The Communication Forum for the Integration of Our America expresses its strongest repudiation of the attack suffered by the Caravan of former President Lula as it passed through the state of Paraná in Brazil.

This armed aggression is a direct consequence of the climate of violence and hatred installed by the distorted and permanent propaganda of concentrated groups of communication such as the Globo Organizations. It is also a prolongation of the growing militarization that Michel Temer’s illegitimate government wants to impose in order to silence all social demands in the face of its anti-popular programme of adjustment.

At the same time, it is a new attempt to remove from the electoral contest the candidate with the greatest intention of voting ahead of the presidential elections that should be held this year. The goal of the de facto government is to perpetuate itself in power and for that it needs to outlaw Lula, these attacks seek to prepare the ground for that, even at the expense of making evident at international level the lack of limits into which the usurping government of Michel Temer has fallen and especially the more radicalized fractions of the right that support it.

Among other issues, this situation also highlights the conflict between the struggle to achieve the redistribution of land through an integral agrarian reform in opposition to the interests of large landowners, who finance and arm groups to attack social leaders. Conflict in which the de facto government has taken a clear party in favour of the ruralists, promoting the criminalization of peasant organizations.

We are before a new sample of the generalized decomposition of Democracy in Latin America, which must be denounced outright by all citizens.

We also warned about the legitimacy that the conservative and neoliberal governments intend to give to the judicial persecution and political proscription of progressive candidates in the name of a supposed anti-corruption crusade, corruption of which they  are the main actors and representatives along with the companies that originate it.

The communication networks, media and social movements grouped in the Communication Forum for the Integration of Our America express our full solidarity to the colleague  Luiz Inácio “Lula” Da Silva, the companions of his caravan, those involved in the struggle  and all the Brazilian people in this juncture of social regression Brazil is going through.

We shall not stay silent!

COMMUNICATION FORUM FOR THE INTEGRATION OF OUR AMERICAS (FCINA)