We are excited to announce the Summer 2022 Claudia Jones Editorial Intern is Cygaelle “Cy” Bergado, a senior at Temple University majoring in Media Studies & Production. We asked Cy a few questions.
Tell us about yourself.
I am a Filipino-American organizer based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. My interests include fighting towards social justice, writing, video production and hanging out with my cat. I am ecstatic to be interning with Toward Freedom!
How would you describe your interest in journalism?
It has been rooted in me since I was a teenager; journalism pays duty to the people by informing us about important issues and events. Journalists provide information that help communities shape decisions—and by extension, organize. I’m proud to be in the journalism field.
What drew you to the Claudia Jones Editorial Internship?
Toward Freedom takes a grassroots perspective. I appreciated its diligence in bringing attention to human rights issues. It was very resonating to find TF‘s dedication towards anti-colonial struggles aligned with mine.
What do you hope to report on this summer?
This summer, I would like to report on the political tyranny of The Philippines. It is important to bring to light the human rights violations being committed there. I am looking to report on the fraudulent Philippine elections ridden with vote buying and voter disenfranchisement. These human rights violations are not anything new to the Filipino diaspora; as we have been colonized, militarized and oppressed by the governments of Spain, the United States, Japan and our own for thousands of years. I also hope to report on the struggle of the Filipino diaspora, from all around the globe, to fight back against these fascist empires.
Anything else you’d like to do while you’re at Toward Freedom?
I hope to strengthen my skills in writing, editing and fact-checking. I also am looking forward to meeting, collaborating with and finding solidarity with new comrades.
Afghan women line up at a World Food Program distribution point / credit: United Nations photo licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Editor’s Note: This article is the first in a series Toward Freedom has launched to examine the real impact and reasons for U.S. “humanitarian interventions.”
From the U.S. military intervention launched under the banner of democracy and human rights to restored warlords and the resuscitated Taliban regime, Afghan women have never stopped fighting for their rights.
When Taliban forces entered Kabul on August 15, appearing to have taken control of Afghanistan two weeks before the United States was set to complete its troop withdrawal, shock and fear for women’s fate under the Islamist group’s repressive rule quickly multiplied inside the country and globally.
After nearly 20 years of a U.S.-led coalition’s presence, a costly two-decade war, the very force the United States had tried to push out of power, in the name of its “War on Terror,” took over again. This time it occurred with stunning rapidity, in the wake of U.S. President Joe Biden’s hasty, chaotic military withdrawal.
With the U.S. exit from Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands of Afghan nationals were abandoned at the mercy of the Taliban, amid concern the fundamentalist movement would re-impose its hard-line interpretation of Islamic law on women and girls.
But securing women’s rights was used from the beginning to justify the U.S. military intervention. The Biden administration’s irresponsible pull-out in tandem with the swift, untroubled Taliban return speaks volumes about Washington’s lack of interest to secure respect for human rights and improve women’s lives. Humanitarian interventions have been used to deploy U.S. troops and drones in Iraq, Libya, Syria and other countries. As a consequence, 1 million people have been killed and an estimated 38 million have been forced to become refugees.
Condemning Humanitarian Interventions
The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), the oldest feminist organization in Afghanistan, stated in its response to the Taliban takeover: “It is a joke to say values like ‘women’s rights,’ ‘democracy,’ ‘nation-building,’ etc., were part of the U.S./NATO aims in Afghanistan!”
On International Human Rights Day, December 10, 2003, Afghan women of the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) marched to the UN headquarters in Islamabad, Pakistan. The sign states in Persian: “Down with the Northern Alliance, power to the Afghan people!” / credit: RAWA
The women’s association mentioned the United States’ geostrategic motives for its invasion, namely causing regional instability to encircle its rival powers, China and Russia in particular, and to undermine their economies via regional wars.
“Right from the start, RAWA members have been saying that freedom can’t be brought through bombs, war and violence,” Sonali Kolhatkar, co-director of the Afghan Women’s Mission (AWM), a U.S.-based organization that funds RAWA’s work, told Toward Freedom. “How can they liberate women while they’re killing their husbands, brothers and fathers?”
Afghan women have long known that the U.S.-staged war on terrorism—and any foreign meddling—was not going to make their country safer. Women took the brunt of the backlash of war, military invasion and, again, today’s uncertain aftermath.
“[Afghan women] have always rejected outside interference, and maintained that Afghans need to fight for their freedom from inside,” Kolhatkar said.
