A conversation with Lula a few meters away from Di Cavalcanti’s perforated canvas – 02/03/2023 – Reinaldo Azevedo

I interviewed President Lula this Thursday. The conversation aired, in full, on the same day, on the program “O É da Coisa” on BandNews FM and BandNews TV and is on Youtube. I’m not going to comment on the details of the answers because, after all, they are available to everyone, for “affections of joy” and for “affects of sadness”, as a philosopher would say. The additional reason for not doing so also stems from the fact that I’m not a reporter—and good reporting will always be the salt of a journalist’s earth. I opine. And I exercised the trade in the meeting with Lula — no more than the interviewee.

Fuel prices? Is there. The pornographic dividends of Petrobras (with all the bows)? Also. We return to talking about the Central Bank and its accelerated interest rate policy, with retail in the hot seat and credit drying up — I don’t know if it was for the honor and delight of certain spirits attached to the Holy Scriptures in the style of Bernardo Gui, the famous French inquisitor who became a character in the novel “The Name of the Rose” by Umberto Eco. He was feared, it is said, for his competence in combating the heresies of the time. It is even possible that he believed more in the church than in God. He decided the death of many people.

We talked about the war in Ukraine, the indications he has to make to the Supreme Court and the Attorney General’s Office, the strength of the so-called centrão, the ministers who face accusations… And, even so, a lot was missing in one hour and seven minutes. Lula was preparing for the launch of the new Bolsa Familia, doubly remodeled: because more numerous families will receive more, see the rules, and because 1.5 million people were withdrawn from the program due to evidence of fraud. The disaster that took over the country did not spare even the Cadastro Único. Wherever Bolsonarism has gone, the scorched land remains.

Lula claims that the main task of his government —and here come the “affections of sadness” as a reaction— is to return the country to normality, which brings politics back. For this very reason, this scribe is not scandalized, and he made that clear when they say that Fernando Haddad had to face Gleisi Hoffmann in order to recover the gasoline. I don’t like it, that’s when an Economy Minister sells his “V-shaped recovery”, puts an end to Emergency Aid and thus “leaves the earth starving”. With the agreement of politicians.

I prefer that the “economic” and “political” sides face each other and that the one who is responsible for deciding —in this case, the President of the Republic— does it. Sometimes I have the impression that we are building a nest for new offspring of the fascist car wash. Its spokespersons are already out there, by the way. Whether they will prosper again, I don’t know. It was a cordial conversation. I asked everything I wanted in the time I had. May others, with “joyful affections,” do even better. I think the Brazilians and Brazil win.

I share here with readers a moment of this Thursday. It happened before my meeting with Lula — although it shows in the first question I asked him. And if I were under the rigor of Bernardo Gui, maybe I would end up at the stake. I passed by the Main Hall of the Planalto Palace on my way to the interview room. I saw the painting “As Mulatas”, by Di Cavalcanti, damaged by vandals. Other signs of the attack still remain in the building. I felt like crying.

There was the emblem of the disasters the country had gone through. And I am more certain every day that that spirit still threatens us. I read Di Cavalcanti being pierced again in the note by the businessmen of Bento Gonçalves, who attributed slave labor in the vineyards to our gifts to the Bolsa Família, the same one that Lula reopened this Thursday in new ways. I saw and heard any notion of good, beautiful and fair being perforated in the words of councilor Sandro Fantinel, from Caxias do Sul, who blamed the victims themselves for working conditions analogous to slavery. After all, he said, they are Bahians with no commitment to hygiene and who only think about beating drums on the beach.

I will never forget that painting and what I felt. And now it’s part of my memory and my work. As happened in the interview with Lula, from Pernambuco.

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