Klaus Hart Brasilientexte

The araponga (bell bird) is a bird which does not miss an opportunity to peck any piece of fruit it finds. It has a special peculiarity: the seeds it swallows do not lose their germinating power, which actually increases.

Under the dictatorship in Brazil, spies from the National Intelligence Service (SNI) were known as ‘arapongas’. They poked their noses in people’s lives, including supporters of the military regime.

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Now, thanks to young Snowden, we know that the greatest ‘arapongagem’ practised in the history of humankind is ‘made in USA’ which considers security more important than freedom and capital more important than human rights and pokes its nose in the life of people, governments, businesses and institutions. It learned from Clausewitz that surprise is the enemy’s trump card.

The US government, through their National Security Agency (NSA), spied (or still spy?) on president Dilma and Petrobras. For sure they have done and will do much more.

The news did not surprise me. I know, from documents obtained from the National Archive (Habeas Data), that I was monitored by the military regime’s ‘arapongas’ between June 1964, when they arrested me for the first time and 1992 – seven years after the dictatorship ended!

In August 2003, when I worked for the government, wiretapping devices were found in president Lula’s office. Months later I found an Army team searching the presidential cabinet. I asked chief of staff Gilberto Carvalho what was happening. He said that the military periodically checked for wiretapping. My response was “Who can guarantee that they will not ‘plant’ a new system in the office?”

Government information is worth a fortune. If shareholders and clients know beforehand that the Central Bank will declare the bankruptcy of any bank, this news is priceless. Anyone who knew that president Collor would confiscate Brazilians’ savings must today be laughing at the multitude who were taken by surprise.

The Cold War did not warm up simply because the Soviet Union did not spy on the USA like the USA spied on them. Frequently the spy on one side was exchanged for another who served the enemy. It is not for nothing that Russia decided to give Snowden asylum. He knows too much about the Yanks’ ‘arapongagem’.

In Mexico in March 2012 I met a university professor who worked in the US as a spy for Soviet Military Intelligence for 20 years. His job was to find nuclear missile bases. Thanks to the autobiography of a former FBI agent he learned, years after he was expelled from the US, that he was followed for seven years. They wanted to know who his mentor was but never found out.

During the days of typewriters it was impossible for an ‘araponga’ to discover the content of a message, unless he/she obtained a copy of the text or could photograph it. Now, all electronic means, through computers and mobiles, can be ‘ex-rayed’ by US security services. ‘Big Brother’ knows all that goes on in our homes.

Even if the White House asks Dilma’s pardon, this does not mean that the NSA will no longer search Brazilian government computers and learn what, when and with whom the president spoke. Information is power – submitting us to the interests of the most powerful empire ever to exist in the history of humankind.

Only one nation has managed to outsmart US ‘arapongagem’: Cuba. This irritates the White House so much so that, contrary to all principles of Law, it holds five Cuban heroes in prison for their mission to try and deter terrorist acts plotted in Uncle Sam’s country.

I now close with a question which will not be silenced: why, instead of attacking the Syrian people, do the US not bomb chemical weapons factories like Combined Systems in Pennsylvania? Ask Vietnamese people who were wounded, killed or disfigured by ‘agent orange’ spread by US armed forces during the Vietnam war.

*Frei Betto is a writer, author or “Hotel Brasil – o mistério das cabeças degoladas” (Hotel Brasil – the mystery of the decapitated heads)(Rocco).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Within Brazil he is equally famous, with over 55 books to his name.  In 1985 he won Brazil’s most important literary prize, the Jabuti, and was elected Intellectual of the Year by the members of the Brazilian Writers’ Union. Frei Betto has always been active in Brazilian social movements, and has been an adviser to the Church’s ministry to workers in São Paulo’s industrial belt, to the Church base communities, and to the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST).