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In Search of a Post-Neoliberal Paradigm: The Brazilian Left and Lula's Government1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 April 2009

Alexandre Fortes
Alexandre Fortes
Affiliation:
Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro
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Abstract

The first decade of the twenty-first century has seen extraordinary political developments in the Latin American left. Indeed, there is no historical precedent for the simultaneous election across the region of governments that can be identified with the political left. From Tabaré Vasquez in Uruguay to Martín Torrijos in Panama; from Néstor and Cristina Kirchner in Argentina to Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua; from Michelle Bachelet in Chile to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela; from Evo Morales in Bolivia to Rafael Correa no Ecuador—as well as Luis Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil and, more recently, Fernando Lugo in Paraguay—representatives of practically all of the region's formative leftist currents have taken over the governments of large, medium, and small countries.

This article takes Brazil under Lula's government as a case study in order to explore the relationship between the various dimensions of the region's lefts: the social and the institutional, civil society and the state, the national and the international, and stability and transformation. Indeed, the election to the presidency of a survivor of the extreme poverty and harsh droughts of northeastern Brazil, a one-time metalworker with little access to formal education, had a profound impact on both the country's social movements and the political party that he founded and led. By examining the hopes and frustrations, dilemmas, and accomplishments of Lula's government, we can better achieve a more dense and nuanced understanding of the larger historical process through which the Latin American Left has reached power.

Type
Rethinking the Left in Victory and Defeat
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 75 , Issue 1 , Spring 2009 , pp. 109 - 125
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 2009

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References

NOTES

2. I am following here Geoff Eley's definitions of the Left as the set of sectors that have been engaged in constituting effective conditions for democracy in contemporary historical times and of socialism as a more specific political project that—from approximately 1860 to 1960—was the backbone of a wider more plural left. Having lost that centrality over more recent decades, the socialist currents and tendencies have had to face the dilemma of redefining their relations with other social and political components of the Left. Cf. Eley, , Geoff, , Forjando democracia. A história da esquerda na Europa (1850–2000) (São Paulo: Editora Fundação Perseu Abramo, 2005)33Google Scholar.

3. Jorge Castañeda, “Latin America's Left Turn,” Foreign Affairs May/June (2006) <http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060501faessay85302/jorge-g-castaneda/latin-america-s-left-turn.html>. Accessed on June 14 2008.

4. For a version of the Left that suffers from the use of that very same schematic and dichotomist reasoning, see the interview Tariq Ali gave to Gianni Carta: “Lula não é um pirata,” Carta Capital 496 (2008): 60–62.

5. Kenneth Maxwell, “Brazil: Lula's Prospects,” New York Review of Books 49(2002): 27–30.

6. Castañeda, Jorge G., Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left after the Cold War (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1993)Google Scholar.

7. Naomi Klein, “Reclaiming the Commons,” New Left Review 9(2001).

8. Baiocchi, Giampaolo, Militants and Citizens: Local Democracy on a Global Stage in Porto Alegre, Brazil (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Baiocchi, Giampaolo, ed. Radicals in Power: The Workers' Party (PT) and Experiments in Urban Democracy in Brazil (London, New York: Zed Books, 2003)Google Scholar; Nylen, William R., Participatory Democracy Versus Elitist Democracy: Lessons from Brazil (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Avritzer, Leonardo, Democracy and the Public Space in Latin America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

9. “Income goes up for the first time since 96, but inequality is still high.” <http://noticias.uol.com.br/economia/ultnot/2006/09/15/ult82u6091.jhtm> Accessed on June 7, 2008.

10. “Income transfer programs reduce inequality in Brazil by 21%” <http://contasabertas.uol.com.br/noticias/auto=1847.htm> Accessed on June 7, 2008.

11. Fortes, Alexandre and French, John, “Another World Is Possible: The Rise of the Brazilian Workers' Party and the Prospects for Lula's Government,” Labor—Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, vol. 2, no. 3 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005, 15–18Google Scholar.

