We Progress at Night When the Politicians Sleep,” Goes an Old Brazilian Saying

Home , Kenneth Maxwell, Survival International

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 landless 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 consequence, 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-

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 workers, Protestants, and others. 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 having 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. Brazil’s income disparities are Brazil’s transformation grows in part out among the worst in the world. The most of its recent prosperity. When I first came impoverished 20 percent of Brazilians to Rio de Janeiro as a student in the mid- receive a mere two percent of the national 1960s, the country was still largely rural, wealth, while the richest 20 percent with short life expectancy, large families, receive 60 percent. Festering shantytowns low per capita income, and a high illitera- surround the large urban centers, and cy rate. By the 1990s, Brazil, with a popu- Rio’s favelas are especially notorious for lation of more than 160 million, had crime and violence. This is the Brazil of become one of the world’s largest half-starved children playing outside economies, with a per capita income of makeshift shacks in dusty northeastern vil- more than $5,000. Family size had lages and smudge-faced urchins knocked dropped dramatically, from six children out by glue sniffing, huddled together per family in the 1970s to 2.5 in the mid- under benches in São Paulo’s principal 1990s. It had become a largely urban downtown squares. But extreme poverty is country. Brazil’s two million cars in 1970 now concentrated in the semiarid had grown in number to 26 million, its TV Northeast of Brazil, where drought and sets from four million to 31 million. Infant disease have long been curses of biblical mortality had decreased from 118 per dimensions. Both were greatly aggravated 1,000 in 1970 to 17 per 1,000, and illitera- in 1998 by the effects of El Ninõ. cy has greatly diminished. Brazilians are proud to call themselves a racial as well as a political democracy, and oday the Brazilian states of São are irritated when scholars and activists TPaulo and Rio Grande do Sul, if they point out that poverty is disproportionately stood alone, would be numbered among concentrated among the Afro-Brazilian the richest 45 nations on earth. The econ- population. In fact, whites on average earn omy of Rio Grande do Sul, the southern- two-and-a-half times as much as blacks. As most state, abutting Argentina and veteran Brazil watcher Ronald Schneider Uruguay, was built on European immigra- notes, out of 14,000 priests, 378 bishops tion and cattle. The state of São Paulo has and archbishops, and seven cardinals, the a gross national product larger than Brazilian Catholic Church has only 200 Argentina’s, and São Paulo City is a mega- nonwhite priests. Similar disproportions lopolis with a population of 15 million and can be seen in Brazil’s diplomatic service a vibrant financial, cultural, and business and military officer corps. life; the state-supported university of São Paulo is a world-class institution. Like sev- evertheless, the poor have seen their eral of Brazil’s larger cities, São Paulo has Nlives improve over the past decade, a lively press; dailies such as the Folha de with large numbers of people moving up São Paulo, the grand old Estado de São from the bottom ranks of society into the Paulo, and the business-oriented Gazeta emerging middle class. The credit for this Mercantil are as articulate, critical, and change belongs to Cardoso’s Real Plan, influential as any quality newspaper in introduced in 1994 while he was finance Europe or North America. Brazil also minister under President Itamar Franco. boasts one of the world’s most successful Confronted with economic chaos and television networks, TVGlobo, and one of feverish inflation, Cardoso created a new its most aggressive publishing empires, currency, the real, linked to the U.S. dol- Editora Abril, proprietor of the mass-circu- lar, with its value pegged to permit only lation newsweekly Veja, which reaches minimal depreciation. Inflation plunged more than four million readers, all of them from more than 2000 percent annually to full-fledged members of the emerging single digits, with instant tonic effects felt global consumer order. throughout the country. A large segment of the population, per- Suddenly, as the currency stabilized, haps 40 million people, however, remains Brazilians had money to spend for refriger- in poverty, with incomes below $50 a ators, televisions, and clothing. Analysts

