Lula beats the far right: the Amazon breathes, but the structure stays in place

According to The Guardian, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won Sunday's runoff in Brazil's presidential election against his far-right opponent, Flávio Bolsonaro, after a comeback the British daily calls "stunning". Crowds celebrated in the streets, and forest defenders, climate activists and social justice movements around the world are rejoicing. The Guardian sees a victory for the planet and for democracy, as well as an instruction manual for movements in other countries campaigning, from the United States to Spain and France. The detail of the "seven lessons" announced does not appear in the extract we have, so we will not repeat them here.

What follows is our reading, not an established fact.

First, the joy is legitimate. When democracy and the living world seemed to be bleeding together, a large Southern country reversing the trend deserves better than a jaded raised eyebrow. The forest peoples, first exposed to fires, land grabbing and gold mining, have no need of our lessons in scepticism.

But an election is not a liberation. Anti-colonial Marxists have been repeating this for a long time: a country like Brazil was shaped to supply the centre with raw materials, soya, ore, meat, and this position is locked in by unequal trade, the weight of debt and dependence on external markets. Amílcar Cabral argued that national liberation requires freeing "national productive forces" from all foreign domination (our translation, based on La Arme de la théorie, in substance). In other words: protecting the Amazon against a hostile president is a victory; deciding for oneself what the country produces, for whom and at what price, is another, far broader one.

The risk is well known. Without social transformation, a progressive government manages an economic machine whose rules it did not write. It will have to contend with agribusiness, creditors, the appetites of extractive industries, and the demand from rich countries, the historic major emitters, that it "save the climate" at its own expense. The forest is thus ordered to provide a global service, without those who have burned the most coal paying the bill.

As for the "model" exportable to Washington, Madrid or Paris, caution is required. We do not yet know, according to what the Guardian reports, which social alliances made the difference or what promises were made. Copying a recipe without knowing the ingredients is the favourite method of hurried editorialists.

So let us celebrate the retreat of the far right. Then let us ask the awkward question: who will own Brazil's land, ore and debt once the party streamers have been swept away?