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Alex Melchiore

September 7th, 2016


Dr. Tait Chirenje
Brazil: The Troubled Rise of a Global Power Reflection
Chapter 9: The Long Road to a Middle-class Society
Brazil has had a tough go at maintaining a stable government and balance. Outside the
government however much of Brazil was still poor. For example, Alto do Cruzeiro was very low
on the social class. This area of Brazil was home to about 5,000 citizens whose main source of
income came from farming and harvesting. This area was so poor that over thirty-three percent
of its citizens lived in straw huts, their only access to water lied on top of a hill from a public
stand pipe. Malnutrition was very common, infant mortality rates were as high as 200 out of
1,000 births, and many of the citizens were illiterate. Over twenty-five years have passed and
there were major changes: most of the huts had been transformed into small brick houses and the
health services drastically improved (but still were average at best). However, people were still
starving. Since this is mostly a rural community, a lot of their livelihoods were dependent on
their crops and the quality of them. During the El Nino years, many droughts would arise,
severely damaging their chances at harvesting a lot of sugar cane to sell. Thousands of people
remained in deep poverty and still do to this day (Reid 164-166).
Brazils rural north-east has the highest levels of poverty within the country. As
previously stated, most of the factors that allow the area to remain poor are a lack of
infrastructure, lack of education, frequent droughts, and political corruption along with unequal
landholding. Naturally the government has had many attempts to pull the area out of poverty.
Democracy started to take hold and the economy of the entire region began to grow, the
household incomes rose by over 72.8 percent. This initial growth had also done wonders by
attracting many investors to pour more cash into this area, essentially saving it although there
were still improvements to be made. So much had changed for the consumer market that many
businesses started to arise such as shoe manufacturers, car manufacturers, textile factories, and
many other businesses had saw this as a place of opportunity. Even with all this improvement,
the average GDP for the region was still far below the national average (Reid 166-167).
During this time, income inequality had fallen drastically for the first time since the
1960s. As democracy picked up, it was clear that the differences in income were becoming more
and more noticeable. It also made the lack of education more visible to the government with the
average person only having over 8.1 years of an educational background. During Rousseffs
term, she promised to eradicate absolute poverty by the end of her term. Welfare programs
started popping up that would add some improvement to their standards of living. Although these
programs still did not offer an efficient wage in which to eat and live. Most of the deep
impoverished areas lied on the perimeter of the major cities (Reid 167-170).
As Brazil continued its steady climb out of poverty, the individuals who benefited and
steadily rose in income got grouped into Brazils new middle class called Class C. Now was this

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.

Source

Reid, M. (2014). Brazil: The troubled rise of a global power.

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