54 WQ Winter 1999 looking at consumer trends over the past frontier was filled in, as cattle ranchers six years reckon that some 19 million peo- moved inland from the coast and squat- ple have moved from basic subsistence ters established themselves between the into the lower level of the Brazilian middle plantation-dominated littoral and the class, which today embraces some 58 mil- backlands. These independent-minded lion people. Those who remained poor mixed-race families lived largely outside benefited as well, finding more money in the juridical formulas that elsewhere their pockets for meat, chicken, eggs, corn, defined and contained both Portuguese and beans. Their income increased by 30 masters and African slaves, but they percent during 1995–96 alone. helped root Brazilian society in the In earlier decades, poverty pushed mil- Brazilian landscape. lions of Brazilians from the hinterlands In the 18th century, the first great mod- into São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro and out ern gold rush brought European settlers, into the frontier on the western fringes of slaves, and, belatedly, government, into the Amazon basin. During the 1990s, pros- the mountainous interior of what is today perity allowed many of the smaller cities in the state of Minas Gerais. Today the spec- the interior of Brazil to flourish, attracting tacular churches and mountain towns some five million mostly middle-class peo- they constructed are among Brazil’s most ple searching for a better quality of life. precious colonial heritage; here the magnificently carved figures of the Apostles by he spread of prosperity and popula- the crippled mulatto sculptor Aleijadinho Ttion over the face of Brazil have stand as marvels of this age of extravagance made it both a more homogenous and a and piety. In the 19th century, large-scale more complex society. For four-and-a-half coffee bean plantations were developed in centuries, most of Brazil’s population São Paulo and Paraná in the south, reviv- remained around key seaports close to the ing the demand for African slaves. After zones where sugar, cotton, cacao, coffee, the abolition of slavery in 1888, immigrant and other major export commodities are laborers poured in from Italy and southern grown. Brazil’s first historian, Friar Vicente do Salvador, writing in 1627, said that the Portuguese settlers and their African slaves “scratched at the seacoast like crabs.” The first Europeans to penetrate the vast interior were intre- pid missionaries, explorers, and ruthless Portuguese frontiersmen traveling up the Amazon River and the tributaries that run south into the La Plata basin. This huge geographical area, larger than the contiguous United States, remained for centuries a hollow fron- A street-level view of Brazil’s mid-1990s prosperity tier, incorporating vast unexplored terri- in the southern city of Curitiba. tories and many thousands of indigenous peoples unknown to the Portuguese Germany, joined in the 1920s by newcom- governors and viceroys who ruled until ers from Japan. By the early 20th century, 1808, or to the Portuguese monarchs who a cotton textile industry was established in held court in Rio de Janeiro between 1808 São Paulo, augmented in the 1960s by and 1821, or to the Brazilian emperors steel and automobile industries, creating Pedro I and Pedro II, who succeeded them an industrial urban working class and a after the declaration of Brazil’s indepen- powerful business elite. dence from Portugal in 1822, or to the Both civilian and military rulers saw the generals and civilian politicians who estab- development of the interior as the means lished the United States of Brazil in 1889. to Brazil’s future greatness. In the late Yet slowly and inexorably the hollow 1950s, President Juscelino Kubitschek

Brazil 55 forced through the extraordinary plans for became a visiting professor at the the futuristic new capital and federal dis- University of California, Berkeley, and trict of Brasília, set down like a spaceship Stanford University, and spent two years at on the largely uninhabited high plateau of the Institute for Advanced Study in Goiana in the center-west of the country. Princeton, New Jersey, working closely Modernistic bowls, towers, and upturned with that wise and brilliant pragmatist, the cups contained the Congress and its func- veteran economist and proponent of tionaries, dwarfed against a backdrop of reform by “muddling through,” Albert O. enormous sky and red earth. Soon there- Hirschman. When he returned to Brazil in after, the generals who ousted Kubitschek’s 1970, Cardoso, like many of the other successor, President João Goulart, and upper-middle-class exiles of his genera- established one of Latin America’s longest- tion, had become thoroughly cosmopoli- lived military regimes (1964–85), tan, skeptical of Marxism, well connected embarked on a series of grandiose schemes in the wider world, and thoroughly knowl- to develop the Amazon. Ignoring the edgeable about the workings of the U.S. established river-based lifelines, they drove political and economic systems. roads straight through the tropical rainfor- est and built huge dams to tame the omentous changes were also taking Amazon’s tributaries and flood the river Mplace at the grassroots within plains, often with disastrous ecological Brazil. Throughout the late 1970s and consequences. The highways brought with early 1980s, trade unions that had been them economic exploitation and its pre- founded in the 1930s during the dictator- dictable companions, greedy speculators ship of Getúlio Vargas on an Italian fascist and corrupt and callous bureaucrats, as model as syndicates dependent on the well as a plague of infectious diseases. The state, shook off government control. Most forced contact with the outside world was formidable was the metalworkers’ union in disastrous for the remaining 250,000 São Paulo. The unions nourished the Brazilian Indians, the majority living in emergence of a new Workers’ Party (PT) in the Amazon forests. The long-isolated 1980 and a National Trade Union Yanomami were hard hit with malaria as Confederation in 1983. Together they pro- 10,000 prospectors invaded their territory vided a base for the charismatic Luís in the late 1980s. Inácio da Silva, popularly known as Lula, The military regime also poured money who rose through union ranks from the into the expansion of higher education, shop floor and awakened hopes that he substituting more pragmatic American would become a Brazilian Lech Walesa. approaches for the old French-influenced He has run three times unsuccessfully for disciplines that had produced Cardoso and the presidency, most recently in October other scholars. But this only created a new 1998. generation enamored of democracy as well The Workers’ Party thrives nevertheless, as technology. Purging and exiling especially in the industrialized south of Cardoso (who was seen as a dangerous Brazil, and in the 1998 election gained Marxist despite the fact that he was the son control of the important governorship of and grandson of generals) and other pro- Rio Grande do Sul with the election of PT fessors from the University of São Paulo candidate Olívio Dutra. But the organiza- and other major institutions also had para- tion of workers was not restricted to the doxical consequences. It provoked U.S. industrial zones. Threatened by the foundations, notably the Ford Foundation, encroachment of cattle ranchers and log- to invest heavily in a parallel system of pri- gers, rubber tappers on the Amazon fron- vate research centers in Brazil that would tier began to mobilize in the 1980s to pro- later provide a haven and political base for tect their livelihood. Like the metalwork- the democratic opposition. ers in São Paulo, these poor workmen pro- Meanwhile, the exiles were welcomed duced a formidable grassroots leader from on American campuses. Cardoso, who among their ranks, Chico Mendes. His lived in Chile, and later in France, rubber tappers’ organization linked up