For decades, active women have been at the forefront of opposing fundamentalism, warlordism and imperialism in Afghanistan.
Leading political activist and human-rights advocate Malalai Joya publicly denounced the presence of warlords and war criminals in the Afghan parliament in 2003 while serving as a member of parliament (MP), which resulted in her dismissal. An outspoken critic of the United States and NATO, she has continued to denounce the 20-year U.S./Western occupation. She has condemned U.S.-led drone attacks and bombings, clandestine raids carried out by U.S. and Afghan special forces into civilian homes, all of which have killed thousands of Afghans.
Between 2001 and 2020, more than 46,000 civilians were killed and 5.9 million Afghans displaced as a result of the war’s ongoing violence.
U.S. Brings Taliban Back to Power
Activists at the Afghan Women’s Network (AWN), an NGO launched in the mid-1990s, have criticized the United States for allegedly bribing and empowering warlords, then resuscitating the Taliban’s power in the 2020 U.S.-led negotiations in Doha, which translated into replacing one fundamentalist regime in Afghanistan with another.
“I do not understand the United States for undoing and now redoing the Taliban in Afghanistan, whose ruling will affect women’s lives the most, which will be ruined yet again,” prominent human-rights activist Mahbooba Seraj, member of AWN, said in a interview with TRT World.
Talking to Toward Freedom, Alia Rasoully, an Afghan based in the United States who founded WISE Afghanistan, an organization that aims to provide women access to health and education, underlined how the Doha talks were conducted solely in the United States’ interest. She said many Afghans are not aware of the agreement’s details.
“Afghan women feel betrayed,” Rasoully said. “Although some women were included in the negotiations, none of their demands for basic human and Islamic rights are being met today.”
On April 28, 2003—known as the Black Day to commemorate the day the Taliban seized Kabul in 1992—other Afghan organizations joined RAWA in a demonstration / credit: RAWA
Spozhmay Maseed, a U.S.-based Afghan rights activist, deplored the seemingly unconcerned U.S. pull-out. “It was shocking to everyone,” she told Toward Freedom. “U.S. forces were combating terrorists for 20 years, today they’re dealing with them. Who were they fighting then? What was that fight for?”
RAWA member Salma, whose real name must be concealed to protect her security, relayed similar concerns to Toward Freedom.
“The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11 was a military operation orchestrated by the CIA that brought in Northern Alliance puppet leaders, who are as extremist and misogynist as the Taliban, and painted them as ‘democratic’ and ‘liberal,’” she said.
“What’s the result of these 20 years?” Salma asked. “[The United States] spent more than $2 trillion on the war to bring back the same Taliban, and it turned the country into a corrupt, drug-mafia and unsafe place, especially for women.”
The façade of democracy the United States had poured trillions of dollars into maintaining was lifted when former President Ashraf Ghani abandoned the presidential palace on August 15 by reportedly dashing onto a helicopter with close to $200 million in tow.
“How breakable that ‘democracy’ was, and how rotten the U.S.-backed puppet government was!” Salma asserted.
The Work of RAWA
On its website, RAWA has documented through its reports, photos and videos the horrific conditions facing Afghan women at the hands of the mujahideen and the Taliban, as well as the destruction and bloodshed during the U.S. occupation, which was rarely reported in the media.
“This indigenous women’s movement had long been trying to draw international attention to the atrocities against their people, in particular the ultra-woman-hating acts they were witnessing,” AWM’s Kolhatkar stressed. “It was only after September 11, when the world discovered there were terrible things happening to women in Afghanistan.”
Unlike many other Afghans, RAWA members have stayed, striving to give voice to the deprived women of Afghanistan in the struggle for women’s rights.
RAWA, which was established in 1977 as an independent political organization of Afghan women struggling for women’s rights, is driven by the belief that only a democratic, secular government can ensure security, independence and equality among Afghan people. It became involved in the struggle for resistance following the Soviet intervention called for by the then-socialist government of Afghanistan in 1979. Over the last four decades, RAWA spoke out against the anti-Soviet resistance (known as mujahideen) in the 1980s, fought against the Taliban regime in the mid-1990s, denounced the role of the Pakistani state in creating the Taliban and has rejected the U.S. occupation of the last 20 years.
The women’s organization has been involved in various social and political activities to include literacy classes, schools for girls and boys in villages and remote areas, health and income-generation projects for women to help them financially, and political agitation. It has also worked with refugee Afghan women and children in Pakistan, running nursing, literacy and vocational training courses. In 1981, it launched a bilingual magazine in Persian and Pashto, Payam-e-Zan (Woman’s Message), spreading social and political awareness among Afghan women.
