Dilma Rousseff Identifies Two Opposing Systems before the World: The Belt and Road or Wall Street

May 27, 2019 (EIRNS)—Former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who was thrown out of office in 2016 by an illegal parliamentary coup run from London and the U.S. Department of Justice, gave a long and thoughtful interview to the Spanish-language Sputnik Mundo on May 15 on regional policies and the breakdown crisis suffered by Brazil today. Asked to comment about “all the talk about Russian and Chinese influence” in Ibero-America and the Caribbean, Rousseff answered by pointing to the two opposing systems contending globally today:

“What is the U.S. worried about? I read a Chinese journalist’s statement that said: ‘Whereas they arrive with Marines, we arrive with businessmen and credit lines.’ I would like to emphasize the difference between the two strategies, between the strategies of the U.S., which is centered on finance, on the fact that resources are allocated for their own increase, and not in productive activities or in infrastructure or industrial investments.

“On the other hand, China and Russia—I put them together because Russia is jointly in the ‘Belt and Road’ project, which is not a speculative project, but an infrastructure investment project. Here in Latin America, the bioceanic route which would link the Atlantic to the Pacific was discussed a lot, but that shows two different ways of seeing relations between countries. One implies that we are going to build infrastructure together, a path of opportunities, investment and economic growth, and improved incomes.

“The other project is one of speculation, where what dominates is the financial market, imposing, as is being seen in Argentina, a disaster, which is going to begin here in Brazil, also becoming constantly deeper, which is cuts—cuts in education. Here they are cutting 30% in university budgets. So you have two different models.”

As for the domestic situation in Brazil, Rousseff started from the purpose for the coup against her. It

“wasn’t done because they didn’t like ‘this’ or ‘that.’ It was carried out in order to put Brazil back fully under neoliberalism. We were the big country in the world which had not completed the process of being neoliberalized. Our labor market was not deregulated; our important state companies were under control of the government.”

The coup, she warned, has “created a monster,” and severely undermined all institutions in the country. As a result, “Brazil is at an impasse. I do not have a crystal ball to say what will happen tomorrow,” but, she said, “a tsunami” could hit Brazil at any time.