Go here to watch Greenwald’s report. (Greenwald lives in Brazil.) There is far more to being a democracy than periodically counting noses in elections. Elections in repressive states are often farces. I make no comment on the recent Brazilian presidential election. Brazilian politics are so byzantine that I, a complete outsider, have no way of judging whether it was an honest election or not. What I do know is that what comes after elections is just as important in determining whether a people are free.
Seems like Brazil made a mistake when it went from relatively benign monarchy to a fractious republic in 1889. Never reached its potential and does not look to do so now.
Donald:
My reading is that the Empire of Brazil was the best managed and most peaceful internally of all the South American states in its time. The monarchy fell because Pedro II spent too much time abroad and his regent/viceroy took the final step of freeing Brazil’s remaining slaves, which irked the big landowners.
Never reached its potential and does not look to do so now.
Brazil has, since 1914, incrementally improved its position vis a vis the affluent countries of the occident. It’s a lagging country, but quit normal for Latin America; real income levels for the broad mass of the population are about 20% of ours, or characteristic of the United States in the 1940s (though with a very different commodity mix). Illiteracy has fallen to about 6% of the population over 15 and < 1% of the population between 15 and 25. The life expectancy at birth (75 years) is about what it was in this country in 1985. The bane of Brazilian life is the extraordinary rate of street crime.
Politically, it has been pluralistic by default, with the exception of the Vargas regime (1930-45) and the first leg of the most recent military regime (1964-74). The early republic (1891-1930) was at the national level run by a cartel of coffee and cattle interests. Politics have been much more competitive in the post-war period. Getulio Vargas hasn’t dominated the Brazilian political consciousness the way Juan Domingo Peron has in Argentina.
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