Popular Pressure

Will the overthrow of the military regimes come from a popular demand for normal political activity or through some other means?

I believe from normal political activity, as more of the people can pressure the government. At least in the case of Brazil. That is what makes Brazil completely different from some other nations of Iatin America.

In Brazil the armed forces do not compose a caste. They are basically recruited--I mean the officers' bodies--are basically recruited from among the lower or a middle class. People who have a certain number of sons and cannot afford to pay their studies send one or a few of them to the army. So their social strata are basically not based on privileges of any kind, but on the contrary, they are under-privileged to a certain extent.

These officers are very much submitted to public pressure because they belong to it. They are really just people who get in uniform. Of course with a slight degree of professional orientation.

Basically they believe in the same things most people do. I don't think they have a militarist vocation. A minority of the military calling themselves, let's say, intellectuals, may try to organize a militarist concept of government. They confuse technocracy and dictatorship and try to introduce technocracy through a military regime, using it as a medium to attain the technocrat's objective.

Our main purpose in democratic terms is to conciliate a technology revolution with a democratic way of doing it and living together. That's the only way because on the other hand we could not go on with the old idea of a liberal nineteenth century concept of just politicians on one side and technicians obeying them all the time.

New Party

To what extent do you feel that democratic parties in Latin America can be a viable institution for promoting the social changes which you think is necessary?

Up to now, at least in Brazil and to a certain extent in some other countries, the traditional parties were not able to fulfill that need or that hole in the social forces. In other words, the social forces of progressivism are not yet served in the majority of those countries, and I include Brazil, by political forces articulated as such.

In terms of ideology you have the Communist party, legal or illegal--illegal in Brazil--which at the same time is not enough and too much. It is not a mass party. But it is too much in the sense that they require first, to take power, to then make the reforms. They don't educate people for democracy. They would rather use their nonconformism and their resentment to take power.

We really need a new party concept not necessarily based on a strict, strait-jacket ideology, but rather on a broad program of courageous reform mentality. I may say, that's what some of us are trying to organize now