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 Without Leonel Brizola, without Luis Carlos Prestes, without Darcy Ribeiro, without Celso Furtado, without Barbosa Lima, without Carlos Marighela, without Gregório Bezerra, without Betinho, without Archbishop Helder Câmara. Without Miguel Arraes. The Brazilian Left is now completely orphaned. The last of our leaders has departed.
This departure symbolized the void that, with the silence of death, they have left behind. A void that also comes from the Left's lack of banners of its own. We do not have anyone to speak or anything to say. And this is added to the frustration with Lula's government, the government that they helped to construct.
Arraes fell ill a little before the ethical crisis of the Workers Party and of the Lula administration, but his sentiment was already one of frustration, as I perceived during our last conversation, a week before the onset of his illness.
Arraes observed that the Left had lost its way. More than adjusting, we had surrendered to the reality of the new times. More than accepting the reality of the economy and of the world after the fall of the Berlin Wall, after globalization, and after Neoliberalism, we had abandoned the values and principles that are permanent.
Arraes felt that the Left had abandoned the poor in favor of corporativism, left aside K-12 education to meet the demands of the university, preferred the unions to the Nation. And he felt that we needed to reorient our struggle, seeking unification of all those who still desire a different Brazil.
Like the others cited above, Arraes died trying; he died carrying in his 88-year-old heart the same commitments he had at age 18. He died as the leader of the Lefts, the last leader who guided my generation.
With them we can and we should disagree; we should discuss their successes and their errors, but we cannot deny that what they all had in common was the dream for a different Brazil.
All of them were men of principled dialogue; they adjusted to the changes in reality, but they did not surrender to them; they did not abandon their principles and their dreams.
That is why, when I cast my vote for the first time, in 1962, I voted for Arraes for governor of Pernambuco. Forty-three years later, I am still proud of that vote.
Perhaps that may be the greatest comfort that we can have upon learning of his death: that we have not regretted voting for him. That is the best eulogy for a politician. I would vote for him yet again and with even more admiration.
Through his permanent example and through his permanent banner, Arraes Taí (Arraes is here). This was his slogan when he returned to the country after almost two decades in exile; that is the slogan that is still valid. Because what he began has still not been completed.
Arraes Taí and we have the obligation to continue the Cause that he carried out with coherence, courage, lucidity, making adjustments when necessary, but never giving up.
Miguel Arraes, member of the Chamber of Deputies and former governor of Pernambuco State, died August 13, 2005, at the age of 88.
Cristovam Buarque has a Ph.D. in economics. He is a PT senator for the Federal District and was Governor of the Federal District (1995-98) and Minister of Education (2003-04). You can visit his homepage - www.cristovam.com.br - and write to him at
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Translated from the Portuguese by Linda Jerome -
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