Instituto Patria arrives in Brazil with the Lula Institute

“Now we are trying to see if we start recover country by country. In Brazil there are elections in 2022 and I think it is quite possible leave the left ruler again. My political experience shows that it is possible to build a sovereign democracy and a strong block ”. This definition of the former Brazilian president Luis Inácio “Lula” da Silva he was pierced by the desire to restore those times when popular governments administered Latin America. He used this concept in December of last year, when he officiated as a lecturer in a course at Instituto Patria.

In an effort to contribute to the premise of a new regional integration, the think tank of Vice-President Cristina Kirchner – who oiled her territorial expansion during the pandemic with Casa Patria in the provinces – is now looking for an international presence Yes will arrive in Brazil in May, with the help of the Lula Institute, based on what was reported by sources from the two centers in THE NATION.

“It is internationalized”, they summarized the relatives of the senator Oscar Parrilli, who presides over the headquarters of Buenos Aires. It will be constituted as the first formal cooperation agreement for the two establishments, who respond to Lula and Cristina Kirchner, former leaders with a solid convocation basis. The institutes have for axis not only theoretical training to create “policy frameworks” among the most loyal followers of Kirchnerism and the Workers’ Party (PT), but also the construction of initiatives that contribute to government projects.

The formalization of the link will take place on May 14, through an open virtual activity which will be disseminated on the networks of the institutes and which will bring together the presidents of each seat: Parrilli and Marcio Pochmann. From Buenos Aires, they noted that “important speakers and internationally renowned personalities” were invited to the presentation, but preferred not to give names yet.

The first joint activity, which will be paid and will address foreign policy issues, will include simultaneous translation in Spanish and Portuguese Yes will start on May 27, with five courses which will take place one per week. In addition to being already planned three other courses for this year, too the diagram of certain thematic commissions of the Patria de San Pablo Institute will be reproduced, through an articulation between the referents for months.

“To have the same goals. Every week there were virtual meetings with the management of the Lula Institute and we work daily with the team there to bring together the aspects of cooperation ”, he noted for THE NATION the coordinator of the Commission for the Regional Integration of the Fatherland, Maria del Carmen Alarcón, a former Santa Fe civil servant of rural origin, who served as secretary for national integration with Cristina Kirchner.

As Parrilli said during the presentation of the first workshop offered by the Fatherland this year to train its followers on issues related to the election year, since 2019, the Institute “manages” with people from their ranks incorporated into the government of President Alberto Fernández. In addition to the ministers of Culture, Tristán Bauer, and Territorial Development and Housing, Jorge Ferraresi, who are part of the directive commission of the think tank; participate in the regional integration commission, who negotiated with Brazil, three active ambassadors: Carlos Raimundi, before the OAS; Fernanda Silva, in front of the Holy See, and Eduardo Zuaín, in Russia.

Pochmann, the president of the Lula Institute – which was born as such in 2011 and has functioned as a citizenship institute since the 1990s -, is a member of the PT, a researcher at the Center for Trade Union Studies and Labor Economics and professor at the Institute of Economics of the State University of Campinas. In dialogue with THE NATION of the State of São Paulo, said of this bilateral agreement: “It is a new phase of the Institute, we are working on the prospect of building a South American vision. That of the Instituto Patria was a spectacular opportunity ”.

This “new phase” of which Pochmann speaks has something to do with resolution of the Supreme Federal Court (STF) of Brazil, who in March quashed the convictions against Lula linked to the Operation Lava Jato, considering that the court of Curitiba he was incompetent. Two of these processes, related to land donation and transfer, were linked to the Lula Institute. “There was an attack on the institute,” Pochmann said.

With a shared vision on the sides of the border that in Latin America, they are two political projects with opposing views -something that resonates in polarized populations, like Brazil and Argentina-, Lula and Cristina they also share a look in unison when considering the two victims of law and maintain, according to what they refer from Buenos Aires to THE NATION, a nourished exchange.

“There is a construction in which the two former presidents participated and which was destroyed for them. There is an opportunity to rethink and establish new needs, ”commented Pochmann for THE NATION, in an understanding shared by Alarcón, who spoke of “specific development and strengthening of regional blocks ”.

Although this is the first formal link for both institutions, both already had links with other countries. From Argentina, for example, they had advised the Ecuadorian Corréistes during the initial phase of creating the Eloy Alfaro Institute of Political and Economic Thought, in a bond that has lost its strength over time. The outgoing President of Ecuador, Lenin Moreno, denounced irregular transfers through said house of studies, which was closed in 2019 by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a maneuver that the former president Rafael Correa – exiled in Belgium – considered “arbitrary”.

However, the international connections of the Patria Institute are not only considered in Latin America, but other countries are emerging on the radar, such as China, a nation that Cristina Kirchner has always looked at. During the last act of Remembrance Day, the vice-president underlined that it was “the articulation of an Argentina with a multilateral vision in foreign matters” during the Kirchnerism which allowed the arrival of the Russian and Chinese vaccines. in the country.

At the Institute of Latin American Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences they translated the book into their language A sovereign foreign policy, by Cristina Kirchner, which selects 26 speeches from the former president. The work will be presented for the second half of this year and an invitation has already been sent to the homeland to participate in person. “Representatives of the Chinese institute went to Argentina before the pandemic and were received by Parrilli. We have important relationships and working on the possibility of an agreement similar to that of the Lula Institute, for the formation of an Argentinian-Chinese policy ”, Alarcón stepped forward, to THE NATION.

Meanwhile – and according to what they commented in San Pablo and Buenos Aires – the former president Evo Morales “seeks to build a political training institute” on Bolivian territory, one of the strongholds where the left regained power, under the presidency of Luis Arce.

In the background of the political questions of the newspaper, the partners of these years not only remember what happened in Latin America, but also work to reconstruct this Strategic alliance who, for example, saw them converge in 2010, for the bicentenary of Argentina, to Lula, Evo, Correa; the late Hugo Chávez of Venezuela; José “Pepe” Mujica, from Uruguay; Sebastián Piñera, from Chile, and Fernando Lugo, from Paraguay, with Cristina and Néstor Kirchner.