I met her again in 1970 in the Tiradentes prison in Sao Paulo. She was in the women´s wing known as the Maidens´ Tower and I was in the men´s. On Sundays I was allowed to go through the gate dividing the two wings in order to celebrate the liturgy with the women. In jail, even atheists did not refuse divine blessings.

Our paths crossed a third time in the presidential palace in Brasilia in 2003. She as Minister for Energy and Mines and I as special adviser for the Zero Hunger programme.

Dilma has a strong character and a short fuse. During her first term in office I suggested she learn to meditate. She once tried phoning me but our agendas did not coincide.

She is an administrator, a manageress, lacking shrewdness in politics. She wants to decide, not negotiate. She wants to resolve things, not consult about them. This impetuousness hinders her political performance.

Our last encounter was on November 26 2014 shortly after her re-election, when she defeated the opposition. She talked for over an hour in her presidential office with Leonardo Boff, Marcia Miranda, Maria Helena Arrochellas, Luiz Carlos Susin, Rosileny Schwantes and me, all of us linked to Liberation Theology. We offered her suggestions for profound structural reforms.

Early in 2015 it became evident that Dilma could not comply with the items on our agenda. I felt foreboding for her government. What she proposed to do, as the sorcerer´s apprentice, is dominated by conservative forces, for they are the very sorcerer.

Associated to what is most physiological in Brazilian politics, Michel Temer approved the parliamentary coup, opening a dangerous precedent: from now on in Brazil, opposition not only rhymes with deposition. It is a trick to usurp political power which, with its back to the people, takes over the State machine.

This is an attack, based on unproven accusations with no legal foundation, on Brazilian democracy and the legitimacy of a government which was elected at the polls by a majority of the people, as has been denounced by the head of state and by former President and PT leader, Luiz Inacio “Lula” Da Silva, and by numerous leaders of left wing political parties and Brazilian social movements.

Since 2003, the year in which the first Workers Party government led by Lula took office, important social programs have been implemented in Brazil, which have had a significant impact within the less privileged population. According to the World Bank, 25 million Brazilians escaped poverty, thanks to programs such as “Bolsa Familia”; “Mi Casa, Mi Vida”; “Más Médicos” and “Hambre Cero”.

Brazil became an influential international actor, a defender of just causes, and a promoter of unity and Latin American and Caribbean integration.

The coup plotting opposition is looking to end the cycle of popular governments of the Workers Party, and thus roll back the social gains won by the Brazilian people, to install a neoliberal government which will allow large transnational companies to plunder the natural resources of this sister Latin American country – especially its immense oil, mineral, water, and biodiversity – and one which will subordinate its foreign policy to hegemonic imperialist interests.

The coup against Brazilian democracy is part of the oligarchy and imperialism’s reactionary counteroffensive against Latin American integration and progressive process in the region. It is, at the same time, directed toward the group of countries known as BRICS, a bloc of powerful economies which have challenged the hegemony of the U.S. dollar.

The Ministry of Foreign Relations of the Republic of Cuba energetically condemns the parliamentary coup underway in Brazil, and resolutely supports the people and the legitimate government of this sister country, as well as President Dilma Rousseff, in defense of the political and economic gains and social accomplishments achieved during the Workers Party governments.

Havana, April 17, 2016