Manuela Picq: the image of the citizen’s revolution fell down

Posted On 19 Aug 2015

Image: El Universo

Brazilian Manuela Picq believes that her arrest and intention of deportation allowed to show the reality of “Correism” in the leftist academic sectors of the continent, she said in an interview with El Universo

After your arrest were you inmediately transferred to the Carrion hotel?

The arrest happened at seven-thirty, an hour later a key moment occurred: when the girls of the Interior Ministry, secretaries and assistants would realize that I am the partner of Carlos Perez, there was a sparkle in their eyes and they would say, “We’re going to deport you.” A process of custody begins, from one hospital to another, which ended at nine in in the morning in Migration where they verbally said they will cancel my visa. I never saw a document.

On Friday night were you transferred from one place to another?

I did not sleep that night, I had blows in the back, head and was worried about my eye. At nine in the morning the deportation proceedings began, it carried my passport because the Brazilian consul stayed with me all the time. I was taken to various places (…).

The police did not know what to do. I studied the Nazi system, which seemed so organized from outside but when you see it from inside it was chaotic and that Friday I could notice how chaotic the “Correism” is. Nobody knew who was above who and when the law intervened and when the boss.

How was the entry of your lawyers?

Limited. On Saturday they managed to enter for the the first 20 minutes. On Sunday, visiting day, I received the consul at nine in the morning, I told him that the visit was very complicated and I could not prepare a defense.

Were you able to notice all the national and international support?

No, I was restricted. When I got home I caught up. At international level a mobilization was held by my academic community. The lies and the illegality became so visible that people from the internation left who looked the government differently turned their backs to it. This issue grew into something larger against the misinformation that exists in authoritarian governments. Associations of Latin American Studies, the International Asociation of Sociology sent letters, universities and a major center in Princeton wrote a letter that obtained two thousand signatures in two days. The leftist intelligentsia moved for the first time, in a heavily and articulated way against leftist governments.

Did this change the image of the citizen’s revolution?

It crumbled. There is a racist, plurinational dimension. My deportation has to do with Carlos, the racist attitude of this government to the indigenous movement and it opens up a space for contesting the legal war that seeks to crush the opposition. The other has to do with the ideological alternative road to the left. The indigenous movement is an interesting alternative, beyond its fragmentation and certain abuses it can commit.