Il futuro è il Brasile?

[Dragonball (POL)]

Friday, 21 April, 2000, 10:09 GMT 11:09 UK
Brazil: Country of the future?


Poor Brazilians live in huge "favelas"


By Americo Martins of the BBC Brazilian Service


Generations of Brazilians have long been taught that they lived in "the country of the future".

With its vast territory, natural resources and economic potential, its people were led to believe that Brazil had a guaranteed place as one of the world's leading countries.

But as the country celebrates 500 years since the arrival of European explorers, the promise of a bright future has not come true for the majority of its population.

A great number suffer daily from tremendous inequality, widespread corruption and growing violence.

Love it or leave it

For a good part of the 20th century, Brazil was one of the fastest-growing countries in the world.



Economic growth has enabled Brazil to send rockets to space


In the first decades of the century, migrants from places as varied as Japan and Italy were attracted by the beginnings of national industrialisation.

In the 1950s their sons and daughters believed the future had indeed arrived as Brazil started to receive massive foreign investments and several multinationals set up offices in the country.

The dream faded with political instability and economic failures.

In the 1970s, the military dictatorship tried to renew hope by using its propaganda machine, manipulating the good times of the "economic miracle" and even by pointing to the success of the national football team.

All to show how great Brazil was.

Children were taught in school to think that Brazil was "big" - the best in the world - and that one should either "love it or leave it".

Most people believed it and the country became a place of superlatives.



Love it: Brazilians were told their country was the best

Suddenly, everyone was proud to say that we had such things as the longest bridge and the biggest hydroelectric power station in the world.

People would tell jokes saying that even God was Brazilian.

Once again, failure followed the "miracle" and the economy simply did not grow at all in the 1980s - the lost decade.

Social problems

All these cycles of economic growth have had an impact on the country.

From a totally rural society, Brazil has grown to be the 10th largest global economy.

Yet the country has failed to redistribute its wealth among its160 million people - one-third of Latin America's entire population.

In fact, Brazil is one of the most unequal countries in the world.

About 50 million Brazilians are poor, 32 million do not have access to clean water and 24 million are illiterate.

Many have to live on a mere $77 per month, the country's minimum wage.

Living in huge "favelas" or shantytowns, the poor in fact have limited access to education, the job market and the health system.

Violence

One of the results of the social exclusion has been an increase in violence.

In 1997, 8,092 people were murdered in the city of Sao Paulo alone - an average of one person almost every hour.

Some people say the gap between the rich and the poor is widening even though the country is now back to a certain degree of economical stability.

Inflation is under control and most analysts predict the country's economy will grow between 3% and 4% this year.

But nobody knows if this growth can be maintained long enough to guarantee its people the promised bright future.




Wednesday, 19 April, 2000, 15:22 GMT 16:22 UK
Analysis: Brazil's 'racial democracy'



Indigenous groups are holding a counter celebration

By Jan Rocha
Brazil is celebrating its 500th anniversary: 500 years since "discovery" or "invasion", depending on whether you were a Portuguese explorer or one of the millions of indigenous peoples who already lived there.

The date has made Brazilians think about their origins, the racial mix of Indians, Africans and Europeans which has produced today's population, and the claim that Brazil is a racial democracy.

No other country outside Africa has such a large black population, about half the total of 160 million, yet blacks are almost totally absent from positions of power - from all levels of government, from congress, senate, the judiciary, the higher ranks of the civil service and the armed forces.




In Brazil what counts is appearance. If you look white, or white-ish, then you are white.

Even in Salvador, the capital and major slave port for nearly 300 years, where blacks make up more than 80% of the population, very few are to be found in government.

And incredibly, up until the 1970s even Salvador's carnival parade was for whites - blacks could only push the floats, not dance around them. That situation only came to an end when a group of blacks set up their own black-only Carnival group, Ile Ayie, meaning big house in Yoruba.

They also started a school to teach black children their own history - about the many slave rebellions, uprisings and quilombos (free territories) set up by runaways - usually excluded from official schoolbooks.

Slave trade

Up to eight million Africans from all over the continent were brought to Brazil between 1540 and 1850, when the traffic was stopped, although slavery was only finally abolished in 1888.

