Brazil:
Brazil is by far the most important economy of South America. The Brazilian economy is relatively industrialized and dominates the region. Possessing large and well-developed agricultural, mining, manufacturing and service sector, the Brazilian economy is not only considered a regional power, but is also regarded as a global economic power. Geographically exceptional, Brazil shares a border with every other country of South America except Chile and Ecuador, and is extremely rich with natural resources. Brazil is home to the largest population in Latin America – numbering 157,079,573 in the 2000 census.
The Indigenous people that lived in what is now Brazil included the Arawak and Carib in the north, the Tupi and Guarani in the East Coast and in the Amazon River Valley, the Ge of eastern and southern Brazil and the Pano in the west. European invasion forced the Indigenous groups further and further into the Amazon, and by the early 20th Century the few remaining Indigenous communities were for the most part obliterated.
In 1493 Pope Alexander VI declared a Line of Demarcation separating Spanish and Portuguese claims in South America. This became a treaty between the Spanish and Portuguese monarchies, and permanently divided the newly invaded lands of the Americas. For this reason Brazil is the only Portuguese speaking nation of Latin America. In 1554 the southern city of Sao Paulo was established primarily as a slave outpost. Approximately one million Africans were kidnapped and brought to Brazil from 1554-1564, all of them entered through Sao Paulo. Finally, in 1822 a renegade sector of the Portuguese monarchy declared the independence of Brazil and assumed control of the massive country.
Since the first European set foot in the Americas, Brazil was witness to the most terrible crimes in the human history. Genocide, slavery and conquest dominate Brazil’s colonial past. It must be noted though, that unlike most Latin American nations, the independence of Brazil was not a result of popular uprisings but instead a split within the Portuguese monarchy.
From 1822 well through the late 19th Century, the so-called Empire of Brazil launched imperialistic attacks against neighboring Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, finally robbing Paraguay of its access to the Atlantic. Brazil existed as the only “independent” state in the region that openly upheld slavery. During the 1880s wide spread slave revolts and a rise in liberal politics led to the destruction of the empire. It was not until 1891 that a republic was proclaimed in Brazil and slavery outlawed - 3 million enslaved Africans were “emancipated.”
The Empire of Brazil was replaced by a federalist mode of government and renamed United States of Brazil. The democratic transition was short-lived; only one year as a new republic, the president dissolved the congress and assumed dictatorial powers. Several military coups then followed, and it was not until 1917 that the government stabilized.
During the 1930s Getulio Dornelles Vargas took control of Brazil. Vargas was a fanatic follower of fascist ideas. The Vargas dictatorship lasted until 1945: during this time communists, labor organizers and the poor were persecuted mercilessly. All political parties were banned and both the media and individual mail was censored.
Resistance against the fascist regime was widespread, led especially by the Communist Party. The CP was headed by Luis Carlos Prestes and organized several uprisings under the banner of the National Liberation Alliance. Although the resistance from Prestes was well received by the working-class, the Vargas dictatorship remained in power due to support from the United States.
The U.S. pressured Vargas to break ties with the Third Reich and Mussolini’s Italy in return for economic and military aid. After WWII, the U.S. pulled its support from Vargas, and in 1945 his regime fell. That same year Prestes was elected senator along with fourteen federal deputies under the CP platform. By 1947 CP membership grew to 180,000 militants and controlled the cities of Rio de Janeiro (then capital of Brazil) and the important port of Santos. The rise of the CP was short lived, and in 1947 another fanatic named Eurico Dutra, was elected president. Under pressure from the United States Dutra banned the CP and persecuted all opposition forces.
In January 1951 the demented and more fanatic than ever Vargas returned to the presidency through fraudulent elections, where he continued to push his anti-communist policies. By 1954 Vargas was overwhelmed by one scandal after another, and resigned from the presidency. A few hours later he committed suicide.
THE 1960s
During this time a progressive wing of the Catholic Church allied itself with radical formations, while the CP threw its support behind then president Joel Goulart. Perceived as a threat by the United States, in 1964 Goulart was removed from office by a military coup with the open support of then president of the U.S. Lyndon Johnson.
By this time the Cuban Revolution had become the center of anti-imperialist struggle in Latin America. Throughout Latin America military dictatorships had become the norm. Influenced by the rise of guerrilla formations in Uruguay (Tupamaros) and Argentina (Montoneros) several militants of CP of Brazil, still the most important left formation, made a call for armed struggle to fight against the military regime.
The most prominent leader of the CP during this time was Carlos Marighella. Marighella convinced several factions of the CP to join the call for urban guerrilla warfare, and several student led organizations followed Marighella’s example. However, most armed groups did not have popular support, and a mass-based movement was nonexistent.
During the height of urban guerrilla movement, two important formations were created. The National Liberation Alliance, led by Marighella, and the Popular Revolutionary Vanguard, led by Carlos Lamarca. Both groups launched attacks against the military junta, executing soldiers, robbing banks and assaulting the ruling class. These acts generated an economic base for the armed struggle that lasted many generations – and even outlasted the armed struggle itself.
