Documentary ‘Confisco’ revives national trauma with loss of savings in Plano Collor

The documentary “Confisco”, which tells the story of the blocking of bank accounts and savings on the second day of Fernando Collor de Mello’s government, achieves what seemed unlikely at this point in time: to revive latent feelings in thousands of Brazilians who were affected by the disastrous package.

However, it errs in not deepening the numerous legal consequences of the measures.

Announced on March 16, 1990 with the intention of curbing inflation, which hit 80% a month, the so-called Plano Collor had the practical effect of literally breaking an unaccounted for number of families and businesses.

Three decades later, there are 600,000 lawsuits related to the topic — suspended and without a trial period — that extend the anguish.

A good part of the confiscation demands still awaits definitive decisions even in the Supreme Court, alongside processes that include other plans, such as Bresser and Verão. Several savers who depend on these court decisions have died or are yet to die without being properly compensated.

The scenes and testimonies involve the viewer in successive reports that demonstrate how the loss of those savings affects the lives of the population to this day.

The heyday of the documentary may be found in the elucidation of speeches by the then Minister of Economy, Zélia Cardoso de Mello. Interviews given at the time, especially to journalist Lillian Witte Fibe, make it clear that Plano Collor, even though it had some technical backing, was implemented and executed in an extremely amateurish way. One gets the feeling that part of his failure, and the losses he’s proved, was the result of precisely that original failure.

The greatest demonstration of this fundamental misunderstanding is that the economic team did not previously think of rules that could delimit the impact of the measures on natural everyday situations.

No one knew how companies would pay their employees, how to proceed in the face of losses caused in business relationships that were established or already started, and many other situations that ended up culminating in thousands of administrative requests for release of values, many portrayed in the HBO Max documentary.

Furthermore, it is clear that the plan’s creators turned a blind eye to the national reality. They did not take into account that the risk of economic setback caused by confiscation in a country as culturally and financially unequal as Brazil could have serious negative repercussions, especially for the poorest – as in fact it did.

A truck driver’s family narrative of the turnaround caused by confiscation is a good example of the emotional and financial scars created at that time more than 30 years ago.

The documentary also demonstrates the effects of the information gap and how it widened Brazil’s socioeconomic inequality. Those who had more legal knowledge or ties with representative entities were able to file lawsuits requesting the release of values, that is, there were Brazilians who sought their rights at the time and had the opportunity to carry out good business and commercial transactions, especially real estate.

This privileged part of the population managed to make wealth while the majority was without access to life savings.

There is a positive legacy of that moment, which is portrayed in the documentary. The expansion of Idec, the Brazilian Consumer Defense Institute. The reaction of society, which, by organizing itself in search of its rights, conferred notoriety and representation on the entity, which became a reference in the struggle for the rights of savers.

Thus, even with gaps, “Confisco” is the documentary that best managed to gather data to demonstrate the consequences of the Plano Collor and how it is necessary to guarantee savers the due reparation for their losses.

Savers went to court to recover losses

From the 1990s onwards, the Justice received a flood of lawsuits from savers who sought to repair the losses of economic plans. For decades, the courts have recognized, through individual, collective or civil public actions, the right of thousands of Brazilians who had passbooks in the Bresser (1987), Verão (1989), Collor 1 (1990) and Collor 2 (1991) plans. Not all actions were successful and, in 2010, the STJ (Superior Court of Justice) reduced the access of those who had not requested a review. The term to benefit from public civil actions fell from 20 to five years, according to Idec (Brazilian Consumer Defense Institute). The STF (Supreme Federal Court) ratified, in 2018, an agreement to pay for the revisions, but experts criticize the discounts. Three decades later, savers are still waiting for the money.