 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we are joined by Professor Fabio from Brazil who works on the Latin American issues and is a close follower of left movement's workers' movement in Brazil. We'll be discussing about what's happening in Brazil and the broader politics how the Latin America is being influenced by the right wing assault. Welcome to NewsClick, Professor. So let's start from Brazil. What's actually happening in Brazil with the current regime continuously pushing anti-people reforms and there's a resistance also growing against it. What's actually happening? It's an illegitimate regime. It came about through a coup. Even if it was a parliamentary coup, they just deposed the government that was elected by the popular vote. So this is, from the start, a very unpopular government who has a very unpopular agenda as you have said. However, popular forces in Brazil have not been able to resist to this very unpopular agenda so far and this also has to do with the legacy of workers' party governments who prevailed in the country for the past 13 years. These are the governments that were deposed recently. Also, in the popular arena, there's not a lot of clarity on the reasons for the impeachment because people have it clear that it was something unfair and illegitimate. But they don't really have clear the reasons why. And this is because the current government, although it has accelerated previous trends and has this very unpopular agenda going on, it does not, in its most profound sense, represent a major shift on policies. But you also keenly follow the entire Latin American politics and do you see any relation between what's happening in Venezuela? Venezuela, the people are on street against the government but there's also a strong force which is acting in favor of the government. And it clearly looks like what's happening in Venezuela is a byproduct of the US interference in Venezuela itself. Do you find relation between what's happening in Venezuela and Brazil? There's one basic relation which is the end of the commodity super cycle and that has created major economic problems for all Latin American countries who sadly are still very much dependent on commodities exploitation. In the case of Venezuela it's a very specific case in the Latin American scenario in the sense that it was the only country in my way of seeing that really attempted to go beyond neoliberalism in the so-called South American pink tide. They faced lots of issues, lots of difficulties on going towards that end. But in my way of seeing there was the difference between Chávez and Lula, so to say, is that Chávez tried to overcome neoliberalism and do it differently. But they have faced one major issue which is to overcome the dependency on oil exportations. Venezuela depends over 90% of its exportations comes from oil. And when there was this major fall down on oil prices there was big economic constraints to Venezuela which also had social expressions and political consequences. So this is the basis of the issues that Venezuela is facing now. It is a very critical juncture in Venezuela because also the ones that are facing, they are heading like the opposition in Venezuela are just worst. So it's a difficult situation in the sense that in my way of seeing Maduro's government has had recent policies which are hard to defend from a left point of view. But the issue is that who is in the other side is even worse. When Obama was there the relationship between Cuba and the US was seemed to be getting better. But now what's going to happen because Trump has a clearly anti-Latino American stance. So what shift is it going to take? Is it a rightward shift or it will get more intense when it comes to assault on Latin American population, more sanctions? What's going to happen? What the Cubans mostly expect from this regime is that there's going to be a slowdown in their approach. But this is not going to mean any significant move backwards towards Cold War or other. Because the Trump regime has to account for their internal forces and there's lots of people inside the United States who argued that opening up, getting involved in Cuba is a better way to change the regime in Cuba rather than just have this distance approach, this isolationist approach towards Cuba. So there are different strategies to provoke a change of regime in Cuba. Nobody in the States like the regime in Cuba, the socialist regime in Cuba. But the approach that favors strengthening commercial relations, economic relations has a strong support in the U.S. also because meanwhile Cuba faces a difficult economic moment. So they are calling for investors and many U.S. businessmen don't want to get out of that. And Trump doesn't really have the strength to counter force that. So the Latin American model has, as we call it, 21st century socialism. That was an ideal model for the different left movements across the globe when it comes to governing a state, develop the socialist principles, following pro-people policies. What will happen to that model when we see Brazil in crisis, Venezuela in crisis? What's going to happen to that model? I think there was an underlying bet to that model, which was that since Latin America is so unequal, just like India, it would be possible to make, to do major changes without affecting core business interests. So to go for a path of reform, that worked fairly well along the commodity super cycle because then there was an important economic growth and it was possible to share a little bit of the profits that were being made without, so there was, so to say, a win-win situation. There was more money to the poor, like to, for example, income grants, public massive income grants that were being practiced in Brazil, but in every Latin American countries. And at the same time, the banks, agro-business, they were making business and profits as usual. So what was achieved through this, with the so-called pink wave tide? Political change was achieved. In most countries in Latin America, there was an important political change. So the Workers' Party came to power in Brazil. There was a change in Venezuela. The two parties that dominated Venezuela and politics since the 50s, they were just wiped out. In Bolivia, which is a country that is marked by sort of an apartheid, that Indians were completely out of the politics. If you go into Bolivian parliament, you're going to see many Indian faces, women. So there's been political change, but the limit to that was economic change. So in any case, there were, none of the cases, they were able to overcome neoliberalism, let alone capitalism. And as I said previously, I understand that Venezuela was the only case where there was a serious attempt to do that. But then the major limit there was the dependency on commodities exportation, which in the Venezuelan case, it's basic oil. So I think that we are at the junction, crossroads in Latin American politics, which is what understanding should we have of this the movement that we've lived in the past 15 years. And we could say that there are two trends of life and death. One would just consider that it was, they were not skilled enough to pursue the changes through reforms. That's one way of seeing. A second way of seeing is that in Latin America, there is very narrow room for reform. And that's not only for economic and then political, social and economic issues are closely intertwinned. So it's not this economic rationale that you think, well, since we're in such an unequal country, we just take a little bit from the rich ones, nobody's going to argue with that. Everybody wants to go against hunger in Brazil. So this is unanimous. But when it comes to putting that into practice, the constraints, the political and the social constraints to overcome that show that the margin of maneuver for reform is very, very narrow if there is any in Brazil. So therefore, the second path leads to the revival of radical politics or to revolutionary politics, if you want to say. Brazil is going to see elections very soon. What are the prospects of left in those elections? Because it looks like the current regime has a very low ratings. So it's going to fall. And what will be the alternative? What's going to happen with Lula and Rousseff? As you said, the current government is very unpopular. So it's a very unstable situation. So to my understanding, it is that if social situation gets even more unstable in Brazil, then Lula is an alternative, but not from the popular point of view, but an alternative to business as usual, so that the big conciliator can come back and make the country work again. So left again at crossroads. Will it unite behind Lula, who MPT and worker party, who is the least, last worst party? That's what their agenda is. They say they're obviously not as bad, not as aggressive, not as destructive as the current government. But being less destructive is that a left-wing agenda. So the alternative to that has to be constructed in Brazil. And the challenge is mostly to detach ourselves from what the workers party has meant to the Brazilian left because it plays a very strong role in popular imagination of left-wings politics. But what we have followed, we have seen in the past 15 or 20 years is that workers party have gone far away from their popular and from their worker roots to become just an alternative party within the current order. So these are the crossroads that we face in next year's election. So and then to be very concrete, maybe perhaps the left will not have a strong candidacy. It just has to start rebuilding itself with patience. Thanks a lot for giving us your time and I'm sure whenever you are in India next time we'll get an opportunity to talk to you more about the Latin American politics and about the Brazilian atmosphere as well. Thank you again and I think that Brazil and India, just as in the old times, third-world countries have to get closer. We have to get to know each other because we have to fight along the same lines. Thanks a lot. Thank you for watching NewsClick.