BRAZIL HISTORY - PERSONAL VIEW - PART ONE

BRAZIL

By Didier BERTIN – 4 January 2010

PART ONE: HISTORY

A country still prisoner of its History and where progress in terms of

Humanitarian values, is still the urgent priority.

I-INTRODUCTION

The small progress achieved by Lula and his Partido dos Trabalhores is far from the huge needs for a stringent change of type of Society towards humanist civilization.

Our target is not to repeat the classical and usually accepted descriptions in terms of History and Economics but to stress in depth the reasons of the unacceptable situation of most human beings in Brazil. Most of population is abandoned to itself especially in terms of Education, health and social solidarity, in the indifference of a small medium class and of course of the few ones taking most of the National Revenue (Gini index 0.57).

II-HISTORY

Since 1500, Brazil was not really a country but a kind of Economic Enterprise hold by a minority with the target to exploit soil and other natural resources by utilization of non paid staff kidnapped locally and then in Africa and later trapped from Europe.

Brazil built his History on slavery. Slaves are not human as serfs but just things as furniture and without souls, since things have no souls. Sometimes living slaves were bought on weight basis with a scale.

From 1454, Pope Nicolas V authorized, the King of Portugal to import slaves from A.frica. The slavery of Black people was not a problem for Church always very far from basic Christian principles and this situation continued with recent Pie XII.

Latin American Church should modestly rediscover the humanitarian philosophy of Jesus and abandon primitive superstitions, which are more in line with pre-Columbian beliefs. In general Church appeared more as a follower than as a leader and should disappear as in western countries.

 A-1500 to 1822

Over such Period only 724 000 Portuguese people arrived in Brazil.

The Indian population was insufficient for the need of Brazilian-Portuguese exploiters and easily to escape to slavery thanks to their knowledge of the area. Indian slavery was abolished in 1775.

From 1532, the Brazilian-Portuguese started to provoke the biggest human violent deportation from Africa to exploit sugar cane at no cost. The life expectancy of a black slave was only 5 years but this had no importance since they were replaced at low cost.

 Population evolution is the following:

 1570:  White:  20 000 – Blacks: 30 000 – Indians: 800 000

1650:  White:  70 000 - Blacks and Half-Blood: 170 000

1822:  White: 920 000 – Blacks and Half –Blood: 2 700 000 – Indians: 360 000

 We should note the strong reduction of Indian populations and the fact that Blacks and Half Blood represented 3 times the number of White people.

Today Brazil would be on such basis a Black African country, but the country was in the hand of Whites exploiting by violence their slaves at no cost.

Brazil was by far the main importer of African Slaves with 5 500 000 African people deported by force from 1532 to 1850. Brazil utilized 40% of the total slaves kidnapped in Africa.

Brazil was the biggest black slaves’ exploiter of the world.

 Regarding the problem of Brazil independence the painful death of Tiradentes is not so meaningfull. “Tiradents” (Joaquim José da Silva Xavier) was adopted as National Hero of independence because he was modest and hanged for example in 1792, when his rich friends were just exiled. However at this time the independence should have been more in favor of the “Fazendeiros: the big Landlords” than in favor of the People.

Surprisingly, the real independence will be given by the son of King of Portugal in 1822 and agreed by Portugal in 1825.

In 1808 Napoleon invaded Portugal and King of Portugal John VI fled to Brazil. His son Peter the First did not return to Portugal and declared the independence of Brazil in 1822 agreed in 1825 by Portugal. For internal reasons, the latter abandoned the throne in favor of his very young son Peter II.

Peter II decided from 1850, when he was only 24 years old to become the champion of the fight against Slavery.

From 1871 Peter II promulgated various laws to free slaves and their children and developed a National Education system as well as the rail transport. In 1888 Slavery was definitely abolished in Brazil.

 C-1889 – 1920

Creation of white people slavery by the big Fazendeiros .

 The first step of the plan of the Fazendeiros was to get rid of a Monarchy encourageing Human progress and they organized a military coup in  1889 to finish with Peter II. They created a forged Republic instead. This Republic is only a name and was under control of Fazendeiros who took by force as today raiders the majority of Brazil Corporation since Brazil was clearly more a private company than a country.

