The movement that defeated Trump’s agenda in Brazil has deep roots

by Jim Hodgson

Lula’s victory Sunday has global significance. Lula – Luiz Inácio da Silva – faced threats from U.S. President Donald Trump. His campaign withstood interference by the U.S. government and by giant tech companies, notably Meta.

In his victory speech, Lula proclaimed: “This country does not accept being anyone’s back yard.” The United States has always treated Latin America and the Caribbean as a back yard. Even when then-President Joe Biden said in 2022 that it wasn’t the back yard, but the front yard, he still implied U.S. possession.

Trump’s revival of the early-nineteenth century Monroe Doctrine, continuing airstrikes against fishing boats while arguing without evidence they were used for drug-trafficking, the fuel blockade against Cuba, the kidnapping of Venezuela’s president, and overt interference in elections in Honduras, Colombia and Argentina (among others) all show renewed U.S. determination to force the region’s submission – together, evidently, with that of Canada.

This election was the fourth that he has won (2002, 2006, 2022 and 2026), but there were three others before 2002 which he lost.

Images from the 1989 campaign: “Without fear of being happy”

The deep roots of Lula’s movement

In December 1989, a night or two before the run-off vote in that year’s election (Lula’s first campaign), I was one of about 300,000 people who gathered in the wide avenue leading to the old cathedral in Rio de Janeiro for Lula’s final rally of that campaign. The famous “Olé” soccer chant, altered here to end “LU-LA, LU-LA,” reverberated in the steel and concrete canyon.

After long decades of military dictatorship, Brazilians were making history: this was their first direct presidential election since 1960. In 1980 with the military still in power, Lula and others formed the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) – the workers’ party – from his base in the industrial suburbs of São Paulo. It built links with social movements across Brazil: farmers, landless farm-workers, women, Indigenous people, ecological defenders and others.

What I learned in my 1989 visit was that many of those movements had roots in the development of Christian base communities in the Catholic Church and in the processes of popular education and cultural action developed decades earlier in Brazil by people like Paulo Freire and Augusto Boal. Those methods had spread rapidly across Latin America, and shaped the work I did in the Dominican Republic from late 1986 through 1988. I was a “communications technician,” working in an organization dedicated to popular education and cultural action. My role was to train people in basic skills: how to write a news release, how to publish a newsletter. (This was long before the internet!) My colleagues did the prior work: adult literacy, building awareness. The people worked on issues of land, water, and threats of expulsion from their homes. I helped them make more noise about their concerns.

I learned far more from my Dominican colleagues about long-term struggles than they did from me about communication!

I returned to Toronto from the Dominican Republic at the end of 1988 and began working with the Canadian Council of Churches (CCC) in early 1989. That work brought me to Rio de Janeiro for a global ecumenical “Cultural Action Workshop.”

The World Council of Churches and the Brazilian Ecumenical Youth Union (UBRAJE) organized the event for young adult leaders from around the world to share experiences of action for social change, and to learn from each other. The theme was “The Senses of Creation,” and participants (about 20 of us from various parts of the world) were encouraged to use our senses to increase our awareness of our surroundings as a sort of first step in a longer process of personal and social change.

We spent a day, for example, visiting parts of Rio de Janeiro: a traditional neighbourhood market, a middle-class beach area (Ipanema), and a Pentecostal church. We broke into small groups, each group corresponding to one of the senses. Later, we returned to our conference centre and talked about our experiences. This wide-ranging discussion succeeded in heightening our awareness of various components of Brazilian society.

Drama exercises took us into our own minds and bodies, and then back out into the world, moving us to think about our place in the world. It seemed quite simple to open a huge trunk, remove costumes from the trunk and don the garb of some other personality. Here we entered the world of Boal’s “popular theatre,” used in Brazil to help people understand issues which surround them and begin to see what can be done to make change happen.

The Brazilians with whom we worked showed us how these activities helped participants to discover their roots, notice the ground on which they stood, and match their ideals to proposals for political and social action, lessons that we would later apply in our own contexts.

One of the organizers was Mauricio Lissovsky, who worked then with Brazil’s Institute for the Study of Religion (ISER) and later as a communications professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Despite the disappointment of Lula’s loss, Brazilians, he said, would continue to strive for transformation of Brazil “with full awareness of the ground beneath our feet.” Action for change could not be rooted in ideologies that were abstracted from people’s daily realities, but rooted instead in the ways that people live, work and express themselves.

In the years that followed, I thought often of Mauricio’s words as Brazil’s Landless Peoples Movement (MST) emerged alongside other social movements across the country. These movements played lead roles in the new international social movement spaces like the World Social Forum and the Hemispheric Social Alliance. Meanwhile, Lula’s political movement gathered strength and the PT won power in various cities and states.

Finally, in 2002, Lula won the presidency. He and his successor, Dilma Rousseff, led the country until 2016, when Rousseff was removed from office through a series of legal and parliamentary manoeuvres that eventually led to the presidency of the right-wing populist Jair Bolsonaro. Lula won the 2022 vote and returned to power – and won again in 2026 as the whole region seemed to be shifting to the right.

