Brazil’s Dance with the Devil – The World Cup, The Olympics, and the Fight for Democracy

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.  

    

The So-Called Clinton Trump Debate

I’ve always found Presidential debates to be difficult to witness.  Those individuals in the Democratic or Republican Parties appear to live in a completely different world from working people in this country.  They profess to care about people and argue that they are working in our best interests.

Colin Kaepernick, the San Francisco quarterback who has refused to stand during the playing of the national anthem had this to say about the so-called presidential debate.  “Both are proven liars and it almost seems like they’re trying to debate who’s less racist.”

So a question to be asked is: Why is there such a disconnect between what government officials say, and the actual reality working people experience every day?

Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton asked the audience to fact-check their arguments.  Well, we can begin our fact checking by taking a look at the science of basic arithmetic.

When we pay for any commodity the money usually goes to private enterprises or corporations. Some of that money goes to the owners and some goes to the workers who produce all goods and services.  When the owners get more in terms of profits, workers get less.  When workers get more in terms of wages, owners get less in terms of profits.  This is basic arithmetic.

Looking at this relationship, we see that the interests of workers and owners are antagonistic.  The press argues against this perspective.  They routinely argue that when workers receive higher wages, employers simply raise prices.  This is not true.

Prices are set because of the system of supply and demand.  If corporations set their prices too high, people will not purchase commodities and corporations will go out of business.  We see this with respect to the price of gasoline.  Gasoline used to be about four dollars per gallon, and now it is about two dollars per gallon.  Corporations lowered the price because they felt they would loose money if gasoline remained at a price of four dollars per gallon.

So, we can conclude that the interests of workers and employers are antagonistic.  A fundamental problem with the Clinton and Trump campaigns is they argue that the interests of corporations and workers are the same.  By doing this, they are both clearly taking the side of corporations against workers.

Donald Trump has most of his business interests in this country.  He favors placing onerous taxes on commodities imported into this country.  In economic terms, this is called protectionism. 

Protectionist policies favor weaker capitalist economies.  By placing taxes on imports, domestic industries are in a more favorable position to compete. 

When Britain and France were the world powers in the nineteenth century, the United States had protectionist laws to encourage investment in domestic industries.  During those years, the prices of commodities were more expensive than in other countries because of these measures.

Then, after the Second World War, the United States became the world’s superpower.  The protectionist measures were abandoned.  U.S. corporations could undercut the prices of corporations in other countries, and placing onerous taxes on corporations during those years was counterproductive.

However, something else happened after the Second World War.  In the first part of the twentieth century, working people commonly toiled for twelve to fourteen hours per day.  The wages of those times were barely enough to feed a family.  Children routinely worked in factories.

So the labor movement organized and forced corporations to make significant concessions.  The civil rights movement also organized to give Black people rights they had been denied.  The women’s movement also organized to make real gains for women.

Corporations responded to these developments by making massive investments into manufacturing facilities where workers receive a salary of between one and ten dollars per day.  This was not done just because capitalists are greedy as some people argue.  No, a constant feature of the capitalist system is that corporations are routinely driven to cut costs.

One of the reasons why many capitalists favor Hillary Clinton is because her policies favor their investments in other countries.  So, this is the choice.  Trump’s policies might favor more U.S. jobs with higher prices.  Clinton’s approach might favor fewer jobs with lower prices.  Working people loose with both strategies.

We should also keep in mind that the banks nearly closed down in the year 2008.  These banks were saved by literally trillions of dollars in government assistance known as quantitative easing.  The government bought up nearly worthless investments to rescue the banks.  This crisis can not be averted and it is only a matter of time before the capitalist debt-bubble will break.

What do working people want?

Since the interests of workers and capitalists are antagonistic, we might ask the question: What do workers and farmers want?

I will only give my opinion on this question based on my life’s experience.  There are eight basic things that workers want.  These include: food, clothing, housing, transportation, communication, health care, education, and exposure to cultural activities like art, music, sports, recreation, dancing, theater, and film. 