The most prominent action was the September 1969 kidnapping of U.S. Ambassador Charles Elbrick. The action eventually led to the exchange of 15 political prisoners for the Ambassador. Following that incident, the junta shut down congress and adopted increasingly repressive policies. By the end of 1969 Marighella and Lamarca had been assassinated, along with many other guerrilla leaders.
By 1970, the remaining guerrilla units concentrated all their efforts towards fighting with security forces. The guerrillas emerged badly beaten after many failed attempts at overturning the dictatorship. The little social movement that remained was severely disorganized and disorientated. By 1973, the military junta reigned supreme. The left had been completely crushed, its principal organizations destroyed and the majority of its cadre killed, imprisoned or in exile.
The second half of the 1970s was characterized by pressure for more political openness from the institutional opposition. Then came the emergence and slow reorganization of student and worker organizations, as well as Human Rights and environmental groups. These organizations slowly filled the vacuum left after the destruction of the guerrilla struggle.
THE RISE OF THE PT AND ECONOMIC DOWNTURN
By the second half of the 1970s opposition from the bourgeoisie began to mount against the military regime. Two factions of the bourgeoisie that the military junta allowed to operate in order to make it appear that there was a “political opening” openly denounced the dictatorship. The progressive wing of the Catholic Church, influenced by the Liberation Theology process in the Sandinista Revolution of Nicaragua, also began to make a call for the military to step down from power. Although some analyst attribute the “peaceful transition” in Brazil to the church and the upper class pressure; the truth is, that it was the growing labor movement that brought change to Brazil.
Many regard 1977 as a crucial year in the struggle to remove the generals from power, Lula himself commented, “1977 was a year in which various sectors of society screamed out to find a little bit of oxygen....we had the consciousness that if the worker’s didn’t speak out, nothing new will happen in the country.”
The military, which enjoyed more than a decade of unchallenged rule, began to grow uneasy by the strength of the labor movement and the public declarations of the church and the elite, and thus went in the defensive mode. The economic downturn compounded the growing social crisis, from one year to the next the real salary for workers dropped by 34.1 percent.
In 1978, in the Saab-Scania truck company in the City of Sao Bernardo, the first labor strike in ten years broke out. By the end of that year 80,000 workers from the main auto and truck companies followed. The biggest fear for the military junta became a reality, by 1979 over 3.2 million workers in 15 states had gone on strike. It was around this time that Luís Ignácio da Silva, Lula, began to emerge as a prominent labor leader. As 1979 came to an end, the junta allowed all political exiles to return to Brazil, but there was a catch, the so-called amnesty also made it illegal for known torturers and murderers to be criminally charged.
The 1980s began with the same intensity, the economy showed no signs of recuperation, the military showed no intentions of meeting the workers demand for wage increases, and popular support was increasing for the workers. In April of 1980, over 300,000 workers went on strike. In order to crack down on the labor movement the junta declared work stoppage illegal and ordered the arrest of 1,500 labor activists, including Lula.
Earlier that year on February 10th, 750 delegates from diverse labor unions officially formed the Partido dos Trabalhadores, making this political formation, the first in its kind of Brazil. That is to say for the first time a mass based movement led to the creation of a political party. Lula noted this historic accomplishment, “the party will be the real political expression of all those exploited by the capitalist system,” he said.
The first years of the PT were extremely difficult. Several PT activists were detained and murdered, over 16 offices were ransacked or bombed. However support for the PT continued to increase in all sectors of Brazilian society, the repressive onslaught the PT received only added to the popularity of the party. By the end of 1981, the PT had a presence in all of Brazil’s nineteen states with over half a million militants. Remarkably, the PT gained its first elected officials before even competing in electoral politics: five federal deputies, eight state deputies, twenty-seven members of city councils, and one mayor, all joined as the party was being formed.
Following the economic policies of the IMF and the World Bank after the economy was devastated by corruption and a mounting foreign debt, Brazil joined Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay in the formation of the Mercado Comun del Cono Sur (MERCOSUR) in January 1, 1995. By the end of that year most nationalized industries were turned over to transnationals, neo-liberalism was now installed as a policy in the country.
In 1982, the junta allowed public elections to take place for the first time since the coup. The PT utilized this “opening” to launch its first electoral campaigns, Lula also began to work to create a united front that included all the opposition forces, including the center-right, the labor movement, and the progressive sectors of the church. The united front efforts failed. The bourgeoisie began to establish its own political parties and rumors of a “fixed” transition from the military to the right wing began to circulate among progressive sectors. Lula began to utilize a much radical language and worked extensively to consolidate the huge labor movement into the Central Workers Union (CUT). By 1983, the PT had already established itself as a national political force, having influence if not complete control in every single urban labor struggle in the nation.
