By Dave Zirin
A review
A
while ago I asked several of my co-workers a basic question: What language do
most Black people speak in the Western Hemisphere? Only one person knew that the correct answer
is Portuguese, the national language of Brazil.
The
answer to this question raises many other questions about the reality of
Brazil. Brazil is both the fifth most
populous nation in the world as well as the fifth largest nation in the
world. More Black people live in Brazil
than in any other nation except Nigeria.
Brazil has it’s own martial arts style, Capoeira, it’s own dance and
music styles, Samba, as well as it’s own way of playing the game of soccer
known to the world as football.
Dave
Zirin’s recent book Brazil’s Dance with
the Devil gives us a unique view of the nation much of the world learned
about through the World Cup, and the Olympics.
This book gives us a view of Brazil that was completely ignored by the
mainstream press during the recent Olympic games.
Brazilian History
One
of the reasons why Brazil has such a large Black population stems from the fact
that Brazil and the Caribbean were the two places that received the most
kidnapped slaves from Africa. Slavery in
Brazil was especially horrendous. Life
expectancy for a Brazilian slave was eighteen years.
Before
the Civil War in the United States, slave owners were the dominant power in
this country. The Civil War was, in
effect, the second revolution in the United States. The defeat of the confederacy removed slave
owners from their position of power.
When the U.S. government abolished slavery, the slave owners lost their
most valuable so-called possession.
Slaves valued at literally billions
of dollars became workers who received a salary for their labor.
Brazil
has a different history with respect to the abolition of slavery. For a time, the Portuguese King needed to
escape the French conquest, and he sailed to Brazil. While living in Brazil, the King opposed
slavery.
Brazil
has a vast interior that was not developed during the time of slavery. Brazilian slaves routinely escaped to the
interior, and it became increasingly difficult to apprehend them.
Nearly
200 years before the slave revolution on the island of Haiti, a settlement of
escaped slaves was established in Brazil.
This settlement, known as Palmares,
was home to more than 10,000 escaped slaves from the years 1605-1694. While the settlement of Palmares was
overturned by the Portuguese military, slaves continued to escape into Brazil’s
interior. As in all nations where
slavery existed, slave insurrections were a routine fact of life.
An
article written in the Brazilian periodical O
Rebate in 1889 gave the following
reason for the abolition of slavery:
“Had
slaves not fled in masse from the plantations, they would today still be
slaves. Slavery ended because slaves
rebelled against it and against the law that enslaved them.” The abolition “was nothing more than the
legal recognition–so that public authority wasn’t discredited–of an act that
had already been accomplished by mass revolt.”
The
other reason for the abolition of slavery had to do with the poor health of the
slaves. Because slave owners were
indifferent to the health care of slaves, they suffered from diseases that
spread to the rest of the population.
For all these reasons, Brazil became the last nation in the Western
Hemisphere to abolish slavery in 1888.
São
Paulo became the most important commercial city in Brazil, and today it is the
most populous city in South America.
Historically São Paulo has been the center of coffee production in
Brazil, and Brazil is the world’s leading coffee producer. Next to oil, coffee produces more revenue
than any other natural resource.
Like
in many nations of Latin America, working people and small farmers had few
resources to support themselves. In
Brazil, working people used available materials to build their homes. In the areas surrounding the cities, these
working class areas became known as the favelas.
Brazil
had a history of repressive governments that organized some development of the
nation. Then, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
was elected to be President of Brazil. He
is known around the world as Lula.
Lula and the Workers Party
Reading
the life story of Lula, I thought of Bernie Sanders, who ran for President in
this country. Sanders promised all kinds
of reforms if he were elected. Then,
after his defeat, he endorsed Hillary Clinton who clearly isn’t interested in
making any basic changes.
Lula
was born into a working class family and became a factory worker. Because of the dangerous conditions workers
are exposed to, Lula lost one of his fingers.
He attempted to get treatment for the injury in one of the hospitals in
that area. None of those hospitals would
treat him because he didn’t have sufficient financial resources.
Lula
then became president of the steelworkers union. The government arrested him for his union
activities. He was tortured while in
police custody.
Then,
Lula helped organize the Workers Party and ran for president six times. He finally won the election.