Due to its pro-democracy, pro-secularist and anti-fundamentalist stance, RAWA has always operated as a clandestine organization, including in the last two decades under the U.S. occupation and the so-called “democratic government,” which it never recognized.
Using pseudonyms, concealing their identities, turning their homes into office spaces, often changing locations to avoid attention, its members have been active in different areas across Afghanistan. They would run underground schools for girls and women where they would use their burqa as a way to hide their books, and disseminate copies of Woman’s Message, secretly aiming to raise awareness among women of their rights and change their minds.
As an unregistered organization carrying out political work and home-schooling, if authorities found about its existence and illicit activity they could react punitively with any member caught up.
Since the assassination of its founder, Meena Kamal, the feminist association has been working more underground as anyone openly identified as member would risk being arrested or even killed. Despite it becoming increasingly dangerous to organize, the movement continues to stand.
“This is the time our women need us the most in Afghanistan,” Salma said. “We have to continue to be the voice of the voiceless who are here.”
Women’s Rights at What Cost?
Afghan women saw improvement in their lives over the past 20 years in terms of access to education, healthcare and employment, as well as economic, social and political empowerment. But the gap between urban centers and rural areas never really narrowed. In rural areas, where it is estimated 76 percent of Afghanistan’s women reside, women still rely on men in their families for permission to attend school and work. Girls are typically allowed to have primary or secondary education, then their families proceed with arranged marriages. In 2020, as little as 29.8 percent of women could read and write.
An Afghan family in a village near Chagcharan Ghor province in 2007 / credit: Vida Urbonaite, Lithuania
“Progress was slower in rural areas,” Rasoully remarked. “We worked hard in advocating to convince parents that their girls could safely go to school in a very culturally appropriate environment that they were comfortable with.”
She called for greater efforts to address the urban-rural divide, noting the international community made the mistake of taking an inequitable approach to offering educational opportunities to Afghan girls, as it directed its programs at young women in cities.
In her view, the insecurity brought on by the war into rural communities was a major impediment that kept girls out of school and prevented women from working.
Many villages experienced for years the devastation of heavy fighting between the Taliban, foreign militaries, government forces and local militias. The loss of husbands, brothers and fathers to the war further compromised women’s ability to go about everyday life.
A woman with her brother are busy drawing water from a river in Afghanistan in 2009 / credit: David Elmore, United States
Salma made clear progress in women’s status in the past two decades has been the result of a “natural process.” During that time, Afghan women acquired basic freedoms that had been withheld from them under the Taliban regime. But the foreign military presence could not be credited for that.
Kolhatkar specified that while the United States had boots on the ground in Afghanistan and it supported women’s rights on paper, the United States allowed the opposite in practice by “working with fundamentalists every step of the way.”
She explicitly said the issue of women’s rights was never a concern for Washington. Rather, it was a pretext to make its long, protracted occupation “palatable.”
“RAWA had been warning the Americans since the early phase of the invasion not to embrace the Taliban, nor the warlords,” Kolhatkar, AWM’s joint director, reminded. “It shouldn’t at all surprise us that the U.S. administration finally left Afghanistan, with misogynist hardliners in charge once again.”
With the Taliban back in control on August 15, a wave of civil resistance mainly was initiated by Afghan women. The protests have built momentum, hitting different parts of the war-ravaged country in the last month.
Further, a new generation has grown up in a country that is connected to the rest of the world through the Internet. That has increased political and social awareness among the general public, especially among young people.
Today, groups of women—small and large—are disobeying Taliban restrictions, protesting in Herat, Kabul, Mazar-e Sharif and other Afghan cities to demand their fundamental rights. They are bravely defying the extremist group, refusing the idea of returning to the grim days that women lived through.
Under the Taliban’s previous rule (1996-2001), the Islamist militants enforced strict rules on women and girls, forcing them to cover their bodies from head to toe, prohibiting them from leaving home without a male family member, and banning them from going to school or work. If they did not abide by the rules, they could face severe punishment, such as imprisonment, torture or execution.
Rasoully expressed concern that the progress made by 35 million Afghans throughout the last two decades, especially young women and girls, may go to waste. She personally mentored girls in medical school, in areas like Kandahar, over the last five years.