56 WQ Winter 1999 with Brazilian social activists and interna- faith of personal salvation and promote a tional environmental groups to pressure frugal lifestyle emphasizing thrift and fam- the Brazilian government for recognition ily. They are seen as a conservative force; of their grievances and to carve out eco- at the local level, however, their organiza- logical reserves to protect the forests on tions have quickly shifted to municipal which their way of life depended. They activism, seeking improved water supplies also developed critical networks of interna- and better services, which has propelled tional supporters in Europe and the them increasingly into politics. The evan- United States who were able to pressure gelicals have a caucus of 35 deputies in the international lending agencies such as the Brazilian Congress, and an evangelical Inter-American Development Bank and bishop in Rio de Janeiro, Carlos Rod- the World Bank into incorporating ecolog- rigues, received a huge vote in the recent ical concerns into their decisions about congressional elections. The new governor loans to Brazil. of the state of Rio, Anthony Garotinho, is also an evangelical. Responding to the he indigenous communities, facing a Evangelical challenge, the Catholic Tlife-and-death struggle for survival as church in Brazil is now encouraging a the outside world pressed in on their powerful charismatic movement that is remaining refuges in the Amazon basin, galvanizing many of the faithful in Brazil’s also found a voice during the 1980s. With cities. The charismatics, like the evangeli- the support of international organizations cals, place a strong emphasis on family val- such as the Cambridge, Massachusetts- ues, but they, like the Catholic hierarchy, based Survival International, tribes such as are also critical of the harshness of Brazil’s the Kayapó and Xavante pressed for recog- capitalist system. nition and protection against the freelance gold prospectors who were invading their ost threatening to Brazil’s political forests and polluting their rivers with dead- Melite and to its large rural landown- ly mercury. A Xavante chief, Marío Jaruna ers in particular has been the emergence was elected as federal deputy and Ailton of a powerful rural movement of the land- Kremak of the Kayapó became well known less. Founded in Rio Grande do Sul in the in Brasília and among the international mid-1980s, the Movimento dos Trabal- human rights networks. hadores Rurais Sem Terra (Movement of While the hierarchy of the Catholic Landless Rural Workers, MST) now has Church was divided on its approach to some 500,000 members, including all sorts political activism, grassroots clergy strong- of people from the margins of Brazilian ly influenced by liberation theology pro- society: the unemployed, migrant agricul- vided organizational support to Brazil’s tural workers, the illiterate, slum dwellers, many new reform movements. Protestant all people the traditional Left believed it fundamentalists have also emerged as a was impossible to organize, stimulated by force in the Brazilian social and religious Brazil’s total failure for centuries to break landscape. Small, impeccable, white the power of the great latifundios and Pentecostal meeting houses now dot the bring about any meaningful land distribu- landscape. The Universal Church of the tion. Less than one percent of farms, all Kingdom of God, founded in 1977 by a over 500 acres in dimension, account for Pentecostal pastor, Edir Macedo, claims 40 percent of all occupied farmlands in more than 3.5 million members and Brazil. The movement was also energized receives more than $700 million in annual by the expulsion of many small holders donations. It owns Brazil’s third largest TV from their plots, especially in Rio Grande network and 30 radio stations. As it is often do Sul, Paraná, and Santa Catarina, by the said in Brazil: “Catholics opted for the mechanization of large-scale soya and poor; the poor opted for the evangelicals.” wheat production in the 1980s. The MST Many Protestant converts come from is now the largest and best-organized social the lower levels of the new urban middle movement in Latin America, with success- class. Protestant evangelicals practice a ful cooperatives, a Web site, and extensive