During
Lula’s presidency, Brazil had a significant increase in revenue. This was primarily due to the discovery of
oil and the increase of exports to China.
Because of this new revenue, Brazil was able to pay off it’s exorbitant
debt to the International Monetary Fund.
We should keep in mind that paying off this debt meant that Brazilian
working people helped to enrich some of the most affluent people in the
world.
Lula
did make some initiatives to improve the standard of living for the poorest
Brazilians. However, the lion’s share of
this new revenue went to the Brazilian billionaires. Some of the money collected by these
billionaires went to purchasing the U.S. corporation of Anheuser Busch the
makers of Budweiser Beer. They also
purchased the Kraft corporation Heinz that produces the ketchup many of us use.
Lula
also had a different foreign policy from his predecessors. He was critical of U.S. foreign policy and
had friendly relations with the Cuban government. The governments of Bolivia and Venezuela have
similar foreign policies. Throughout
Latin America there was a resentment of the fact that the U.S. government had
supported many of the repressive military dictatorships that ruled the
continent.
Then,
Lula resigned from office and supported his Workers Party successor Dilma
Rousseff. The former military regime held Dilma in prison for two years and
tortured her during that time. At the
time of his resignation Lula was one of the most popular Presidents in the
world with an eighty percent approval rating.
However,
in the capitalist system financial upturns eventually develop into
downturns. This is what happened in
Dilma Rousseff’s presidency. By the year
2013 demonstrations rocked Brazil because of an economic downturn. Apparently the demonstrators would have
preferred that the wealth of Brazil be used for education and health care,
rather than for beer and ketchup. At the
time of her impeachment Dilma had an approval rating of about ten percent.
Lula
and Dilma both worked against the Landless
Workers’ Movement, MST who have about 1.5 million members. Trade union membership has declined under
while the Workers Party ran the government from 30% to 17%.
David
Zirin had this to say about the Workers Party initiatives that caused
increasing inequality:
“The
oligarchs’ land ownership has not only increased but has become more
concentrated than it was fifty years ago, a result of Brazil’s transforming
into one of the leading agribusiness and beef-producing countries on
earth. As a part of this land grab, Lula
and his successor Dilma have been far tougher on the landless peasant movement
than his right-wing predecessors.”
A
direct consequence of the Olympics has been an increase in police murders of
civilians. Another consequence has been
a drive to force residents of the favelas out of their homes to make room for
the construction of new and more expensive housing.
Zirin
quoted a teacher from Rio de Janeiro who said:
“I
used to be a fan of Dilma, but I lost respect for her when she sided with the
mayor’s plan for Olympic development.
There are some huge contradictions between her federal policy and the
local impact of the Olympic development, which she supports. .
. Dilma is just a capitalist. And this is just capitalism, its all about
making money. The poor are the ones who
built this city. You couldn’t be here
without the poor of Rio. But now, the
people who built the city are being pushed out.
You can’t have a positive legacy of the Games when the poor who created
this city aren’t part of that legacy.”
So
the struggle to liberate Brazil continues.
A crucial lesson we can learn from all this is that the capitalist
system needs to be abolished. Union
officials are incapable of making the capitalist system favorable to
workers. Only when workers take power
and make human needs more important than profits will working people be treated
with the dignity we all deserve.
The Cuban Revolution
When
we look at the recent history of Brazil, we can also take a look at how the
Cuban Revolution transformed the reality of that nation. Shortly after the revolution, the Cuban
government organized a literacy drive to make sure everyone on the island knew
how to read. Within a year this drive
was an overwhelming success.
We
might consider that literacy drives in other parts of the world have failed to
reduce the percentages of people who are illiterate. The difference is that in Cuba the government
has created an atmosphere where people want to continue their education. Today all Cubans have a lifetime right to
pursue their education.
One
result of these policies is that today Cuba has more doctors per capita than
any other nation in the world. The
infant mortality rate in any part of Cuba is significantly lower than that rate
in the urban centers of the United States.
While
Cuba continues to have many significant problems, those problems are clearly
not the same as the problems of Brazil.
We can also imagine what would happen if a government that had the same
priorities as the Cuban government, and also had the resources of the developed
world. A nation that had that
combination would clearly have the potential to have the highest standard of
living in the world.
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