“But today, we are being told girls cannot go to school beyond sixth grade,” she said. “This will take us back to the stone ages.”
Maseed, the U.S.-based Afghan activist, insisted today’s Afghan women are better educated and more politically aware than in the 1990s, and will keep pushing for their rights.
“If women go backward, they think it’s better to come out on the streets and be killed than to follow these regressive rules and die inside every day,” the activist affirmed.
Resisting oppression with exceptional resilience—even under the new Taliban rule—they intend to keep up their struggle. They also are appealing to the international community not to grant recognition to the Taliban as a legitimate political actor.
In the past weeks, Afghan associations and supporters in the diaspora have joined Afghan women’s calls to refuse to recognize the Taliban. But they also have criticized the U.S. role in creating a disaster, at both political and humanitarian levels. And it is clear from U.S. machinations that ordinary Afghans will suffer starvation with recent efforts at keeping the Taliban from accessing funds stored in foreign banks.
“Perhaps things were better for many Afghan women under a U.S.-supported government, but it is also the United States’ violent intervention, which has led to the situation in Afghanistan today,” Nida Kirmani, a feminist sociologist and professor at Pakistan’s Lahore University of Management Sciences, wrote in a tweet. “One cannot disconnect the two.”
Using women’s rights again as a means of framing US imperialism. Perhaps things were better for many Afghan women under a US-supported government, but it is also the US’s violent intervention, which has led to the situation in Afghanistan today. One cannot disconnect the two. https://t.co/RYNX9COIvL
Alessandra Bajec is a freelance journalist specializing in West Asia and North Africa. Between 2010 and 2011, she lived in Palestine. She was based in Cairo from 2013 to 2017, and since 2018 has been based in Tunis.
Many Nicaraguans expressed support for their country’s voting process on November 7 as 2.8 million people cast their votes for as many as 6 national parties / credit: Julie Varughese
This article is the first in a series on Nicaragua’s elections.
Just three days after Sandinista revolutionary Daniel Ortega won his fourth term as Nicaragua’s president with 75.92 percent of the vote, U.S. President Joe Biden signed the RENACER Act.
An acronym for the “Reinforcing Nicaragua’s Adherence to Conditions for Electoral Reform Act of 2021,” RENACER slaps sanctions on Ortega government officials, attempts to restrict multilateral financing to Nicaragua, monitors Nicaragua’s relationship with Russia, punishes the country for alleged human-rights violations and targets reported corruption inside Nicaragua, among other items.
Then on November 12, 25 member states of the Organization of American States’ (OAS) Permanent Council voted in favor of a resolution that criticized the elections as not free and fair and urged further action.
The OAS resolution and fresh U.S. sanctions, as well as social media platforms suspending known Ortega supporters a week before the elections and corporate media outlets inaccurately reporting on Ortega make clear the United States is the primary contradiction in the Nicaraguan people’s struggle for liberation.
A view of Victoriano Potosme’s farm in San José de los Rios in Ticuantepe, Nicaragua. Peasants like Potosme won land ownership when Sandinistas took power in 1979 / credit: Julie Varughese
Social Markers Improve
Ortega, a militant in the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (the Sandinista National Liberation Front, or FSLN for short), was first elected president in 1984. His defeat in 1989 to neoliberal Violeta Chamorro, a scion of the landowning class, kicked off 16 years of neoliberal rule. During that time, Sandinista reforms were rolled back and social outcomes plummetted. That is why the era from 1990 to 2006 is referred to as the Neoliberal Period.
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega in 2013 / credit: Fernanda LeMarie/Cancillería del Ecuador
When Ortega was re-elected in 2006, the maternal mortality rate—a key marker of a country’s well-being–was 92.8 deaths per 100,000 live births. By 2020, that number dropped 60 percent to 37.5 deaths per 100,000 live births because of programs that include “maternity homes” to monitor pregnant women close to their due date. Other improvements include a 41 percent decrease in poverty, 100 percent electrification, 100 percent mobile-phone access, 85 percent internet accessibility, as well as a 100 percent increase in the amount of renewable energy the state generates. A free-trade zone employs 120,000 Nicaraguans, who work for foreign companies. Those corporations are required to abide by Nicaragua’s laws as well as respect the environment and workers’ rights. All of this means few people leave the country, but many have arrived from neighboring neoliberal Honduras.
Farmers Defend Nicaragua
Victoriano Potosme once labored under the orders of “latifundistas,” white plantation owners in Nicaragua.
