|
|
N. 04/2000
|
|
|
|
|
But Brazil is
also a country featured by stressed contradictions: against São Paolo, deemed
as one of the main metropolis of the industrialized world, we have in the
Amazon forests still unexplored; facing an oligarchy controlling the sizeable
resources of the country, there is the endless population of wretches living
in the “favelas” and in the Nordeste lands that survive with less than a
dollar a day. Notwithstanding, it concerns one of the emergent countries
featured by the less turbulence level: even the twenty-year military
dictatorship, started with the golpe of Marshal Castelo Branco in 1964, did
not show the ferociousness and the controversy that featured other Latin
America countries and did not left a so heavy inheritance. The national
unity is, someway, the real miracle in Brazil. When Cabral landed in the bay
of Porto Seguro, on April 22nd 1500, he found neither Incas nor Aztecs, as it
would have happened little later to his Spanish colleagues Pizarro and
Cortés, but only some Indio tribes, still, more or less, at the stone age,
and whose descendants claim nowadays, some sentimentally, the rights over the
lands of their ancestors. During the
following centuries, Lisbon succeeded in defending them against the French
and Holland craving, proceeding to a slow and methodical colonization. For
two centuries, the occupation was limited to the coastal strip, stressing
over the north provinces since they were closer to the motherland. Then the big
landowners, real feudatories with power of life and death, started-off the
research of new lands inland and the legendary “bandeirantes” departed to
conquer the treasures of the Mato Grosso and Minas Gerais, subjecting the
aborigines. A first turning
point was the massive importation of slaves from Africa, that on a side let
the start of the intensive cultivation of café and sugar cane that still are
very important resources for the economy of the country, and on the other
side it constituted the requisites to establish what is, according to the
sociologist Gilberto Freyre (even if much-discussed), the only really
multiethnic society all over the world. The second
turning point was the arrive to Rio de Janeiro in 1807, escaping from the
Napoleonic armies, the king of Portugal John VI, who turned Brazil, at least
temporarily, from the empire outskirt to the centre of the Lusitanian world.
With the royal family and the court it arrived also the state and
bureaucratic structures, the military school, the university and all what
could cater for changing the colony into a nation. When king John was
recalled to Lisbon in the frame of the Restoration, his son Pedro took his
place and in 1822 proclaimed the independence of the country of which he
became the emperor. Before finding
his democratic and current order, Brazil must pass indeed throughout many
events, from the oligarchic regime known as “the system” to the prolonged
dictatorship of Getulio Vargas. The rise of
Brazil is marked by a quick increase in population that was due for a long
time to the immigration from Europe - and earlier - to a very high birth
rate. At the independence date, inhabitants were less than four millions the
half of which was Negro slaves. At the beginning of the century, Brazilians
was 17 millions, in 1930 40 millions, in 1960 70 millions, in 1975 105
millions, at the dawn of the new millennium they are 172 millions, of which -
as official statistics point out - 55% are White, 6% Negroes, 38% Mulattoes
and Mestizos, and 1% “others”, that is Indio, the most left out of the modern
economy. Reality is much
more complex: it is possible that 90% population is really the most half-blood,
since neither at the slavery age there have been, by the sexual point of
view, a real segregation. Even the Japanese immigrates, very aware about
their ethnical purity, let themselves contaminate by the heterogeneous trends
founding the “being Brazilian “ and have started to yield to the temptation
of mixed unions. The mix of races, White and Negroes, Indio and Asiatic, has
leaded to a population featured by the most varied and original somatic
characters, somehow unique in the world. Nevertheless it must be said that if
officially there are no discriminations, it's the per-capite income to divide
races. Whites keep steadily settled at the top of the society and place
generally over the 6.800$ per year average income- all but despicable in
Latin America - while Negroes and Mulattoes often live in poverty. Between
the so-called asphalt society, traced on the North America one, and the mud
society, that reminds the sub-Sahara Africa villages, there's a gap very hard
to fill. One of the must welfare groups is without any doubt that of the
descendants, already of the third, fourth and even fifth generation, of the
Italian immigrates, got here massively between the second half of the
nineteenth century and the fifties and the sixties and that massively entered
the economic and financial elite. What
distinguishes Brazil among others countries is the lack of ethnic background
troubles, that has leaded Freyre to speak about the “race democracy “: all speak
the same language, listen to the same music, see the same soap operas at the
TV and long for the same football teams. The other face of the coin is that
this mix has produced a society without exact cultural roots, where
Catholicism mixes without any restrain to pagans rites, the evangelic sects
has founded a very fertile background, the concept of family has turned to a
sort of independent variable, promiscuity is the rule, the “child on street “
are already a sad institution and violence thrives everywhere. Notwithstanding
its unavoidable harshness, the twenty-year period of the military
dictatorship has not only carried to a remarkable economic development, but
also has brought a certain discipline in society, which foreign investors
that believe in Brazil since ever felt the lack of. After a chaotic
start-off, reaching an apex in the impeachment for corruption of the first
civil president, Fernando Collor de Mello, also the democracy has resumed to
work someway. The current
President, the ex sociologist Fernando Henrique Cardoso, elected for the
first time in 1995 and later confirmed by popular acclaim in 1998, is a Left
man converted on his way to liberalism. His great merit
is that of having defeated the hyperinflation, a plague that has been
affecting the country over years, by applying the Argentine prescription of
rigour, privatisation and the Real hooking-up to the dollar. Unfortunately,
the Russian and the Asiatic crisis of two years ago, with the following
flight of capitals from the developing countries, broke suddenly the
Brazilian recovery, compelling to abandon the parity with the American
currency and to face again the currency loss in purchasing power. Now things
are setting-up again, and the International Monetary Fund foresees for the
year of the anniversary a growth over 4%, enough to contain a still endemic
unemployment, ever increasing due to the arrive on the market labour of
million young. Nevertheless the
Left that in due time contributed to bring Cardoso to power, is today the
utmost critic toward him. Everything is
brought up to him: the lack of a great project for Brazil, the slowness of
the reforming process, the abandon of the primary social renewal targets, the
giving up to the interests of multinationals and landowners, the inability to
reduce the gap between rich and poor. Intellectuals, and even that part of
the Church still linked to the “liberation theology “ whose main exponent was
monsignor Holder Camara, do not forgive the president that he partly
rejected, once settled in the control room, what he wrote during his long
academic career and that he converted to neo-liberalism. Not only
professors attack him. There's for example the “Landless farmers “ movement
that leads the protest and it's already in clear riot against the government. In spite of all,
during five years Cardoso has expropriated twelve million hectares of large
landed estates, a surface equal to a third of Italy. To change, he
must not only deal with the problems of a so big country but also fight
against a Congress where all strong powers are represented and that, as it
happens at Washington, has the possibility to block any kind of legislation. Constitution
gives also wide powers to the 26 states governors, some of which are real
feudal sirs and others are implacable political enemies of the president, and
who do not have any hesitation to sabotage him. In bureaucracy and policy
corruption is spread at an extent that it is almost impossible to indict
them. The population
schooling average level, notwithstanding the seven-year compulsory education,
is very low, and the lack of a qualified and adequately paid teaching body
does not make things easier. The shining
future almost everybody foretells to Brazil, thanks to its unbounded natural
resources, its privileged geographic position and the characteristic of its
population, must still wait a little more. |
|
Leadership Medica®
Mensile di scienza medica e attualita`
Copyright 1997© All Rights Reserved