BRAZIL: ONE FOOT IN UTOPIA, ONE IN MATHEMATICS

By Piers Bannister and - - Reprint | | Print |

This column is available for visitors to the IPS website only for reading. Reproduction in print or electronic media is prohibited. Media interested in republishing may contact romacol@ips.org.

BRASILIA, Jul 1 2003 (IPS) - In Brazil, 115 years after the proclamation of the republic, it is as if the monarchy still existed, writes Cristovam Buarque, minister of education for Brazil, ex-rector of the University of Brasilia, and ex-governor of the Federal District. Brazil has still completed neither its republic nor the abolition of slavery. To this day, members of parliament consider themselves nobles, unemployment has replaced forced labour, slaves have been transformed into the poor, and education is for the few. The election of Lula as president completes the republic and the abolition of slavery, Buarque writes in this article for IPS. What is necessary to the completion of abolition is intense, total, and radical land reform. It is also necessary to create jobs to end slavery and the secular Brazilian tragedy of transforming fed and chained slaves into hungry and unemployed free men. To complete the republic, equal access to education must be guaranteed, which is only possible through a free, quality public school system for everyone.

In Brazil, 115 years after the proclamation of the republic, members of parliament still call each other ”noble colleagues”. It is as if the monarchy still existed beneath the name republic. It is not a question of parliamentary culture, nor is it even exclusive to parliament. It is that in 21st century Brazil, the elite feel as distant from the people as they did in the 19th century.

The Brazilian elite are not really citizens. The inequality between the rich and the poor, whether in income or in education, living conditions, mode of transportation, entertainment, food, and customs, is extreme. They never sit at the same table, discuss the same subjects, or even think of themselves as belonging to the same people.

Brazilian citizens don’t refer to each other as citizen deputy or citizen senator because Brazil has still completed neither its republic nor the abolition of slavery. After proclaiming its independence in 1822, the country remained a monarchy and allowed slavery to continue for 70 years. Although in a mere 18 months it proclaimed the creation of a republic and formally abolished slavery, in practice very little changed. To this day, members of parliament consider themselves nobles, unemployment has replaced forced labour, slaves have been transformed into the poor, and education is for the few.

The regime adopted a republican form, but Brazil continues to be divided between a rich elite and a plebian mass. Little by little the republic abolished slavery, extended the right to vote, allowed freedom of expression and the organisation of political parties, but at the same time it concentrated land and education in the hands of a few.

The election of Lula as president completes the republic and the abolition of slavery.

These two dates must be remembered: 1888, the year of abolition, and 1889, the year the republic was proclaimed. We cannot put off that which everyone wants: a complete republic, without exclusion, in which all citizens are equal. We were not elected merely to govern well but, by governing well, to realise the republican revolution that Brazil has been waiting for for more than a century.

The revolution was not completed because the republicans detached themselves from the people. As a new nobility, they lost the capacity for indignation in the face of the poverty that surrounded them, they savoured the privileges of aristocrats, and grew accustomed to the voices of power and the requirements of bureaucracy. These are the distortions that we in the Lula government are not going to succumb to. We are not going to grow accustomed to an incomplete republic, and we will not forget that our mission is to complete it.

The principal way to avoid accomodationism is to address the difficulties of the present without forgetting the legacy that our government must leave for future generations. To work to resolve these problems without losing the commitment to the dreams of the future. To keep one foot in utopia and the other in mathematics.

Lula was not elected to change the basic structure of the economy or to bring about the equality of income or consumption, but to insure that all citizens are equal, completing abolition and the republic. What is necessary to the completion of abolition is the intense, total, and radical land reform that the country is waiting for, together with the technological techniques of the 21st century, and without disruption of production. It is also necessary to create jobs to end slavery and the secular Brazilian tragedy of transforming fed and chained slaves into hungry and unemployed free men.

To complete the republic, equal access to education must be guaranteed, which is only possible through a free, quality public school system for everyone. At present Brazilian society invests 80 times more in private education for children of the middle class than in public education for the children of the poor. The former spend 347 dollars per month and receive up to twenty years of schooling; the latter receive 277 dollars per year and stay in school an average of four years. In no way can this be called a republic.

To complete the republic and abolition, Lula will insure that the measures are taken to change this reality in his four years in office, until the country is truly a republic, until its people are literate and children attend improving schools, so that by Brazil’s 200th birthday in 2022 all Brazilians will have an education equivalent to completing secondary school.

All of this is possible and has already been accomplished by countries that are poorer and have greater difficulties than Brazil. It is possible if it has the support of the society and the commitment of the government, particularly the members of parliament as they discuss the next federal budget.

This is the major obstacle: convincing the nobles left over from 1889 that the time has come to invest a substantial amount of the nation’s resources to bring to fruition the republican revolution that only free, quality, public education can create. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)