A rush of books about Brazil is well under way in order to coincide with the World Cup. If that weren’t reason enough, the Rio Olympics, which begin in two years, further pique the interest of outsiders. If this were China or India it would be easy to accuse people of jumping on a bandwagon. But there is an astonishing dearth of books about Brazil, and good ones are even harder to find. This lack of interest seems even more baffling since the rise of the Bric countries.
In the interest of full disclosure, I, too, am writing a book on Brazil. Mercifully, it is not in the same vein as Michael Reid's Brazil: The Troubled Rise of a Global Power. Were it so, my pitch would now have been comprehensively queered.
Reid, a Latin Americanist of many years, opened the Economist's office in Brazil, in the mid 1990s, and knows the country intimately. His book should become the standard serious introduction to Brazil for anyone needing a concise history combined with a clear analysis of contemporary politics. Having read all the contenders in English, I can say that this is the best, elegantly written and incisive. (Further disclosure: I have never met the author.)
External apathy towards Brazil is hard to fathom. The country is huge. Its range of natural resources is unparallelled, and it has developed a unique character, influenced primarily by European, African, indigenous Indian and, to a lesser extent, Japanese and Levantine culture.
Although this hybrid has led to some fascinating and unique attributes, it is nonetheless much more recognisable to westerners than either China or India. Above all, it is one of the most entertaining places in the world: the music is great; so is the football. With a little effort the visitor can discover a most rewarding cuisine, the natural world is breathtaking and there is a thriving intellectual life often missed by the rest of the world because Europeans and Americans show little interest in learning Portuguese as opposed to, say, Russian or Chinese.
As Reid indicates in his subtitle, Brazil also suffers some troubling aspects. Not the least of these is the vast social inequality between the jaw-droppingly wealthy elite and the desperately poor underclass that is particularly visible in the northeast, an area often left off the tourist itinerary.
One consequence of the inequality is the exceptional levels of urban violence that plague the country. Brazil is one of the most dangerous places in the world, although, as in South Africa, the poor are far more likely to be the victim of violent crime than the middle class.
This is not a congenital problem. In 1982 the murder rate in Rio stood at 23 per 100,000 inhabitants, the same as New York City’s. Seven years later Rio’s was three times higher.
Cocaine in transit
The primary reason for this is simple: Rio had become the key transit country for cocaine from Colombia destined for Europe, and, as happens to all such distribution zones, it developed its own coke habit.
Rich kids started doing a lot of coke furnished by the cartels of the favelas, leading to the outbreak of a fearful urban war. In this the police functions not as a law-enforcement agency but as another participant trying to grab the spoils. The US war on drugs condemns tens of thousands of Brazilians to death every year, just as it does Mexicans.
Is Brazil able to overcome security challenges like this along with its uphill struggle to improve its health, education and transport infrastructure? Can Brazil assume a position of global influence commensurate with its immense economic potential? Or will it end up, as a friend in Rio described it to me in the typically colourful language of Brazilians, acting as “China’s commodity bitch”?
This conundrum is neither new nor unfamiliar. Early on, Reid points out that Stefan Zweig, the Austrian writer who fled the Nazis to Brazil, wrote a warm book about the country, more than 50 years ago, entitled Brazil: A Country of the Future. For just as long the Brazilians have responded wryly that theirs will only ever be a country of the future, never of the present.
The atmosphere here in Rio as the World Cup approached was subdued – many feared it would not be the sensual party they expected when Brazil was awarded the finals, many years ago. As Reid identifies, rightly in my opinion, Brazil was moving in a positive direction in the late 1990s and first half of the last decade under Presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso and then Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the mesmerically charismatic trade unionist who still dominates Brazilian politics. But from Lula’s second term and during the administration of the current president, Dilma Rousseff, things have gone astray, and Reid does a good job explaining why.
One major problem is the protectionism that has long characterised the Brazilian economy. During much of the 20th century this was important, as Brazil sought to develop its industrial base.
In some sectors, notably aircraft manufacturing, it has succeeded. But the intense bureaucratisation of Brazil is now a chronic hindrance to its further development, such that its most prestigious sociologist, Roberto da Matta, recently described the inability of Rio de Janeiro’s government to clean up as the consequence of the country’s “monopoly capitalism, rent-seeking, semistate and hierarchical corporates which privatise profit and socialise responsibility and losses”.
Clientelist tangle
In a time of economic uncertainty and weak political leadership, emerging from this clientelist tangle – made more impenetrable by a complex federal system and the presence of sectional interests – is going to be hard. These are a powerful hindrance on process, be they giant construction firms sucking dry the state’s breast; a well-organised congressional bloc of evangelical churches with an animus towards many things, including drug liberalisation; or the rural lobby, which has a successful record of strong-arming the government into watering down environmental protection.
In the face of this Brazil may yet muddle on through its two mega sporting events. But the huge protests that swept the country last summer suggest a fair number of Brazilians are reaching the end of their tether. They may love their football, but the evidence suggests they love their health and education even more.
