It was a dirty campaign. The president of the São Paulo Federation of Industries (Fiesp), Mario Amato, declared that 800,000 businessmen would leave Brazil if Lula won. Mr Collor discovered a former girlfriend of Lula’s, Miriam Cordeiro, with whom he had had a daughter, who was prepared to go on television and say that he had offered her money to have an abortion. It was a lie, but the effect on the voters was devastating. Three days before the election, the news programme with the highest audience in the country – Globo TV’s Jornal Nacional – showed a shortened version of the last debate between Fernando Collor and Lula, which had been specially edited to show the former as decisive and confident and the latter insecure and hesitant. It was seen by 60 million people.
The last event to influence the outcome occurred on the eve of the elections, a Saturday, when the police in São Paulo rescued a leading businessman, Abilio Diniz, who had been kidnapped. There was only one Brazilian in the group who had committed the crime – the others were Chilean and Argentinean – but the police reported that they had links to the Workers’ Party. Although none of the party militants had been involved, the Sunday edition of the Estado de S. Paulo printed an interview with Abilio Diniz’s brother who said that the Workers’ Party had indeed taken part in the kidnapping.
Fernando Collor won the election with 50 per cent of the votes, compared to 44 per cent for Lula. He took office on 15 March 1990, and the next day called a meeting of his economic advisers and instructed the new Minister of the Economy, the economist Dr Zélia Cardoso de Mello, to announce to the press the details of his plan for combating inflation: the Plano Brasil Novo, which became known as the Plano Collor.88 The plan would prove fragile. It had a strong voluntary component, and the reform package announced by the government – fiscal, banking, property ownership – could not be implemented by decree. The minister saved the worse news for the last part of her presentation. In the banks, part of the money in checking accounts, investment accounts and savings accounts was blocked. Account holders could withdraw up to a maximum of 50,000 cruzeiros (the old currency, which the plan had rehabilitated), the equivalent of $1,250. The amount withheld would be returned after eighteen months, and even then in twelve instalments, with a considerable reduction in real value. Twenty years later, 890,000 individual court cases and 1,030 class actions are still waiting for a judicial decision. In addition, wages were frozen, public service tariffs were increased and the Central Bank decreed a three-day Bank Holiday. The newspapers calculated that savings and current account deposits in Brazil amounted to around $120 billion and that the government was confiscating around 80 per cent of all the money in the banking system, approximately $95 billion.
It was a cataclysm. No one could buy anything, consumption came to a standstill, and thousands of workers lost their jobs. Companies went bankrupt, no one had savings, and people’s only recourse was to trust their luck. They cancelled their plans, negotiated to pay doctors and hospitals in instalments, and realized they had no way of paying their debts. But, extraordinary as it may seem, Brazilians accepted the confiscation. To put the situation in context, people were exhausted by the consequences of hyperinflation, and the president, who had just been elected by the popular vote, was adamant in his claim that there was no alternative. For the time being, most people believed him when he said that the confiscation was the only possible way to put an end to inflation. ‘Either we’ll win, or we’ll win,’ the president declared.
DEMOCRACY HAS NO END
But President Collor lost. Ten months later inflation was back, the economic crisis had become endemic, and workers across the country were demanding wage increases. The government introduced a second economic plan – Collor II. At the same time, the administration prepared the privatization of state-owned companies, closed government sponsored agencies and foundations, and opened the doors to the international market. The economic policy continued to be erratic. Every time prices went up, the government adopted a new measure – freezing wages, increasing taxes, raising tariffs – all as ineffectual as they were pugnacious. Little after a year upon taking office, Dr Zélia Cardoso de Mello, the Minister of Economy, resigned. The government had no credibility left and the Brazilian people were fed up with anti-inflationary plans.
Although Brazilians did not make the comparison, Fernando Collor was very like Jânio Quadros – only younger. They both had an inclination for histrionics, contempt for politicians, disdain for Congress, a moral vision for the country, and an authoritarian style. During Mr Collor’s presidency, the theatrical spectacle included descending the ramp of the Planalto Palace in the company of athletes, comedians and television personalities, wearing T-shirts stamped with pseudo-philosophical phrases and promoting his image as an athlete. To reaffirm his role as the representative of youth and modernity, the president had himself photographed doing practically anything: riding a motorcycle, on a jet ski and even inside a fighter jet – as if he were a co-pilot – dressed in camouflage uniform. As president his tone was artificial and his attitude imperious. He ignored group interests, stayed aloof from politics, was unaware of how precarious his government was, and behaved as if nothing could touch him. Jânio Quadros had done all of the same things, and had fallen when he resigned, and his bluff was called. The cause of Fernando Collor’s fall was corruption.
The rumours had begun with the confiscation of the country’s savings, when stories spread that there had been exceptions: certain groups and individuals were able to keep their money. But the extent of the abuses only reached the public when the press investigated Paulo César Farias, who had been President Collor’s campaign treasurer, and discovered that he was at the centre of a systematic corruption scheme within the government, a scheme in which the president himself was his partner.89 From then on it was just a question of time. In May 1992, Veja magazine exploded a bombshell. In a seventeen-page interview, Pedro Collor, the president’s younger brother, accused Paulo César Farias of being a front man for the president, not only in the administration of illegal funds that had been raised during the election campaign – around $60 million – but also by acting as an intermediary in illicit deals involving the exchange of political favours and government posts, in return for bribes. In June, Congress began a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry, which, although it had little credibility at the outset, soon began to expose the scandals. Through the inquiry, it was discovered that Mr Farias’s interference reached into every level of federal administration. All the president’s personal expenses were paid by him, including the rental of cars for use by the president. It is still not known where the funds misappropriated by Paulo César Farias – estimated at between $300 million and $1 billion – were deposited.90 Up until the very last minute, President Collor did not believe the scandal could destroy him. However, on Thursday 13 August 1992, during an informal speech to two thousand taxi drivers who had come to thank him for government assistance, he lost his composure – right there in front of the government offices, the Palácio do Planalto. He vehemently denied all the denunciations, claiming they were false. He called on the people to take to the streets the following day, wearing the national colours – green and yellow – in a massive show of support for his government. The president was very angry, but the Brazilians were sick and tired, and Sunday ended up being a day for demonstrations. With one detail: people dressed in black. With no prior organization, all over the country, people spontaneously came onto the streets – but they were all wearing black, with black mourning bands around their arms and black strips of cloth tied to the antennas of their cars. Fernando Collor had underestimated Brazilians.
People were determined to expose the president. Street protests irrupted with full force, but this time they were characterized by good humour and a carnival spirit. People carried gigantic dolls modelled after the president, wearing prison garb, and of Paulo César Farias dressed up as a rat with a moustache and glasses. And they carried coffins bearing the names of President Collor and Dr Zéli
a Cardoso de Mello. The students, who were already restless, painted their faces black, or green and yellow – the caras-pintadas (painted faces) – and called for a nationwide protest with the slogan ‘Collor Out! Impeachment Now!’
Ulysses Guimarães’s last great contribution to Brazilian politics was to lead the impeachment process in the National Congress. But on 12 October 1992 he died in a helicopter accident and his body was lost at sea – once again Brazil was in mourning.91 On 29 December the Senate met to vote on the impeachment of the president. This was the first great test of the 1988 Constitution: the removal from office of the first president elected by the people since 1961. The request for impeachment had been presented to the Chamber of Deputies by Marcelo Lavenère, the president of the Brazilian Lawyers’ Association, and Barbosa Lima Sobrinho, president of the Journalists’ Trade Union – the two national institutions most committed to re-democratization – and had been accepted. President Collor had been temporarily removed from the presidency in September. On the morning of the Senate vote he attempted a last manoeuvre to avoid a conviction that would ban him from politics for eight years: he resigned. The session in the Senate was suspended and the vice-president, Itamar Franco, was sworn in as the new president of Brazil. The following day, the Senate met again and passed the impeachment with seventy-six votes in favour and three against. Fernando Collor’s political rights were suspended and he was prevented from holding public office until the end of 2000.
It is hard to believe that Itamar Franco would have agreed to run as Fernando Collor’s vice-president because he believed in his moral discourse and modernizing mission. Mr Collor had selected Mr Franco as his running mate because he needed the votes from Minas Gerais, the second-largest electoral college in the country. Not only that, but election results in Minas Gerais tend to predict the results of the rest of the country. The state is centrally located and mirrors the different faces of Brazil. Mr Franco probably accepted because his term of office as senator was coming to an end and he had failed to get re-elected. The two men were in complete disagreement about everything from the beginning of the election campaign to the end of the government. Mr Collor made no attempt to conceal his contempt for his vice-president, who was a traditional politician from the provinces, with nationalist leanings. For his part, Itamar Franco was quarrelsome and unstable. Despite having been the governor of Minas Gerais, he was virtually unknown to the Brazilian people and took over the presidency in the middle of a general crisis. He knew Brazilians had misgivings about him, and that most people were only accepting the situation because they wanted to maintain the democratic order. He surprised everyone.
