Paulo Freire and the Cold War Politics of Literacy by Andrew J. Kirkendall

Author:Andrew J. Kirkendall [Kirkendall, Andrew J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: History, Latin America, South America, Biography & Autobiography, Political, Educators, Education, Language Arts & Disciplines, Literacy
ISBN: 9780807834190
Google: JgGhHKrsaY8C
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Published: 2010-01-15T03:23:05+00:00

Six / The Long, Slow Transition to Democracy in Brazil & the End(?) of Utopia, 1980–1997

Paulo Freire returned to a Brazil that was still run by the military but experiencing “a concrete opening.” Freire felt that he had to “take advantage of the existence of this space.” The amnesty law of 1979 had made it possible for him and his family to make a life once again in his native land. After his return, he found it necessary, as he frequently noted, to “relearn Brazil” while responding to abundant invitations to speak throughout the country.1 Brazil had undergone significant social and economic change since his departure in 1964, but these changes were not yet reflected in the political system. Brazil's transition to democracy would take most of the following decade, and Freire would play a role in the democratization process, first through his involvement with a new political party the likes of which Brazil had never seen before, the Partidos dos Trabalhadores (Workers' Party, PT), and then though his employment as the secretary of education in a PT municipal government in São Paulo. In the last decade of his life, the end of the Cold War also changed the international context in which Freire thought and worked.

The Brazil that Freire returned to was new in more ways than one. Economic growth and social change had continued to be uneven under the military, but in the late 1960s and early 1970s, growth rates in the gross domestic product had reached double-digit levels, constituting what became known as the Brazilian miracle. Industrialization and urbanization continued to accelerate as a result of government policies that encouraged foreign investment but also maintained a strong role for the state in the economy. The military model of economic growth exacerbated historical patterns of vast inequalities of income distribution. The years of the “miracle” were also the years in which torture was employed most heavily as a means of keeping political opposition in check.2

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