Most freed slaves were then turned out to become vagrants, homeless, jobless, penniless, while the authorities, alarmed that the majority of the population was now black or mixed race, did everything to encourage European immigration to "whiten" Brazil.

This policy lasted well into the 20th century, until the writings of influential sociologist Gilberto Freyre in the 1930s showed that the country's racial mixture could be seen in a positive light and the idea that Brazil was an example to the world in racial harmony was born.




The Portuguese arrived in Brazil 500 years ago

But in 1946 a Unesco study revealed that while most Brazilians approved of racial tolerance, in practice racial discrimination was widespread.

Fifty years later in 1999, a report by the Minority Rights Group International showed that discrimination had continued: black and mixed race Brazilians still have higher infant mortality rates, fewer years of schooling, higher rates of unemployment, and earn less for the same work.

Black men are more likely to be shot or arrested as crime suspects, and when found guilty, get longer sentences.

Yet there is no national black movement in Brazil, no open racial conflict, no apparent racial tension. Black Americans who live in Salvador say they feel much more at ease there than in the racially divided USA.

One of the reasons for this huge difference between the USA and Brazil is that while in America, race is defined by your ancestors - one drop of black blood makes you black - in Brazil what counts is appearance.

If you look white, or white-ish, then you are white. For black Brazilians it is this very blurring of racial lines that makes it so difficult to fight racism. And paradoxically, offers the chance for Brazil to become a real racial democracy, once it faces up to and takes steps to combat racism.

[asburgico]

fatelo leggere a larth

[larth (POL)]

Originally posted by asburgico
fatelo leggere a larth

larth ha gia letto che cosa e' REALMENTE il brasile in un libro scritto dieci anni fa' . e perche' ci e' diventato dal posto felice che era PRIMA ..


e' allora che i tuoi ' amici' di wall street mi sono cominciati a divenire antipatici ... per loro la 'societa' del brasile' e' la migliore delle oppurtunita' ... e il modello del LORO brasile va portato dappertutto....

infatti il brasile e' una grande potenza , il mercato e' libero e sono tutti felici in brasile ...

un ' paradiso' che tocchera' anche a te . .... te lo meriti per l' impegno in difesa del ' modello americano ', la mondializzazione cosi' splendidamente applicata in brasile ...

[asburgico]

Originally posted by larth
larth ha gia letto che cosa e' REALMENTE il brasile in un libro scritto dieci anni fa' . e perche' ci e' diventato dal posto felice che era PRIMA ..


e' allora che i tuoi ' amici' di wall street mi sono cominciati a divenire antipatici ... per loro la 'societa' del brasile' e' la migliore delle oppurtunita' ... e il modello del LORO brasile va portato dappertutto....

infatti il brasile e' una grande potenza , il mercato e' libero e sono tutti felici in brasile ...

un ' paradiso' che tocchera' anche a te . .... te lo meriti per l' impegno in difesa del ' modello americano ', la mondializzazione cosi' splendidamente applicata in brasile ...

non fare il furbino sai bene che mi riferisco al fatto che anche nell'america latina, di fatto (come riportato nell'articolo) è sempre esistita la segregazione razziale nonostante le tue teorie avessero voluto dimostrare il contrario.

[larth (POL)]

Originally posted by asburgico
non fare il furbino sai bene che mi riferisco al fatto che anche nell'america latina, di fatto (come riportato nell'articolo) è sempre esistita la segregazione razziale nonostante le tue teorie avessero voluto dimostrare il contrario.

sei tu che fai il furbetto ... In tutto il mondo i poveri sono 'segregati' dai ricchi e certa segregazione diventa lampantemente ' razziale' nelle societa' miltirazziali dove certe razze restano ' svantaggiate' a dispetto di ogni assistenza pubblica ... ( a cominciare dalla democratica e umanitaria america faro del mondo ..)

l' origine delle nostra discussione fu lo steminio degli indigeni .. non dei poveri , elemento sociale del quale comunque la societa' mondialista amerikana mai fara' a meno ....anzi ne favorira' la moltiplicazione nel numero e nello spazio ..