“We were slaves under them,” he said while standing on his mountaintop farm in San José de los Rios in Ticuantepe, about an hour from the capital of Managua. There, he and his family grow award-winning fruits and have developed an internationally acclaimed organic fertilizer called BIO Buena Vista.
Victoriano Potosme (left), pictured with female relatives, speaks to a group of international visitors about the impact of the Sandinista Revolution on his family’s life as they farm on land seized from white wealthy landowners in San José de los Rios in Ticuantepe, Nicaragua / credit: Julie Varughese
For campesinos like Potosme, the November 7 elections were critical. After the Sandinista Revolution, peasants like Potosme were able to own the land they worked because of reforms that put 235,000 acres into their hands.
“If we go back to the neoliberal period, it would take us back 150 years,” he said a few days before casting his ballot.
The Human Rights Question
Biden released a statement on Election Day, citing the Inter-American Democratic Charter as justification for intervening in Nicaragua’s affairs. That charter was adopted on September 11, 2001, by the Organization of American States (OAS), a multilateral body the United States slapped together in the early 20th century as part of its efforts to control the Western Hemisphere. Per the Monroe Doctrine, the United States considers the rest of the hemisphere its “backyard.” After years of dormancy, that colonial term re-emerged during the Trump administration.
Then after the election, the OAS also chimed in.
“We reject the results of the illegitimate elections in #Nicaragua,” tweeted OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro. “I urge countries of the OAS to respond to this clear violation of the Democratic Charter during its #OASassembly.”
We reject the results of the illegitimate elections in #Nicaragua.
I urge countries of the OAS to respond to this clear violation of the Democratic Charter during its #OASassembly.
The OAS General Assembly held its 51st regular session this past week in Guatemala. The organization could not be reached for comment as of press time.
But numerous commentators have pointed out the hypocrisy of the United States and the OAS using terms like “democracy,” “self-determination” and “rights.”
Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) National Organizer Ajamu Baraka, who has taught U.S. history in universities, recently wrote an analysis in which he said all settler-colonial states like the United States have criminality at their core because they were born out of “systematic, terroristic and genocidal violence against Indigenous populations.” The United States now is the largest empire in recorded human history.
“Democracy and human rights are no more than ideological props to obscure the real interests and intentions of the rulers and to build domestic support for whatever criminal activity the state has embarked on,” Baraka went on to write. (Full disclosure: This reporter coordinates a wing of BAP.)
Killer Sanctions
Ordinary Nicaraguans understand the pain of sanctions.
“They are going to kill all the farmers, who dedicate themselves on a daily basis to life, to building, to working the land,” Jhaniors, a youth organizer in the Managua department, told a journalist who traveled with this reporter on a recent Friends of the ATC delegation. “The sanctions don’t help—they kill.”
Today Biden signed the “RENACER ACT” that sanctions the Nicaragua gov’t. Sanctions kill ppl. Over 40,000 ppl died from sanctions in Venezuela. How is sanctioning Nicaragua going to help the ppl?
Listen to Jhaniors, a youth organizer in Nicaragua speak on how sanctions will hurt: pic.twitter.com/iPU393viuH
Farmer Saul Potosme of Ticuantepe was positive the FSLN party would win the November 7 election / credit: Julie Varughese
Potosme’s son, Saul, said when the U.S.-funded, right-wing attempt at a coup took place in 2018, his family lost out on the opportunity to sell 30,000 to 40,000 pineapples. Participants in the attempted coup had blocked the path for trade to take place unless farmers paid up.
“We had no way of sustaining our families,” Saul said as he handled a bottle of his family’s award-winning organic fertilizer, BIO Buena Vista. “Many farmers here within this community rose up to get rid of the golpistas because we were sick of the coup attempt.”
“Golpistas” means “coupmongers” in Spanish.
The farmers traveled an hour to Managua to confront the coupmongers.
“It was a hard fight,” Saul said. “The reality is farmers are the ones who sustain a nation.”
After the coup attempt, the Ortega government implemented a program to create alternative ways for Nicaraguan farmers, young people, and women start and sustain businesses.
Nicaraguans on Election Day
In the run-up to Election Day, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken denounced the “sham of an election.” Then major social-media platforms like Facebook and Twitter disappeared the accounts of pro-Sandinista activists a week before the elections.
