Head and Soul

The power behind the throne in the Lula presidency will be José Dirceu,
 a former communist who received guerrilla training in Cuba.
A man, with literally and figuratively many faces

Carolina Berard

José Dirceu de Oliveira e Silva, 56, is one of the most important figures in Brazilian politics today. He was the nation’s second highest vote-getter among federal deputies (the first was Enéas Carneiro) winning 556,563 votes. He is the president of the Workers’ Party (PT) and the political guru of president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. He is also the force behind the PT’s campaign for the presidency, responsible for the new ideological directions of the party. Dirceu will certainly have one of the most important posts in the government.

The change in PT’s rhetoric is quite significant. Lula used to preach against capitalism and everything that it implies—the IMF, investors, and so on. Needless to say business people (Brazilians and foreigners) wanted him far from the presidency. Today, thanks to Dirceu’s new policies of seducing these institutions and people, many company directors are less afraid of him and some publicly admit they have voted for Lula.

Dirceu’s strategy of toning down Lula’s rhetoric and adopting slogans such as “Lula Light” or “Little Lula Peace and Love” was quite successful. The change, however, made PT radicals’ blood boil. “I am very upset with my party,” declared Heloísa Helena, from the PT in Alagoas. “I gave up on running for the governorship of Alagoas because I can’t agree with the alliance [that PT just made] with PL (the pro-business Liberal Party). But it’s better to have a broken heart than to sell your soul,” she attacked.

This strategy, which many analysts call “maturation,” included Dirceu making various road shows to Wall Street and speaking with investors, bankers, company directors, and the like. His trip to New York and Washington was remarkable not only for the Workers’ Party, but for Dirceu himself. “Dirceu entered a territory that was unthinkable until a short time ago,” said financial weekly magazine Isto É Dinheiro, especially given his past. “In 1969, the US Ambassador to Brazil, Charles Burke Elbrick, was kidnapped. To release him, the kidnappers demanded (and they were successful) the release of 15 political prisoners. One of them was José Dirceu, who went to Cuba afterwards,” explains the magazine. In Cuba, Dirceu received training in guerilla warfare.

The PT’s radical members are not the only ones to criticize the new ideological approach of the party. Agamenon Mendes Pedreira, a satyrical columnist for O Globo newspaper (Agamenon is the alter ego of Hubert and Marcelo Madureira from the popular Casseta & Planeta humoristic TV show) asked: “During the dictatorship, Dirceu spent four years without telling his wife his real identity. If he did do this to his own wife, who can guarantee he is not doing it now with PT’s government program?” Olavo de Carvalho, a journalist and a philosopher, who knew Dirceu when they both fought together against the military dictatorship, is even more aggressive in his attacks: “It is absurdly naïve to believe that these are ‘things of the past.’”

Other politicians (especially Lula’s opponents) also criticize Dirceu and Lula’s so-claimed “change.” José Aníbal, the president of the PSDB, the Brazilian Social Democractic Party, said in an interview with O Estado de S. Paulo, in June 2002: “They are selling an illusion. It is a PT that is completely changed for the elections.”

Two questions are yet to be answered. The first is to what extent Lula’s voters know about Dirceu, this powerful politician who might have a discrete yet important post — such as Chief of Staff, to act behind the scenes. The second one, and maybe most important, is if his critics are right when they say that now, just like in the past, the new image he presents is pure electoral survival politics.

A profile of José Dirceu, based on an account published by Veja:

When young, José Dirceu was a kind of pop star: the long-haired radical militant of the 1960s and 70s was well known as a student leader and a Don Juan. “He had many girlfriends at the same time and followed the teachings of free love,” reported Veja. He even got involved with a girl who was a spy working for the Department of Security, a girl his friends called the “Golden Apple.”

He was arrested in 1968, when he was a candidate for the presidency of UNE (União Nacional dos Estudantes—National Students Union). He was freed in 1969, along with other political prisoners, in exchange for Charles Elbrik, then US Ambassador to Brazil, who had been kidnapped.

Later, he went to Cuba, where he worked with the Cuban Secret Service and was trained in guerilla warfare. Nowadays he claims to be no longer involved with such activities. “I did learn guerilla warfare, but I did not like it. I did not get involved, it was not what I wanted,” he says.

In 1970, he had plastic surgery on his nose so that he could go back to Brazil in 1971 unrecognized. Only in 1975, though, did he move back to Brazil, more specifically to Cruzeiro do Oeste, in the countryside of the state of Paraná. Before going, though, he carefully prepared a character in which he would transform himself. He invented a name and a whole story: Carlos Henrique Gouveia de Melo, a discrete man coming from a small town of the state of São Paulo.

He got married in this city but not even to his wife did he reveal his true identity. Only after four years, after a general amnesty was announced, did Clara Becker finally know who her husband was. “When I saw him on TV seeing his family again (…) I cried and cried and cried. It would have been easier to forget this if I had been widowed,” Ms Becker told Veja.

Carolina Berard is a translator in Brazil. She worked as a translator and journalist for the portal MultARTE Brazilian Culture www.multarte.com.br  and has translated texts on various subjects ranging from economic integration to popular culture in Brazil. She is currently doing freelance translations and articles for several publications. Her email: carolinaberard@hotmail.com  or kerolmb@ig.com.br 

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