“When plunder has become a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.”—Frédéric Bastiat, Economic Sophisms
I was born into a Latin America that still believed reporters were custodians of facts, not curators of narratives. Six decades later, that ethos has largely been displaced by what Alexis de Tocqueville predicted as “democratic despotism”: a soft, pervasive power reducing citizens to “flocks of timid and industrious animals” under a shepherding state.
This transformation was not sudden. Its architecture was laid gradually by the Foro de São Paulo, launched in 1990 by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Fidel Castro. Their strategy was to infiltrate slowly, reshape minds, and erode resistance—beginning in schools, pulpits, newsrooms, and finally courtrooms.
Echoing Bastiat’s warning, the Foro displaced the classical rights of life, liberty, and property with a moral order justifying coercion in the name of justice. Hayek warned that liberty demands personal responsibility, while Burke reminded us: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
This essay traces the Foro’s rise—from university halls to supreme courts—and asks: How do we resist a force that corrodes rather than confronts?
Origins and Silent Methods
The Foro de São Paulo did not arise in a vacuum. It emerged from a decades-long process that reshaped the moral and political vocabulary of Latin America. Founded in 1990 by Lula da Silva and Fidel Castro, the Foro was born as a reaction to the collapse of the Soviet bloc. But its institutional roots reach deeper—into parish halls, union meetings, and seminary classrooms.
The groundwork was laid in the late 1960s, when the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (CNBB) embraced a new pastoral strategy inspired by the Second Vatican Council. At its VII General Assembly (1966–1970), the CNBB approved the Plano de Pastoral de Conjunto (Doc. 77), which directed the Church to “adjust to the country’s socio-economic reality” and to promote Christian witness through a “constructive presence in society.”
This new approach found its operational arm in the Base Ecclesial Communities (CEBs)—lay-led grassroots groups that combined Bible study with political awareness. These communities became incubators for political consciousness, especially among the poor and working class. In a study on the Catholic Left and the Workers’ Party (PT), the CEBs are described as “bridges from the ecclesial to the political sphere,” awakening Christians to “political commitment from the perspective of the oppressed.”
Meanwhile, the Dominican friars of São Paulo were advancing a more radical engagement. In Cartas da Prisão, Frei Betto recounts how several Dominican clergy “served as logistical support” for revolutionary groups like the ALN led by Carlos Marighella. Their activities blurred the line between Christian charity and armed resistance. Frei Betto later defended liberation theology, arguing that “Christian faith and Marxist analysis are not only compatible but necessary allies” in the struggle against capitalism.
By the mid-1980s, the Workers’ Party—nurtured by this theological-political ecosystem—had absorbed much of the CEBs’ human capital. The 5th National Meeting of the PT (1987) reveals the party’s ideological pivot: resolutions support “popular socialism” and condemn “North American imperialism,” signaling alignment with revolutionary agendas across Latin America.
In this context, the Foro was less a rupture than a culmination. It formalized a network already built through decades of moral realignment and cultural reengineering. Its strength came not from winning debates, but from reshaping the very frameworks by which political legitimacy, justice, and freedom were understood. It was, in Hayek’s words, “not through the power to coerce but through the power to condition minds.”
Education, Media, and Religion: The Invisible Trenches
If the Foro de São Paulo was the engine, education, media, and religion were its transmission system. These sectors—formally apolitical—became conduits for ideological realignment. The shift didn’t occur through legislation or censorship, but through epistemic capture: redefining what counts as truth, virtue, and justice. In Brazil, legal theorists openly argued for a “new constitutionalism” rooted in dignity, inclusion, and collective morality—principles largely derived from international progressive norms rather than local jurisprudence.
In Brazilian universities, especially in faculties of journalism, law, and economics, the transition was subtle but decisive. Curricula abandoned classical liberal references—natural law, individual rights, and methodological individualism—in favor of legal positivism, Keynesianism, and technocratic planning. Students once exposed to Locke and Bastiat now debate Foucault and Gramsci. The result? A climate where the state becomes the moral compass of progress.
The media—once populated by reporters committed to truth regardless of ideology—has followed suit. Journalists of the 1970s—some aligned with the left—still upheld facts above narratives. That ethos eroded. As early as 1988, Herbert de Souza (Betinho) wrote that the goal was a “new citizenship” through media—“not neutrality, but engagement.”
In religious circles, the transformation was profound. The CEBs became centers for political mobilization. Liberation theology, especially as articulated by Leonardo Boff, reinterpreted Christ as a revolutionary liberator. In Jesus Christ Liberator, Boff argued that “sin is no longer individual transgression, but systemic injustice.” His reinterpretation resonated across dioceses and seminaries, especially those influenced by the Dominican order and CNBB.
By 1990, when the Foro was officially created, the battlefield was shaped. Elections could be lost or won, but the semantic field—what words meant, what counted as justice—was already dominated. The Foro didn’t need to conquer nations by force; it had already conquered their consciences.
From the Andes to the Pampas: A Continental Web
The Foro de São Paulo was never merely a Brazilian invention. It rapidly became a continental mechanism for ideological alignment. From the rise of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela to Evo Morales in Bolivia, from the Kirchners in Argentina to the Chilean left under Michelle Bachelet, the Foro functioned as a coordinating framework—linking parties, unions, and movements that shared a strategic vision: the gradual replacement of liberal democracy by a centralized social order.
This was not a conspiracy in the cinematic sense, but a patient federation of elites who understood what Gramsci called hegemony: control of cultural institutions as a prerequisite to political transformation. In this framework, elections were useful but not essential. What mattered was shaping the long-term direction of society—through constitutions, supreme courts, and transnational narratives.
Even formerly centrist parties were drawn into this gravitational field. In countries like Paraguay, Uruguay, and Ecuador, leaders sympathetic to the Foro’s ideals adopted increasingly interventionist policies, undermining checks and balances while amplifying state control over education, the press, and civil associations. Critics were dismissed as reactionaries or, worse, agents of imperialism. Public debate became a monologue.
The network’s durability owes much to its adaptability. Unlike the abrupt revolutions of the past, the Foro’s influence operates through legal means, cultural prestige, and emotional appeals. It speaks the language of inclusion, progress, and human rights—while systematically eroding the institutional foundations that protect those very ideals.
Conclusion: Naming the Unnamed
In Discours de la servitude volontaire, Étienne de La Boétie called it “voluntary servitude.” The people, he argued, are not always conquered by force—but often seduced into submission by custom, comfort, or clever rhetoric.
The Foro de São Paulo represents a 21st-century form of this seduction. It does not wear uniforms or demand marches, it reshapes consciences. It builds an order where liberty is redefined as compliance and justice as redistribution. It recodes the moral compass of generations through schoolbooks, liturgies, and primetime television.
Resisting such a force requires more than elections or denunciations. It demands a return to first principles: to the classical and Austrian traditions that affirm the sovereignty of the individual, the sanctity of property, and the binding nature of truth. As Mises warned, “Only ideas can overcome ideas.”
To expose the Foro is not to invent a villain, but to reclaim a vocabulary: where freedom means responsibility, where solidarity is voluntary, and where justice is not the will of the most organized, but the limit of their reach.