The Forum on Communication for the Integration of Our America (FCINA) rejects and condemns the judicial-media-parliamentary coup d’état that has displaced Dilma Rousseff, who was elected by 54 million citizens as constitutional president of Brazil; a coup that, in addition to removing the Workers’ Party (PT) from power and suspending the social programmes and other benefits for the most dispossessed, represents a threat to the processes of integration in our region.
The regressive character of the illegitimate interim government has been exposed in their first actions: a cabinet which is made up exclusively of white men, many of whom have been denounced in court cases of corruption; the elimination of the Ministry for Women and Minorities; the closing of the Ministry of Culture; the reduction of the social programmes established by the Workers’ Party, that had radically reduced poverty in the country.
The coup in Brazil will without a doubt have a grave impact on the prospects for an independent regional foreign policy and the promotion of a multilateral approach to global relations; its instigators will attempt to impose their economic agenda in the region, with neoliberal policies oriented to deregulating national economies, protecting foreign investors and undoing all the policies of redistribution of wealth, thus aggravating conditions of poverty, social exclusion and social vulnerability of millions of people in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Now that in Brazil they have managed to remove Dilma, although for now only temporarily (she is still president, even if she is suspended from her functions), the regional and international right wing forces have lined up all their batteries against the constitutional government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
The Forum on Communication for the Integration of Our America (FCINA) emphatically denounces the present attempt to overthrow the legitimate government of Venezuela.
For over a decade, the Bolivarian country has been submitted to a ferocious offensive by the most retrograde groups. Today, food shortage due to hoarding attests to an economic war, accompanied by instances of plundering and demonstrations, in an attempt to generate a situation of chaos. This could create an excuse for foreign intervention, following the libretto of the US Southern Command (Operation Venezuela Freedom-2) to provoke a situation that could set off a coup d’état.
It is in the context of these concerted operations against the Bolivarian Revolution that we should understand the declarations of former Colombian President Uribe, calling for a military uprising, together with the threat of OAS General Secretary, Luis Almagro, who has invoked the Democratic Charter of that organization as a pretext for intervention in Venezuela. Similarly, there is the persistent and systematic campaign orchestrated by the local and international press to discredit the government.
We value and support the participation of UNASUR and the attitude of General Secretary, Ernesto Samper, in his endeavor to mediate between the Bolivarian government and the opposition, in an attempt to avoid the designed escalation.
In addition, the insistence on “flexibilization” and “refoundation” of the regional bodies, in addition to being a demonstration of vassalage, would simply lead to undoing the processes of regional integration — Mercosur, Unasur, Celac, Alba-TCP — that achieved their greatest momentum thanks to the agreements among the progressive governments of the region; it would also mean promoting a new process of total dependence on financial capital.
We, the media groups, communication networks and social movements that make up the Forum on Communication for the Integration of Our America, call on communities, peoples’ organizations and citizens in general, to mobilize in defense of regional integration, threatened today by the power of factious minorities allied with the interests of US global dominion.
We call on all progressive and democratic sectors of Our America to join forces for full sovereignty, peace, stronger democracy and the well-being of the great majority of the people of our region.
Foro de Comunicación para la Integración de NuestrAmérica (FCINA)