12. Pimentel, Fernando, “O paradoxo brasileiro,” Teoria e Debate, 56 (2003–2004), 27Google Scholar.

13. In the comments that follow on specific aspects of the current Brazilian political situation I benefit from elements to be found in works presented at the conference “Nurturing Hope, Deepening Democracy, and Combating Inequalities: An Assessment of Lula's Presidency” (see note 1), especially those by Juarez Guimarães (on the debate concerning Lula's government political project), by Ana Fonseca and Cristiani Vieira Machado (on the government's social policies), and those by Wendy Wolford (on the social movements in the rural areas and the quest for agrarian reform). As none of those works has already been published, there are no specific quotations.

14. It is worth noting that the Brazilian political system came to integrate the majority of the population only after the sanctioning of the 1988 Constitution, which extended the right to vote to illiterates.

15. The 2006 election presented a somewhat distinct scenario since one of the candidates, the former governor of São Paulo, Geraldo Alckmin, instead of having historical connections with the Left, had somewhat obscure links to the extreme right-wing Catholic organization Opus Dei. Even so, the other candidates were two PT dissidents who presented their candidacies as left-wing alternatives to the government: Lula's former education minister Cristovam Buarque, who ran on a PDT (Democratic Labor party) ticket and the then senator and founder of the PSOL, Heloisa Helena.

16. Fortes and French, “Another World Is Possible,” pp. 23–24.

17. The general guidelines of Lula's economic policies had in fact been announced during the 2002 campaign in a document entitled “Letter to the Brazilian people.”

18. In regard to the so-called “neo-developmentist” components of Lula's government, it is worth stressing that if on the one hand it is in confrontation with the monetarist sectors present in the government itself (with less influence in the second mandate than in the first one), on the other it faces resistance from groups of ecologists, many of whom have traditionally aligned themselves with the PT. The ecologists denounce not only the dependence of the government's macroeconomic strategies on agribusiness that lead to the expansion of soybean planting and cattle raising, thereby increasing deforestation of the Amazon, but also the anxiousness of the developmentalists to see infrastructure works going on at an accelerated rate, which leads to pressures for their impacts to be underestimated. In spite of the progress in regard to regulatory measures aimed for protecting sensitive biomes, the constant shocks inside the government and the powerful influence of agro-business in the governmental coalition recently led to the resignation of Environment Minister Marina Silva, the most outstanding ecological leadership within the PT.

19. As Hobsbawm has underscored, unfortunately, this situation, in which the dispute among the same social bases with the ideological segments that are closest to them makes it difficult to strengthen alliances with them, and it is a recurrent one in the history of the Left. Cf. Hobsbawm, Eric, Era dos Extremos: O Breve Século XX, 1914–1991, 2a ed. (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1996), 149Google Scholar.

20. At that time called the Movimento Democrático Brasileiro—MDB (Brazilian Democratic Movement).

21. Marcelo Badaró Mattos, “O PSOL e as eleições presidenciais de 2006: Um novo PT?” Paper presented at the Latin American Studies Association Conference, Montreal, 2007.

22. Cf., for example, the interview given by Emir Sader to Ricardo de Azevedo, “América Latina pós-neoliberal,” and Lowy's, Michael essay, “A herança de Che Guevara.” Both in Teoria e Debate, (74) 2007Google Scholar.

23. This seems to be the view of José Luís Fiori. Cf. José Luís Fiori, “As grandes alamedas.” Available at <http://www.ie.ufrj.br/aparte/pdfs/fiori061206.pdf> Accessed on June 7, 2008.

24. Klein, Naomi, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, (Toronto: Alfed A. Knopf, 2007)Google Scholar.

25. On the “Brazilian Miracle” of the 1970s, see Singer, Paul, A Crise do ‘Milagre’: Interpretação crítica da economia brasileira, (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1976)Google Scholar.

26. See the excellent systematization of the debates in this issue ever since the end of the 19th century in Blackburn, Robin. “O socialismo após o colapso”. In Robin Blackburn (org.) Depois da Queda: O fracasso do comunismo e o futuro do socialismo, 107–215.

27. For a panoramic view of the themes that marked the debate on the third congress of the PT, see Marco Aurélio Garcia, “Os horizontes do governo e do PT” (pp. 4–7) and the texts of Jilmar Tatto, Luiz Dulci, Marcelo Deda, Maria do Rosário, Marta Suplicy, Raul Pont, Tarso Genro, and Valter Pomar, brought together under the general heading “É hora de discutir o PT” (pp. 8–14). All in Teoria e Debate, (68) 2006.