<a href=www.nytimes.com>NY Times By LARRY ROHTER

CAETÉS, Brazil — Half a century ago, Antônio Ferreira de Melo and his older cousin Luiz were playmates here in the poor and arid interior of Pernambuco state. They would chop down tree branches and pretend they were riding horses or use their slingshots to hunt birds and lizards for their families to eat. Advertisement

Drought eventually drove Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his family 1,300 miles south to São Paulo, where he became a factory worker, labor leader and, as of Jan. 1, the president of Brazil. But Cousin Antônio and most of the president's other relatives remain here, living much as they did when he was a child and confronting many of the same problems that led to his departure.

"Things here have changed very little since Lula left," Mr. Ferreira, a 54-year-old farmer, said as he watched his wife and some neighbors grind yucca into flour for sale at a market. "We're still poor, and the government down there in Brasília still doesn't do much to help us. It's always been like that."

The hermetic rural world that Brazil's new president was born into in 1945 is a shrinking one. Today, 80 percent of the country's 175 million people live in urban areas. But Mr. da Silva has talked often of how the parched poverty of his early years here continues to color his view of the world, and he refers frequently to his experiences and the experiences of others like him who escaped indigence by migrating south to Brazil's big cities. Yet the battery of glaring social and economic inequalities still on display here in his hometown are a microcosm of the challenges he now faces on a national level.

With 11 head of cattle and 23 acres of land on which he grows corn, beans and "a bit of cotton," Mr. Ferreira considers himself one of the lucky ones here. In a good week, he said, he earns as much as $50, which he estimates is enough to put him "in the top 1 or 2 percent" of the 26,000 people who live in this municipality about 1,000 miles northeast of the capital.

But there is no school nearby, so Mr. Ferreir, whose education, like that of the president, ended when he was 12, insists that his eight children go to the county seat to study. An emergency medical post is two miles away, but it is often out of vital medicines, which most local farm families cannot afford anyway.

In the last decade, electricity has finally been extended to remote rural hamlets like this one, allowing residents to install refrigerators, lamps and televisions. But telephone service, sewage disposal and even running water remain distant, much yearned-for dreams.

"We don't even have a well at the ranch where we live, so any time we need water, one of my daughters or I have to walk two leagues," said Raimunda Josefa de Farias Xavier, 48, an illiterate mother of eight, referring to a distance of about eight miles. "After all these years, I've got back problems that I think have come from walking such long distances with a heavy bucket on my head."

With opportunities lacking here, the traditional outlet for the young has always been to do as the president's family did and head south to São Paulo and find work in a factory or store. That is still the case, but with Brazil's annual growth rate having slowed from a high of 8 percent in the 1970's to 1.5 percent last year, their chances of success have diminished.

"Of every 100 who leave here, only 10 do well, and some end up so poor that they can't even afford the bus fare to return," said Aurino Duarte de Almeida, the municipal government's secretary for administration. "For a guy who is illiterate, has no job skills, training or experience, the best he can hope for when he comes back is to work in a neighbor's fields at $1.50 a day."

Some of those coming back from São Paulo may have also brought with them the maladies that afflict Brazil's big cities, like crime and violence, but have been rare here. Mr. Ferreira complained that hooded gunmen not long ago robbed his son-in-law in his own home, and the authorities blame migrants for a recent string of daring bank robberies and highway assaults.

"People who have gone south tell crime gangs like the Red Command that the pickings are easy up here, and the criminals are taking advantage of that," said Adelvando Alexandre de Pontes, the chief of staff of the local government. "We're not used to robbers armed with machine guns, and our police sure aren't equipped to confront that."

Official corruption also appears to be a problem. Most of the people here are poor enough to qualify for a government food relief program known as "the basic basket," but many say that the monthly $4 payment often does not get to them, and that when it does, it takes the form of inferior products.

"We end up with all the merchandise the store owners can't get rid of because no else one wants it, like black beans that have been sitting around for six years and spoiled cooking oil," complained Nelson Vieira da Silva, a 63-year-old farmer. "Some of the stuff is so putrid that I've tried to feed it to my pigs, but even they won't eat it."

