Brazil Today: Agora é Lula

Brazil’s first leftist president in over 40 years, Lula came to power on a tide of promises to cure the country’s major social and economic ills—particularly Brazil’s ever-growing gap between rich and poor, the widest in the world. Since the January 2003 start of his term, “the people’s president” (born in the Northeast and raised in a São Paulo favela) has moved swiftly and often controversially to act on these promises, bringing the country’s socioeconomic optimism to new highs and ushering in a new era of financial promise (evidenced in the omnipresent Agora é Lula—“Now is Lula’s time”—bumper stickers). Affecting everything from military spending to cinematic themes, this interest in Brazil’s global powerhouse potential has colored much of Brazil’s current scene, continuing on even as Lula’s initial popularity started to plummet due to beliefs that he was not doing enough. Highlights of the ongoing “Lula era” include:

FOME ZERO (“ZERO HUNGER”)
One of Lula’s most successful campaigns is “Zero Hunger,” a wildly popular program where government funds and private business donations are used to bring food and supplies to the most economically disadvantaged communities in Brazil. Nearly two million people—most in the rural Northeast, the country’s poorest region—have been helped by Fome Zero’s public-meets-private program, which comes in the form of hunger “credit cards” that give them monthly real allotments with which to buy food. At 2003’s G8 (Group of Eight) economic summit in Evian, France, Lula pushed for a proposed international version of Fome Zero, where funds from the world’s economic superpowers and taxes on international arms trade would be used to assist the world’s poverty-and famine-stricken nations.

WORLD SOCIAL FORUM
Lula’s G8 presentation was but one example of Brazil’s optimism-fueled interest in international affairs and globalization. Globalization’s opponents (many of them based in Brazil) have long protested the economic hegemony of the world’s superpowers, but no gathering has raised as much ire among developing nations as the World Economic Forum (WEF), an elite US$20,000-a-head annual meeting of the world’s richest nations and organizations. In 1998, these WEF-opposing groups decided to formally organize, leading to the 2001 birth of the World Social Forum (Fórum Social Mundial). Held at the same time as the WEF in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, the event is considered the “socially conscious” version of the WEF—a similar global gathering, but this one dedicated to the needs of poorer nations and the world’s social problems rather than its economic successes. As the host of the World Social Forum and one of the developing world’s major economic forces, Brazil has appropriately taken a lead in voicing the WSF’s concerns on the global stage; indeed, in 2003, Lula was the first and only world leader to attend both the WSF and WEF.

TRADE AGREEMENTS
The WSF and other global watchdog groups’ calls to action met with varied success. US President George W. Bush pushed for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), which would equalize trading regu¬lations for the 34 member nations of the Americas. Lula stood out as one of the most vocal and prominent opposers of the FTAA (of whom there are many), making it clear that Brazil’s primary interest is in Mercosul (a.k.a. Mercosur), a trading partnership of South American nations that he believes would benefit the continent’s economy in a much more beneficial and impactive way than the FTAA.

MST (LANDLESS WORKERS’ MOVEMENT)
Not all of Brazil’s socioeconomic mobilization has been on an international scale. Seeking—like Fome Zero—to right social wrongs and bring food to the poor, the Movimento dos Trabal¬hadores Rurais sem Terra (MST) began in 1985 to protest the country’s land distribution laws (which the movement claims are skewed toward the wealthy). Landless farmers in search of work and food began squatting with their families on unused but arable land all over Brazil. Over 70,000 families have been provided for in this illegal manner—making it the largest social protest movement in South America—but the farmers have clashed frequently and violently with the police.

Much of the struggle died down when Lula came to power on a platform of socio-economic cooperation across all barriers, but a recent upswing in MST-related violence was taken by some as a symbol of Lula’s imminent decline in power and effectiveness. Approval ratings for “the people’s president” dropped, with many from his own leftist party decrying Lula as growing increasingly conservative.