Rio wrote:Well, since Lula was elected for president in 2002, Brazil has been ruled by the Bread and Circuses politic.This politic consists to give food and entreteriment to the people, to they "don't" worry about the corruption.
Oh, it started way before Lula. The basic idea of investing in entertainment to keep the population under control has been around for ages. It's just been intensified recently. But yeah, this idea has been used by pretty much every Brazilian government since the fall of the first republic. Actually, it already happened way before that. It just got worse with radio and television. And now the internet as well, of course.
Populism has been a strong force in Brazil since the Vargas Era. And
Panis et Circensis is almost a synonym for populism, so yeah, you are pretty much correct.
When Lula was elected, the first thing that he did was give money to the poor, every month they receive money. Yes, I'm paying it. As the poor are the majority, they suppor him, he was reelected and on the next election, Dilma (from the same party) was elected. I think that this party will rule for long time. Little opposition. Last year to worsen, they started to apply the quotas system. Guess who is benefited, yes the poor.
It goes beyond Lula. All those social programs started with the FHC administration, basically. And giving money isn't really the problem, since we have a surplus. The problem is how the money is given.
The whole program is there just to mask the real issues in the system. Instead of actually investing in public education and healthcare, in order to improve the quality of public schools and hospitals, they give free money to the poorer family, as if it would make any difference.
I think Alaska has a much better system in place. Since 1976, they have the Alaska Permanent Fund, which administers money acquired from oil royalties. The money is equally divided between all adult citizens. It's a much better system, really. That money simply exists. There is no need to raise taxes for it to come. And everyone has access to their fair share, without the government distributing it.
In Brazil, where the discussion about the division of the the recent oil deposits is quite polemic, I think that's the best system to be adopted. And it's not just oil. There are lots of ore royalties in the mining industry as well. Also in the forestry industry. We could have the money acquired from all those deposits divided equally amongst the local population, instead of going into politicians' pockets.
The only politician who is campaigning to create something similar to the Alaskan fund is Senator Eduardo Suplicy, though. So I'm not really enthusiastic about it.
This politc has been adopted since our military dictatorship. On TV every day, all the time, football,football,football,football. Half of the newspaper, TV newscast and news websites is about football.
Since before the military regime, actually. Populism started with radio, not television. There is a reason why Vargas managed to get his populist speech reach the entire country. Radio appeared here in the late 1920s and early 1930s. With all radionovelas, football match transmissions etc. TV just made it all worse.
But now, in a time when the internet is the main means of telecommunication, things are slowly changing. Access to information has become easy. People started taking active roles. They don't need to read the papers, listen to the radio and watch TV anymore. They can access everything in the web. And they can be active actors as well. There are blogs, twitter, Youtube etc. The age of populism in Brazil has finally come to an end.
Sorry for bad english :/
Your English is good enough, don't worry.
Look that sh*t, our mayor tried to demolish A INDIGENOUS MUSEUM, YES, A MUSEUM to build a parking for Maracanã Stadium. Luckily people occupied the museum and after a long time of tension, the government gave up.
Soulflytribe wrote:Yes, Rio, I agree with you.
However, you are kind of wrong about the Museum. It's a historical building built in 1865, but it's ruined, abandoned and completely destroyed now.
Its main function is to serve as shelter for homeless people, drug dealers and rats.
And no, the Government hasn't given up yet. That building is going down.
It's a historical building that belonged to the Prince Ludwig August of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, husband of Princess Leopoldina, who was the daughter of Emperor Pedro II. As an admirer of indigenous cultures, he signed a contract passing the land to the Brazilian government
ad eternum if and only if it was to be used in that benefit of indigenous peoples. If that agreement is broken, ownership goes back to the descendants of Princess Leopoldina.
I certainly hope the building will not be destroyed. There was a time when our governments actually cared about preserving historical buildings. They should be restoring it and turning it into a museum, not threatening demolition.
This is actually the issue with the
Monroe Palace all over again. An eclectic building, admired by pretty much every serious architect outside Brazil, destroyed only because the President thought it blocked the view of a military facility. And worse, modernist Brazilian architects, like Lúcio Costa, actually supported the move, claiming there should be only modernist buildings in Brazil. That building was the seat of the Senate when the capital was still Rio. And just like that, half a century of Brazilian history was destroyed.
http://www.ceci-br.org/novo/revista/docs2004/CT-2004-10.pdfThere is a huge movement to rebuild the Palace now, but I don't think it will happen anytime soon. Hopefully, that won't happen with the Aldeia Maracanã building, but if it does, I'll be the first one campaigning to have it rebuilt, eventually.
PoFo ethnic party statistics: http://www.politicsforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=8&p=14042520#p14042520
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