Voters in the city of Chinandega display their freshly inked thumbs, which indicates they recently cast their ballots / credit: Julie Varughese
Despite the saber-rattling and repression, more than 2.8 million Nicaraguans cast votes in a process that appeared more organized than what this reporter has witnessed in various jurisdictions in the United States. Nicaraguans took between five and 10 minutes to vote, while U.S. voters have had to stand on lines in the sweltering sun for as long as 11 hours, as seen during the 2020 presidential election. While U.S. voters must figure out how to get to the polls between long commutes, jobs and other obligations, Nicaraguans are given the day off. Plus, Nicaraguan college students get a week off to travel to their home departments to vote.
Some people are confused about how many parties/alliances are competing in Nicaragua’s elections today:
There are 7 options in total, but 1 party is regional, only in the Caribbean Coast (which has autonomy)
Support for Ortega’s party, the FSLN, was overwhelming on Election Day, resulting in an almost 76 percent victory, with 65 percent of people voting.
“I voted for Commandante Daniel Ortega for the benefit of the community,” said Raul Navarretto, 64, as he walked out of a voting center in Chinandega, a Sandinista stronghold three hours north of the capital of Managua.
Nineteen-year-old Arlen Rueda, who strolled a toddler out of a voting center, also voted for Ortega, saying she supported the government’s efforts to provide food to its population, among other endeavors.
Armando Casa Y Padilla, 75, would not divulge to this reporter for whom he voted. “Es una secreta.” Yet, he valued the voting process. “Only people can make democracy happen.”
I’m on Caribbean coast of Nicaragua. Garifuna, Creole, Mestizo, Miskito managed polling with all candidates on ballot. Strong support for government in formerly neglected area. Education, transportation, healthcare improvements given as reasons.@Blacks4Peace#Nicaraguapic.twitter.com/0IQGhqVBK0
There is so much propaganda and fake news in the corporate media trying to discredit Nicaragua’s elections. I visited 4 voting centers, and there were a lot of people voting in a very efficient, quick, and transparent process.
Election night, Sandinistas inundate the streets to celebrate the victoria of the FSLN. Here they celebrate as the preliminary results come in. pic.twitter.com/6C3KB6fSgC
While the corporate media spoke of Nicaraguan candidates and journalists being thrown in jail, the only people who were actually detained include “criminals, drug traffickers and golpistas,” according to Fausto Torrez, who handles international relations for the Associación de Trabajadores del Campo (Rural Workers’ Association, or ATC for short), an independent farm workers organization, as well as for the Coordinadora de Latinoamericana Organizaciones del Campo (the Latin American Coordinator of Rural Associations, or CLOC for short). CLOC is made up of 84 rural worker organizations in 18 Latin American countries.
Despite what the Western corporate media has reported, “pre-candidate” is not an official designation in Nicaragua. Those who wish to run for office must do so under the banner of one of six registered national parties, five of which are anti-Sandinista.
Many media outlets are opposed to the Ortega government and yet are allowed to operate. For example, the Chamorro family still operates La Prensa, a newspaper.
“Here, we hear from people who are against the government, but we don’t accept people taking U.S. money for coups,” Torrez said.
The Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation accepted $7 million between 2014 and this year from the U.S. Agency for International Development. Nicaragua has been cracking down on U.S. funded operations that seek to subvert their progress. That includes groups who were involved in the 2018 coup attempt that killed more than 300 Nicaraguans, most of whom were Sandinistas. Plus, this past September, Cristiana Chamorro, the foundation’s founder and daughter of former right-wing president Violeta Chamorro, was arrested for money laundering.
“In other places, they go to college and get drunk in financial paradises,” said ATC Secretary-General Edgar Garcia. “But here, they are in jail.”
This is the first in a series of articles on Nicaragua’s November 7 elections. The second article can be read here.
Julie Varughese is editor of Toward Freedom. She spent a week traveling through Nicaragua as part of a delegation organized by the Associación de Trabajadores del Campo (Rural Workers’ Association, or the ATC for short), an independent farm workers’ organization.
Sonia Guajajara, an Indigenous rights campaigner who was elected this autumn to be a federal lawmaker from the Brazilian state of São Paolo, marched in September with a feminist bloc at a left-wing rally the day after a Bolsonaro supporter threatened two other candidates with a gun / credit: Richard Matoušek
RECIFE, Brazil—On election night, the city of Recife erupted in cheers of joy.
