The myth behind Brazil's Lula is crumbling

[FarCenter]

Widespread anti-government protests in Brazil have damaged the once stellar image of the country's ruling Worker's Party and its former head Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. President Dilma Rousseff faces continued criticism.

The mass protests across Brazil, especially in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paolo and the capital, Brasilia, forced President Rousseff to address the country on national television late Friday in an attempt to head off a deepening government crisis.

Following the storming of a foreign ministry building in the capital on Thursday (20.06.2013), the government clearly feared an escalation of violence in the midst of the high-profile Confederations Cup soccer tournament.

"Dilma is living through a political inferno," says Adriano Diogo, a state parliament member in Sao Paolo for Rousseff's governing Worker's Party. It is no accident, he maintains, that the president was booed at the Confed Cup opening ceremony in Brasilia's brand new stadium. There are many political forces at work in Brazil that would like to prevent her re-election in October 2014, he said.

http://www.dw.de/the-myth-behind-brazils-lula-is-crumbling/a-16900223

[David__77]

1. The Left needs to assume leadership, and isolate the right.

The right cries about taxes just like in the US. The left needs to steer this, and ensure that the Workers Party return to its roots, reject neoliberalism, and redirect public funds toward generating real economic development.

[flamingdem]

2. I'm trying to catch up with all that's going on in Brazil

Very intense and in so many cities, and very little reporting in the US

[madrchsod]

3. giving the world cup to brazil was a really bad idea

someone should have done a little research on brazil and it`s cities.

[BainsBane]

5. Why?

They've had the World Cup before. What about Brazil is unsuitable for the World Cup? It's the 7th largest economy in the world.

[hack89]

25. A sky high violent crime rate for starters.

keeping everyone safe is going to be a monumental task.

Security has long been a major problem in Brazil, where heavily armed drug lords control swaths of territory that are off-limits to law enforcement and where petty crime often turns fatal. As part of its Olympic bid, Brazil's government pledged to curb the violence, and major strides have been made in recent years, particularly in Rio, where the police are now present in more than 200 hillside "favela" slums.

But the country still has an alarmingly high murder rate, and knife- and gun-point muggings, carjackings and armed robberies continue to be facts of daily life. Rio alone has seen a spate of recent incidents, including the March gang rape of an American student aboard a public transit van and the shooting last Saturday of a Brazilian engineer who, because of faulty signs, took a wrong turn and drove into an unpacified favela.

http://news.yahoo.com/crime-doubts-persist-brazil-ahead-events-082227963.html

[BainsBane]

34. In Rio, yes

in the favelas of Rio, not in Salvador. I'm not sure about crime patterns in Sao Paulo.

[hack89]

35. Crime in Sao Paulo is extremely high with the same base causes - out of control gangs.

https://www.osac.gov/Pages/ContentReportDetails.aspx?cid=13521

[BainsBane]

38. No doubt

the question is the distribution of it, where it's located in relation to the stadiums. I've never spent time in Sao Paulo.

[BainsBane]

4. To understand Lula you have to have some context of Brazilian history

His election was a huge accomplishment and he did implement policies that started to bridge the gap between rich and poor. I would assert that the fact you have these protests shows that Brazilians believe a better life is possible.

[HiPointDem]

6. i recently read an article which said that lula = brazilian bourgeosie v. US more than 'left'

[BainsBane]

7. Again the issue is context

Compared to what? Compared to Castro, Allende or Goulart--yes. Allende and Goulart, however, both were ousted by the military and killed. More than twenty years of right-wing authoritarian dictatorship following Goulart in Brazil. Lula was head of the steel workers union and helped to bring down the dictatorship. He twice unsuccessfully ran for president as a socialist against the right-wing and scandalously corrupt neoliberal Fernando Collor and the more moderate neo-liberal Fernado Henrique Cardoso (an intellectual who wrote about dependency theory). When Lula was elected in 2002, he moderated his approach and came to power with the backing of some of Brazil's financial elite, who had come to recognize that the existing model of economic development that targeted a small percentage of the population was not working for Brazil, not even for the elite. Lula did not challenge neoliberalism but he softened it. His administration widened the percentage of the population that benefited from economic growth and increased Brazil's middle class. Brazil's economy grew and the poor became less poor, rather than more poor as had always been the case in periods of economic development. Now the economy has begun to retract and the Brazilian middle class expects more. That Bahians are protesting tells me a lot has changed and that people now expect a better life.

As historian EP Thompson demonstrates, protests rarely take place at the depths of poverty, during periods of extreme hunger. They tend to occur when people expect more, when economic change invokes a sense of moral outrage, what Thompson calls a "moral economy" of the crowd. I believe this is what we are seeing in Brazil.

[HiPointDem]

8. you apparently missed the point.

[BainsBane]

9. I did not miss the point

I elaborated on it quite clearly. If I misunderstood your point, you might rephrase it in a complete sentence.

[HiPointDem]

10. oh, you considered that an elaboration? i thought you meant it as a rebuttal.

[BainsBane]

11. It was context

from knowledge of Brazilian history. Of course given the way you wrote the post, it's a bit difficult to know if I followed your meaning. You could express it in a complete sentence or two, yet I have noticed an unfortunate resistance or inability on your part to clarify your ideas. I don't really know why.