Brazil 57 international contacts. Its members often cation explained to the New York Times. take the law into their own hands, invading Not surprisingly, all these movements properties and setting up squatter settle- strike a raw chord with the “owners of ments, sacking warehouses to obtain food, power,” as the brilliant Brazilian lawyer and challenging landowners. Almost as and social critic Raymundo Faoro so aptly often they provoke violent reactions from put it. Owing to the overseas support the fazendeiros (large landowners), local environmental movement receives, the police, and hired gunmen. Brazilian military views it as a pawn of for- What the MST seeks is access to land eign interests, part of a thinly disguised and the breakup of the large estates, many effort by the United States to take the of which remain undeveloped and unpro- Amazon away from Brazil. The military ductive, or are held for tax purposes or to intelligence network closely monitors the draw government subsidies. Its ideology is activities of the MST, and Cardoso’s min- an eclectic mix of revolutionary socialism isters dismiss the movement as “enemies of and Catholic activism, as befits an organi- modernity.” It was similar attitudes that a zation built in large part by itinerant hundred years ago led to the repression priests. Its most prominent leader is an and slaughter in the backlands so brilliant- economist named João Pedro Stédile, who ly immortalized by Euclides da Cunha did post-graduate work in Mexico and and Vargas Llosa. takes inspiration from the Mexican Zapatistas. He argues that the Brazilian he great 20th-century Brazilian his- elite is too “subservient to foreign inter- Ttorian Sergio Buarque de Hollanda ests”—an obvious swipe at the IMF and defined a Brazilian as a “cordial” individ- the forces of global capitalism as well as ual, and Brazilians are like their president, the former dependentista now lodged in people of great and infectious charm. But the futuristic presidential palace in where politics and social conflicts meet, Brasília. their country can be a very violent place. It Finally there is the Brazilian environ- has many martyrs to prove it, among them mental movement, composed of some 800 Chico Mendes, gunned down in 1988 by organizations stirred into being by the cattle ranchers threatened by his rubber uncontrolled destruction of the Amazon tappers’ movement. More than a thousand rain forest, ecological disasters in the labor leaders and grassroots peasant grotesquely polluted chemical complex at activists have been assassinated in Brazil Cubatão in São Paulo state, and rampant since the mid-1980s. In much of the coun- encroachment on the remnants of the try the murderers of activists act with once lush Atlantic forests. impunity. In November 1998, Miguel In 1998 forest fires in the Amazon Pereira de Melo, the crusading Brazilian region, aggravated by the impact of El photojournalist, was killed by gunmen. He Ninõ, were the worst on record, but the had recorded the 1996 massacre of land- Cardoso administration did little to less peasants by military police and was respond until the extent of the catastrophe about to testify at the trial of those officers. became difficult to hide. The devastating The subtler obstacles to pluralism may drought in the Northeast, another predi- prove the hardest to overcome. Reform catable consequence of El Ninõ, also will require changing an oligarchic style of received scant attention until famished politics and an entrenched bureaucracy peasants organized by the MST raided that have both skillfully deflected chal- warehouses and occupied bank agencies lenges for centuries. Indeed, the deals and police stations. This finally caught the made to bring about the transition from attention of the indifferent bureaucrats in military to civilian rule during the 1980s the surreal world of Brasília, preoccupied guaranteed the persistence in power of with the purchase of expensive Oriental many old-line politicians, including pre- carpets for their offices so that “foreign vis- eminently the powerful Bahia political itors could be more elegantly received,” as boss, former state governor, and current a spokesman for the minister of communi- president of the Senate, Antonio Carlos