Some people from the social movements took positions within various PT-led local, state and national governments, and played positive roles within the structures of power. But the movements themselves retained their autonomy from the party and governments. When necessary, they criticized various government policies, such as the glacial pace of land reform, the charity model implicit in the government’s anti-hunger program, persisting corruption, the government’s embrace of food fuels like ethanol despite their impact on food prices and supply, and more recently the government’s move to allow oil and gas exploitation in the Atlantic Ocean near the mouth of the Amazon River.

Leaving aside for the moment debates over successive PT administrations, what had been underway among social movements in Brazil and many other countries in Latin America since long before the PT’s electoral success was a process of stepping back from reliance on political parties as vehicles (much less vanguards) for social change.

Instead, the social movements themselves become protagonists themselves in the political arena – as had Lula in his labour-organizing days. Widespread use of the techniques of popular education accomplished what they were intended to do: create new social subjects – people who were passive no longer and who understood themselves as agents of change.

Elections this weekend in British Columbia and Brazil: Who gets thrown under the bus for the sake of development?

by Jim Hodgson

I write today from northwest Chiapas, part of the traditional territory of the Zoque Indigenous people in southeastern Mexico. But I am thinking of friends and family in the Canadian province of British Columbia, who will elect a new provincial government today, and of the people of Brazil who will choose a president Sunday.

In all of these places, politics have become sharply polarized. The right attacks even the concept of Indigenous rights as an impediment to private property and to their notions of development – usually tied to ecologically-destructive resource extraction. They also attack 2SLGBTQIA+ people, especially trans people. And the left, rather tepidly in my opinion, defends the rights of Indigenous people, ecological protection and the rights of queer and trans people.

Today, let’s look at my home province, so-called British Columba, a land where virtually no treaties were signed during colonization.

Orange Shirt Day, Penticton, Oct. 30

In the B.C. provincial election, two acronyms have been bandied about. DRIPA and SOGI. Conservative politicians say they’re bad: threats to your property on the one hand and to your family on the other. And the relatively progressive government has not shown much courage in defending these policies.

What are they?

In this piece by Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs (UBCIC), DRIPA is explained.

In times like these, First Nations and our rights are often the first to be thrown under the bus. In the territory known as British Columbia (B.C.), this has resulted in politicians placing a target squarely on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA). Lost in all the related bluster and rhetoric is what UNDRIP and DRIPA actually are and are meant to do, and what those who seek to weaken or do away with them are asking British Columbians to give up.

Understanding UNDRIP and DRIPA

UNDRIP is an international human rights instrument. Developed through a series of forums beginning in 1982 and ending with the UN General Assembly voting to adopt UNDRIP in 2007, it is the product of more than 20 years of international deliberations, diplomacy, and compromise between UN member States and Indigenous Peoples’ representatives.

UNDRIP does not create new rights, nor does it extend any unique privileges or entitlements to Indigenous Peoples. Rather, it expresses long-standing international human rights norms in the specific context of the world’s Indigenous Peoples. Grounded fundamentally in the inherent right to self-determination enjoyed by all peoples, it is intended to protect the collective human rights of the more than 470 million Indigenous People worldwide that may not be adequately addressed in other human rights instruments that emphasize individual rights, and it also further elaborates on specific individual human rights with particular emphasis on the rights of Indigenous women and children.

Stated simply: UNDRIP recognizes and is meant to protect broadly accepted, basic human rights. Indigenous rights are human rights.

DRIPA, on the other hand, is a provincial statute which the B.C. legislature passed unanimously in 2019. The purpose of DRIPA is to advance the domestic implementation of these rights in B.C. DRIPA made B.C. the first jurisdiction in Canada to formally adopt UNDRIP as its framework for reconciliation, as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada explicitly called for. Since then, DRIPA has played a key role in enabling First Nations to take our rightful place at the decision-making table while facilitating economic growth and prosperity. …

There are legitimate questions about how DRIPA should operate, how its obligations should interact with existing law, and what role courts should play when conflicts arise. But those questions should not be allowed to obscure the fundamental question at the heart of this debate: whether the rights of First Nations will be treated as enduring human rights or as political concessions that can be suspended whenever they become politically inconvenient.

Summerland’s first Pride March, June 18.

And SOGI – sexual orientation and gender identity – is explained here by Wilbur Turner, president and executive director of Advocacy Canada (a Kelowna-based 2SLGBTQIA+ advocacy organization).

SOGI 123 was introduced in BC schools in 2016, ten years ago. It is a set of resources to help schools be safe for every student, and it was never a stand-alone curriculum. Researchers at UBC’s Stigma and Resilience Among Vulnerable Youth Centre, led by Dr. Elizabeth Saewyc, evaluated it using BC Adolescent Health Survey data from more than 98,000 students in grades 7 to 12 across 482 schools. They found that SOGI 123 reduced bullying and sexual orientation discrimination for students in the rainbow community and for their heterosexual classmates too. “We’ve now got 10-year evidence that it works,” Saewyc said.