The incomparable singer Etta James also said in one of her songs that she wanted “security.”  For me, this means that we need to have the right to all those things workers want and need throughout our lifetimes.  Of course, all these goods and services need to be of the highest quality.

Capitalists want us to be competitive.  They want us to think that workers who live in other cities, or states, or countries are our competitors.  My opinion is that working people have the same interests in all countries.  We all would like the things I just mentioned.

Politicians as well as the media argue that it is unrealistic to have these goals.  They argue that the way to get what we want is to work for a corporation directly or through a small business.  The idea of working people running a government where human needs are more important than profits is totally unacceptable to those who support the capitalist system.

However, when we think about the goods and services people want and need, we might question the role of some of the enterprises we’re routinely exposed to.  The cities throughout the world are filled with office buildings that house enterprises that include: banking, insurance, advertising, as well as stock brokerage houses.  Thinking about what these enterprises do, they don’t directly provide for the goods and services we want and need.  Yet, we need to pay for all these enterprises with every commodity we buy.

Both Trump and Clinton argue that they have plans that will reinvigorate the economy.  However, there is no real plan in the capitalist system.  Capitalism is continually regulated by the anarchy of supply and demand. 

In 1929 there were more commodities on the market than could be sold at a profit, so capitalists merely shut down the economy.  Millions lost their savings.  Working people experienced pay cuts and there was about thirty percent unemployment.  This same scenario almost happened in 2008.  Clearly, there was no plan for these events.

Donald Trump totally discredited Hillary Clinton’s claim that working people benefitted from policies she advocated with the following statement:

“You go to New England, you go to Ohio, Pennsylvania, you go anywhere you want, Secretary Clinton, and you will see devastation where manufacture is down 30, 40, sometimes 50 percent.”

However, Trump also totally discredited his character when he argued that he favors “law and order.”  Had there been a real debate, this statement would have destroyed any popularity Trump has.

The Central Park Five

 In the year 1989 a young woman was raped and brutalized in Central Park, New York.  The police arrested five Black teenagers for the crime and coerced them into signing confessions.  There was no other evidence connecting the Central Park Five to this crime.

Donald Trump paid $85,000 for adds in four New York City newspapers.  The headlines of these ads were: “Bring Back the Death Penalty.”  Theses ads, signed by Trump argued:

“I want to hate these muggers and murderers.  They should be made to suffer.”  ‘They should serve as examples so others will think long and hard before committing a crime or an act of violence.”

   

After serving seven years in prison, conclusive evidence emerged that someone else was guilty of this crime.  All of the Central Park Five were released from prison.  The city of New York eventually paid each of the Central Park Five one million dollars for every year they spent in prison. 

Donald Trump argued that this settlement was a “disgrace.”  He went on to say that, “The recipients must be laughing out loud at the stupidity of the city.”

So, Donald Trump argued that young Black teenagers, who were found not guilty of anything should be made to “suffer.”  When it was conclusively proven that they were innocent of the crime they had been convicted of, he offers no apology.  To the contrary, he calls the payment they received for being unjustly incarcerated, to be a “disgrace.” 

I read the newspapers every day.  Rarely have I seen any mention of Donald Trump and the Central Park Five.  Yet he is in the papers every day.

Hillary Clinton chose not to call Trump in this gross hypocrisy.  Clinton supported her husband, President William Clinton’s “Crime Bill.”  The effect of this bill was to dramatically increase the number of people living in prisons in this country.  Anyone who lives in the USA has a better chance of going to prison than citizens in any other nation in the world.      

I’m supporting Allyson Kennedy for President and Osborne Hart for vice-President.  They are the candidates of the Socialist Workers Party.  They understand that the interests of workers are antagonistic to the interests of corporations.  They understand that only by mobilizing working people will any basic changes happen.  They see the interests of working people throughout the world as the same and see our interests as being international.  They believe that it is clearly possible for working people to establish a government where human needs are seen as more important than corporate profits.

