Latin America's Turbulent Transitions by Roger Burbach

Author:Roger Burbach
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zed Books
Published: 2013-04-16T16:00:00+00:00

7 Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and presidential candidate Dilma Rousseff attend a campaign rally in São Bernardo do Campo, São Paulo, on the eve of the first round of the 2010 presidential elections (credit: Michael Fox).

7 | Brazil: between challenging hegemony and embracing it

‘We – the Workers’ Party – know that the world is headed toward socialism,’ the Brazilian Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT, Workers’ Party) president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva told a packed crowd at the party’s first national convention. ‘The big question is: Which socialism?’1

‘The socialism that we want will be defined by all of the people, as a concrete demand of the grassroots struggles,’ Lula continued. ‘We want a society in which men are valued and where no one has the right to exploit the work of anyone else. A society in which everyone has equal opportunity to realize their potential and aspirations.’

The year was 1981. Despite the strength of the socialist project in Cuba and the revolutionary victory in Nicaragua, Lula and the PT were not willing to quickly define their socialist vision based on what had been implemented elsewhere. That was the job of ‘the people,’ they said. Clearly impacted by a decade and a half of repressive military rule, the founders of the new party had, in 1979, written into their founding charter a key point that would define the goals of the fledgling organization for years to come: ‘There is no socialism without democracy, nor democracy without socialism.’2

It was through elections, and not weapons, that the PT planned to democratize Brazil, take power, and carry out the working-class revolution for socialism so dreamed of during the dark years of the dictatorship. They were fairly successful. In Brazil’s first open elections, in 1989, Lula lost the presidential election by less than 6 percent. In local elections, thirty-six PT mayors were elected across the country, and began to implement radical programs, such as participatory budgeting, to involve the local community in public decision-making.

At a time when the formal socialist countries were crumbling across the globe, the PT was growing and consolidating.

‘The PT is without question the largest explicitly socialist political party in South America, and its growth, particularly in the almost pre-capitalist countryside, is unprecedented in the region,’ wrote Brazilian political scientist Emir Sader and journalist Ken Silverstein in 1991. ‘Whatever the difficulty in labeling the party, the PT’s coalition of forces represents a Brazilian “New Left,” and is certainly the most hopeful model for democratic socialism anywhere in South America.’3

The PT remained an inspiration for movements and organizers across the region, as the party continued to grow and gain increasing political power. Lula finally won the presidency on 27 October 2002, with over 60 percent of the vote. His successor and former chief of staff Dilma Rousseff was elected and followed in his footsteps on 1 January 2011.

Despite their radical history, Presidents Lula and Rousseff have not joined Chávez, Morales, and Correa in their calls for twenty-first-century socialism. In fact, in

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.