BOARD OF EDITORS David Apter, David Baltimore, Daniel Bell, Guido Calabresi, Natalie Z. Davis, Wendy Doniger, Clifford Geertz, Stephen J. Greenblatt, Vartan Gregorian, Stanley Hoffmann, Gerald Holton, Donald Kennedy, Sally F. Moore, W. G. Runciman, Amartya K. Sen, Steven Weinberg STEPHEN R. GRAUBARD Editor of Dædalus PHYLLIS S. BENDELL Managing Editor SARAH M. SHOEMAKER Associate Editor MARK D. W. EDINGTON Consulting Editor MARY BRIDGET MCMULLEN Circulation Manager and Editorial Assistant Cover design by Michael Schubert, Director of Ruder-Finn Design Printed on recycled paper frontmatter sp00.p65 1 05/01/2000, 1:01 PM DÆDALUS JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES Brazil: The Burden of the Past; The Promise of the Future Spring 2000 Issued as Volume 129, Number 2, of the Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences frontmatter sp00.p65 2 05/01/2000, 1:01 PM Spring 2000, “Brazil: The Burden of the Past; The Promise of the Future” Issued as Volume 129, Number 2, of the Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. ISBN 0-87724-021-3 © 2000 by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Library of Congress Catalog Number 12-30299. Editorial Offices: Dædalus, Norton’s Woods, 136 Irving Street, Cambridge, MA 02138. 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Postmaster: Send address changes to DÆDALUS, 136 Irving Street, Suite 100, Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A. frontmatter sp00.p65 3 05/01/2000, 1:01 PM Contents V Preface Leslie Bethell 1 Politics in Brazil: From Elections without Democracy to Democracy without Citizenship Simon Schwartzman 29 Brazil: The Social Agenda José Murilo de Carvalho 57 Dreams Come Untrue Peter Fry 83 Politics, Nationality, and the Meanings of “Race” in Brazil Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro 119 Democratic Governance, Violence, and the (Un)Rule of Law Alfred Stepan 145 Brazil’s Decentralized Federalism: Bringing Government Closer to the Citizens? Elisa P. Reis 171 Modernization, Citizenship, and Stratification: Historical Processes and Recent Changes in Brazil Luciano Martins 195 Muddling Through Changing References: From Late Nation-Building to the Crisis of the Nation-State Celso Lafer 207 Brazilian International Identity and Foreign Policy: Past, Present, and Future José Sergio Leite Lopes 239 Class, Ethnicity, and Color in the Making of Brazilian Football frontmatter sp00.p65 4 05/01/2000, 1:01 PM Patrícia Birman and Márcia Pereira Leite 271 Whatever Happened to What Used to be the Largest Catholic Country in the World? Claudio de Moura Castro 291 Education: Way Behind but Trying to Catch Up Manuela Carneiro da Cunha and Mauro W. B. de Almeida 315 Indigenous People, Traditional People, and Conservation in the Amazon Albert Fishlow 339 Brazil and Economic Realities ADVISORY BOARD José Augusto Guilhon Albuquerque, Mauro W. B. de Almeida, Leslie Bethell, Patrícia Birman, José Murilo de Carvalho, Claudio de Moura Castro, Marcos Sá Corrêa, Luiz Felipe de Seixas Corrêa, Manuela Carneiro da Cunha, Vilmar Faria, Albert Fishlow, Gelson Fonseca Júnior, Alvaro da Costa Franco, Peter Fry, Hélio Jaguaribe, Celso Lafer, Márcia Pereira Leite, José Sergio Leite Lopes, Fábio Luiz Pereira de Magalhães, Luciano Martins, Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, Elisa P. Reis, Simon Schwartzman, João Clemente Baena Soares, Maria Adélia Aparecida de Souza, Alfred Stepan frontmatter sp00.p65 7 05/01/2000, 1:01 PM Preface V Preface to the Issue “Brazil: The Burden of the Past; The Promise of the Future” O ONE WHO HAS DONE BATTLE with the stalled automobile traffic of Rio or São Paolo, who has gazed with wonder Nat the twentieth-century glass palaces of Brasília or observed the heavily guarded skyscraper residences of the well- to-do and smelled the fetid quarters of the poor, can ever doubt that Brazil is a rich/poor society, with many of the amenities of modernity and not a few of its problems and contradictions. It is useful to know that it is the world’s fifth largest country geographically, boasting the seventh or eighth largest economy, in a league that includes such other giants as Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, and the United States. Such statistics are commonly quoted today and are thought to have great significance, but it may be even more useful