This is undoubtedly a decisive year for Brazilian society. Apparently, we will go to the polls to decide if we continue to deepen social misery in defense of the deregulated market, or if, once again, we resume the fragile class pact and its alleged progressivism. So far, these seem to be the only two options that our political elites have provided to Brazil, since the final years of the military dictatorship and the establishment of the New Republic, in the 1980s.
At the beginning of January, the sheet launched a series of articles on economic issues considered important by, so far, the main candidates for the presidency of Brazil in this year’s election. Economists who make up the teams of Ciro Gomes, Lula, Doria and Moro composed this series. Changes in the economic model, the resumption of models based on illusory pacts between “above” and “below” or the intensification of authoritarian neoliberalism, daubed by the words “effectiveness”, “experience” and “responsibility”, were addressed by each one of the interviewees.
It is still early days, but we need to understand the understanding of these pre-candidates about the declared war between capital and populations that we live in Brazil and which side they really are on. Furthermore, to understand how these presidential candidates intend to address a topic that has gained new prominence in the media: the growing expulsion of Brazilians from the country.
How will these candidates make medium and small cities attractive to their young people, who, without any prospect, migrate and become cheap labor? How will they handle our researchers who, on a weekly basis, gain media attention through the so-called “brain drain” and, with them, take years of public investment in science and technology?
After all, what do we want? Continue insisting on an excluding model, supported by the tale of economic development through agriculture and retail, and which continues to expel thousands of Brazilians to the borders of the United States and the European Union, or adopt a model of society that is, in fact, inclusive?
Brazil, country of emigration
The successive departures of Brazilians in the last four decades are the result of a socioeconomic and political situation that has been taking shape since the end of the military dictatorship.
However, they gain greater media and academic visibility when economic crises explode. Each time, we witness a massive emigration of Brazilians to central countries, in search of better living conditions; Brazilians deported at land and air borders or disappeared on clandestine routes. We live this drama in the transition from the 1980s to the 1990s, the beginning of the 2000s and now.
Recently, articles point to a high growth of Brazilians emigrating. Estimates from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicate more than 4 million. The numbers are undoubtedly higher, as they do not include undocumented Brazilians. Repeatedly, the central reason pointed out by the media is the current economic crisis that we are experiencing. High formal unemployment, rising cost of living and lack of perspective are among the factors that suggest this way out. However, the emigration of Brazilians is, to a large extent, a symptom of the excluding economic model that we adopted in the 1980s and that we continue to insist on.
The period of the New Republic, still in force, marks the end of a long national developmental cycle, which began in the 1930s and intensified in the 1950s. manufactured goods, less unequal and capable of meeting growing popular demands. However, it is distorted and carried to exhaustion by the military governments, which contracted a huge foreign debt between 1970 and 1980. It is the beginning of the lost decade and we are not alone. Washington and Wall Street carefully took all of Latin America.
Mistakenly, the developmental project wanes embraced with the infamous military dictatorship, as we restore democracy. The indiscriminate commercial opening, the liberalization of foreign investment without control, the privatization of strategic state-owned companies and the deregulation of markets that follow have generated a very high social price.
Since then, successive civil governments have prioritized an economic orientation dependent on and associated with external interests. An economic model that places us on the periphery of the international division of labor, which corrodes our technological and industrial fabric and makes us hostages to the export of raw materials. At the same time, it continues to push our population towards unsophisticated and informal service sectors.
It is no exaggeration to think that the predatory mode of production adopted and its impact on our population is a mode of destruction on an advanced scale. We live in racial and class wars in Brazil. Some originate in our training, such as those experienced by indigenous people and blacks. Many are declared by agribusiness and mining against traditional peoples and our biomes. Others are produced by millionaire apps that feed on the precariousness of informal workers.
A project that overcomes the expulsion of Brazilians
Therefore, the word “expulsion” in the title of the text is not strange. This is the condition that best expresses what is lived in this country in a camouflaged war that produces thousands of losers. For almost 40 years, we have had a dependent neoliberal political project that is metamorphosing itself, through successive economic crises, and has, in the narrow national elites, the support to continue massacring most of our own population. Those who lose are expelled.
There are those who can and want to leave the country. But there is also a large mass of Brazilians who, without options, face the dilemmas and tragedies of immigration. When they make it through the migratory journey, they become cheap, undocumented sub-proletarians, ready to meet the immediate needs of developed countries.
We are a country that sees its population grow and age. Demands for education, decent income, health, food and housing are increasingly expressive. These are rights that are in our Constitution. However, for many, they are only achieved through mass emigration, a cruel and subaltern process of handing over labor power to our “business partners”. There is no doubt that this economic model is flawed and needs to be overcome. But how willing are we, in fact, to such a feat?
We need a long-term national project, capable of overcoming this dependent economic model that, with Bolsonaro and Guedes, shows its worst face. A plan capable of directing us towards a more egalitarian, inclusive society with a better distribution of wealth, through decent jobs and guaranteed labor rights for all. This is an answer for the more than 4 million documented and undocumented Brazilians abroad, and for those who, without any prospects for the future, can at least consider the possibility of staying in the country.