The president-elect returned to his birthplace in November, and at an outdoor barbecue that Mr. Ferreira helped organize, his relatives and former neighbors besieged him with grievances and complaints. Having one of their own in power is a novel situation, and they are looking to him to remedy all the social ills that afflict the world he long ago left behind.

"We hope he is thinking of us," Mr. Ferreira said. "It is a miracle and a dream that he has become president, and we know that all of Brazil wants to talk to him. But we really need for our lives to improve."

<a href=www.brazzil.com<Brazzil

Brazil has not completely finished the process of becoming a Republic. Nor has it completely abolished slavery. In 21st-century Brazil the elite feel as distant from the people as they did in the 19th century. The Brazilian elite do not feel like citizens who pertain to the same people.

Cristovam Buarque

One hundred fifteen years after the Proclamation of the Republic, the Brazilian members of Congress still call each other "Noble Colleague." It is as if the Empire still existed but under the name of Republic. It is not a matter of congressional etiquette, nor is it true only of members of Congress.

In 21st-century Brazil the elite feel as distant from the people as they did in the 19th century. The Brazilian elite are not citizens. The inequality between the rich and the poor—be it in income, education, housing, transportation, leisure, food, or customs—is so large that they do not sit at the same table, do not discuss the same affairs, do not feel like citizens who pertain to the same people.

The members of Congress do not call each other "Citizen Deputy" or "Citizen Senator" because Brazil has not completely finished the process of becoming a Republic. Nor has it completely abolished slavery. After Independence, Brazil remained a slave-ocratic empire for 70 years; then, in only 18 months it abolished slavery in 1888 and proclaimed the Republic in 1889; yet everything continued much the same as before. Almost 200 years after Independence, the members of Congress continue to be nobles, forced labor has been replaced by unemployment, the slaves have been transformed into famished poor people, and education continues to be available only to the few.

The regime became republican but Brazil continued divided between a noble elite and a plebeian mass. Just as slavery was abolished, little by little, the Republic expanded the right to vote, permitting liberty of expression and of political party organizing, but it concentrated land in a few hands and education in a few heads. The legacy of Lula's government, therefore, will be to complete the process of the Republic and of abolition.

To do this, we must not repeat 1888 and 1889 by postponing that which everyone hopes for—a complete Republic, without exclusion, one in which everyone would be equal citizens. We were elected not only to administer well, but rather, administering well, to undertake the republican revolution for which Brazil has waited more than a century.

Since the republicans did not connect with the people, the Republic was never completed. As "neo-nobles" they lost their capacity to become indignant about the poverty surrounding them; they enjoyed the privileges of aristocrats; they became used to the customs of power and the demands of the bureaucracy. We in Lula's government cannot run this risk: disconnecting from the poor; losing our capacity for indignation; becoming addicted to the glitter of power; and falling into the clutches of the bureaucracy. We must not become accustomed to the same incomplete Republic while forgetting that our task is to complete it.

The principal way to avoid accommodation is to move forward from the present difficulties, never forgetting the legacy that our government must leave to future generations: Administer the present difficulties without losing sight of the obligations of the dreams for the future; have one foot in arithmetic and the other in utopia. Lula was not elected to establish or change the central structure of the economy; nor was he elected to create equality of income or of consumption. He was elected to make everyone equal as citizens, thus completing the Republic and abolition. This will be Lula's legacy for the future of Brazil.

To complete abolition we must undertake the intensive, total, radical agrarian reform that Brazil desires, using 21st-century technology with no disruption of production. Job creation is another measure necessary to finish off slavery and interrupt the century-old Brazilian tragedy of transforming the shackled and fed slaves into the free, starving unemployed.

To complete the Republic we must guarantee an egalitarian education to all citizens, which is possible only through free, quality public schools for everyone. A society is not a republic when it invests practically 80 times more upon the private education of middle-class children—R$ 240 thousand (US$ 71 thousand) —than upon the public education of poor children—R$ 3,200 (US$ 949). Middle-class students spend R$ 1,000 (US$ 297) per month and receive educational investments for up to twenty years. The others receive R$ 800 (US$ 237) per year and remain in school an average of four years. This is not merely inequality: It is difference. And as long as this sort of difference exists, the country will not be a Republic.