Thousands of students have now graduated after spending most of their school years with these resources in their classrooms. The sky hasn’t fallen. What has happened is that more kids feel safe at school.

British Columbians face real problems this fall, from housing and health care to the cost of groceries. Let’s get serious about those, and leave the kids out of this culture war.

I’ll write about Brazil’s election in days to come. In the meantime, for excellent updates check out posts from Panamerican Dispatch.

The struggle over the new world (dis)order

by Jim Hodgson

The first hours of the annual parade of world leaders at the UN General Assembly Sept. 22 showed again the sharp disagreement between the leader of the United States and many other leaders over multilateral cooperation and unilateral abuse of power.

In his speech, Donald Trump threatened to “annihilate” Iran, proclaimed his nation’s supremacy, and declared that “to the victor go the spoils.” He also called Cuba “a failed state,” though any “failure” is due to his country’s decades of interference, embargo and sanctions.

Trump’s speech followed those of UN Secretary General António Guterres (left) and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio (Lula) da Silva (centre), who both emphasized the need for multilateral cooperation in the face of the ecological, political and humanitarian crises that confront humanity. Guterres also called for debt relief that is timely and effective.

“In the face of a global catastrophe more than 80 years ago,” Guterres said, “the United Nations was created as an act of defiance. The defiance of people who refuse to surrender the future to fear. The defiance against the self-defeating notion that might makes right. The defiance of countries that know our futures are bound together. The defiance of hope.”

Lula, who seeks re-election in October, warned that countries should not interfere in the internal affairs of other nations. In the current campaign, Trump has openly backed Flávio Bolsonaro, son of a disgraced former president. Trump previously interfered in elections in Honduras, Argentina and Colombia.

Lula urged world leaders to take stronger action in response to intensifying global conflicts and called on the UN to recover its capacity for dialogue and mediation. He added that it is time to choose between multilateralism or global fragmentation.

“Concessions to the law of the stronger have surpassed all limits. This is not idealism, but pure realism,” he said. “War is not the continuation of politics by other means; it’s the complete breakdown of politics.”

In his speech, Trump said Mexico was the “epicentre” of drug-trafficking in Latin America and that it had ceded some of its territory to the cartels. 

A day later, President Claudia Sheinbaum responded with irony: 

“I could say that it is very difficult to live next to a country with such a high level of consumption of illegal drugs. Or I could say that it is very difficult to live next to a country that produces so many weapons. But I won’t say that because we have a good relationship.”

(Sheinbaum did not attend the General Assembly; Mexico’s remarks were delivered Friday by Foreign Minister Roberto Velasco, who emphasized collaboration with other countries and reform of UN structures.) 

Trump gathers his “Shield of the Americas”

Since Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, the United States has tried to dominate its neighbours in the Western Hemisphere. The early 19th-century Monroe Doctrine (now dubbed “Donroe”) is revived to limit perceived threats in the region.

Over the past 13 months, the U.S. military has killed at least 230 people in about 70 air strikes on boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific Ocean. In January, U.S. forces kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his spouse Cilia Flores, and now holds them in a prison in Brooklyn across the East River from the United Nations building.

In April, U.S. and Ecuadoran soldiers launched an effort to dismantle a drug-trafficking group. On Sept. 24, U.S. troops and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration assisted Ecuadoran authorities in arresting more than 30 people with alleged ties to Mexico’s Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

During the high-level General Assembly session, Trump gathered leaders of the 14 countries allied with him in his so-called “Shield of the Americas.” 

They pledged coordinated action against 24 organizations designated as “narco-terrorist.” The declaration calls for sanctions, intelligence sharing, security cooperation and a commitment to invoke the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, or Rio Treaty, to consider collective military action against the groups.

New Canadian aid to Palestine and Haiti (but not Cuba)

Canada’s foreign minister, Anita Anand, also emphasized multilateral collaboration in her speech. Canada’s foreign policy, she said, is guided by establishing autonomy in strategic fields to limit superpower coercion, along with aspirations to lead middle powers.

“Great powers are walking away from global economic co-operation, dismantling economic integration,” Anand said. State sovereignty “has been treated with disdain.”

“We are facing serious challenges in the global order,” Anand said.

“We will lead other middle powers to act collectively and decisively, because middle powers are playing a key role in building the framework for the new international order — which is being established as we speak.”

Earlier in the week, Prime Minister Mark Carney pledged $100 million in aid for Palestine in an effort to preserve “the possibility of a two-state solution.”

The funding includes $80 million in humanitarian aid, while the rest is development funding for security initiatives, including top-up funds for a multi-year project to train police in the West Bank. 

Anand announced $25.4 million in new Canadian funding for Haiti to support security, governance and community resilience in Haiti. But there have been no new funding announcements for Cuba since commitments earlier this year of $13.5 million to the Pan-American Health Organization, the World Food Program and UNICEF for programs in Cuba.

(Images: http://www.lajornada.com.mx)