In the capital of the Workers’ Party presidential candidate Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva’s home state of Pernambuco, thousands roared as the vote count showed Lula overtaking his rival, right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro. While supporters set off fireworks over the Atlantic Ocean, others made the “L” sign with their fingers and thumbs to indicate support for Lula. When buses couldn’t get through the crowd of revelers, drivers gave up with beaming smiles, making the L as well.
Brazilians had just voted in their most consequential election since democratization.
But, just as after the first-round election, cheers soon turned into murmurs as people lowered their eyes to their phones to see if Lula would retain his lead. This was far from certain, given events earlier that day. The Federal Highway Police (PRF) had conducted over 500 operations by pulling over buses and cars. The miles of traffic jams that ensued impeded people from reaching voting booths, especially in northeastern states like Pernambuco. Then news broke that these operations were part of a plan the Bolsonarista-led PRF had hatched in the presidential palace.
While the Electoral Commission (TSE) condemned this, it did not take action to compensate for lost voting time. By contrast, in the first round, the TSE extended voting for the large Brazilian diaspora in Lisbon, Portugal, after someone wearing the green and yellow colors many Bolsonaristas adorn, broke into a voting booth to double vote, annulling dozens of votes.
“It’s as if,” Rômulo Cavalcante, a lawyer from the northeastern state of Alagoas, told Toward Freedom, ”[the TSE in the second round] was afraid of provoking some kind of conflict.” Due to the highway police’s unprecedented actions, Calvacante believes “democracy in Brazil remains more fragile than ever.”
Contrary to the TSE and PRF’s assurances, the operations stopped some people from voting. Yet, Lula retained his lead. He became the first candidate to beat an incumbent since Brazil emerged from a military dictatorship in the 1980s, but also won with the smallest margin since then (1.8 percent).
“[I] didn’t just defeat a candidate,” Lula proclaimed. “[I] defeated the entire machinery of the Brazilian state.”
Almost three weeks later, Bolsonaro still has not explicitly conceded. His supporters have staged roadblocks around the country, sometimes aided by the PRF. João, a tourist landlord in the northeastern state of Rio Grande do Norte, told Toward Freedom that he believes “the election was stolen.” That echoes a false belief still held by much of the Bolsonaro camp, said Danny Shaw, Latin American and Caribbean Studies Professor at the City University of New York. “[That camp] lives in a parallel universe of half-truths, misinformation and propaganda.”
“But,” as Shaw said, “the fact that Washington recognized [the election results] so early on, put pressure on Bolsonaro and his supporters.” The chances Bolsonaro could stage a successful coup—which his camp was “constantly measuring”—have diminished rapidly.
Former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio “Lula” Da Silva (left) and current Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro (right) are the main contenders in Brazil’s first-round presidential election being held on October 2 / credit: Ricardo Stuckert (right) / Alan Santos / PR (left)
Beyond Bolsonaro
Talk of a Bolsonaro coup has subsided. In the last few days, he and his sons visited the Italian embassy to apply for citizenship, and Bolsonaro has told allies he may leave Brazil on Lula’s inauguration, to be held on New Year’s Day. This may be because he will lose political immunity. “I think he is planning to ask for exile in another country, like Hungary, where [President Viktor] Orbán is his friend or even Italy because he is going to be charged in Brazil,” Cavalcante predicted. That is partly because Italy’s governing party (Brothers of Italy) is far-right, and an iteration of a fascist party.
It seems more likely that Bolsonaro will flee while signaling as little clarity as he can about the result, than stage a coup. He has shown with basic questions—such as whether he’s received a Covid vaccine—that he can maintain strategic obfuscation, and observers have predicted he is likely to do the same with the election’s legitimacy.
Depending on what happens to the charges of wrongdoing that are likely to be brought against him, that could be how he hopes to return to politics in future.
And whatever happens to Bolsonaro, the right will have decent prospects at the next election. It remains to be seen how united it will be. Some elements prefer the anti-institutionalism and inflammatory cultural rhetoric of Bolsonarismo. While others prefer the more rationalized “Third Way” discourse of candidates like surprise third-placed Simone Tebet, who in this campaign was promoted by a significant section of the right-wing media. Both approaches have close ties to agro-business and prioritize what Brazil’s most-read newspaper recently called “fiscal responsibility” over reducing the country’s hunger crisis, in a recent op-ed attacking Lula for prioritizing tackling hunger. The anti-redistributive right in Brazil has been resilient, even when it had to get behind a leader who oversaw hundreds of thousands of avoidable Covid deaths.
