Home > An Open Letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair

An Open Letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair

by Open-Publishing - Saturday 20 August 2005

Police - Repression Governments South/Latin America UK

Dear Prime Minister:

Not since the Christie Affair * (1862-1865) have relations between our two countries been this bad; I mean Brazil and England.

Quite apart from the lies of the war which, in our cups, I’m sure we all agree, were fantastic fibs (great with the rabble, though, I must admit: they sold like hot cakes here in the US where I live), I think you would better do right by the De Menezes dossier and not try to "fix the facts around the policy" on this matter.

Brazil did not have, nor does it want to have anything to do with your necrophiliac/anthropophagic policies.

So I remind you, as a private Brazilian citizen, do right by this one, man. I’m only asking for this one, ok?

You can go ahead and rampage about the earth with your Gringo brothers—you’re going to do it anyway anyhow, just as you would for the banking houses of Barrington Brothers and Rothschild in the 19th century—but do right by this one, man. (Is Iran really next? Aw, c’mon, try China: I’d be tickled pink if you tried that. Make me happy?)

Besides, you have no choice: it’s on CCTV, and the whole world knows about it.

Cheers,

Flávio Américo dos Reis,
Aka Lucifer, Bearer of Light
Translator/Writer

P.S.: I saw the Beeb yesterday trying to spin it—your post-Hutton Beeb, declawed and defanged—but it isn’t spinnable, I tell you, it’s on CCTV!, unless, of course, my wits deceive me and you should regale me with yet another deus ex machina!

The bit about you sending your Scotland Yard minions to Gonzaga to try to buy off the family is really sick—but really in keeping with the content of your character. (See the Times of London Story, ’Blood money’ and leaks: how a week went sour for the Met, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/articl...)

Oh, by the way, I look Middle Eastern, too, or Asiatic—as you so oddly put it over there, and I can be identified by my horns, my trident and my long, scaly tail. Although I do not have a forked tongue. That is pure rumor.


*The Christie Affair (Portuguese: Questão Christie, 1862-1865) in terms of Brazilian international relations was a contention between that nation’s government and that of the United Kingdom.

This diplomatic row was the result of a set of incidents involving both nations, culminating, on account of the inept performance of the designated British Ambassador to Brazil—William Dougal Christie—in the breaking off of diplomatic relations at Brazil’s initiative.

In 1862, some English sailors were detained in the city of Rio de Janeiro, for, inebriated and in civilian attire, they were promoting mayhem in the streets of what was then the capital. Their condition as British military confirmed, they were immediately released. Not satisfied, ambassador Christie took advantage of the situation to demand the prompt compensation for the cargo of the shipwrecked vessel, the Prince of Wales, that had sunk in the Albardão coast (then Rio Grande do Sul Province) (1861), the dismissal of the Brazilian police officers who had carried out the arrest, and a formal apology by the Imperial Government of Brazil to England. Christie, concerning the shipwreck of the British vessel, stated further that its crew were allegedly killed by Brazilians before it sank, and that they then allegedly proceeded to loot the ship.

The following year, a naval war squadron under the command of Admiral Warren blocked the harbor of Rio de Janeiro, capturing five Brazilian vessels anchored there. This incident further enraged the capital, resulting in several protests, with the population threatening reprisals against British property in Brazil. Emperor Dom Pedro II, looking for a friendly resolution to the row, appealed to King Leopold I of Belgium to arbitrate the Affair and, even before that monarch’s final decision, he proceeded to indemnify the British for the Prince of Wales’ lost cargo.

The Belgian king ruled in Brazil’s favor and, since the British government, for its part, refused to tender formal apologies for its ambassador’s performance, Dom Pedro I decided to break off diplomatic relations with England (1863).

Only after the British government presented formal apologies to the Brazilian emperor (1865), at the outbreak of the war against Paraguay, were diplomatic relations between the two nations re-established.

The case is argued in his book, Open Veins of Latin America, by the Uruguayan journalist and writer Eduardo Galeano, that the War against Paraguay, or the War of the Triple Alliance, was provoked by the Home Office, through its embassies in the capitals of Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo and Buenos Aires [the Buenos Aires Herald, the newspaper of the English community in Buenos Aires was the first to declare war against Paraguay-even before the war had been officially delcared!], owing to the fact the British, who had set up tentacular networks of railroads into these countries’ interior to sap their natural wealth, were nonplussed at their inability to break through Paraguay’s protectionism. At the time, Paraguay was an exception in Latin America in that it led a rather independent development from the European powers. In the end, the war proved most costly to Brazil, Paraguay was compelled to take out its first loans from the banking houses of Barrington Brothers and Rothschild (the only true beneficiaries of that war), and whereas it had been one of the most developed and self-sufficient countries in Latin America then (remarked on by none other than Baron Alexander von Humboldt himself!), it henceforward became a pauperized country, beholden to foreign interests. By the end of the war, the ratio of men to women in that nation was 8:38, and the nation never really recovered from that horrendous decimation. Brazil only pardoned Paraguay’s war reparations in 1943.

(Translated—and expanded on—by Flávio Américo dos Reis from the article in the Portuguese language section of the Wikipedia).