We Progress at Night When the Politicians Sleep,” Goes an Old Brazilian Saying
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The Two Brazils “We progress at night when the politicians sleep,” goes an old Brazilian saying. Today, after more than a decade of political and economic change, Brazil’s landless, its evangelicals, its indigenous peoples, and others have emerged into the daylight. Brazil’s future lies as much in their hands, our author writes, as in those of the politicians and bankers. by Kenneth Maxwell nly a year ago, Brazilians Brazil, with the world’s eighth largest were full of confidence economy, into the forefront of the global that their country was trend toward open markets and free trade. poised to surge into the Not only were Brazilians prospering but O21st century, that perhaps it was finally on their decade-old democracy had found the road to becoming the great power solid footing. Later in 1994, Cardoso was many had long imagined it would be. In rewarded for his efforts as finance minister 1994, Finance Minister Fernando Hen- with the presidency, becoming Brazil’s sec- rique Cardoso, a former Marxist professor ond directly elected civilian chief execu- of sociology turned neoliberal reformer, tive since the military surrendered power had masterminded a sweeping currency in 1985. reform—the Real Plan—which joined Then came the global economic crisis, other liberalizing measures and thrust beginning with the currency collapses in 50 WQ Winter 1999 Rushing forward in “an avalanche of hope,” an army of the land- less occupies a 205,000-acre latifundio north of Brasília in 1996. Southeast Asia in 1997, escalating with the ernment spending, increase taxes, and Russian defaults last August, and landing reduce indebtedness. In return, Brazil won with a crash on Brazil shortly after. Having a $41.5 billion bailout orchestrated by the failed, despite its many other successes, to International Monetary Fund (IMF)— get its fiscal house in order, Brazil found and the guarantee of more painful mea- itself dangerously dependent on infusions sures to come, as well as a recession that of foreign capital to finance its trade and promises to be long and deep. Cardoso, government deficits, struggling to stay who was, in his Marxist days, a high priest afloat even as nervous investors fled with of dependency theory—the notion that the their dollars. developed capitalist nations would forever Cardoso, who won a second term in hold the less developed economies in October in the midst of the crisis, was thrall—must have wondered if he had forced to take drastic measures to cut gov- been so wrong after all. Brazil 51 Yet Brazil’s decade of political and eco- democracy over the past decade, bringing nomic success has changed the country in new voices into the political and social are- certain irreversible ways. And the changes nas, Brazilians are beginning to recognize will, paradoxically, complicate its recovery. that getting to the future involves under- Prosperity, the opening up of political life, standing the past. and the expansion of educational opportu- This new concern with history is reflect- nities brought with them a deeper political ed in the recent vogue for restoring colo- engagement by the population, and the nial architecture—some of the most extra- emergence of unions, political parties, and ordinary examples in the Americas— a variety of grassroots organizations. To a which was once allowed to rot or was sim- degree that is unprecedented in the coun- ply swept away to make room for modern try’s history, Brazilians have found their buildings. In Bahia and São Luis in political voice, and they have begun to Maranhão, splendid baroque churches rethink what it means to be Brazilian. and 18th-century townhouses have been The IMF-mandated policies thus risk magnificently restored; old forts and ruins bringing about headlong confrontation of Jesuit missions along the southern fron- between the Brazil of bankers and busi- tier have become popular tourist attrac- nessmen and a new Brazil of political and tions. But these buildings are artifacts of social activism. One thing is certain: the the traditional Brazilian history, while the Brazilian government can no longer rule past that Brazil is rediscovering is replete by dictate or from the top down, whatever with contradictions. it may have promised the IMF. Brazil’s transition to national indepen- How successfully these two Brazils work dence in 1822, unlike that of its Spanish out their collective future will be one of American neighbors, preserved great con- the most dramatic stories of coming tinuity in institutions—the military, the months, and not only for Brazil. Failure in law, and administration. It was led, after this South American giant will profoundly all, by the eldest son of the Portuguese affect the reforms under way throughout monarch, who promptly named himself Latin America as well as the assumptions Emperor