Lula's legacy is the completion of the Republic and abolition. His role is leading Brazil so that we take the measures necessary to change reality in the four years before the elections of 2006, creating a dynamic in which the republican revolution will continue in the following years. So that, before the end of his administration, all Brazilians will be literate, all children will be attending schools of increasing quality and, before the bicentennial of Independence, all Brazilians will have the equivalent of at least a high-school education.

This is possible. Poor countries with more difficulties than ours have already done this. We have the resources and the know-how. It is possible if the administration has zeal, determination, and the support of society, especially that of the members of Congress when they vote on the next budget. This is the greatest obstacle: convincing the noble heirs of the Proclamation of the Republic in 1889 that the time has come to make a decent investment of the national resources in a republican revolution, one that can be achieved only by providing free, quality public education for all.

But action by the administration and the Congress will not be enough. What are you doing so that we can complete the Republic and abolition?

Cristovam Buarque - cristovambuarque@uol.com.br, 59, Ph.D. in economics, is Brazil's Minister of Education. He was the rector of the University of Brasília (1985-89) and the governor of the Federal District (1995-98).

Translated by Linda Jerome LinJerome@cs.com  

Narco News By Adriana Veloso Part IV in a series, reported from Rio de Janeiro April 2, 2003

A leading health official from the new administration of the Brazilian national government this week told a group of 35 authentic drug policy experts (see related story, "A Drug Policy from Below"), that she favors their approach: “harm reduction as a political and clinical strategy of treatment.”

"We have to produce arguments in favor of the Health Ministry to assume harm reduction policies as a question of public health," said Regina Benevides, Executive Secretary of the Health Ministry.

Regina Benevides Last Wednesday, Benevides attended a meeting with the National Anti-Drug Secretary (SENAD), headed, since the last administration, by the Colonel Paulo Roberto Ulchôa. About that meeting, Benevides said, “We presented the issue from another point of view; harm reduction as a priority for the Health Ministry.”

“The current drug policy is the same that was formulated by the former government,” clarifies Benevides.

Congressman Fernando Gabeira: War on Drugs is "stupid" The federal Congressman Fernando Gabeira, asked about Benevides' statement, told Narco News that, “the idea of a National Anti-Drug Secretary is as stupid as the war on drugs.”

Marcelo Araújo Campos, the president of the Brazilian Association of Harm Reduction (ABORDA, in its Portuguese initials), agrees. He says that, “the SENAD doesn’t have the legitimacy or the competence to define national drug policy.” As one of the leading voices of the harm reduction movement, Araújo said, “We don't dialogue with the SENAD. We cannot work together with an agency that has the words 'anti-drug' in its name.”

Benevides clarifies that, “there is no official policy of the Lula government regarding drugs, what we have is the policy as the SENAD has defined it." And her alternative goes beyond simply shifting responsibility to her department: "We believe," she said, "that this issue cannot be solved only by the Health Ministry, but rather with the participation of many sectors.”

The new administration inside the Heath Ministry is already working toward new legislation. In fact, the Health Ministry has proposed a complement to the law passed in 2002 amending drug policies: "The Health Ministry is in charge of normalizing harm reduction programs," which it defines as, "making utensils and places for the safe use of drugs available," said Benevides.

The assembled harm reduction workers received her words as a sign of hope.

"This law," said Benevides, the public health official, of the 2002 drug "reform" law passed by Congress, "doesn't contemplate harm reduction and does not make field work viable or more flexible." Organizations that do this kind of work, she said, need, "the government as an ally," and that is exactly what this woman, also a member of the "Torture: Never Again" organization in Brazil, wants to install inside the new government of which she is a member.

“However, there is still a prohibitionist path being followed in Brazil's drug policy,” accuses Araújo, the ABORDA president. He explains that, “the SENAD is directly involved with the Lula administration, so it is hierarchically superior than the Ministries.” But there is a sign of hope. “Now both the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Health have the sensibility to treat this issue in a better way than the SENAD,” he explains.

Congressman Gabeira believes that, in the new administration, the Health Ministry “will influence the SENAD much more that the Justice Ministry, because it has a different way to treat the subject, since the drug consumer is no longer considered an object of police action but rather is a medical concern.”

