Bulletin on the 15 TFPs, Vol. I – No. 8 – 1988, Pleasantville, N.Y., page 1

WITH grave socioeconomic problems and a radical con­stitutional reform threatening Brazil , the Brazilian So­ciety for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) is carrying out a public campaign dealing with the impasse Bra­zil now faces, proposing at the same time, a concrete, serene and balanced solution.

The campaign centers around the book, The Proposed Con­stitution: Anguish for the Nation by Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira. His amply documented, 210-page work analyzes the formation and functioning of the special Constitutional As­sembly elected in November 1986, as well as the disastrous "Cabral Plan" it has present­ed. He concludes that the proposed land, urban and business reforms can be compared to a toboggan coasting the country toward communism.

In the busy streets of Sao Paulo , South America 's largest city, and other Brazilian cities, members and associates of the Brazilian TFP are utilizing bands, standards and banners to bring the issue into the na­tional limelight, selling tens of thousands of books. In Brazil , where the sale of even 6,000 copies would be considered good for a non-fiction book, the first edition of the latest TFP work sold out at 40,000 copies, and the printing of a second edition of 30,000 co­pies has made the book a best­seller.

Published as a special issue of the monthly magazine Cato­licismo, the work describes a panorama filled with paradoxes and contradictions. For exam­ple, the proposed constitution calls itself democratic and zeal­ous for the unity of the coun­try, but, at the same time, it would make the Indian tribes a kind of privileged aristocracy, risking national unity by setting one ethnic group against another.

Perhaps the most disconcerting aspect of the new plan is that while it claims to be liberal and respectful of legitimate individual rights, its provisions perilously mutilate the Brazilian family, strike a profound blow against private property and restrict free enterprise. The plan calls for implanting a drastic land reform of a socialist and confiscatory nature that will turn the countryside into favelas (slums). Analogous reforms are planned for cities, businesses and medicine. The Brazilian state would thus be transformed into an authori­tarian tyrant, with its talons tearing into all the legitimate freedoms of the country.

Ironically, these reforms are being proposed at the same time that the Russia of Gor­bachev is acknowledging the economic failure of the invading and monopolistic commu­nist state, which the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in a recent docu­ment courageously termed the "shame of our time."

To circumvent a catastrophic situation in Brazil that this refor­mist fanaticism could make in­soluble, Prof. Plinio Correa de Oliveira has advanced a pro­posal that is already having widespread repercussions. He proposes that the socioeco­nomic section of the constitu­tion be debated by a new assembly to be elected in three years. This would permit am­ple time to debate the drastic reforms being proposed and to permit the mature, rational and sound formation of national public opinion. After this peri­od, the future assembly would draft a new constitution that would then be approved by a national referendum.