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Via Comanda and Via Fanti
Milan, Italy
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 An American Lula
‘Brazil did
it’, I say to myself, ‘which proves that it’s possible. So why can’t
we finally put a Socialist in the White House?’
by John Hemingway
21/01/2003
Italians have always had a special feeling for Brazil. (leia em português >>>) They see it as having a culture, or attitude towards living, which
in many ways is similar to theirs. I’ve never been to Brazil but just about every
Italian I know who’s gone there has told me that it’s a great place.
Of
course, you go anywhere as a tourist and its nice, but in the years that I’ve been
here whenever there’s a poll that asks Italians where they’d like to live
outside their own country Brazil is usually at or around the top of the list.
So,
given this Italo-Brazileiro affinity it’s not at all surprising that the recent
presidential election and Lula’s victory received a good deal of coverage in the
local press. In the weeks leading up to the election and afterwards there were reports on
national TV and in the major dailies that this was not going to be just another changing
of the guard. Lula was a leftist and that in itself was extraordinary. He was of humble
origins, and that too was interesting.
But what
seems to have stimulated the interest of Italian progressives most were his actions soon
after taking office. First he decides to put off the purchase of a number of new Mirage
jets for the Air Force and use the money to ‘feed the people’. A fairly unusual
action for any leader, anywhere. In the USA, a country that has no national health care
system, the government spends annually half its budget on weapons, some 360 billion
dollars, and try as I might I just can’t imagine George Bush knocking off an order
for fighter jets to feed the homeless of New York and Los Angeles. But that was just one
of the surprises to come out of the new Brazil. The President then decides to open up some
of the country’s numerous Army barracks and their sporting facilities to the poor.
Not fully satisfied he gets the Army to work on paving and repairing roads wherever
needed.
Now
I’m sure many observers here and certainly in Brazil are thinking that these are just
symbolic acts and that if Lula and his government really want to solve the problems of the
country then they’re going to have to do a lot more. Still, symbolism counts in this
world. You do what you can, and if you’re in a position to set a country’s
agenda sometimes it’s the little things that create an atmosphere of change. Actions
speak louder than words. People get motivated and start to think that maybe creating a
better life isn’t so impossible, that maybe it’s worth a try.
While
the American and Italian Left certainly found Lula’s election a cause for celebration
I can’t help but feeling that they were also a bit envious. As I read about Bush and
his government’s preparations for war with Iraq I sometimes ask myself why we’ve
never been able to elect an American version of Lula.
‘Brazil
did it’, I say to myself, ‘which proves that it’s possible. So why
can’t we finally put a Socialist in the White House?’ Just for four years, I
think, and then if he doesn’t deliver on his promises or turns out to be a bad
president we can kick him out of office come the next election.
But
perhaps the problem isn’t getting an ex-union leader like Lula into the White House
but George W.’s lack of Latino sensibilities. His father, George H., is a great
admirer of Italy and Italian culture and it’s no surprise that as a politician he was
much more realistic and pragmatic than his son. W’s problem is that he’s just
too Texan for his own good. He needs to loosen up and stop dividing the world into
“good” and “evil”. He needs to get out of Washington and away from all
his advisers and generals and Secret Service agents and spend some time in a country whose
lifestyle is, in itself, enlightening and educational.
As I
say, I’ve never been to Brazil but I just know that going there would finally make
him realize what he’s been missing all these years. I’d leave it to my friend
Luis Peaze to choose the city. Rio or Sao Paulo, it doesn’t really matter. The
important thing is to get out of the States and experience a different way of living,
another set of values. I’m convinced that after just a month of total exposure to
Brazilian life our president would come out of it a profoundly changed man.
Of
course, the only problem with sending him down to Brazil is that he might like it so much
that he’d never want to go back to the States. After four weeks of intensive cultural
exchange he might just feel the need to abandon his wife and sell the ranch. I, for one,
would gladly run that risk. Better to have him a happy ex-pat in Brazil than a bad
president back in the U.S.A.
Should,
however, he prefer to come to Italy there’s really only one place for a man with his
ambitions. The old jail/compound on the island I have in mind now houses the cadets of the
Guardia di Finanza academy, but I’m sure
that room could be made from him. At first, because of his notoriety he’d be
something of a tourist attraction. But with time people would forget about him and from
the windows of the compound he could look out on the port town of Piombino and watch the
yachts and tall ships that sometimes dock there in the summer. He could admire the beach
and the water and the haze that even on clear days makes the coast seem farther away than
it really is. In the winter there are very few tourists and fierce storms often hit the
island. He’d have to stay indoors and would have plenty of time to think and to
ponder the mistakes of his past. Guards from the Finanza
would escort him as he went shopping for used books in the Librerie of Piombino. Mothers would whisper to
their children as he’d pass by that there was the American who’d once ruled the
world. But like Napoleon before him, they’d say, he’d bitten off more than he
could chew, and after his desert Waterloo had been exiled to Elba. A sad man, incapable of
understanding that nothing lasts forever, not even empires.
Copyright © 2002 John
Hemingway
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