While they will not win the election, this strategy has the potential to transform the world.

              

Colin Kaepernick, & The National Anthem

Recently Colin Kaepernick, who is the quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, refused to stand for the singing of the National Anthem.  Kaepernick gave the following reason for his protest:   

“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color.  To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way.  There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.

“I am not looking for approval.  I have to stand up for people that are oppressed.  .  .If they take football away, my endorsements from me, I know that I stood up for what is right.”

Clearly, Kaepernick’s protest has struck a cord with the many people who have been protesting police brutality.  His protest has also shed light on the history of why Francis Scott Key wrote his Star-Spangled Banner.

Francis Scott Key was a slave-owner who lived in Maryland.  He wrote his Star Spangled Banner about the United States defense of Fort McHenry during the war of 1812. 

Before going into the motivations for the national anthem, I believe it is useful to look at a bit of history.

The first of many revolutions in the Americas

During the American Revolution, the British promised about 3,000 slaves their freedom because they joined the British army and fought against the revolution.  For this reason, most Black people in this country fought for the British against the revolution. 

During the negotiations after the British defeat, representatives of the United States demanded the return of the 3,000 Black British soldiers to slavery.  At that time the most valuable commodities in the world were slaves, and the United States government desperately wanted ownership of the British soldiers who had a dark skin color.

The British government agreed to this demand and betrayed the promise they made to the Black soldiers.  However, the Irish Commander of the British forces, Sir Guy Carleton, countermanded the order to return Black soldiers to slavery.  He ordered these soldiers to Nova Scotia and fulfilled the promise the British had made.

After the revolution, the United States government was made up of two factions.  They were called the federalists and the anti-federalists.  The federalists favored a strong federal government and supported the commercial interests in the northern states.  These federalists succeeded in abolishing slavery in several northern states.

The anti-federalists were in favor of a weak federal government and supported slavery.  The anti-federalists became the same Democratic Party that President Barack Obama represents.  With the election of Thomas Jefferson, the federal government became dominated by these pro-slavery interests.

The war of 1812 and it’s aftermath

During the war of 1812, the British again promised freedom to escaped slaves who joined their army.  As a result, thousands of slaves joined with the British.  These former slaves fought with arms in hand against a government that was dominated by slave owners.      

In the original version of the Star Spangled Banner, Francis Scott Key wrote about how he was horrified that former slaves had escaped and fought against the slave-owning republic.  The following words were written by Francis Scott Key in the original version of the Star Spangled Banner.  These words are never recited today for obvious reasons.

“No refuge could save the hireling and slave

From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,

And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

Here Francis Scott Key made it clear that the United States government had no intention of supporting the interests of the slaves.  He clearly felt that escaped slaves deserved, “the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave.”  When he wrote about “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” he clearly was not talking about human beings who happened to be slaves.  We should be clear that these were not the words of an isolated individual, but reflected the position of the United States government at that time.  In fact, the entire economy of the United States was based on slavery.

Frederick Douglass escaped slavery when he was nineteen years old.  He became a leader of the abolitionist movement.  On July 4, 1852 Douglass spoke on the meaning of the Fourth of July for the millions of slaves who lived in this country.  He concluded his speech with the following words:

“Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms­ of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without rival.”  

Thinking about the reality these words represented, we might conclude that nothing had been gained from the American Revolution.  The British rule of the thirteen colonies was tyrannical, and the conditions slaves experienced represented, “revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy.”

Were there any gains made because of the American Revolution?

My opinion is that in order to see all the ramifications of the first revolution in the Americas, we need to take a closer look at the events of those times.

During the British rule of the thirteen colonies a person’s status in life was determined upon their birth.  There were the gentlemen and everyone else.  The so-called gentleman had the power, lived off of the labor of the people, and never worked.  The majority of the population lived at the mercy of these gentlemen.