58 WQ Winter 1999 Magalhães. ACM, as he is universally since, during the years of high inflation, known, is a gregarious, tough, and single- government deficits had miraculously dis- minded political operator who proudly appeared as delayed payments wiped out professes his admiration for Napoleon. obligations. But after 1994 such flimflams Today he is more influential than ever, a no longer worked, as money retained its pivotal figure in the coalition that supports value. The opening of the economy and President Cardoso—an odd but very the stabilization of the currency had some Brazilian twist of fate since Cardoso was perverse effects as well. Many industrial precisely the sort of upper-class intellectu- workers were displaced as imports flooded al that Magalhães and other power brokers the consumer market. Not only did the ser- under the military regimes of the past most vice sector expand, but many industrial distrusted. workers were forced into the informal sector. Subsequently, unemployment in- he bosses and bureaucrats have plen- creased dramatically. Tty to protect. The welfare and pension Cardoso hoped to pass a half-dozen ambi- system, for example, does virtually nothing tious reform measures during his first term— for the poorer workers but vastly benefits from cutting public payrolls to rewriting tax state functionaries. In 1996, laws—and, not surprisingly, all Brazil had 29 four- fell victim to constant star generals on dilution and de- active duty and lays. His major 5,000 people success, altering drawing gener- the constitution ous pension to allow for his checks at the four- own re-elec- star level, tion, was including bought at the far-flung high cost of relatives of also allowing dead and state and retired offi- local political cers. bosses to run Brazil’s for- for re-election. mal political They promptly structure also opened the makes re- The ideological divisions in President Cardoso’s political coali- spending spig- form excruci- tion were the target of this Brazilian cartoon last year. Mayor ots to ensure atingly diffi- Celso Pitta of São Paulo is second from the left; Antonio Carlos victory at the cult. It has 27 Magalhães, or “ACM,” is second from the right. polls, swelling state gover- public-sector nors and more than 5,500 municipal may- debt to more than $300 billion in early 1998 ors (prefeitos), many of whom have run up and leaving Brazil pitifully vulnerable when massive deficits which by tradition the fed- the international crisis hit. eral government is expected to cover. The 1988 constitution obliges the central gov- resident Cardoso will find it difficult ernment to transfer a large share of tax rev- Pto deliver on his promises to the IMF. enues to the state governments and munic- Arrayed against him will be both the old ipalities but without a commensurate shift corporatist interests, eager to protect the of responsibility for government programs. past and their own privileges, and the The idea was to devolve power and newly assertive groups such as the MST, encourage democracy. The result was to which disagree with the path chosen for strengthen parochial interests and the the future. local political bosses. These problems Cardoso’s popularity, though great were aggravated by the Real Plan’s success, enough to secure him a clear majority in

Brazil 59 last October’s election, is based almost which will cut deeply into the social pro- entirely on the success of the Real Plan. He grams Brazil so desperately needs. Nor views himself as a man of the Center-Left, will the president find support from an adherent of the new “third way” of Bill powerful governors among whom he will Clinton and Tony Blair, but is perceived by find fewer friends than during his first the public as being a political leader deci- term, especially since they will be forced sively of the Center-Right, the friend of to bear the brunt of the budget cuts. bankers, industrialists, civil servants, and Particularly troublesome will be the politicians rather than workers and the newly elected governor of the important landless. As the realities of IMF-imposed state of Minas Gerais, the former presi- austerity begin to hit home—Brazil’s econ- dent Itamar Franco, under whom, as omy was already shrinking by the end of finance minister, Cardoso implemented 1998—Cardoso may find his popular sup- the Real Plan. The erratic Franco is still port waning. He has consciously steered deeply resentful that Cardoso and not he away from the heady rhetoric of populism, got all the credit. Nor will the protests of avoided demagoguery, and preferred per- landless rural workers go away. Stédile in suasion and compromise to executive particular makes no secret of his desire decree, but the next year may well test his to “finish off the neoliberal model.” resolve. It is ironic that in the charged international economic climate in which Fer- ula lost the 1998 election in part nando Henrique Cardoso begins his sec- Lbecause he chose to attack the Real ond term as president, the protection of Plan. But the 1998 elections also saw the the Real Plan, by plunging Brazil into emergence of middle-class Workers’ recession, now poses the greatest threat Party leaders who spoke a language clos- to the benefits it brought to many er to that of the new social democrats of Brazilians. Yet posing one of the greatest Europe, consciously avoiding the radical challenges to the IMF-mandated pro- rhetoric of the shop floor. These gram to satisfy the international markets Workers’ Party representatives in Con- are groups and forces within Brazil that gress are likely to provide solid opposi- barely existed before political and eco- tion to Cardoso’s IMF-inspired policies nomic liberalization began a decade over the next year. The center-left politi- ago. The travails of the Brazilian econo- cal allies within Cardoso’s own political my—no matter where they lead—should family also risk being alienated by his not obscure the significant success story orthodox economic retrenchment, the rise of these new voices represents.

60 WQ Winter 1999