This post is just a first shot at something that I hope to consider in much more detail in the future - what exactly is the effect of illiteracy or functional illiteracy on the Brazilian population (or, at least the population close to where I live)?
First, some explanation of what one encounters in my neck of the woods, the dry interior of Bahia state:
-Most people, but not including many older adults, can be said to be technically "literate". They can write their names and can read simple sentences.
-Almost no one reads books as a source of amusement. Reading is almost universally considered a horrifying task forced upon you by schools (unless its the bible, in which case it's by the church). One never sees books in public spaces, and not too often in private ones either - almost no houses have a proud bookstand displaying their literature as I often see in the US. No one considers books necessary for transportation - take a two-day bus trip and you'll be the only one that brought a book.
-Negative views of reading seem to approach superstition - reading after you eat can destroy your eyesight, for example. So can reading on the bus. Maybe there's a grain of truth to it, but certainly not in proportion to the concern it causes.
-No one, in the course of an argument or conversation, will ever refer to something they read to make their case. The ultimate source of authoritative knowledge is personal experience. Next is someone you personally know that said so. Third is television (and within television, it's a tough call whether the news or the soap operas are more likely to form opinion on a burning question such as "do foreigners bathe or not?").
-To a certain extent, reading is something you do if there is something wrong with you. In times of depression, if you don't reach for the bible, you probably read self-help books, the only type of literature that appears to be widely available.
-One makes written advertisements (like pamphlets) at his risk - even people that can read the information might find the effort too great to bother, and will chuck it in the street. In my experience trying to advertise a free community movie theater, most people did not achieve an understanding of what the advertisement said without some coaching (and it probably contained a total of 20 words).
I started to think about all this while reading a new book called "The Information", that briefly delves into a study on illiteracy in Central Asia in the 1930s. The researcher found that illiterate subjects could not or would not make "logical" arguments. The author gives the example of the syllogismish question:
All bears in the North are white.
City X is in the North.
What color are the bears in City X?
The literate observer will say "White". The illiterate respondent will say something like "I don't know. I've never been there. I've only seen black bears".
Now, this is quite a bit more extreme than anything I've seen here in Bahia, but it still seemed to get at a kernel of truth about why I find it so hard to relate to people here. "The Information" goes on to argue that the very thought processes of literate and illiterate individuals are quite different, and formal logic and argumentation are basically impossible without literacy.
Typically when a foreigner feels a disconnect in the country he's in, he's likely to simply attribute it to "cultural differences." But what if much of the culural difference he feels in a place like Bahia is in fact attributable to the difference in literacy levels?
I don't know how big the impact is - I'm certain it exists, but I don't know if it's a lot or a little. But I'd consider the following observations as candidates for further exploration:
-Very few people in my experience, including college students, can grasp a complicated or nuanced argument, text-based or not. It's a tough task for anyone, but I'd guess that in more literate countries, there is at least a significant portion of the population that can generally understand what follows logically from a fact and what doesn't. I reckon that population to be very small where I live.*
-There is an astonishing inability to think creatively among most people. When I teach English from a textbook to groups, a good part of the exercises must simply be thrown out, because no more than one in five students can answer a question like "describe your ideal house" or do role playing. They sit silently hoping to avoid the question, or simply say "I don't know". If you give numerous examples, you can probably get them to choose the best example. But few students will come up with an original idea, and it's not because of language issues (I and others have observed creativity issues a thousand times).
-There is a penchant for believing in preposterous conspiracy theories that I think most literate people could discard after a moment's reflection.**
I hope I'm not coming down to hard on the people here. It's worth noting that any population, including that of the US, struggles with the challenges of logic, creativity, etc. And people everywhere love crazy conspiracy theories, and do not like to change their mind.
But even with that in mind, I still propose (as a hypothesis for further consideration, not as a fact) that low literacy rates play a major role in local culture and that, as a correlary, if and when serious functional literacy real takes hold in the region, the culture will undergo some significant changes.
I have a lot more to say (and many more qualification to make, such as "what if it's not literacy per se, but rather a cultural factor that promotes literacy and other related factors at the same time that really counts? Say, and 'educational culture'?"), but more on this later after some research, se deus quiser.
