Cardoso's Brazil: A Sellout?

Abstract

Few contemporary figures in Latin America have aroused as much admiration, anger, and, above all, disappointment as Fernando Henrique Cardoso, president of Brazil from 1995 to 2002. As a left-wing scholar and theorist, Cardoso had laid out persuasive accounts of operations of international dependency that were mother's milk of theory for many of us in older generation of students of Latin America. He was a prominent opponent of repressive military regime that came to power with U.S. connivance in 1964. It was, however, a distinctly right-wing alliance of forces that won presidential election for him in 1994, defeating left-wing candidate, Luis Inacio (Lula) da Silva. Nonetheless, many clung to hope that Cardoso would represent a third way that would lead Brazil out of mire of and political inequalities that had plagued nation for centuries. It is intent of Petras and Veltmeyer in Cardoso's Brazil to put any such delusions to rest. They declare that the Cardoso regime was Brazil's worst in century. They present a brief but richly documented analysis of and economic consequences of Cardoso administration. Their conclusion is that Cardoso literally sold out Brazil, turning large and critical sectors of economy over to foreign investors and subordi nating policy to demands of international finance, particularly International Monetary Fund (IMF). Brazilians suffered declining economic growth rates, lower real wages, loss of access to services, rising unemployment, and a significant shift of employment from formal to informal sector. Cardoso's declared goal of attacking social exclusion could not have been more clearly betrayed. Only in education, they write, did Cardoso significantly improve life of Brazilians, and even there, achievements in elementary and secondary education were not matched by needed changes in higher education. They make case that prob lems created or intensified by Cardoso will live on far beyond his government because they have weakened domestic firms at expense of foreign corporations, made country more vulnerable to manipulation by more powerful ones, and undermined labor unions. Cardoso's administration coincided with, if it did not cause, demobi lization of flowering of civil society associations and a proliferation of NGO's that arose with collapse of military regime. Any evaluation of and economic policy in a country as large and diverse as Brazil inevitably relies very heavily on statistical analysis. The barrage of statistics mar shaled to prove case made in this book can be usefully poised against extensive statistical presentations made in Ted Goertzel's (1999) work, a gushing paean of praise to Cardoso that clearly constitutes Cardoso-approved official story. As Petras and Veltmeyer say, definitive judgment on Cardoso's performance was incontrovertible