight them all at once.

On the day of the coup, we saw what Bolsonaro was capable of for the first time. At that time he was a congressmen and he voted her out. During his speech, he said "In memory of Colonel Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, the fear of Dilma Rousseff, for the Army of Caxias, for the Armed Forces, for Brazil above all and God above everyone, my vote is yes".

Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, the torturer.

“In this case of the Teles family, which is a terrible case because the parents of Edson Teles and Janaina Teles, at the time Edson was 4 years old and Janaina 9, they were brutally tortured and the children were taken to the premises of the Doi-Codi and saw people tortured and their parents hurt. At first they did not recognize them. They stayed there for a while without the presence of any relatives and no known person being used as a bargaining chip so that the parents, Amelinha Teles and César Teles, could say what they [torturers] wanted to hear”, said the professor, José Carlos Moreira da Silva.

This was the man that Jair Bolsonaro, who would later become president of Brazil, paid tribute to. The saying “for Brazil above all and God above everyone” was also a reference to the Nazi propaganda, in Hitler's Germany, "Deutschland über alles" which, in English, means "Germany above all".

Bolsonaro was not arrested after that. Nothing ever happened to him. That was when it all began.

Dilma was betrayed by her own vice-president, Michel Temer. She was publicly humiliated by senators, congressmen and the media.

Elections finally arrived and people who saw what was really happening had a glimmer of hope. But then the worst happened.

On April 7, 2018, Sergio Moro, friend of Bolsonaro and then federal judge, illegally arrested Lula for the crimes of passive corruption and money laundering in the criminal action involving a triplex in Guarujá with absolutely no proves. They had nothing on Lula but, if he was arrested, he couldn’t run in the elections and the Worker’s Party would not return to power. Lula da Silva peacefully turned himself in to the Federal Police after making a public speech.

“There’s no use in trying to stop me from traveling around this country, because there are milions of Lulas, Boulos, Manuelas and Dilma Rousseffs to do it for me. There’s no use in trying to stop my ideas. They’re already in the air, and you can’t imprison them! There’s no point in trying to stop my dreams, because when I stop dreaming, I’ll be dreaming throgh your minds and dreams! There’s no point in thinking everything’s going to stop the day Lula has a heart attack. That’s nonsense! Because my heart will be beating through yours and there are milions of hearts! The powerful can kill one, two, or a haundred roses. But they’ll never stop the arrival of spring and our fight is in search of spring!”, said Lula, before turning himself in.

In 2018, The Worker’s Party decided to put Fernando Haddad on Lula’s place. They tried their best, but Haddad didn’t have the same power that Lula had. Bolsonaro won and, in 2019, he took over.

Lula was released on November 8, 2019, one day after the Federal Supreme Court considered the arrest in second instance unconstitutional. The UN Human Rights Committee (United Nations) concluded that Sergio Moro was partial in the trial of Lava Jato cases against him. It was also considered that his political rights were injured when he was prevented from running in the 2018 elections.

Now, we have the opportunity to change that. How? By talking about the military dictatorship, giving visibility to all victims, recognizing our history, punishing those who threaten our democracy without forgiveness. And to finish, i want to remind you of something we all heared in school at least once: “Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it.”