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NEWS & LETTERS, December 2002
Lead Article Mass unrest inspires Lula's victory in Brazil
by Mitch Weerth On the first day of 2003, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva
takes over as Brazil’s President, having won 61% (52.7 million votes) in the
second round election on Oct. 27. Lula’s victory is seen throughout Latin
America as a huge advance for the Left, given the fact that Brazil, with 170
million people and by far the biggest economy south of the U.S., has never had
an avowed “socialist” in power. Nobody in Brazil has ever won so many votes. As 100,000
people came out into the streets of Sao Paulo to celebrate the night of his
victory, Lula himself indicated the high stakes this move to the Left
represents: “If at the end of my tenure all Brazilians can eat three times a
day, my mission will have been completed.” This is not just hot air from the new man at the top.
The Workers’ Party (PT) that Lula founded in 1980 under the military
dictatorship was a truly mass party of the working class, and while in many
respects it has moved away from its radical roots, it embodies today a vision
that over 52 million Brazilians have rallied around. Lula’s challenge to end hunger in four years is an
honest reflection of what brought him to power. Some 54 million people are
classified as “poor” in Brazil, and another 30 million are “indigent” or
destitute. Basic services that have been privatized since the early 1990s under
neo-liberal restructuring have had a devastating impact on workers’ struggles
to merely survive. The cost of electricity is up 368%, telephone service 3,700%,
water 420%, and urban transportation in urban areas, where 80% of Brazilians
live, 300%. Unemployment is up 50% in the past decade, but this
figure only gives part of the story. In the cities fully 32% of Brazilians do
not have a so-called real job. It’s estimated that the informal sector now
employs as many people as private industry and government combined. In the
greater Sao Paulo area 20% of able bodied workers have no job whatsoever. This last number should ring a bell: it’s where
Argentina’s unemployment rate stood right before the crash of December last
year. Upwards of 70% of the population is now struggling by in the informal
sector; goods change hands mainly by barter. The suffering has reached horrific
proportions, and it is this that has to be understood if one is to grasp what is
happening in Brazil. Nothing has been able to prevent the latest disaster: up
to 14 children dying each week from hunger. The problem is worst in the
northeast of the country, but the scope of it is not yet known. Teams of
emergency workers are just beginning to make door-to-door searches in every
neighborhood to find out how many there are who are too weak to get to a
hospital or even to call for help. BRAZIL TO FOLLOW ARGENTINA? While Argentina’s economy has crumbled, Brazil stands
on the precipice. And while the misery of the past decade in both countries is
well enough known, there are still those who persist in denying that Lula’s
election was in any way a result of it. Consider the erudite, well-paid scholar
Kenneth Maxwell (Director of Latin American Studies at the Council on Foreign
Relations and Foreign Affairs magazine) who wrote in The New York Review of
Books (12/5/02) that “it is an exaggeration to say that the elections were a
rejection of the ‘Washington Consensus’ on economic development and the
so-called ‘neo-liberal’ model, as many outsiders claim.” Far from it being an “exaggeration” of
“outsiders,” this is what nearly every Brazilian, whether lower class,
middle class, or the sector of the ruling class that supports Lula, has been
saying for the past six months about what the election represents. A worker in the city of Caixas, where all the textile
plants have been closed down over the past eight years, put it this way: “They have massacred our jobs and our communities. The
few who still have jobs are left to shoulder too heavy a burden. Wages must be
increased immediately, and public funds must go to creating a massive public
works program. The bosses and their international banker friends can wait to be
repaid. It’s our turn now. We the people have spoken. If they don’t like it,
well, that’s just too bad.” This statement reveals very clearly that Lula was
elected not just because of the “fear” of contagion from Argentina that
investors and economists talk about. It’s rather because of a very hard, lived
reality: Brazil has already gone too far down the same road. Is there time to
pull back? Is there a way out? The answer to this question requires a careful look at
three things: 1) Just what is the “vision” that Lula projects today? 2) How
seriously do the Brazilian masses believe in it? 3) What is the possibility of
Lula actually succeeding? It must first be understood that the PT is not alone on
the political landscape. While Lula won in 25 of 26 states, PT governors won in
only three of them. The outgoing ruling party (PSDB) won seven, including two
key states, Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais. Though the terrain is different in
Venezuela under Hugo Chavez, Brazilians can look north and see an opportunist
dragging a polarized country to the brink of civil war. Within the PT, while approximately 30% of the party is
composed of established tendencies that do not agree with much of the platform
Lula ran on, he did put out a clear message. It was carefully scripted by
himself, the president of the party Jose Dirceu, and his running mate, textile
tycoon Jose Alencar. In Lula’s own words, it goes like this: “The state of our economy does not depend on us alone,
but on the whole world, and we’re seeing the problems afflicting all nations,
problems that show the failure of cruel economic models. We see the problems in
the U.S. economy, and the growing threat of war. But we’re open to a mutually
respectful relationship. Unfortunately we depend on that volatile global
capital, but this fact alone cannot immobilize us." Thus you have the new Lula: we accept the demands placed
on us by the IMF (whose current scheme for Brazil extends to 2005, the third of
Lula’s four years), yet we reject the notion that a more just distribution of
wealth is not possible. Jose Alencar (from the rightist Liberal Party, PL), who
represents that sector of the bourgeoisie who wants to reclaim a portion of the
national wealth sold off to foreign investors, today refers to himself (only
half jokingly) as being “to the Left” of Lula. He makes this claim because
his party too is opposed to Brazil’s deep indebtedness to foreign investors. How did this play out in the campaign? Alencar was not
quietly accepted. He was booed loudly at the few rallies he appeared at with
Lula, including the victory rally, and it was common to see campaign stickers
posted with his name cut out of them. PATIENCE, FOR NOW As for Lula, a consensus emerged that nothing would be
done in the months prior to the election to jeopardize his victory. This
included calling a truce with the outgoing President Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
The extent to which this truce was carried out, either explicitly or implicitly,
is remarkable. The Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), for example,
practically called a moratorium on land seizures in the past year. And when a
piece of Cardoso’s son’s property was occupied in May of this year, Lula
declared no illegal land takeovers would be permitted under his administration.
