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Social apartheid in Brazil

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Template:Allegations of apartheid Allegations of Brazilian apartheid draw a controversial analogy from the treatment of non-whites in apartheid era South Africa to their treatment in Brazil. Those who use the analogy point to Brazilian treatment of the poor, particularly black and "half-caste" Brazilians and street youth, and allege their second-class treatment.

Social apartheid

Economic and race-based

The term "social apartheid" was coined in Brazil to describe the gaps between the rich and poor in Brazil, which were seen as being as great as those found in South Africa during the height of apartheid:

The elite-drive nature of Brazilian society means that those on top have an authority that goes virtually unchallenged. There are white-collar crimes in Brazil but there are no white-collar criminals, for the elite is careful to protect its members. For the residents of the other Brazil, on the other hand, there are no protective barriers between themselves and the hardships of everyday life. The rift between the two worlds of rich and poor is as deep as the one found in South Africa before it started dismantling the apartheid system. For this reason, the phrase "social apartheid" was coined.

This parallel is strengthened by that fact that these inequities in the economic and social status particularly affect Afro-Brazilians. According to São Paulo Congressman Aloizio Mercadante, a leading member of Brazil's leftist Workers' Party (PT), "Just as South Africa had racial apartheid, Brazil has social apartheid." Afro-Brazilians trail white Brazilians in almost all social indicators, including income and education, and those living in cities are far more likely to be abused or killed by police, or incarcerated.

Carlos Verrisimo states that Brazil is a racist state, and that the inequities of race and class are often inter-related. Michael Löwy agrees, stating:

There also exists a real social apartheid throughout the country which is seen in big cities through the physical separation of mansions and the wealthy quarters, surrounded by walls and electric barbwire and guarded by private armed guards who carefully patrol all entrances and exits. It is social discrimination which also has an implicit racial dimension where the great majority of the poor are black or half-caste.

Jan Rocha argues that Brazil's current social apartheid is rooted in its long history of slavery, and the entrenched attitudes that accompanied that slavery:

Economically dynamic, socially Brazil stagnates. The explanation for these riddles seems to lie in Brazil’s history. Slavery lasted longer and was more widespread than in any other country of the western hemisphere. It was only abolished just over 100 years ago. The attitudes that went with slavery were so deeply entrenched they still influence today’s Brazilians. Brazil never had a political or cultural revolution, or any violent rupture of the status quo. Slavery was abolished, but what took its place was not equality and fraternity, but an unofficial system of first and second class citizenship, a social apartheid more difficult to fight than any official system of discrimination. Bits of Brazil are as modern as anywhere in the industrialized world, but the daily reality for many Brazilians is still rooted in the past.

According to Maria Helena Moreira Alves, these inequalities were exacerbated by the differing treatment of urban migrants during and following the Great Depression:

Internal migrants from Brazil, many the descendants of Indians or African slaves, were totally abandoned to their own endeavors in the city, with no governmental subsidies, no programs of immigration support, no job training, and no housing programs to help the process of adaptation. In short, Brazilian migrants found themselves pushed into a social apartheid in the slums of the city, their jobs limited to those that white would not touch, such as garbage removal, hard construction work, and menial jobs in industry. In contrast, many European and Japanese immigrants came under the auspices of programs organized by their governments which assisted them with the cost of their transportation and of housing, helping them find employment, trained them, and provided a number of other benefits.

Street youth

Social apartheid is also tied the exclusion of poor youth (particularly street youth) from Brazilian society. Tobias Hecht writes that rich Brazilians view street children as a threat, and that this perception:

... is rooted in the contradiction between the desire to keep children socially marginal, docile, and out of view, and the existence — precisely at the center of urban life — of street children who often exercise violence, something normally deemed the province of adults. Street children are a reminder, literally on the doorsteps of rich Brazilians and just outside the five-star hotels where the development consultants stay, of the contradictions of contemporary social life: the opulence of the few amid the poverty of the majority, the plethora of resources amid the squandering of opportunities. They embody the failure of an unacknowledged social apartheid to keep the poor out of view.

The role of the police in keeping the inhabitants of Brazil's many favelas from impinging on the lives of middle- and upper-class Brazilians is key to maintaining this state of apartheid:

The total number of favelas in Brazil is 3,905... Given their proximity to the elite neighbourhoods, they have become a daily nightmate for the predominantly white middle- and upper-class population of Rio. The role of the police, as an ex-minister in the city stated, is to maintain a state of social apartheid 'without the need for the fences they use in South Africa, because they don't come down from the hills, they don't organize themselves.'

Reaction

The term "social apartheid", and the inequities associated with it, are recognized as a serious issue even by Brazil's elites, who benefit from it:

Despite decades of impressive economic growth, the striking social inequities remain. In a recent survey of 1,500 of the most influential members of Brazil's political and economic elite, close to 90 percent believed that Brazil had achieved economic success and social failure. Close to half viewed the enormous inequities as a form of "social apartheid".

Cristovam Buarque, Governor of the Federal District from 1995 to 98, Minister of Education from 2003 to 2004, and currently PDT (Democratic Labour Party) senator for the Federal District argues that "Brazil is a divided country, home to the greatest income concentration in the world and to a model of apartation, Brazilian social apartheid." Current Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been quoted by Mark Weisbrot in The Nation as saying "fighting to bring the poor of Brazil out of economic apartheid".

See also

Notes

  1. Ladle, Jane. Insight Guides: Brazil, American Map, 1999, p. 76.
  2. ^ Buarque, Cristovam. Lula's Brazil Is Indebted to the World for So Many Broken Hopes, Brazzil Magazine, August 23, 2005.
  3. Hall, Kevin G. "Brazil's blacks get affirmative action 114 years after emancipation", Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, May 31, 2002.
  4. Verrisimo, Carlos. Apartheid in Americas, CrossRoads, December/January 1994/1995.
  5. Lowy, Michael. Brazil: A Country Marked by Social Apartheid, Logos: A Journal of Modern Society and Culture, Volume 2 Issue 2, Spring 2003.
  6. Rocha, Jan. Brazil In Focus: A Guide to the People Politics and Culture, Interlink Books, 2000.
  7. Alves, Maria Helena Moreira "Sao Paolo: the political and socioeconomic transformations wrought by the New Labor Movement in the city and beyond." In Gugler, Josef. World Cities Beyond the West: Globalization, Development and Inequality, Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 202-203.
  8. Brandão, Caius. The Landmark Achievements of Brazil's Social Movement for Children's Rights: The Social Apartheid in Brazil, New Designs for Youth Development, v.14-3, Fall 1998.
  9. Hecht, Tobias. At Home in the Street: Street Children of Northeast Brazil, Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 214.
  10. Erdentuğ, Aygen and Colombijn, Freek. Urban Ethnic Encounters: The Spatial Consequences, Routledge, 2002, p. 119.
  11. Eakin, Marshall Craig. Brazil: The Once and Future Country, Palgrave Macmillan, 1997, p. 114.
  12. Weisbrot, Mark. As Brazil Goes..., The Nation, September 16, 2002.

References

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