The media will have a significant impact on Brazilian discourse over the next four years. Cavalcante explained Brazilians like himself “were successfully manipulated by the media” when former President Dilma Rousseff was deposed in a 2016 procedural coup. And he told Toward Freedom that the media will need to hold accountable politicians who espouse violence, in order to return Brazil to a time when “political polarization [didn’t involve Brazilians] being threatened by their bosses, neighbors and strangers in the street.”
Supporters of Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva rally in São Paolo / credit: Richard Matoušek
Neoliberalism’s Future in Brazil
The president-elect faces significant struggles, particularly in reducing the hunger crisis. He has proven credentials, but faces a hostile climate.
Lula’s “Bolsa Família” program of conditional cash transfers during his 2003-11 presidency was cited as a major factor in the 28 percent decline in poverty rates in his first term. Bolsonaro ended Bolsa Família and, despite enacting a different cash transfer scheme, has presided over a huge increase in hunger, from 19 million in late 2020 to 33 million now. This, despite being the fourth-largest food producer in the world.
“Brazil is now back on [the United Nations’] Hunger Map,” Ediane Maria, a newly-elected Socialist and Liberty Party state legislator in São Paulo, told Toward Freedom. “People who eat breakfast today are not sure they can have dinner. Lula started the Zero Hunger programme [including Bolsa Família], which got Brazil off the Hunger Map; but [under Bolsonaro], our country is in a worse state than during the biggest hunger crisis of recent memory in 1993.”
And unlike in the 2000s, Brazil is not benefitting from a commodity boom, increasing pressure from the large section of Brazilian media who advocate smaller state expenditure.
Lula will not have the resources, power, and potentially the will, to transition significantly away from neoliberalism in Brazil. Neoliberalism is the systematic movement of public resources under private control. As Jemima Pierre, the Haiti/Americas coordinator for the U.S.-based Black Alliance for Peace (BAP), told Toward Freedom, “Even though [recent Latin American election-winners have produced] leftist governments, they’re still following the lead of the U.S. in terrible neoliberal policies. So, I think it’s a good thing that Bolsonaro lost. But I also think people need to hold Lula’s feet to the fire.” Pierre worries that “the left is so relieved that Bolsonaro lost that they’re not going to push Lula, because the fear is that if you go against Lula, then you’re going to get this right-wing government back. So, the left is really stuck between a rock and a hard place.”
As long as Lula governs effectively enough to implement key progressive policies, despite his obstacles, he could continue to increase popularity of such politics in Brazil, paving the way for further progression after his term.
An aerial view of the municipality of Tefé in the Amazonian rainforest of Brazil / credit: Rodrigo Kugnharski on Unsplash
Lula’s Global Moves
Advocates of multilateralism and environmentalism view this election positively.
For instance, U.S. human- and labor-rights lawyer Dan Kovalik told Toward Freedom Lula’s victory “would help bring about the multipolar world that we need.”
Lula already has touted creating a cartel of rainforest-endowed countries, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Indonesia, to motivate conservation.
“Lula’s first foreign policy visit will be to Argentina to increase and expand the BRICS,” Shaw said, referring to the group of states (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) that are trying to counter U.S. control over international finance. Lula also advocated the creation of a South America-wide currency—the Sur—during this campaign.
Like any leader, Lula will need to be held to account to meet his stated goals. As Pierre states, “We are happy that there’s a leftist president, but we also remember that it’s the same leftist president who was behind the snuffing out of Haiti sovereignty as it was trying to bring Brazil on the international stage,” referring to the 2004-17 Brazilian-led UN peacekeeping occupation of Haiti, where Brazilian troops abused their power and stayed for years after being asked to leave. Upon Washington’s re-intervention in Haiti this year, Pierre explains that the United States “has worked with leftist governments [like Mexico] to get its work done… What we’re worried about is that Lula will fall into this trap.”
Lula’s victory could probably be considered the crowning achievement of the leftist Pink Tide’s resurgence across Latin America. That’s something BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka believes “represents the continued shift of power away from the international colonial ruling classes”—as long as Lula has learned geopolitical lessons from the 2000s.
Inauguration is over a month away. Lula faces strong economic, political, international, environmental and societal pressures that can hinder progressive policymaking. But, just like on election night in Recife, if you’re a progressive or simply espouse democratic values, now is the time for cautious celebration.
Richard Matoušek is a journalist who covers sociopolitical issues in southern Europe and Latin America. He can be followed on Twitter at @RichMatousek and on Instagram at @richmatico.
