By Kenneth Maxwell
The three major Brazilian newspapers in their editorials had nothing good to say about Lula’s presence in Moscow for the 80th anniversary parade on Red Square celebrating the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in WW2.
The Brazilian President and his wife, Rosângela (Janja) Lula da Silva, joined Vladimir Putin, President Xi Jinping of China, and Captain Ibrahim Traoré of Burkina Faso, clad in his army uniform, the 35-year-old victor of a military coup in 2022, among other autocrats on the viewing stand in front of Lenin’s mausoleum.
Vladimir Putin praised his “special military operation,” that is his war against Ukraine. Afterwards at the gala dinner in the Kremlin he praised the role of the BRICS, with Dilma Rousseff, the former (and the impeached ) president of Brazil, in attendance. She is now the head of the BRICS’s development Bank, re-elected with the support of Putin, which is based in Shanghai, China.
The Estado da São Paulo said in an editorial that Lula in Moscow was a “day of infamy”.
The Folha de São Paulo said in its editorial that Lula in Moscow was “not pragmatism, only a diplomatic error .. and that in consorting with autocrats .. Lula was not only attending the just celebration of the end of the most lethal conflict in the history of humanity, but yes, the glorification of the another actual conflict condemned by the majority of the democracies of their world, with the exception of Brazil. A war of more than three years imposed by a nuclear giant on a ex-soviet republic which has already caused a million deaths according to estimates difficult to verify.”
O Globo of Rio de Janeiro said in its editorial: “Lula in Moscow: The wrong side of history.”
Brazil had indeed participated in WW2,
But not on the eastern Front and not with the Russians. A Brazilian Expeditionary Force (FEB) had fought in Italy, as part of the U.S. military command. Brazil had provided a critical base for the United States in Natal, in the north-east of Brazil, which was absolutely critical to the supply of U.S. armed forces in North Africa, and to the support of the Soviet Union via shipments of war supplies and crated aircraft around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa and through Iran into the Soviet Union.
This despite the fascist overtones of the Brazilian dictatorial regime of Getulio Vargas and the fact that Brazil had the largest Nazi party outside of Germany, and that the chief of Vargas’s powerful secret police was a fervent German sympathizer.
Lula could well have celebrated Brazil’s participation in WW2 in Rio de Janeiro at the “Monumento aos Pracinhas” which commemorated the Brazilian war dead: 948 men killed in action. 25,900 men, including a full infantry division, liaison flight and fighter squadron was involved.
The FEB saw heavy combat at the arduous Gothic Line and during the final offensive in Europe. By the end of the war, the FEB had taken 20,573 Axis prisoners, including two generals, and almost 900 officers. The FEB served with distinction in several battles including Collecchio, Camaiore, Monte Plano, and Serchio Valley.
It would no doubt have pleased the Brazilian military, and at a time when the Supreme Court in Brasilia is considering the case of the riots in Brasilia on January 8th, 2023, when supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro (who was in Orlando, Florida at the time) had ransacked the Palácio do Planalto, the president of Brazil’s official headquarters, as well as the supreme court building, and the Congress building, in an attempt to prevent Lula from taking office after his election to a third term, and after Lula’s lengthy imprisonment (April 2018 to November 2019) on changes of money laundering and corruption.
The Brazilian military had after all played a large role during the presidency of his predecessor, former Army captain, Jair Messias Bolsonaro. Army Generals had ruled Brazil for 21 years during the military dictatorship between 1964 and 1985. It could have been symbolic moment of national reconciliation. After all, Celso Furtado, the famous Brazilian exile, economist, and public servant, also fraught in Italy. His participation in the war against fascism was also well worth remembering.
But instead, Lula chose to be in Moscow.
The symbol of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force in Italy was a green snake smoking a pipe. Known as the “Smoking Snakes.” It became a symbol of defiance and pride for the Brazilian soldiers who proved their doubters wrong on the battlefield.
Lula received a Doutor Honorius Causa from the State University of Saint Petersburg, Vladimir Putin’s home town It is the University where Vladimir Lenin and Vladimir Putin studied. Lula’s Janja, wife went to Saint Petersburg and gave a speech on “hunger and poverty.” She is 21 years Lula’s junior and was a functionary of the Itaipu hydroelectric dam between 2005 and 2020. She famously told Elon Musk to “f..k” off.”
It is a pity Janja Lula da Silva did not have time in Saint Petersburg to look up the archives of the USSR Academy of Sciences (now the Saint Petersburg Ethnological Museum and the Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg) which holds the records of George von Langsdorff (Grigori Ivanovich Langsdorff) and his expeditions in Brazil. Langsdorff was the consul general of the Russian Imperial Court in Rio de Janeiro during the time the Portuguese Court, fleeing Napoleon’s troops, had removed to Rio de Janeiro, where it remained for almost 21 years after 1808.
Langsdorff is reported to have 1,500 decedents in Brazil, including Luma de Oliveira, a Carnaval Queen. He was evidently busily impregnating Brazilian women in addition to his duties as the consul-general of Imperial Russia in Rio. There is a venomous coral snake named in his honor. Lula should have remembered this snake (and the emblem of the FEB) before he embarked on his visit to Putin land.
The Micrurus Langsdorffi is a very nasty reptile.
President Lula, however, was on his way to Beijing for a four-day state visit to China and to attend the fourth
Forum China-Celac, the meeting between the leaders of several major South American countries (The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States [Celac]) and Chinese representatives.
Lula has eleven ministers, top politicians, and a delegation of 150 business leaders with him in Beijing. He said on arrival that Brazil’s link with China was “indestructible.”
Colombia’s President, Gustavo Petro, said that they were not “only looking one way’ by which meant toward the U.S. Chile’s President Gabriel Boric is also in Beijing. Lula added that he could not accept “that the president of the U.S. tried to impose on the planet earth, from one day to the next.”
While he enjoys the militarily parade in Red Square and the bromides of Xi Jinping on Beijing, Lula should perhaps remember that Brazil is a democracy, and that Russia and China are decidedly not.
The meeting of BRICSs in Rio de Janeiro between 6-7 of July and the COP30 meeting in Belém, Pará , between 10th and 21 of November, guarantees that Lula and Brazil are set to remain center stage.
But in Rio and in Belém, Lula should remember, that the Micrurus Langsdorffi lurks in the tropical undergrowth.
The featured image is of President Lula in Moscow listening to Putin and is a screenshot from the official video of the event.
This is the follow up to an earlier article: