A History of Modern Brazil: The Past against the Future

Abstract

Colin M. MacLachlan, one of the finest sociocultural historians of his generation, here offers a highly reflective, readable book on modern Brazil. It is not a dry monograph packed with footnotes, interviews, and a serious reading of dusty archival documents. Instead, it is a lively (even chatty) volume that mines his mature appreciation of Brazil, serious knowledge of its history, culture, and o povão, and rare access to the country’s leading intellectuals and politico-economic elites. It also exhibits a bit of sentimentalism from a historian who has seen the best and the worst of Brazil. It is a kind of book that can only be written by a seasoned historian of MacLachlan’s stature, and both novice and advanced scholars will readily appreciate his keen insights and graceful writing style.The structure of the book is more thematic than chronological. The first four chapters deftly cover 450 years of Brazilian history, while the remaining four dwell on the making of a “modern” Brazil, whose various themes have both historical flashbacks and fast-forwards. The country’s modernization and material transformation has been impressive. In 1900, Brazil’s economy was primarily monoculture, with 75 percent of its exports made up of coffee. By 2001, the value of coffee represented only 5 percent of exports (p. 239). By mid-1980, Brazil emerged as the “Third World’s largest industrial park” and supplied Saddam Hussein with two thousand IMBEL-made tanks, which the U.S. military destroyed in 1990 and again in 2003. Such deep industrialization took place under the military, and only authoritarianism could have pulled it off (p. 140).Yet, the social cost (the “Brazil cost” as MacLachlan puts it) was enormous. Racism, crime, and poverty have worsened. The country’s income distribution is among the worst in the world—equal to Guatemala, Honduras, and South Africa, according to the World Bank’s 2003 World Development Indicators. The bottom 20 percent of Brazilians take home barely 2 percent of the national income, while the richest fifth received a whopping 64.4 percent. Of the 20 countries with the worst income distribution records, only Namibia, Swaziland, Paraguay, Colombia, and Lesotho treat their poor worse than Brazil. Fernando Henrique Cardoso observed that Brazil is not a poor country; it is an unjust country. A United Nations emissary to Brazil commented that the hunger in Brazil was “an act of [state] violence” (p. 214). If one creates his or her own “pollution of poverty” index consisting of corruption, crime, drug trafficking, hunger, political violence, racism, environmental degradation, unemployment, an external debt of $226 billion as of 2001 and rising, sem terras, and sem tetos, MacLachlan can be accused of being too generous to Brazil’s social development record. But this is expected of an eminent non-engagé Brasilianist com saudade. Charles de Gaulle’s dictum should be brought back: Brazil is not a serious country.MacLachlan takes pains to point out that the similarities and friendship between the United States and Brazil are deep and mutually admired. But the bilateral relations have been skidding: Brazil has grown up and wants respect, and impudent U.S. foreign policy has aggravated them. Brazil has, in turn, irked the United States—from its refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty to its recognition of the PLO, Lula’s dismissal of the Free Trade Agreement for the Americas (FTAA) as “an annexation of Latin America by the United States” (p. 215), and Brazil’s decision to fingerprint all arriving U.S. citizens, but not other nationalities. MacLachlan recounts that when 9/11 occurred, Cardoso compared it to the “brutality . . . of perceived American global hegemony,” and many Brazilians felt America got what was due (p. 221). This is hardly the stuff of mutual admiration and friendship.MacLachlan argues that MERCOSUL’s days are numbered, as the proposed Free Trade Area for the Americas comes into being by 2005. MERCOSUL, as a group of four countries, represented 1.6 percent of the world trade in 2002. As much as two-thirds of its trade is with countries outside the region. The intra–Western Hemisphere trade accounts for 78 percent of all the trade activities, a ratio higher than the European Union’s; this makes the idea of a single market of the FTAA more real and viable. Interestingly enough, what will undermine MERCOSUL is its own inability to expand intra-regional trade. MacLachlan could be right, although the Itamaraty will not go down without struggle, that the FTAA renders MERCOSUL even dysfunctional.