But Benevides warned that "to maintain the status quo is much easier than making change," and that's why she asked the members of the Movement of Civil Society for Harm Reduction to "pressure the government to develop a national harm reduction strategy."

Thus, the struggle to redefine Brazil's drug policy is now being fought inside the highest levels of the Lula administration. Washington is betting on the SENAD. But Benevides' view carries the weight of Civil Society. President Lula: The Whole World is Watching.

BrazzilApril 2003

Our own tele-idiot is very real and has already conquered Brasília. Our President analyzes the political moment with shallow metaphors. Talking about the changes he hopes to promote, he said, "It is like harvesting fruit. It's no use getting it when it's still green". Kosinski wouldn't dare this much.

Janer Cristaldo

—And how about you, Mr. Gardiner, what do you think of the bad times in the stock market?—asks the President of the United States.

All Chance Gardiner knows about life is the garden where he was raised. He feels obligated to a response, so he talks about the only thing he knows:

—In a garden, there is a season for plants to grow. There is spring and summer, but also autumn and winter. And then, spring and summer return. As long as the roots are not cut, all is well and will continue well.

The President seems satisfied:

—Mr. Gardiner, I must confess that what you just said is one of the most comforting and optimistic declarations I have had the opportunity to listen to in a long time.

This dialogue—which not only could occur in our days but in fact does occur—actually belongs in the universe of fiction. Polish writer Jerzy Kosinski, upon his arrival in the United States, created with Being There one of the most disturbing characters of our times, called Chance Gardiner. If you didn't read the book, you can still catch the movie, which screened in Brazil under the title Muito Além do Jardim (Way Beyond the Garden), with a magnificent performance by Peter Sellers.

The Brazilian translator of the book had a moment of illumination when he translated the American title as O Vidiota, that is, the video idiot. Gardiner is a domestic servant of a mysterious master, identified in the work as "the Old Man". Chance lives a life of reclusion in the garden of the mansion and he only had contact with two people in his whole life, the Old Man and the Old Man's housekeeper. His name is Chance because he was born by chance. He can't read or write. His only contact with the world outside is through the television. When he doesn't like what he sees, it's simple: he turns off the set, or he changes the channel with his remote control.

The Old Man dies and Chance is thrown out in the world by the servants. With only the shirt on his back, literally. When the wife of a senator runs him over in the street and asks him who he is, he says: I'm the gardener. And he becomes known as Chance Gardiner. Because he didn't carry any money or documents, the wife of the senator imagines that it must be someone very important and takes him to her house. Chance, who had never thought about the subject, is inserted into the power circle.

People who read the book or saw the film know the end of the story: by repeating clichés he heard on television, Chance builds a brilliant career in the media and starts being considered for president of the United States. If you haven't read Kosinski, please do it immediately: it is one of the most profound parables in contemporary literature. With television, any illiterate can have a more or less general idea of what occurs around himself and in the world. Strictly speaking, nobody needs to read anymore to understand—or to suppose having understood—the world.

If the Kosinski gardener belongs in the universe of fiction, our own tele-idiot is very real and has already conquered Brasília. Without a single tinge of culture or logic, our President analyzes the political moment with shallow metaphors. Talking about the gradual process of changes he hopes to promote in the economy, he said, in the best Gardiner style: "It is like harvesting fruit. It's no use getting it when it's still green". Not even Kosinski would dare this much.

The agricultural rethoric didn't stop there. In a solemn speech to the members of the Council on Economic and Social Development, the spirit of Chance descended again. The President remembered that 15 years ago he bought a jabuticaba* plant and planted it in his small farm, but the tree never yielded any fruit. One day his wife, first-companion Marisa Letícia, appeared with an identical plant, in a vase. Lula thought it was impossible to grow jabuticabas in an apartment, in a vase. But Marisa Letícia believed in the plant and cared for it, watering it frequently. Our Chance's conclusion: "the little jabuticaba tree yields four or five times a year, something this Council can transform itself into, if it so desires."

