Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Brazil: A Century of Change

2010; Duke University Press; Volume: 90; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-2010-076

1527-1900

Marshall C. Eakin,

The end of the twentieth century and the beginning of a new millennium generated evaluations around the globe as historians and social scientists took stock of where we have been and where we are going. This volume presents the collective wisdom of a group of prominent intellectuals and policy makers as they reflect on the path Brazil traversed in the twentieth century and, in some of the essays, where it should be heading in the twentieth-first century. Originally published in Brazil in 2001, this fine English translation provides us with an excellent text for our students and colleagues who have not yet had the privilege of learning Portuguese. The publication is the result of a translation program initiated some years ago by the Brazilian Embassy in Washington, D.C. (which apparently has produced only two volumes).The editors assembled an eminent cast of 15 authors, many with long experience as analysts and policy makers. Jerry Dávila provides an excellent introduction to the volume, one that was lacking in the Brazilian edition. As Dávila notes, the authors of these essays are guided by “a critique of the neoliberal economic policies of the 1980s and 1990s, and they assert a ‘neodevelopmentalist’ vision defending the idea that the state should be active in managing patterns of economic growth with a mind to engineering greater social inclusion” (p. viii). The relevance of this vision is even more important now than it was in 2001, after Lula’s two terms as president, Brazil’s recent economic successes, the world economic crisis, and the continuing debate over the role of the state in Brazil’s economy.The volume opens with Hervé Thery’s succinct “cartographic and statistical portrait of twentieth-century Brazil.” Afrânio Garcia and Moacir Palmeira then survey the transformation of Brazil from an overwhelmingly rural society in 1900 to one where less than 15 percent of the population lived in rural areas in 2000. Paulo Singer’s essay summarizes a century of economic history concluding with observations on the globalization of the Brazilian economy. In chapter 4, “Brazil and the World,” Celso Lafer provides an overview of foreign policy emphasizing the growing role of nationalism and development. Renato Ortiz’s chapter titled “Culture and Society” is especially noteworthy for its astute analysis of the pursuit of national identity, the role of mass communications, and notions of modernity.The next three chapters turn to domestic politics. Luiz Carlos Bresser Pereira’s “From the Patrimonial State to the Managerial State” draws on his voluminous previous work. He argues that Brazil is now “a democratic state, somewhere between bureaucratic and managerial, presiding over a globalized capitalist economy and an emerging postindustrial society that is no longer essentially class based but rather is stratified” (p. 141). He argues that the solution to Brazil’s economic challenges is “not to replace the state with the market but to reform and rebuild the state so that it could be an effective agent of market regulation and of training businesses in the international competitive process” (p. 163). Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro takes a hard look at the “(un)rule of law” in republican Brazil, concluding with a sobering analysis of the flaws of Brazilian democracy: clientelism, corruption, organized crime, lack of accountability, and “the highest rate of lethal police violence in the world” (p. 205). In a fascinating essay, “Federalism and National Identity,” Aspásia Camargo examines the “permanent tension between the centripetal forces of centralization and the centrifugal forces of decentralization” (p. 216). In the Constitution of 1988 she sees Brazil creating an “innovative federalism” that is “societally based and libertarian” while trying to control many of the problems pointed out by Pinheiro in his essay (p. 249).The next two chapters in the volume have a regional focus. José Seixas Lourenço concentrates on Amazonia, in particular the environmental question. Cristovam Buarque looks at Northeast Brazil, declaring, “Brazil needs to discover itself through the northeasternness of its national poverty, in order to develop new policies to combat the situation” (p. 275). The final chapters turn to globalization. In his brief essay, “When the Future Arrives,” the late Celso Furtado argues that Brazil will suffer with increased globalization. In the following chapter, Gilberto Dupas calls for a national plan to confront the challenges of a global economy. Jorge Wilheim makes a plea in his short essay for a plan to reduce the gap between rich and poor in Brazil. Finally, in “Quo Vadis, Brazil?” Ignacy Sachs concludes the volume with a question that pervades all the essays: Will Brazil remain “tangled up in bad development” and increasing inequality, or will it “manage to start down the path of development that is socially homogenizing, distributive, and inclusive” (p. 341)?