Brazil was a kind of factory of beef, milk, sugar cane and in that time COFFEE (60% of exports)

The fazendeiros were extreme rightists and organized according to their main production as in a conglomerate. Presidency of the so called State Brazil or Brazil Corporation was alternatively given to milk Producers of Minas Gerais and to Coffee Producers of Sao Paulo. This forged Republic was called coffee with milk.

 The white population from abroad was trapped by the Fazendeiros. They were poor and living in a difficult situation in their countries (Italy in majority). Italy. 1 243 633 Italians came from 1870 to 1920 especially to Sao Paulo.

 Fazendeiros sold them a dream of a better life in Brazil and Brazil paid their transport. On arrival the story was totally different and  they were obliged to repay their transport  endlessly in working as quasi-slaves in the Fazendas. Work time was the same applied formerly to black slaves.

When Italy was aware that its citizens were converted into slaves, they finally stopped any departure to Brazil.

From 1822 to 1920, 4 000 000 of white people immigrated to Brazil.

 D-From 1930 to today

Contempt of Human beings was the corner stone of Brazil and today this situation is continuing because it only a strong Education effort may change the situation and Education is deficient and poorly founded.

As we have seen the Brazil stabilized its population characteristic in only 1920. As a result White population is slightly in majority because of the recent immigration.

We may say that Brazil population as is only born in 1920.

This explains many aspects of the country as the absence of real common History, the absence of the sense of nation far behind the states and cities and villages, the absence of a real educational system, the absence of solidarity, which generates huge discrepancies, the indifference of people for others. As a result of educational system  Brazilian do not know apart exception foreign languages, they do not travel and have no comparative scale to assess where they live and this reduces desire of progress.

The social stability is guaranteed by “POLICIA MILITAR” and by the developpement of an anonymous denunciation system “Disque Denuncia” in all Military Police offices.

The stability of violence is thus violence itself.

The fact that people were always deprived of democracy has continued for a long time.

In 1930 Vargas took the power from the so called Republic by a military coup, and became rapidly a nationalist dictator.

During the war he joined the allies in order to neutralize any adverse US retaliation since USA needed to have bases in Nordeste in the frame of War II strategy,  but he did not permit Jews to enter in Brazil during the war and on the contrary Nazis came easily to Brazil after the war (the most famous Dr Menguele in Sao Paulo).

From 1945 to 1964, Brazil discovered democracy for only 9 years and went back to its Dictatur habits with a military coup up to 1985.

If the population of Brazil stabilized in 1920, we may say that the attempt to make of Brazil a nation have only started in 1985.

Brazil is a young country of 25 years which has to discover everything in the field of Democracy: we are at the beginning and far to see the end.

 We will see through the economic chapter that Brazil is far to be freed of its past:

A large majority of the population lives in a deep misery in the frame of a clear indifference. The roots of this contempt are probably the heritage of slavery.

Few people take the  majority of Brazilian revenues as the former fazandeiros.

The reform of the Partido dos trabalhadores is very far of being sufficient and the recourse to a strong police is a signal of failure.

The continuous influence of slavery spirit may be still viewed in facts and the so called racial mixture is a legend as far as tolerance is concerned; in fact Brazil is a usual racist country despite its reputation:

1-Most of Inhabitants of huge number Favelas are Black

2-Brazilian are not shocked by the existence of Favelas and new Favelas are created everyday with no reaction of the population sometimes in the most dangerous places like between ways of Highways.

3-All important positions in Brazil are hold by White people and only by White people.

4-Most of students at University are White

5-Black people are not sufficiently offensive to protect their rights

The most significant racist step is the following and concerns a disappearing people, the Indians:

6-The Indians are minor citizens and have no citizen rights as the right to vote, they are considered as not responsible.

I even heard a teacher saying that if full rights were given to Indians they will do stupidities.

Only few meters prove the contrary, in French Guyana the same Indians are full French and European citizens and vote and a few meters behind the border of Brazil the same Indians are considered as idiots if it is the case they are similar to Brazilian leaders. Buying French Air Fighter is not an argument of cleverness, for us French and European people. We may fear that next Olympic Games will involve a Progress only as concern the number of members of POLICIA MILITAR.

We will come back on this Brazilian underdevelopment in the economic survey.