It may look curious to a literate Brazilian reading the newspaper once a week to see two American intellectuals dedicating a book about Brazilian structural problems to those Brazilian people who are fearlessly building a new society. It might be enough to think about the 19 landless workers killed in Pará by policemen contracted by landowners, or the 52 victims of a rainstorm in Recife, both recent events. Or the final judgment on the carnage of 119 Carandirus, when justice laid the blame on the victims themselves. Or the clandestine cemetery discovered in southern Pará, where may be buried the answer for the families of more than 300 people missing since the Araguaia guerrilla siege. How can one not be afraid?
But if the editors’ purpose was to draft a realistic portrait of contemporary Brazilian society, its historical structural problems, and the resistance of individuals and organized groups in civil society, they did a definitive job. A collection of papers of different lengths originally published in various U.S. periodicals, the book comprises 38 chapters organized in 6 sections.
The first section covers international capital, local economies, and popular resistance. It unites subjects such as the Carajás Project, money laundering in “fiscal paradises,” forced labor, and the progress of the Brazilian labor movement through criticism and union struggle. Unfortunately, although the labor movement may have achieved important rights for the working classes, more than 50 percent of the active population still works in the informal market. Forced labor is another nightmare. One can watch television reports on the 10-year-old “coalmen” working 12 hours a day carrying heavy pieces of wood in temperatures of 48 degrees Celsius just to help their fathers, receiving no money. Or the “aunt-boys” on Mato Grosso maté farms, who carry 200 kilograms on their shoulders, five times their own weight.
The second section is about corruption. Its topics include the 1994 Brazilian elections, the role of U.S. interests and politics in that process, and major figures, such as P. C. Farias and Fernando Collor de Melo and his impeachment. The third part broaches serious questions about Amazonian affairs, such as rational economic and social alternatives, the rubber tappers’ movement, and unplanned occupation and its consequences. The fourth section offers views of big cities, street children, and the fight of some groups for dignity and rights.
The two final sections look at the future of some Brazilian grassroots movements and the role of the Workers Party, our main organized political force. One last question comes to mind: which soul are the editors talking about? Whites, the rich, businessmen, blacks, yellows, reds, Indians, workers, junkies, the unemployed, from the North, from the South, students, the illiterate, from the cities, from the country? There are many Brazils with many souls, and we who are fighting with or without fear to be happy must consider all the wills and all the differences.
