Mr. Clemens on Brazil, the Monroe Doctrine, and the art of meddling by appointment
A letter to the editor, from the desk of Mr. Samuel L. Clemens, vice-president (retired, deceased) of the Anti-Imperialist League
To the Editor:
Sir —
I have a certain standing in this matter, having spent a portion of my later years writing in opposition to the notion that this country was put on earth to improve its neighbors by occupying them. I was fairly hard on the subject. The gentlemen who ran the republic at the time did not enjoy it, and I regret to report that none of them was moved. I am told the argument is now being made again, in a new coat, and I find I am still against it.
The occasion is Brazil, which on Sunday held a runoff election between its incumbent, Mr. Lula da Silva, and a Senator named Flávio Bolsonaro, son of the former president, who is at present serving twenty-seven years for plotting a coup. Mr. Lula won, with a little under fifty-two percent of the vote, and a margin of some four million. This is a larger victory than the polls anticipated, and I mention it first because it is the fact most likely to be forgotten by the end of the week.
The rest is a matter of allegation, and I propose to treat it as such, for I have been hanged by too many newspapers in my day to hang anyone else on an allegation. But the allegations are numerous, and they are made by persons who ought to know. Brazil’s government says the United States has been working to tilt the election toward the Senator. Its Attorney General has asked for an investigation, and the Federal Police have, I am told, begun one. Its intelligence agency says it has confirmed the interference. The State Department, for its part, strongly denies it. Brazil refused visas to two American officials who, it said, had come to talk about “election integrity,” which struck the Brazilians as a curious phrase for a visit from abroad. A foreign government that arrives to inspect your fairness is generally not the sort that has been invited.
There is more. A newspaper in London reports that the State Department has been diverting a million dollars from its human rights fund to oppose what it calls “judicial overreach” by Brazil’s Supreme Court, the same court that convicted the Senator’s father. Washington has also laid tariffs upon the country, and sanctioned one of its justices, and the American consulates in Brazil shut their doors to the public two days before the first round, citing security concerns they did not elaborate. Three Democratic Senators wrote the Secretary of State to say they feared the whole business pointed toward interference. I confess I cannot conceive how they came to think so, unless they were reading the newspapers.
Now I would be a poor humorist if I did not remark that the Brazilian side has its own theatrical habits. Mr. Lula’s campaign made an advertisement declaring that the American President wished to colonize Brazil and carry off its riches. This is the oldest trick in politics, and I admire it as a craftsman. A candidate who finds a foreign villain handy is never so patriotic as when he is running behind. One must also note that the President has not, so far as I can learn, formally endorsed Mr. Bolsonaro, and that what Washington says it is defending is the right of a foreign press and foreign critics to speak about a court. It is not an absurd position, and I have no wish to treat it as one. I only observe that it is easier to defend a principle when you are not simultaneously threatening to tariff the country in which you are defending it.
The matter of history is also at hand. A gentleman has been good enough to send me a story, now some years old, about the prosecution of Mr. Lula in the matter called Lava Jato, in which a Brazilian prosecutor, in a message that was later leaked, is reported to have called the former president’s arrest “a gift from the CIA.” The meaning of the remark is disputed, and the Brazilian Supreme Court later annulled the convictions on other grounds. I mention it only to say that a country with a long acquaintance with American intelligence services may be forgiven for being touchy on the subject, as a man who has been burgled twice is forgiven a certain interest in the locks.
I will add the fact that makes me smile most. The scheme, whatever it was, did not work. Mr. Lula won. The loser, I am told, says he cannot accept the result, and the American President has suggested, offering no evidence the papers could find, that the Brazilians have followed some former President’s playbook. A man who declines to concede an election that he lost is a figure I thought we had agreed to be embarrassed by, at least in other countries.
I have now been dead long enough to have formed the settled opinion that a republic ought to hold itself to the standard it prescribes for its neighbors, and that a great power is never so unattractive as when it is lecturing a smaller one on fairness. A recent post from an official State Department account is said to declare that American dominance of the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again. I have rarely seen so much confidence assembled in one sentence, or one that the Brazilian electorate so promptly declined to take as a forecast.
I remain, sir, as ever,
Mark Twain
(deceased, but still on the mailing list of the Anti-Imperialist League, which has been much neglected)