Land reform must be pursued through a “positive, constructive” process, he
said. So far, the MST has gone along with him. The university youth, too, have
so far followed this path. The opposition within the PT let its displeasure with
Lula be known, and yet also refrained from sowing too much discord within the
ranks. A few lines from a statement from the O Trabalho current reads: “Working people made clear that they want an end to
this ‘economic model’ dictated by the IMF, which provokes the bleeding of
the nation in order to pay the foreign debt...It’s impossible to accept that
those who were defeated Oct. 6 (in the first round) would still push the country
into disaster and chaos. They were defeated exactly for having concocted, in 20
years, 13 accords with the IMF, all of which have led Brazil to its current dire
situation...It’s impossible to accept their dictates!” This is not the voice of a fanatical few. Nearly a third
of the PT candidates elected to Congress Oct. 6 are from the left wing of the
party. Nevertheless, as these new representatives threatened to meet a week
prior to the Oct. 27 vote to decide how to move Lula leftward again, they
relented under pressure from Dirceu who asked them to not place obstacles in the
way of Lula’s victory. None of this story should be taken to suggest that the
Left in Brazil will continue to toe Lula’s line; it was specifically followed
only to insure his victory. There was even a popular refrain used to explain it:
“Lulala, e depois luta ca,” or roughly, "Lula there (in power), and
afterwards struggle here." That struggle, both as it will be waged against Lula as
he moves to calm the ongoing rage against poverty, and with him as he attempts
to enact an efffective campaign against hunger and start land reform, faces huge
obstacles. ECONOMIC REALITIES To begin with, the hammering that international
investors meted out to Brazil in the months prior to the election, driven by
their fear of an ex-lathe operator with no college degree rising to the highest
office, puts Lula’s movement behind the eight ball. Due to foreign investors'
actions, Brazil's currency, the real, has lost 43% of its value against the
dollar. Lula proposes to immediately form a new “Secretariat
of Social Emergency” to lead the effort to end hunger, but 95% of the budget
for 2003 is already decided. The budget for this new department will thus have
to come from donations. He proposes to offer tax breaks to small businesses to
stimulate job growth. What the IMF plan calls for, however, are tax increases,
coupled with cuts in social programs. Guido Mantega, an economic advisor to
Lula, states in no uncertain terms that: “There is not the slightest
possibility of restructuring the debt.” Lula also stated this innumerable
times in the campaign. Nor is it clear where the tax increases to pay debt
servicing will come from: the more workers are thrust into the “informal
sector,” the less they can be taxed. In addition, the tax burden in Brazil is
already equivalent to about 30% of gross domestic product, a high value in
comparison to other countries with similar output. On the other hand, the agrarian reform that Lula calls
for would go a long way to fighting poverty. The problem is that unless land
expropriations are carried out in the course of a revolution, landowners must be
compensated, which costs a lot of money. There are an estimated 100,000 families
camped out on illegally occupied land today, a result of 15 years of struggle by
the MST. A common figure thrown around for the cost of the kind of reform Lula
wants is $40 billion. Throughout the campaign Lula indicated relief might come
from placing more emphasis on Mercosul, the common market between Brazil,
Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. This could presumably serve as a counterbalance
to the U.S. and Europe. His first foreign visit will be to Argentina, the second
biggest of the four countries. The problem here is not alone the dire straits Argentina
is in, but the fact that Brazil’s foreign trade with these countries at
present only accounts for 15% of its total. It’s unknown how a substantial
increase could be achieved. Lula is in a straightjacket. He knows this, and to his
credit has not promised anyone, such as the Caixas textile worker quoted above,
a “massive public works program.” He will get a wage increase soon, though
it won’t be as much as he needs. The key question is therefore whether the next four years will be only about a struggle for higher wages, or about the need to restructure production and life in accordance with the goal of human self-development rather than the self-expansion of capital. |
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