The words of the Declaration of Independence that “All men are created equal” were indeed revolutionary.  Initially, the affluent people who supported the revolution attempted to dominate the government.  However, with Shay’s Rebellion and other initiatives by working people, the Constitution was amended to include the Bill of Rights.  The idea that everyday people would have rights with the new government was another clearly revolutionary idea.

Reading these words, one might ask: So how did all of this affect the slaves who never had any rights?  Answering this question requires looking at a bit more history.

The slave owners of this country were obsessed with repressing slave rebellions and apprehending escaped slaves.  President Thomas Jefferson worked to isolate the revolutionary government of Haiti, where slavery had been abolished.  General Robert E. Lee was the commanding officer of the U.S. army that put down John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry.  That raid had been about organizing and armed defense of slaves who wished to escape bondage.

However, what the slave owners didn’t see was the emerging class interests of northern capitalists, as well as the emerging class of workers and small farmers.  Growing numbers of people became convinced that a continuation of the slave system would be a roadblock to the development of this country.  These differences became so profound that millions of soldiers would be mobilized in the Union Army to militarily defeat the slaveocracy.

While the slave owners were obsessed with suppressing slave rebellions, the Union Army literally destroyed nearly every building in South Carolina.  This was a conscious move to convince the Confederacy that they had no chance of winning the Civil War.

As a direct consequence of the Civil War, the government adopted the 13^th, 14^th, and 15^th Amendments to the Constitution.  These Amendments abolished slavery, gave all men full citizenship rights, as well as voting rights.  When Black people learned of the defeat of the confederacy, there were immensely joyous celebrations.

My opinion is that this development would have been unlikely without the American Revolution freeing this country of British rule.  We should recall, that under the rule of the British, the vast majority of the population never had rights that government ministers needed to respect.

We will also notice that after the Civil War reconstruction governments emerged in the former confederate states.  These governments attempted to create a real democracy.  Many Blacks and Caucasians learned to read for the first time.

However, the same government that defeated the confederacy, effectively gave power to forces that became the Ku Klux Klan.  In the year 1877, the Union Army ended their occupation of the South, and the Ku Klux Klan militarily defeated the reconstruction governments.

The Ku Klux Klan then stripped Black people of their citizenship rights with a series of apartheid-like laws known as Jim Crow.  It wasn’t until the 1950s and 1960s that the civil rights movement erupted and forced the government to defend the rights that had been gained after the Civil War.  The rebellions of 1966–1968 also forced the government to change some of their institutionalized discriminatory practices.

So, what does all of this have to do with Colin Kaepernick?  My point is, that while this might be difficult to see, gains have been made because of the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the Civil Rights Movement.  Saying this, we might also consider that Frederick Douglass’ words on the Fourth of July reflected a real reality, as do Colin Kaepernick’s words today.

My point is that real progress has been made with respect to working people since the American Revolution.  Today working people and farmers are in a stronger position to advance our demands than workers and farmers of the past.  We have these advantages because of the many struggles that erupted before us. 

The problem has been that when the American Revolution did away with British rule, a government emerged that expanded chattel slavery.  When the Union Army defeated the confederacy, the U.S. government would eventually support Jim Crow segregation.  When the government outlawed Jim Crow, that same government advanced a course of mass-incarceration.

The problem is not to dismiss those who made real advances in the past.  The problem has been that when these advances were put forward, the government reacted with an iron heal of repression.  

So, when we think of the slavery and the genocide against the Indians, I do not believe that there are good reasons for celebrating the signing of the Declaration of Independence on the Fourth of July.  When we think of the reality that surrounded the Star Spangled Banner, as well as the reality we experience today, we can only cheer on Colin Kaepernick for his courageous stance.

For those interested in continuing the tradition of struggle that started with the American Revolution, this country has an amazing history that we can draw from.

For those interested in the origin of the Pledge of Allegiance, you can see my review of the Pledge at this link.