Pedro I. Portuguese America, on which the new international economic unlike its Spanish-speaking neighbors, also order has been founded. It is precisely for avoided fragmentation into numerous new this reason that U.S. treasury secretary republics. Independent Brazil emerged as Robert Rubin declared that Brazil is “too a monarchy with its huge territory intact. big to be allowed to fail.” The state as it developed was, as a conse- quence, highly centralizing, and the razil for many foreigners is still the national mythology it spawned depicted Bland of the bossa nova and “The Girl the country as a product almost exclusive- from Ipanema,” but Brazilians themselves ly of the coastal Portuguese and the impe- are becoming irritated with their country’s rial inheritance. willful folkloric self-image as forever But today Brazilians are learning a new young, bronzed, and beach bound, oblivi- history. It brings into focus the unruly ous to the past and giddily committed to a Brazil of the escaped slaves who held out future as ephemeral as the country’s torrid for decades in the backlands of what is telenovelas. Antonio Carlos Jobim, author today the state of Alagoas against the of that great lyrical celebration of Ipanema Portuguese in the 17th century; the bloody beach and the graceful passing beauty of uprisings in the Amazon, Pernambuco, its denizens, once said that Brazil is “not and the southern borderlands of Rio for beginners.” And he was right. Grande do Sul against the Brazilian Brazilians still want to have fun, to be empire in the early 19th century; and the sure, and no one is proposing the abolition extraordinary messianic communities of of Carnival. Yet as Brazil has embraced the semiarid interior of Bahia brutally sup- > Kenneth Maxwell holds the Rockefeller Chair in Inter-American Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Copyright © 1999 by Kenneth Maxwell. 52 WQ Winter 1999 pressed a century ago and immortalized by Celso Pitta, in 1996, and President the great Brazilian essayist Euclides da Cardoso brought Edson Arantes do Cunha in his Rebellion in the Backlands, Nascimento, universally known as Pelé, and more recently by the Peruvian novelist the great Brazilian soccer star, into his cab- Mario Vargas Llosa in his War at the End inet as minister of sport. The new vice gov- of the World. The historian Laura de Mello ernor of Rio de Janeiro, Benedita da Silva, e Sousa calls this the Brazil of the “unclas- is an African Brazilian born in a Rio favela sified ones”—the majority of the Brazilian (shantytown). As more Afro-Brazilians population, neither white nor black, nei- have moved into the middle class, black ther slave master nor slave in origin, not faces have also appeared more regularly in landowners but squatters and small holders, not only Portuguese but Italians, Germans, Japan- ese, Arabs, and Jews, as well as mestizos, mulat- tos, Indians, and Afri- cans, not only bankers but small entrepreneurs and shopkeepers, not just bishops but African orixás and Pentecostal pastors. he recognition of the “unclassified T ones” has been accompa- nied by the emergence of • • movements among the landless, the indigenous peoples, industrial work- ers, Protestants, and oth- ers. African Brazilians are perhaps the most important group now finding a political voice.* For centuries, they retained a resilient pluralistic religious and advertisements and the press. cultural presence at the core of Brazilian Brazil’s rediscovery of history chal- society, but one barely recognized in the lenges above all the peculiar legacy that corridors of elite power until very recently. has since the 18th century allowed the São Paulo elected its first black mayor, country’s rulers to graft the imperative of authoritarianism onto their vision of the future. It was this mindset that made the *Racial self-definition is a complex matter in Brazil, French positivists so attractive to the mil- where a very wide range of racial categories between itary officers who overthrew the monar- black and white has traditionally been recognized. The chy in 1889, and to the generals who count of “African Brazilians” varies from a high of 120 seized control in 1964. It is perfectly million, using a U.S. definition that includes all persons with some degree of African ancestry, to Brazil’s official summed up in the motto emblazoned 1991 census estimate, which lists only seven million across Brazil’s national flag: Ordem e blacks (prêtos) and classifies 62 million Brazilians as Progresso (Order and Progress). Demo- browns (pardos). Essentially in stark contrast to the tradi- cracy in Brazil has all too often been seen tional U.S. classification, being black in Brazil means hav- ing no white ancestors. Brazil was the foremost recipient as the enemy of progress, the harbinger of African slaves in the Western Hemisphere. of anarchy, disunion, and backwardness. Brazil 53 That, it seems clear, will no longer do. month.