Year 501 by Noam Chomsky

Author:Noam Chomsky
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Politics, Political Science
ISBN: 978-1-60846-449-4
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Published: 2016-01-18T16:00:00+00:00

4. Securing the Victory

The United States was the “regime’s most reliable ally,” Thomas Skidmore observes in the most comprehensive scholarly study of what came next. US aid “saved the day” for the ruling Generals; the process also “turned the US into a kind of unilateral IMF, overseeing every aspect of Brazilian economic policy.” “In almost every Brazilian office involved in administering unpopular tax, wage, or price decisions, there was the ubiquitous American adviser,” the new US Ambassador discovered in 1966. Once again, the US was well-positioned to use Brazil as a “testing area for modern scientific methods of industrial development”(Haines), and therefore has every right to take credit for what ensued. Under US guidance, Brazil pursued orthodox neoliberal policies, “doing everything right” by monetarist criteria, and “strengthening the market economy” (Skidmore). The “economic miracle” proceeded in parallel with the entrenchment of the fascist National Security State, not accidentally; a regime that could not wield the knout could hardly have carried out measures with such a deleterious impact on the population.

The neoliberal reforms did not exactly succeed in “building Brazilian capitalism,” Skidmore continues (though they did help build foreign corporations). They provoked a severe industrial recession, driving many businesses to ruin. To counter these effects and to prevent still further foreign takeover of the economy, the government turned to the public sector, strengthening the despised state corporations.

In 1967, economic policy was taken over by technocrats led by the highly respected conservative economist Antonio Delfim Neto, an enthusiastic supporter of “the Revolution of March 31,” which he saw as a “huge demonstration by society” and “the product of a collective consensus” (among those who qualify as “society”). Declaring its devotion to the principles of economic liberalism, the government instituted indefinite wage controls. “Worker protests, up to now infrequent and small, were handily suppressed,” Skidmore notes, as fascist rule hardened further over the whole society, with harsh censorship, elimination of judicial independence, removal of many faculty, and revised curricula to promote patriotism. The new compulsory course in “Moral and Civic Education” aimed to “defend the democratic principle by preserving the religious spirit, the dignity of the human being, and the love of liberty, with responsibility under God’s inspiration”—as administered by the Generals with the technocrats at their side. The authors of the 1992 Republican Campaign platform would have been much impressed, along with 1980s-style “conservatives” rather generally.

The President announced in 1970 that repression would be “harsh and implacable,” with no rights for “pseudo-Brazilians.” Torture became “a grisly ritual, a calculated onslaught against body and soul,” Skidmore writes, with such specialties as torture of children and gang rape of wives before the family. The “orgy of torture” provided “a stark warning” to anyone with the wrong thoughts. It was a “powerful instrument,” that “made it even easier for Delfim and his technocrats to avoid public debate over fundamental economic and social priorities” while they “preached the virtues of the free market.” The resumption of high economic growth, by these means, made Brazil “again attractive to foreign private investors,” who took over substantial parts of the economy.

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