Feature Page: Growing challenges in Brazil to Lula’s pro-capitalist policies

by Gerry Foley

After more than a year in office, the government elected by the working people of Brazil has started to see an important erosion of its credibility among the masses who placed their hopes in it.

(Luiz Ignacio da Silva, “Lula,” was elected president by more than 60 percent of the vote on Nov. 6, 2002. Lula was the candidate of the Workers Party, the Partido dos Trabalhadores [PT], which emerged from mass struggles against the former dictatorship and claimed to be a socialist, even a revolutionary, party.)

The most dramatic shift is the return of the landless peasants’ movement, the MSI, to relying on its own mobilizations rather than the government. Until recently, the peasant leaders avoided public criticism of the Lula government, although they could not help but be disappointed with its performance. Most of the MSI leaders are still cautious about criticizing the regime, but a shift in their attitude is evident.

The government promised to provide farms for about 115,000 peasants this year. It reportedly provided only about 9000 in the first three months of the year. Peasants who were encouraged by the hope that they enjoyed the favor of the regime increased their land occupations. But the number of peasants killed by landlords nearly doubled in 2003, going from 43 in the previous year to 72.

MSI leaders who armed themselves in self-defense were arrested with the support or complicity of the national government. The government has done nothing to counter the gangs of mercenaries organized by the landlords. Accordingly, in early March, the MSI began an ambitious program of land occupations. Some 18,000 peasants moved out of encampments into 53 properties. An April 8 Reuters dispatch quoted MSI organizer Dirce Ostroski as saying, “If they [the peasants] stay in their camps the government will do nothing.”

In its April 19 issue, the Mexico City daily La Jornada noted that one of the main MSI leaders had made a negative assessment of the Lula government: “Joao Pedro Stedile criticized Lula’s economic policy and blamed it for the difficulties in carrying out the agrarian reform. ‘We did not elect a president committed to the ideas of the left so that he could out the policy of the bankers.’”

However, in his election campaign and after taking office, Lula gave every possible guarantee to the capitalists and their imperialist big brothers that he would not make any trouble for them. He even chose a leader of a right-wing capitalist party, Jose Alencar, as his running mate.

Unfortunately, the workers and poor, hoping to get something from the election, were persuaded that Lula’s guarantees to the capitalists were only tactical. Since taking office, he has tried to maintain that illusion, though it is more and more difficult as the masses see what policies he following.

Lula’s attempt to maintain two faces turned in opposite directions was denounced by a prominent Brazilian economist, Fernando Jose Cardim. The Folha de Sao Paulo, one of the country’s main newspapers, reported April 14:

“According to Cardim, Lula is making a mistake by maintaining two contradictory lines. One talks about transition and gives the idea that the PT government has not really begun yet. The other is designed to pacify the financial markets.”

Lula began his presidency with an attack on the pension rights of public workers. At the height of the popular hopes for his government, he was able to win a victory over this sector of workers, despite their determined struggle. But he is now facing more and more strikes and protests by public workers.

La Jornada reported March 25: The Lula government, 15 months after taking office and immersed in a budget-cutting policy, is facing its worst moment, with an increase in strikes in the public sector and a flood of demands from the workers.”

The article mentioned a two-week-long strike by border police that tied up airports and a strike by agricultural assessors that blocked almost a half-billion dollars in exports. It also referred to a 48-hour strike by social security workers. The country’s second-largest trade-union confederation, Fuerza Sindical, called for a campaign of protests to force Lula to make good on the promise of 10 million new jobs that he had made during his election campaign.

A March 26 AP dispatch reported a poll showing a notable drop in the government’s popularity: “The number of people who gave the government a ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ rating fell to 34 percent in March from 41 percent in December, when Ibope’s last poll was released.

“The number of people who rated the administration ‘bad’ or ‘terrible’ rose to 23 percent from 14 percent. … A clear majority, 58 percent, saw the Lula government’s main task as boosting economic growth and jobs.”

Some 46 percent thought that the government was “on the wrong path.” Only 54 percent still had confidence in the government, as compared with 66 percent in December.

Nonetheless, the capitalists, who have chosen for the moment to try to hide behind the “workers government,” were happy that the erosion of Lula’s credibility was not more precipitous. “Markets were relieved that the poll did not show a bigger fall in the government’s popularity,” the AP dispatch noted.

The protests of the MSI have been joined by the movements of the homeless and the Indian peoples. Brazil has one of the most lopsided distributions of land in the world. An AP dispatch of April 19 noted: “About 90 percent of the land is owned by just 20 percent of the country’s 178 million people.

The poorest 40 percent of the population hold just 1 percent.” Another AP dispatch, April 16, pointed out that 3.5 percent of landowners owned 56 percent of the arable land.

The previous openly neoliberal regime made significant distributions of farms to landless peasants, but according to its laws, only unused land could be ceded. With the boom in soybean exports, however, the big landowners are now not willing to give up any land.

Brazil remains in recession. A million jobs were lost last year, the first year of the Lula government. An April 15 Reuters dispatch reported that a study just released by the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Rio de Janeiro estimated that one third of Brazilians had to subsist on no more than a dollar a day.

Clearly, the realities of the Brazilian social and economic situation are beginning to drown out Lula’s promises. The left of the PT (about a third of the party’s fraction in the lower house of parliament) is showing more signs of restiveness.

It is a long way from this to offering a political alternative to the regime, which in order to provide a solution to the brutal conditions of Brazil would have to be a revolutionary socialist leadership. But there is increasing political ferment on the left and a growing mass radicalization.

Lula is less and less able to provide an effective shield for the exploitation of the local and imperialist capitalists.

This article first appeared in the May 2004 issue of Socialist Action newspaper.