A Message from the Editor: The São Paulo Experiment

Abstract

A Message from the EditorThe São Paulo Experiment Ryan Alexander “Brazil . . . it’s the country of the future, and it always will be!” The exact provenance of this old joke is unclear. Typically, it is attributed either to the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, who wrote of his adopted homeland with admiration in his 1941 book, Brazil: A Land of the Future, or to the French statesman Charles de Gaulle, who is widely credited with coining the exact phrase, with its more sarcastic and derisive tone. Regardless, at its origin it reflected an outsider’s perspective. Since then, however, it has morphed into a kind of self-deprecating admission by Brazilians that every time their nation finally seems to be on the verge of breaking through, something bad happens. A quick sweep through Brazil’s history can give you the feeling that it has been forever trapped in this boom-bust cycle. In the first half of the nineteenth century, foreign observers praised Brazil’s comparatively amicable split from Portugal and subsequent stability as an independent empire, both of which stood in stark contrast to Spanish America’s protracted wars of independence and shaky beginnings as a collection of unstable republics. Yet imperial Brazil hung onto chattel slavery longer than anywhere else in the Atlantic system (the decree of abolition finally came in 1888), making it a pariah in the international community while postponing and worsening its inevitable transition into a post-slavery existence. Its coffee-based export economy eventually recovered, but it was again thrown into disarray by the global economic depression of the 1930s. Its subsequent turn toward mass industrialization produced what some heralded as an economic miracle, but once again the bubble burst just as quickly. Populist mass politics, interpreted by well-to-do Brazilians and foreign economic interests as the start of a slippery slope into a communist future, spurred the imposition of a brutal military dictatorship [End Page xi] that lasted from 1964 to 1985, while astronomical foreign debt plunged the country deep into a hyperinflationary economic crisis in the 1980s. The restoration of democracy in that decade appeared to offer a fresh start, but, yet again, reality hasn’t quite caught up to hope. While at the turn of the new millennium Brazil was the B in BRIC (which also included Russia, India, and China, and later South Africa, resulting in the expanded BRICS), a group of nations widely regarded as the world’s most potent emerging economies, today South America’s largest country is rarely discussed in such optimistic terms. Perhaps the most telling statement of Brazil’s most recent fall from grace is its current president, Jair Bolsonaro, a crude politician who has publicly defended the military dictatorship’s routine use of torture while touting, of all things, his own military record to secure mass support from an electorate looking for a savior. The details of this history are unique to Brazil, but the general themes— dramatic shifts in economic policy, wild swings in political affairs, constant pivots from inward-looking nationalism to externally oriented integration into global markets—are no doubt familiar to scholars of all areas of the Global South. And one of the salient experiences across all Global South regions in the twentieth century has been mass urbanization. From Jakarta to Kinshasa to Manila, the world’s largest cities, and the world’s fastest-growing cities, by and large sit in the Global South. Latin America’s major urban centers have been no exception, and Brazil’s financial and industrial capital, São Paulo, has recently surpassed Mexico City as the region’s largest (both sit in the top five of the world’s megalopolises in terms of population). São Paulo, less familiar to foreigners than its glitzy counterpart, Rio de Janeiro, is arguably the more influential of Brazil’s two megacities. As the introduction to this issue points out, the stereotypes of the two cities could not differ more: Rio, with its attractive art deco facades, sexy samba dancers, pervasive beachgoing culture, and over-the-top carnival celebrations, stands in stark contrast to São Paulo’s drab, boxy high-rises, suit-and-tie wearing business...