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group actually middle-class or was it just a step above the poverty line? Class C included those
with an income of 1,200 and 5,174 reais per month. This had created a new mass consumer
market where tax breaks and consumer loans increased enough for a major increase in car sales
and airline tickets; shopping malls, grocery stores/markets became a lot more widespread. Now
the people within this class were not rich but the even the gap between the middle-class and the
poor began to expand. In some areas it was still very poor and unsanitary. In Montonhao, there
was raw sewage in streams right next to the supermarkets and many families still lived in
wooden shacks in the perimeters of the city. Eventually things for Class C began to take a dive,
many became indebted due to severe over spending their new found wealth to the point where
Class C was drawing closer to the poverty line once again (Reid 172-175).
Social policies and public health did see some improvements in this stretch. The average
life span rose over ten years from 1980 to 2010 and the infant mortality rate saw a drastic
decrease. The only problems with some of these public health programs is that they only reached
about one out of every four citizens due to the wage gap. It was clear that Brazil needed more
health care professionals. Being a democratic socialist, Rousseff pushed for a raise in the amount
of doctors in the country so that 1.95 doctors (average) did not take on over 1,000 patients. The
lack of education meant that there were not many local doctors to hire so she had to import over
4,000 new doctors from Cuba to help the deficit (Reid 174-175).
After all the monetary and health problems, education was the next big issue Brazil had
to tackle. New laws in place required state governments to make higher education a priority for
all citizens. The federal governments job was to evaluate the schools. Unfortunately, this was a
big task for Paulo Souza, the education minister for Cardoso. He faced many issues including the
poorer performances in the more impoverished areas, many of the teachers were untutored
themselves and not so qualified to be teaching classes. Many of the schools were in session from
dawn until dusk and it is a challenge to keep the attention span of students from all ages focused
for that long, not to mention there were some that still worked while attending school. There
were a small portion of individuals who would not complete secondary school until the age of
twenty-five. Naturally these schools were in major need of funding to make school way more
manageable to the average student. The government decreed that the education system would
receive royalties from the oil companies to increase their funding which they would use to hire
more teachers to teach smaller classrooms, textbooks, and many other school supplies. With all
of these reforms, Brazil had seen a huge increase in higher education. From the years 2000 to
2010, the number of students enrolled in these higher education schools had increased from 2
million to 6 million. Universities had become a lot more popular with more than 300,000
students attending receiving financial aid. Still, many students drop out due to work restrictions
(Reid 177-180).
Racism still ran rampant throughout Brazil. Many of the most impoverished areas were
black dominated. Blacks were put at disadvantages when it came to health care and education
quality. Much like the United States history, many looked at blacks as lesser human beings and
belonged at the bottom of the barrel. Many tensions still remained from black activists saying
that inequality could only be overcome by adopting U.S policies which in Brazils society would
cause many new problems. The main issues were in the universities and secondary schools. To
combat this, universities had a quota to allow a certain amount of people of different color to
attend if they had passed the entrance exams. The next area where racism was rampant was in
politics. There were not strong black political leadership in Brazil. Rousseff was a strong
feminist who surrounded her cabinet with mostly women to empower them, not a whole lot of
minorities. It was hard to change the outlooks of those who looked down on blacks without a
ground-breaking event that would change their lives (Reid 182-186).
Favelas were the next issue to tackle within Brazil. Favelas were breeding grounds for
poverty and crime. Police forces were not equipped to deal with many of the issues within these
favelas due to lack of funding. Many of the departments were unreformed and under manned.
Many police were untrained as well essentially adding to the crime rate because of all the police
brutality in an attempt to fight back against crime. This all added to the already high prison
population and prison reform was taking a while to catch on (Reid 186-189).
Brazil has been through many troubles to become a middle-class society. Now more
citizens are educated, are living longer, and becoming less poor thanks to the democratic
reforms. Many social problems still exist but many problems are taking a step in the right
direction to solutions to them. Rousseff had really fought for more social justices and had made
vast improvements for all of Brazil.
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