The combative nature of the urban movements finally reached the rural areas, in particularly, Northern Brazil. By far the most impoverished region of the country, concentrating over 12 million landless peasants. By 1984, the Brazilian campesinos, formed the National Confederation of Agricultural Workers (CONTAG) and the Rural Workers Without Land (MST or Movimiento Los Sin Tierra) with a joint membership of over 11 million people. The MST gravitated towards the PT and the CUT, and is until today an important ally of the PT. The PT supported the over 200 land takeovers organized by the MST and CONTAG.
Both rural organizations faced the wrath of the dictatorship, several campesino leaders were killed and detained. The emergence of ultra-right wing rancher organizations added to the tense dynamics developing in Northern Brazil. The MST although considered smaller than CONTAG, was and continues to be much more radical and thus received more attacks by para-military and governmental forces. The struggles of the landless culminated in the first agrarian reform in Brazilian history in 1988, although not satisfactory to the righteous demands of CONTAG and MST, the reform did call for the protection of labor rights and of the environment. As it is usually the case, the laws were not respected by the ranchers and thus the campesino struggle continued.
The Military-Bourgeois Pact
Sareney, launched a series of campaigns with the objective of discrediting the PT. The new president, accused the PT of being controlled by “secterian radicals” and went as far as organizing a conspiracy in which several workers were killed. Sarney accused the PT for opening fire against the workers, years later the truth was uncovered, it was the military police that killed the workers in an effort to incriminate the PT.
The PT political platform became much clearer around this time, in an official PT document released around the time that the post-military constitution was being proposed, the party clearly laid out its principles, “ The PT, as a party that supports socialism, is by nature opposed to the bourgeois order, the foundation of capitalism. Thus the PT rejects the bourgeois constitution that will be promulgated...which constitutes the institutionalization of the bourgeois order that the party seeks to destroy and in its place, construct a socialist society.”
In 1989 the first popular and direct elections for the office of president were allowed by the junta, Fernando Collor de Mello from the right wing National Reconstruction Party launched his candidacy, so did Lula. The NRP launched a red-baiting campaign against Lula, believing that Lula will not make it past the first round of elections, the NRP began negotiating with the generals a “peaceful transition.” It was obvious, both the military and U.S. interest had selected Collor de Mello, long before election-day. Surprising all the political elites, Lula made it through the first round and lost to Collor de Mello by only a five percentage point difference, with over 47 percent of the people casting their votes to the PT, this translated to roughly 31 million votes in support of Lula.
The Parallel Government, the World Social Forum and the Road to the Presidency
In 1990, Lula organized a gathering of Leftist Political Parties and Organizations of Latin America and the Caribbean, with the participation of seventy organizations from 22 countries, the gathering came to be known as the Forum of Sao Paulo (FSP). Heavily criticized by the right wing and the Brazilian government “for harboring known terrorists,” it could be argued that this process was what elevated Lula to an international progressive figure.
In one of the most important PT strongholds, the southern city of Porto Alegre, Lula once again called for an international gathering, the World Social Forum (WSF). The forum was organized as an alternative to the World Economic Forum, held in Davos, Switzerland in January 2001. The following year the WSF, was once again organized in Porto Alegre, there Lula announced that the III World Social Forum will include heads of state.
In March of 2002, Lula solicited to be a candidate for president to the Party. He was elected with over 87 percent of the party membership. Lula ran a formidable campaign almost clinching the presidency in the first round with 46 per cent of the vote. In the second round, Lula defeated his closest opponent with 61.7 per cent of the vote, becoming the first president to receive such overwhelming support in the history of the country. On January 1, 2003, Lula was sworn in as President of Brazil, a few weeks after that the III World Social Forum will begin in Porto Alegre.
Severely debilitated by decades of persecution and repression, the CP had little importance in the political life of Brazilian society during the 1960s. The CP was further debilitated by factionalism; Maoist and Stalinist factions fought each other for control of the party. Meanwhile a slow but growing independent labor movement surpassed the organizing efforts of the CP.
In the early 1980s, the CP (Communist Party) began to reorganize itself, around this time the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT or Workers Party) was also founded. The PT distanced itself from the CP, in order to avoid the factionalism that continued within the CP. Although sharing the basic principles of anti-capitalism, the PT did not consider itself a continuation of the “traditional left” during this time. However the 1980s, perhaps the most turbulent economic decade in the contemporary history of Latin America, was going to be a determining factor in sharpening the objective conditions for what remained of the Brazilian left. The 1980s was also the beginning of the end for the military junta.
The Rise of Lula as a political figure
In 1985, the military allowed for the election of the first civilian president since 1964, the process was completely controlled by the junta. The election process was not conducted through direct popular vote, rather an electoral college was instituted were only delegates from the parties with national representation would be allowed to vote. The PT criticized the process and instructed the party delegates to boycott the electoral college. The right wing parties selected Tancredo Neves, a puppet of the regime, he died before taking office, in his place José Sarney, another sympathizer of the military rule was named president.
After the narrow defeat in 1989, Lula launched a parallel government to that of Collor de Mello in which he instituted educational, cultural, and agrarian reform in the communities that supported him in his first bid for election. He consolidated his power base and although he ran in two other presidential races he was unable to defeat the technocrats that ruined the Brazilian economy.