Delighted with his own words, he went on and concluded that the jabuticaba tree in the farm had not yielded because he didn't know how to care for it, or because the soil had some problem. "She believed more than I did. If we transform the opportunities we have in smaller things, surely the Council will be able to represent the jabuticaba tree in my farm. But, if we think big and take loving care of the millions of Brazilians, men and women, neglected by everyone for many, many years, surely this Council will be able to represent the jabuticaba tree that Marisa planted in the apartment."

More recently, the Planalto's gardening apprentice decided to have a go at fishing. Commenting on the juridical framework of the country, he uttered the sentence: "In fact, any fisherman who is here today knows that big fish take longer to catch with a hook. If Maluf knows how to fish, he knows that catching a little lambari (minnow) is easier than catching a pintado, or a jaú (large Amazon catfish)".

If our Gardiner would stick to his garden, he could even pass as a sage. But the man is fascinated by words and doesn't hesitate even when confronted with History. At the occasion of the inauguration of the new Polibrasil factory, he lavished his erudition: "When Napoleon Bonaparte visited China for the first time, he said that China is a giant and the day the giant wakes up, the world will tremble". The phrase is, in fact, from Napoleon. Pity he never went to China. For a man who has stated that the Bible does not contain any instance of hunger, this visit to China is trifle.

But the government is not enough for our Gardiner. He already had his name put forth for the Brazilian Academy of Leters, as well as for the Nobel of Peace. This administration has barely started. Fun years await us ahead. "Love, with faith and pride, the land where you were born! Child! You will never see a country such as this one".

You sure won't.

• Translator's note: Jabuticaba (myciaria cauliflora)—grape-size, blue-black, pulpy fruit.

Janer Cristaldo—he holds a PhD from University of Paris, Sorbonne—is an author, translator, lawyer, philosopher and journalist and suffers São Paulo. His e-mail address is cristal@baguete.com.br  

Translated by Tereza Braga, email: tbragaling@cs.com

WSWS 2 April 2003

The World Socialist Web Site invites workers and other readers to contribute to this regular feature by emailing informationto: editor@wsws.org

Latin America

Lula government faces massive strike by Brazilian metalworkers.

Over 20,000 Sao Paulo metal workers are entering the second week of their strike to demand a 10 percent wage increase to offset the impact of inflation. The strike is affecting 40 more factories each day. The strikers’ unions, associated with the Forca Sindical (FS) federation, suspended the job action against 76 plants that have signed preliminary “me too” agreements to accept the increase. The FS has expanded the strike to other plants. In some cases—auto parts manufacturers and foundries—the labor federation has declared a truce, pending negotiations, in part to contradict charges that it is being “too radical,” according to FS sources. Another federation, the Central Workers Union (CUT), has indicated that it will not call its members out on strike. Average wages for metal workers are a paltry $250 a month. The Brazilian minimum wage is about $120 a month.

However, observers warn that those employers that cannot increase prices to pay for the wage increases are reticent to settle. Since new firms are added every day, the strike could involve the bulk of Sao Paulo’s 280,000 workers by the end of the week. Consumer prices have increased by more than 9 percent since last November, and 16 percent throughout the year, following a 35 percent devaluation of the Brazilian Real.

Union leader Eleno Jose Bezerra said, “Our goal is to achieve wage increases at 1,200 factories and we are prepared to stay out for a month, if necessary.”

This is the largest strike since President Lula—a former metal worker who led strikes in the 1970s and 1980s—took office promising to improve conditions of the Brazilian working class and to create jobs. The reformist party he leads—the Workers Party, known by its Spanish acronym as the PT—has agreed to implement the demands of the International Monetary Fund and is increasingly coming into conflict with the working class.

Brazilian unemployment increases to 11.6 percent

The same week that the World Bank and other international financial institutions congratulated the government of President Luis Ignacio da Silva Lula for exceeding the austerity goals imposed by the International Monetary Fund, unemployment leapt up in Brazil.

The Brazilian Institute of Statistics and Geography reports that 11.6 percent of the labor force is unemployed, up from 11.2 percent last month, raising fears that Brazil is sliding back into economic recession. Unemployment statistics had shown gradual improvement since February 2002, when the rate was 12.5 percent.