At a Solidarity Economy event in Curitiba, the Brazil of Fato Paraná interviewed the secretary of the portfolio in the federal government. Gilberto Carvalho, one of Lula’s closest advisers, spoke of the importance of popular participation in the government, the need to approach the “peripheries” and the evangelical base, the solidary economy initiatives that bear fruit, despite the weakening of public policies in the recent years, as well as a supposed “radicalization” of Lula in his current mandate.
See key excerpts below:
Brasil de Fato Paraná: We are coming at a time when popular movements demand work in communication, solidarity, cooperative experiences, production. In other words, there is a melting pot of culture taking shape… In your opinion, how should the Lula government work with this? Also thinking about the result of the second round of the presidential election, what will be the relationship of this “popular broth” with the new government?
Gilberto Carvalho: The lessons of the past have taught us a lot, that this relationship cannot be incidental, occasional, the icing on the cake… It is essential. You can’t build the future if you don’t start, right now, anticipating forms, fundamentals, principles… We have to have a method of government. Lula understood that. When he launches the Council for Popular Participation, when he determines that the issue of participation is strong in the General Secretariat, coordinating this throughout the government, that each ministry has an agent of popular participation, that the Secretariat for the Solidarity Economy is recreated, the Ministry of Women, the Ministry of Human Rights, of Racial Equality are recreated, this is not to please the audience. This is part of a conception that society needs to be inside the government, building the government project together with those who are occupying the positions.
I am convinced that new forms will advance, resume plebiscites, referendums, conferences, councils. But, in addition, policy making itself will have a new degree of participation. This corresponds to a progress that society itself has made. 2023 is not 2003, there are new problems, economic and such, but there are also new advantages. One of them is this: society has matured and participates in a much more concrete way than in that period.
:: The struggle for food sovereignty in Brazil ::
You have a very important perception, based on your own experience, that the periphery today is not the one you found yourself in in the 1980s. and seek to change it… You also talk about the role of evangelicals in the periphery, that there is now a popular leadership on the right, which is Bolsonaro, and the importance of communication. How important is this dispute?
I think that this challenge constitutes, I won’t say the main one, but that it is one of the great challenges we have, which is to break with a culture that we have been creating, over time, of believing that it was enough to practice adequate public policies, that with that you would have a result of material, economic inclusion, and that there would also be cultural and citizen inclusion. We’ve already broken our face, and reality has shown us that it’s not like that. There’s not this story of you making the person have access to a good and that is automatically a factor of awareness. What has been proven, in general, is the opposite: the capture of those who have some economic access on the part of a middle-class culture, in the worst sense of the term, of individualism, of violence.
We have no right to repeat this mistake. The government will have to take, and I hope this will start to happen very soon, this care that every government action has a reading, a dispute over the reading of that event. From this point of view, if back in 2003 we had the work of community radios, which we did not take into account, and of various forms of the press, at present there is a huge leap forward in this area, which is social networks. The work of digital inclusion, of communication through networks, has become dramatically important. These vehicles are essential for reading and interpreting reality that people do.
So we have to, on the one hand, value the democratic initiatives of the press, much more than we have already done, make alliances with the progressive sectors that are occupying space in the press, without white paper, but valuing a press that creates, that helps to develop a citizen conscience. In addition to a heavy investment in communication via social networks, along with physical presence, this cannot be forgotten. The physical presence of the left, of progressive militancy among the population, is essential for us. Without this, we will “limp” again, we will make the mistake and weaken ourselves. Because it is also through this communication, information, and having this awareness, that you will stimulate the organization of popular power. Through popular committees, through the multiple forms we have today of organizing the people.
How is Bolsonarism and evangelical pastors in the periphery, how to deal with it?
I strongly defend that, mainly in the peripheries, a new alliance with the evangelicals is sought. One thing are the great leaders of the mass-television churches, another thing is there at the base. Of the 20 thousand candidates for councilor that the PT had in 2020, more than two thousand were evangelicals, many pastors.
There is a field of negotiation, conversation, identification, which is possible for us to build. I think it is strongly necessary to seek to build this alliance. It’s no use creating war against the big churches, you end up victimizing them and giving them the motto to make their campaigns fake and full of fake news. What interests us is the dialogue with those who are there at the base, doing their work, which, I insist, is very generous, very attentive to the people, and we are interested in joining them, seeking points of convergence and alliance.
Talking a little about solidarity economy. I interviewed Paul Singer a few times, and this was his life project, he went so far as to say that the solidary economy was one of the ways to overcome capitalism. How is this resumption in the current government, what is more important to do?
First, we need to talk about the enormous responsibility of succeeding a genius like Paul Singer. I have a real reverence for his work. Then it is recognizing that, despite the difficulties, the seeds were sown and bore fruit. I am impressed by how, walking around any corner of the country, you see the initiatives of the solidarity economy, the most diverse forms of cooperative, in short.
This resumption intends to take a leap towards taking the solidarity economy from being a niche within the government to becoming an effective public policy. For this, the government needs to invest, deal with the financing of the solidarity economy, with the availability of resources and people to carry out assistance, organization and training work. Create and expand the networks of the various initiatives.
I am, like Paul Singer, very excited, because reality is showing us how fruitful this path is. No illusions that this will, by itself, break capitalism, but I would say that it is an important way of anticipating socialist values, as a form of re-education.
Today (4/2) one of the headlines on the UOL website was something like “Lula is more to the left in this government than in the past”. Would you say that this is true, who knows Lula well and is close to him? Is he more to the left, more radical?
I find these qualifications amusing, because Lula is where he has always been. What Lula does not want to do is to fail in the essential commitments he made: the issue of hunger, giving back rights to workers, resuming the country’s growth with income distribution. If capital is more sensitive today, it is more concerned today with financialization, with everything that is happening, if the situation is different, that is a reaction of capital.
I want to insist on that, Lula is no longer on the left, he is where he has always been, which is the defense of the people’s interests, and he was elected for that. He knows that he cannot falsify, that he cannot fail with those who have placed their trust in him, which is the majority of the Brazilian people.
Source: BdF Paraná
Editing: Lia Bianchini