When Itamar Franco became president, the situation in the country was calamitous.92 The GDP (gross domestic product) was decreasing and, in the metropolitan area of São Paulo alone, 15 per cent of the economically active population was unemployed. Inflation was back to over 20 per cent a month, in spite of Fernando Collor’s promises. And the rate of inflation had been the same for the two previous years. Inflation affected all the social classes, but its affect on the poor was particularly severe. Since they generally did not hold bank accounts, their money did not receive the benefits of daily monetary correction. Inflation not only sabotaged their future, but had lethal collateral effects including food shortages, unemployment and violence – unbelievable violence. It is no coincidence that in 1993 two of the worst acts of urban barbarity in the country’s history took place. On 23 July six military police officers jumped out of two cars in front of the Candelária church in the centre of Rio de Janeiro and opened fire on forty adolescents and street children who were sleeping on the church steps. On 29 August the same year a group of thirty-six armed men wearing hoods opened fire on twenty-one youths in the favela of Vigário Geral in Rio de Janeiro’s north zone.93
Brazil was experiencing the paradox of being a country where democracy coexisted with social injustice. The cruelty of this paradox was best expressed by the voices from the favelas.94 Rap music became the instrument for expressing the chaos, poverty and violence that characterized everyday life in the favelas and the suburbs. It exposed police violence, a discriminatory justice system, abandonment by the state, and the lack of opportunities – all the damage wrought by social inequality. It was to the credit of members of the Itamar Franco government that they attempted to understand how a democratic system had become the hostage of social injustice, and how inflation had become its ally. After changing his Finance Minister three times, the president appointed Fernando Henrique Cardoso to the post and asked him to develop a new plan to combat inflation. The request sent a shiver down the spine of government leaders – between 1980 and 1993 Brazil had had four different currencies, prices had been frozen five times, and nine anti-inflation plans had been implemented. There were a total of eleven indexes that measured inflation.
This time everything was done with transparency. The Plano Real was submitted to public discussion, the nation understood how it worked, and the National Congress voted for its implementation.95 In the embryo of the new currency, the real, was an inflation index: the Unit of Real Value (URV). Although people gradually gained confidence, they were suspicious when the full transfer to the new currency took place. Many thought the government could be planning to freeze prices again or that the plan was another ruse to win the next elections, in 1994. But what the people of Brazil wanted most was to have a stable currency – preferably equal to the value of the dollar – which would allow them to plan for the future. The real offered all of this. This time the plan resulted from a partnership between the cosmopolitan sociologist Fernando Henrique Cardoso and the provincial engineer Itamar Franco. Fernando Henrique Cardoso became the official candidate to succeed Itamar Franco to the presidency and beat Lula in the first round of the elections in 1994. The Plano Real was his ticket to the presidency.
Such is the nature of democracy, conquests are slow, hard to achieve and easily lost. But the struggle against the dictatorship taught Brazilians that democracy is a value in and of itself and it needed to be attained. The 1988 Constitution consolidated the country’s democratic institutions and the Plano Real gave it a stable currency – an essential element for democracy to grow. In the twenty years that followed, Brazil began to confront the issue of social inequality, with only moderate success. The task will not be easy. Three presidents in a row were elected for two consecutive terms: Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff. At the turn of the twenty-first century Brazil had accumulated five hundred years of history and, along the way, a certain degree of self-knowledge. History is the only resource Brazil can rely on to lend a future to the country’s past, and, for that reason, our history draws to a close here – although we, the authors, suspect it is incomplete. This history ends with another intuition too: we believe democracy will never be extinguished in Brazil. One never knows. The future could be bright.
Conclusion
History is not Arithmetic
When the Portuguese arrived
In the pouring rain
He dressed the Indian
What a pity!
If it’d been a sunny day
The Indian would have undressed
The Portuguese.
Oswald de Andrade, Portuguese Error
Tupi or not tupi, that is the question.
Oswald de Andrade, Manifesto antropófago
What makes brasil, Brasil – or Brazil, Brasil? Ever since the Portuguese arrived, every generation has asked themselves this question. Some have come to more positive conclusions than others. It is not an easy question, and history is not the only key to the answer. Brazil has a short history, just five hundred years – at least if we adhere to the official narrative that it began with the arrival of the Portuguese – and a troubled one. Once aroused, history tells all and loves to engage in controversy. History rewrites concepts and myths, questions many of the assumptions about Brazil, and reveals trends and reoccurrences truly worthy of a
new interpretation. And history plays with time, entangles, orders and reorders the thread. With one eye on the past, history keeps the other wide open to the present, and even to the future.
Since Brazil has been Brasil – since the country first created its identity as a nation – there has been a long history of internal conflict, violence, attempts at self-government and demands for equality – accompanied by the gradual development of human rights and citizenship. The story of Brazil is common, yet distinct. There is nothing evolutionary about Brazil’s history, in the sense of following a predictable progression of facts and data. From one side, this process looks very similar to that of all modern countries, with the struggle for individual freedoms during the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; and the struggle for collective freedoms during the twentieth century. In addition, there has been a gradual perception of a new type of right, neither individual nor collective – the right to a sustainable environment and to a national cultural heritage. But there is another side to Brazil’s story. In Brazil, the fight for political rights lagged far behind the fight for social rights. It took until the 1970s for the country to be proactive in defending civil rights, with movements for Afro-Brazilians, women and LGBTs – and for the environment, and, even then, at least initially, those movements were tentative. The exercising of some rights does not necessarily lead to the exercising of others. Nevertheless, without the guarantee of civil rights, whose normative principle is individual liberty, and without understanding that law-abiding people must have equal rights – no matter what their differences are – there is no citizenship.1
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