SPEECH BY THE MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS, AMBASSADOR ERNESTO ARAÚJO, AT THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION SEPTEMBER 11, 2019 FUNDAÇÃO ALEXANDRE DE GUSMÃO "BRAZIL IS BACK" SPEECH BY THE MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS, AMBASSADOR ERNESTO ARAÚJO, AT THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION * Good afternoon! dominate and to harness, but went out of It’s a pleasure to be here. I’d like to express control, fortunately, and became a revolt my thanks for Heritage [Foundation], it’s really against a whole system whose corruption was an honor to be here in this august hall. still not totally clear, but of which the people, in My thanks to President Kay James; Vice their wisdom, had the intuition already. It was President Jay Carafano, and all the staff that a revolt against the political-economic system, made this possible. which didn’t deliver services or economic I would start by saying that I just realized opportunities that people wanted, in spite of its it’s 9/11 so, before really starting, I’d like to social-oriented rhetoric, but also a cultural express our sentiment in memory of the revolt against the ownership of public victims of that terrible day. I also remember discourse by politically correct media. one year afterwards – so, 2002 – I saw the In an information society, whoever controls cover of, I think it was “Foreign Policy” the discourse controls the power. People magazine, and the cover article said, about started to realize that in Brazil, back in 2013. 9/11, “The Day Nothing Much Changed”. It’s a People went to the streets to protest against way of seeing it, right? I think then we were something, they didn’t know exactly what, I trying to get a sense of what happened that think (that’s what protests normally are, I day, and what changed and what did not think) and they didn’t get what they wanted change, and some of the things I’m about to because they didn’t know exactly what it was, say may be also a part of an ongoing but when they came home, they went into speculation about everything that changed in social media, and they never left! And they are the world in the last two decades. still there. We are still there. This is changing So Brazil is back – I believe that’s the title I the country and is part of a world change. The gave to this speech. Back to where we never people trying to ascertain their power over the were, but where we feel that we belong – and discourse, against the political-economic where we think all nations belong. In any case, system and against the media which control we feel we are back to the center of the fight. each other, the political-economic system and And we feel that Brazil is part of a global the media, and still try to control the people. process, that I’ll try to describe a little bit. This spontaneous movement reemerged in We can say that it started back in 2013, 2015 in the shape of the protests for Dilma when Brazilians went to the streets Rousseff’s impeachment and destitution. It spontaneously, by the hundreds of thousands, had already a strong nationalist vein, which maybe millions, without being able to voice went beyond the simple removal of a detested entirely what they were rising against, and for leader. It was against the regime of the reasons that were certainly far larger than the Workers’ Party (which is an Orwellian immediate reasons of the revolt – more or designation, since we are at it, because no less like the Boston Tea Party, perhaps. It was workers were ever seen inside the Workers’ a rise of the equivalent to 5 cents in the price Party). It was against the Gramscian state in of bus tickets that sparked a movement – a which Brazil had turned, a system of state movement that, in a sense, is still going on in control of the economy and media control of Brazil, a movement that at first the Left tried to the culture. ________________ * Speech by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Ernesto Araújo, at the Heritage Foundation, in Washington, D.C., held on September 11, 2019. Source: <http://www.itamaraty.gov.br/pt-BR/discursos-artigos-e-entrevistas-categoria/ministro-das-relacoes- exteriores-discursos/>. Speech by the Chancellor Ernesto Araújo at the Heritage Foundation They got Dilma removed from office (I think I But what is it that mobilized Brazilians, can say we got Dilma removed from office, all Brexiters and US MAGA voters? Brazilians), and some people back then I think it’s, to put in a more elegant term, it’s thought: “Well, this is it”, but it was not it, it was a revolt against ideology. The realization we not over. The Workers’ Party was replaced at had been lied to, that we had been despised the top, but the system stayed on. People by an élite that tried to rule us and abate us in continued to strongly support the fight against the name of social justice, or in the name of corruption which was going on, the “Lava Jato” European integration, or in the name of a operation, which later got Lula convicted for borderless world, in the name of progress or corruption and sentenced to 11 years in jail, a whatever. All high-sounding names that are term that he is now serving, as you know. there not to describe the reality, but to impose People embraced the rule of law as a banner, a certain power structure into reality. like never before. And they kept pressing for a If you believe in Toynbee’s theory of total cleaning-up of the system. So they civilization advanced by challenge and realized that it was more than removing a response, what is the challenge, the big president from office; what was at stake was threat, that not only Brazil or the US, or the the connection between the age-old system of United Kingdom or any other country, but the the economical-political “give and take” system big threat that our civilization now faces? and, packed with that system, some sort of Some people would say ‘climate change’, but hegemonic social project. it’s not, absolutely not true. The big challenge That was Brazil, but then, in 2016, came of is ideology. course the Brexit vote and Trump’s election. In 1989 and immediately afterwards, it Few people realized back then, but I think this seemed that Western civilization had overcome showed Brazil was already part of something its biggest challenge, Soviet communism. In bigger, something more universal in nature. the ensuing peace, without a challenge, the There was – and still is, I think – some sort of West started to stagnate. It started to splurge. “Zeitgeist” for freedom across the world. Without the need to fight for life or death, it The same movement reemerged around started to make mistakes without any Jair Bolsonaro’s candidacy. From 2017 it consequences, or thinking they did not have became increasingly clear that he was the any consequences. It made a huge mistake in only political leader capable of bringing the the diagnosis of what had ensured its victory. people to power, the only one who believed in It thought it was only the economy that had freedom, in nationhood, and in God, and in ensured the West’s victory, and ignored the their interaction. culture. It ignored, for example, Ronald We may say that Trump and Bolsonaro are Reagan’s advice in his farewell speech. It part of the same insurgency, what I would call through the Christian faith had nothing to do the universal insurgency against bullshit. with it, when it clearly was a huge part of the Here and there and elsewhere, in Brazil, in West’s success, as Saint Pope John Paul II’s the US, elsewhere, people fight for something fight clearly shows. His action against else than the economy, something else than communism was not a political action under just getting rid of corruption. Something else religious pretexts, but rather a religious, faith- than just getting their jobs back. based action with some political instruments. 2 Speech by the Chancellor Ernesto Araújo at the Heritage Foundation In any case, the West opened the ground for first real chance we ever had to really have a the emergence of the new challenge, in the prosperous economy inside a healthy, shape of what today I believe we can call confident society. I am sure that only in a globalism. society of trust and confidence, you can have In general, we can say that globalism is a thriving open economy, only on top of what came to be the amalgam of the nationhood, family, traditional ties, you can globalized economy with cultural Marxism have a functioning capitalist economy. infiltrated in the institutions. So, basically, Globalism wants to sell us the incompatibility economic globalization hijacked by cultural of those goals, and we are disproving that Marxism. thesis. In Brazil globalism took the shape of a In the US the globalist program worked slightly different amalgam, that of the traditional differently – not, mainly, I think, through state corrupt system of patronage dominated by a control, as in Brazil, but mainly through the Gramscian left infiltrated in the cultural destruction of American manufacture and its institutions. In Brazil they infiltrated what we technological base, thanks to globalization, used to call the “physiological state” – I don’t also coupled with the destruction or erosion of know if it makes sense in English, but traditional ties and values.