[HiPointDem]

12. i didn't think what i wrote was so difficult as to need clarification. local/nationalist bourgeois

reform v. actual left revolution, what's so difficult?

[BainsBane]

13. of course it wasn't a revolution

Who imagined it was? He was elected. It wasn't even an electoral revolution. I have never heard anyone claim it was a revolution. He was a change from Fernando Henrique and Collor.

Brazil has never had a revolution. Even their independence movement was relatively peaceful, the principal battle being at Bahia where the Portuguese navy held on until July 2, 1823.

These protests are a major deal. Whether they will constitute a revolution, it's too soon to tell.

[HiPointDem]

15. revolution in the loose sense, as some fundamental change. duh.

thanks for the schooling teach but you haven't told me anything i don't already know yet.

and regardless what the fruits of the protests are, they won't be any fundamental change either. just more of the fucking same.

[BainsBane]

16. If you knew anything about Brazilian history

You wouldn't have used the word revolution. Your continued rudeness is noted. Why everything has to be a battle for you, I have no idea. You seem to object to the fact someone writes more than one sentence.

[HiPointDem]

17. no relationship between knowing something about portuguese history and using the word

revolution.

everything isn't a battle for me.

i have no objection to people writing more than one sentence, in fact, i often do the same.

you are the rude one. you make assumptions and act on them as if they were certainties. but they're not, they're just your assumptions, and most of them are wrong.

[BainsBane]

18. and then you would not call it Portuguese history

quite obviously.

I cannot help the fact that you writing is unclear. You did not use the revolution in your first post. I am not a mind reader. If you want people to understand you, you have a responsibility to express yourself clearly.

[HiPointDem]

19. you make no sense whatsoever

[muriel_volestrangler]

20. I've learnt something from BainsBane in this thread, from well-written posts

Yours, however, have been short phrases, frequently ungrammatical, and pretty much useless.

[HiPointDem]

28. yeah, yeah, usual suspects heard from

[BainsBane]

30. Here's a map

?w=500&h=231

Brazil is in South America. Portugal is in Europe, on the Iberian Peninsula. They are not the same country.

[HiPointDem]

31. thanks again teach expert on islam now an expert on brazil my some posters do get around

[BainsBane]

37. Yes, some of us read

and value knowledge and education.

[alcibiades_mystery]

21. Your interlocutor read an article somewhere that said something

You, on the other hand, have actual knowledge. So, of course you're going to get empty responses tinged with contempt. You know more than the person you're discussing things with, and that person wanted to just make a claim and dance away.

[HiPointDem]

29. usual suspects & i made no 'claim'. but par for the usual harassers

[socialist_n_TN]

23. Yeah, but I think that was HiPoint's point.....

. Like Chavez, Lula didn't go far enough. Anytime you leave the capitalist power structure intact, you leave the PROBABILITY in place for a restoration. And ANY neo-liberalism, even of a "softened" variety is bad for everybody, but the 1%. So Lula's paying the price for that hesitation about neo-liberalism and, indeed, capitalism itself.

Agree with the Thompson position though. At least in most cases. The masses of people have to know what they have to lose before they get pissed off about losing it.

BTW, HiPoint if I misunderstood your point, I apologize.

[Zorra]

26. Yeh, it's like a surgeon not getting all the cancer out. If she doesn't get it all out,

it metastasizes again.

lol - comrade!

[socialist_n_TN]

39. Good metaphor comrade......

[BainsBane]

27. He had to operate within Brazil's political context

enacting socialist reform wouldn't have been possible, particularly since he had to put together a parliamentary-like coalition to maintain power given the nature of Brazil's party system.

Brazil is a country with an enormously wealthy and powerful elite.

[HiPointDem]

32. of course that was my point, & anyone could understand it except the personal harrassment

team members, which is what this is about.

[socialist_n_TN]

40. Well I thought it was pretty obvious......

I guess it wasn't obvious enough for some. You've got to use REAL small word for some folks comrade.

[Sparky 1]

41. Thanks for the helpful post.

[BainsBane]

42. Thank you

for your kindess

[byeya]

24. Lula's election was huge! His accomplishments are considerable but the people awakened to

the fact that there is a long way to go for a semblance of economic justice about the time Lula gave more than lip service to the World Bank, WTO, etc.
Lula raised expectations and couldn't meet them in a short period of time. Dilma faces this problem and the problem of political survival which should be the #1 priority. The Left needs to continue consolidating power.

[BainsBane]

33. I agree

and I wish the Brazilian people the very best in making that happen.

[byeya]

36. So do I. It's a little easier now that 0bama has deployed the military to other parts of the world,

and except for Honduras and Colombia and Paraguay, Central and South America is more free from northern interference then it has been for generations.
Lula developed trading partners to counterbalance the USA and the current leadership needs to work with the new Western Hemisphere organization of states - with the USA and Canada excluded - to formulate regional alliances for the benefit of the working people and those that want to work.
Perhaps, they will even be able to rid themselves of the - for them - counterproductive "war on drugs"

[dipsydoodle]

22. The mass protests are a mixed bunch

possibly each with their own agenda.

See Ocpagu's post here in the Latin Forum : http://www.democraticunderground.com/110819560#post4

[ocpagu]

43. The person who wrote this...

... is absolutely clueless.