Guantanamo Is an Appeal to Brazil

The frequently dreamt-of news of the restoration of relations between Cuba and the United States deserves Brazil’s support and encouragement. After all, a shining opportunity to advance in the direction of peace has presented itself, one of the main goals for whoever fights for human rights.

An initial movement in this direction could — and should — be the announcement that Brazil also will take in a group of Guantanamo prisoners whom U.S. authorities are trying to place in friendly nations making the decision to receive them for humanitarian reasons.

If this announcement becomes reality, Brazil will take inspiration from another good example originating with that dear brother called Uruguay, led by President Jose “Pepe” Mujica.

Our diplomacy always reiterates its interest in maintaining excellent levels of cooperation and economic, political and cultural exchange with the United States. It is seldom that such a clear opportunity to assert agreement with Barack Obama’s efforts comes along, helping him fulfill his promise of closing the Guantanamo Base.

To Brazil’s cautious presidential or ministerial advisors who will jump from their seats to try to block what they always call a negative agenda, it is important to remember that President Dilma Rousseff just won a difficult election in which she faced an adversary in the second electoral phase who preached the reduction in the age of majority for criminal offenses.

Dilma did not give in, just as she would not yield to defending the death penalty, evenly split in polls, like Mujica who does not bend to protests of opposing sectors of Uruguayan society that condemn his administration as a statesman.

It is worth remembering, in a sincere dialogue with whomever still feeds the dragons and specters of the Cold War, that there is zero chance of American military personnel freeing prisoners who are the least bit suspected of being involved with terrorist organizations.

Six young men were received in freedom by Uruguay, after three others taken in by Georgia, two by Slovakia, one by Kuwait and another by Saudi Arabia, all belonging to the USA’s sphere of diplomatic influence.

Those received by Mujica were imprisoned for nine years and survived the type of treatment given to everyone who was held in George W. Bush’s secret prisons.

You can get some idea about that treatment reading the report from the U.S. Senate committee that investigated, over the course of five years, no less than 6 million documents from the CIA, about which no one is sure if it really handed over everything that is held in its vaults and encryptions.

If Brazil answers this call and makes the courageous decision supporting Uruguay, it is foreseeable that other neighbors will follow the same path, until the remaining 136 prisoners in that dungeon installed as a veritable enclave in Cuba’s territory are taken in.

In our country, it is with certainty that the freed young men from Guantanamo, some around 20 years old, will be greeted by a people that has always opened its arms to immigrants.

They will not have too much difficulty starting a new life, finding work, studying again, starting a family and making Brazilian children, supported by a vast Arab and/or Muslim community that is respected for their hard work and peaceful character.