The Right's New Clothes: How Old Neoliberal Ideas, By Marina Amaral

The Right's New Clothes: How Old Neoliberal Ideas Have Been Charming the Latin American Youth
This story was written by Marina Amaral and originally published by Agência Pública.

"Our body is the first private property we have; it is up to each of us to decide what to do with it," shouts in Spanish a young blonde woman with a firm voice, while moving gracefully across the stage at the Liberty Forum, adorned with the logos of its official sponsors - Tobacco company Souza Cruz, Gerdau Group, Petróleo Ipiranga and the RBS Group (a local Globo TV affiliate). Fully packed, the 2000 seat auditorium of the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUC –RS in Portuguese), in Porto Alegre, bursts into laughter and applause for Gloria Álvarez,
She addresses the public with ease, which is mostly made up of PUC-RS students, one of the best and most expensive universities in Southern Brazil. “Who here call themselves liberal or libertarian raise their hands,” she asks the audience, who reply with raised hands. “Ah, ok,” she relaxes. Her mission, explains the young leader of the National Civic Movement (MCN in Spanish), a small Guatemalan organization that sprung up in 2009, in the wake of movements that unsuccessfully demanded the impeachment of the Social-Democrat President Álvaro Colom, is to teach her ideological peers how to “charm and seduce people on the left, and how to beat the bearded and beret-cladded Che Guevara
All of us, seven-and-a-half billion human beings inhabiting this planet, are selfish. This is the truth, my dear friends in Brazil. We are all selfish. Is this bad? Is this good? No, it’s just the reality,” she says categorically. “There are people who don’t accept this truth and come up with this wonderful idea: ‘No! [Gloria shouts, imitating a man's voice] I will build the first unselfish society!’ Be careful, Brazilians, be careful, Latin America! Those wise guys are like Stalin, in the Soviet Union, or Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un, in North Korea, Fidel Castro in Cuba, or Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. Why do we keep following those hypocrites like sheep? Because [Gloria grimaces and imitates a frail woman elderly voice] they teach us that it’s wrong to be selfish and that to think of ourselves is a sin. How many of you haven’t heard someone say we need a good man who doesn’t care only for himself” she says, bending as she speaks, and then standing up to regain her proud upright posture, “Look, gentlemen, unless it’s is a Martian, this man does not exist, never existed and never will exist." Frantic