to know that Brazil does not resemble the other so-called geographic and economic giant states of the world in any number of very important ways. Whatever differences may exist between the United States, India, Russia, and China—all geographically vast—they are scarcely less than those that make Brazil different from all of them. Indeed, even within Latin America, its own geographic enclave, Brazil’s Portuguese origins distinguish it from the other V Preface sp00.p65 5 05/01/2000, 1:02 PM VI Dædalus states explored and settled by Spaniards in the early modern period. To argue this is to do more than simply emphasize Brazil’s distinctiveness. It is to suggest that Brazil, five centuries after its discovery by Europeans, boasts a history with many unique features, carrying, as the title of this Dædalus issue suggests, the burdens of its past. Yet, as those who know Brazil best never fail to recognize, the country is shaped also by a continu- ing determination to be something other than what it is. It is a country of great projects, of vast ambitions. At a time when many bandy about the term “globalization”—the cliché of the moment, whose multiple meanings are scarcely ever agreed upon—Brazil, like so many other rich/poor societies, is seeking to maintain its economic viability in an international market- place that is being rapidly transformed. More than that, it is seeking to maintain many of the distinctive features of its political and social culture, which could not be mistaken for being simply Portuguese and is scarcely more adequately ren- dered when described as Latin American. Brazil’s federalism is not that of Germany or Switzerland; its Catholicism is not that of Italy or Spain; its racism is not that of the United States or South Africa; its intellectual life is not that of France or the United Kingdom; its transport system is not that of Russia or China. What, then, is Brazil? Who knows it? Who cares to probe its complexities? Who has ever done so? The ample references cited in this issue tell a tale of very great importance. For those who do not read Portuguese, Brazil often remains a closed book. The question of familiarity with Brazil is particularly poignant and relevant today when so many countries, including the United States, make great pretenses to being internationally minded, purporting to know the world when they in fact do not. There is disturbing evidence to suggest that in certain of the older and more established democracies, an alarming parochi- alism is growing, with many preoccupied principally with them- selves, concerned overwhelmingly with their economic pros- pects, paying less attention than is warranted to the complex and different cultural and political worlds that lie beyond their borders. Fouad Ajami may not have overstated the situation when he wrote recently: “America today faces an odd disjunc- Preface sp00.p65 6 05/01/2000, 1:02 PM Preface VII tion, perhaps without precedent, between its assertion of global power and its deep disinterest in the truths and details of foreign places. As our power increases, so does our parochial- ism.” If the United States today is not simply “the other,” the giant that Latin Americans are never allowed to forget, as Octavio Paz argued in Dædalus almost three decades ago, it is by no means obvious that many Americans know their Latin Ameri- can neighbors, even those avowedly and openly friendly. The subtle distinctions that divide the democratic world of the twenty- first century, with so many having discovered their democratic roots only very recently, are too little understood and reflected on. If there are too few who are very attentive to developments in Eastern and Central Europe, the situation may be even more acute in respect to Latin America. The very first paragraph of this Dædalus issue sounds the note that needs to be kept in mind by all who read it. Leslie Bethell, one of the few non-Brazilians in this collection, writes: “A little over ten years ago, Brazil became, for the first time in its history as an independent state, a fully fledged democracy, with regular free, fair, and competitive elections for both the executive and legislative branches of government based on the principle of one person, one vote.” Democracy came to Brazil very late, almost five hundred years after it had been settled by Europeans.