Alex Melchiore

September 7, 2016
Dr. Tait Chirenje
Brazil: The Troubled Rise of a Global Power Reflection
Chapter 8: Lulismo and the Brazilian Dream
In the month of February in 1980, the Partidos dos Trabalhadores (PT) or the Workers
Party began to take rise in Brazil after the military regime and the car strikes. The one question
on everyones mind was what were the ideals of this party going to be? Cardoso insisted that this
group should be a left-wing party of a multi-class progressive movement to help strengthen the
social classes, Lula (who would end up becoming Cardosos successor) agreed. This was enough
to get union leaders to push forward with the party which would end up becoming the biggest,
original, and most successful party in Latin America. Early on this party preached about a
representative democracy although one of the core members was also a member of the corporate
state which lead to a lot of early tension within the party. Out of the ordinary for political parties,
the PT elected officials from competing parties in the 1995 election. As the party was still
growing and finding its identity, this was the best course of action (Reid 140-141).
Lula would become the partys leader and saw opportunities to further the party in 1999
when mass unemployment overtook inflation as the nations top fault. Lula had hired some
outside help to soften his image and make him appear more likeable to potential voters in coming
years. Once he was in a good public standing, he seemed to go against his partys belief of
benefitting the social structure of the country by neglecting social programs and endorsing
agribusiness and reform. He began to disconnect from the ideals of his own party claiming that
he changed as Brazil changed. His objectives now were to tackle inflation and provide stability
to the public accounts. The national debt and inflation were rising which sent a huge scare
through investors and the public, anyone whose wallet was about to become lighter. Cardoso was
able to get Lula to publically support his financial plans to combat these growing problems
which ended up failing. This political stunt had no demoralizing effects for Lulas campaign as it
became clearer and clearer he would win the election. Lula claimed that the people wanted an
economy based on development instead of relying on dependence although many of his actions
were different from his words (Reid 144-146).
Lula would call reforms on tax, the political system, land and financial systems, pensions,
and labor. This stunt was going to make enemies in both parties but he did what he felt was right.
Eventually the government would push through a pension reform which was limited and required
people to retire at older ages and put a limit of pensions for workers in the public sector, which is
what the PT condemned Cardoso for attempting to do. As far as social policies were concerned,
Lula lacked a lot of drive, his attempts at a food security program ended up being a glorified and
ineffective version of food stamps (Reid 146).
With most of Lulas policies being completely different from what he originally planned,
many wondered what was going on in the PT party which had flooded Lulas cabinet. No

political story is complete without corruption. It turned out that many officials had been taking
bribes and kick-backs from outside sources and apparently had been at it for a long time by
hiding it through multiple bank accounts, many foreign which allowed them to evade taxes
which was highly illegal. Unfortunate for the nation, the PT party remained in office and
everyone expected that they would face little to no charges. This was not the case and the senior
members were sentenced to multiple years in prison (Reid 147-150).
After all of the controversies and corruption, Lula was able to get back on track as there
was a shift to state capitalism. Lulas second term allowed him to redeem himself. First he
adopted a more statist economic policy in which the economy grew and investors became
reassured which drew many back that were lost. He set up a better public works system called
the Growth Acceleration Program which looked to urbanize favelas, having better drainage, and
replacing street lights for more efficiency. For this program he chose Dilma Rousseff who was
getting her start in the political game. He also found new oil which became a gold mine and in
his own words a millionaire lottery ticket. During this time Brazil became more of a crediting
nation as opposed to being overrun with debt when he first started in politics (Reid 156-158).
This was short lived however, the 2008 Wall Street crash severely impacted Brazil.
Several big companies were shown to make terrible investments in the stock-market and many
credit lines from overseas that financed imports and exports were canceled. Fortunately for Lula,
he was quickly able to pull Brazil out of the dark economic days. Those days were numbered
however, it was hard for Lula to find a successor to back him up, until he remembered Dilma
Rousseff (Reid 159-160).
Lula had quickly attached her name to some of his most successful reforms so her
popularity in the polls had skyrocketed for the upcoming election. She was essentially a survivor
having lived a rough life with most notably having been arrested and tortured for twenty-one
days for not revealing her address which would lead them to a militant with many rifles and
ammunition. She portrayed herself as more of a democratic socialist instead of a social democrat
as her predecessor had been. She severely lacked Lulas dexterity and political instinct which
would quickly land her in deep water. Rousseff took stands against corruption and promised to
eradicate the most extreme poverty and made sure that public spending and services would be
more monitored. She was able to gain popularity by lowering the unemployment rate but many
of her economic plans had failed to bring the economy back in 2012 and the inflation rate
continued to rise at 6.5 percent each year (Reid 161-163).
Lulas and Rousseffs terms in office had both their ups and downs. I was shocked to
learn about Lulas terms being littered with corruption and what it had done but was also
intrigued to learn about how his economic plans had brought him back from all of the scandals
surrounding him. He really had high hopes for Rousseff who would end up tackling different
issues than her predecessor. I felt that she had great social stances which had helped lower the
poverty levels and got many citizens back to work, but she was no economist and would only
change her stances on economic issues only when she was proven to be wrong. Both of them
were great leaders in their own ways.

Source

Reid, M. (2014). Brazil: The troubled rise of a global power.