*To give an example from a few days ago, an English student of mine (who is also a college student) had heard some information to the effect that many words related to capoeira come from African languages. She translated this into the contention that all words related to capoeira, including the word "capoeira", come from African languages. I had read a couple books about the subject and knew that the origins are pretty murky and disputed, so I tried to argue that, while its indisputable that many words used in capoeira (say "berimbau")are of African origin, that doesn't mean all are, and the word "capoeira" itself could be an African word, or a Brazilian word based on an African word, or purely a Brazilian word (the word "capoeira" also refers to a portable chicken cage, which may be related to its origins), but probably no one knows for sure. But she appeared to take my qualification as a wholesale rejection of her idea and merely replied by repeating a few times what she'd already said: "All those capoeira words are African words". The anecdote doesn't amount to much, but I feel it's fairly representative of what I find on the rare occassions where I leave "nice conversation mode" and move into "fact-parsing mode".
**An excellent example: a friend told me that he found out that the moon landing was a fraud. How did he know? Exhibit A: the astronaut had a shadow. Exhibit B: the astronaut was stuck to the floor (that is, he was feeling the effect of gravity rather than floating in space).
Now, dear reader, see if 5 seconds is enough to conclude that this is absurd. I'll wait.
As for A, you don't have to know much to see that, if you can see anything, there is light, and if there is light, there is a shadow. If the astronaut wasn't shrouded in absolute darkness (which he wasn't - we can see him in the video), then we know that he must have had a shadow.
For B, most of us learned in school that anything that has mass has gravity, and the moon certainly has a lot of mass. So of course the astronaut is on the ground rather than floating. If I recall correctly, the moon has 1/6 the gravity of earth.
But of course, my argument wasn't very convincing - he'd heard his ridiculous theory from a friend he admired, so logic wasn't likely to get in the way. My friend ended the conversation with "He had a bunch of other proofs too, I just can't remember them now".
quinta-feira, 3 de maio de 2012
domingo, 25 de março de 2012
More on Retirement in Brazil
Previously, I've written about retirement in Brazil. The Economist has a good article taking on the same subject:
http://www.economist.com/node/21551093
http://www.economist.com/node/21551093
quinta-feira, 15 de março de 2012
Brazil's Challenges #2: The End of Easy Credit
Over the last decade, consumer credit has exploded in Brazil. The stabilization of the economy in the 1990's included a precipitous fall in inflation, which allowed consumers and firms to start thinking a bit more long-term: banks, companies and the government have been looking for ways to make up for lost time and lost consumption ever since. One result has been a huge rise in credit. This chart shows the absolute since 2002, taken from the Central Bank - the total 2002-2011 nominal growth was 438%.
The strong credit growth, which has been from 10% to 30% for every year shown here, has stirred plenty of debate about the health of Brazil's economy, especially in the middle of 2011. The blog brazilianbubble.com shares news daily to support its position that the Brazilian economy is headed for a disaster. Major publications like the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek have questioned the ability of Brazilian consumers to manage this debt, and praised strong credit growth as an indicator of economic strength (and the blog beyondbrics refers to the debate here). The layman can be forgiven for not being certain what to conclude, and we can expect public opinion to keep changing by the month.
But whether a bubble is on its way to bursting or not, it is certainly the case that these scintillating growth rates in credit can't go on forever. As of 2010, the World Bank has credit at 57% of the Brazilian economy, about double what it was in 2002. Of course, this is far from outrageous, as the world average is over 100%. But for lower-middle income countries, Brazil is above average, and given new concerns about inflation eating into disposable income in the country, its questionable whether Brazilians can afford serious continued growth in the cost of paying down debt.
No one doubts that credit has played a crucial role in Brazil's recent economic success. Brazil's leaders have defined their strategy as appealing to the "internal market" and developing consumption as an alternative to export-led growth. Consumption has become so crucial as an economic and political tool that a Brazilian political scientist has even attributed voting patterns to which candidate allows them to increase consumption the most. Almost everything, from a semester of English classes to a new stereo is paid in monthly installments - to the point where the displayed price is almost never what you pay up front. Consumers that don't want to pay interest rates (though most Brazilian consumers have falling for the trick of presenting up-front payment as a "discount" rather than avoiding interest) have to ask for the price "a vista". Consumption and credit are fully intertwined in the Brazilian economy.
Though credit growth is slowing, it should still continue to be significant. The Brazilian Central Bank expects growth of 15% in 2012, down from 18% in 2011. In the mid to long-term, responsible credit growth will only become more difficult as the market saturates.
What will replace credit as a major driver of economic growth in Brazil? It's possible that a coming oil economy will step in to fill the gap, or that the country will finally turn to real productivity gains down the line. But we should expect the low-hanging fruit credit has provided for the last decade to be exhausted soon enough, and a more arduous growth strategy based on investment and productivity to be necessary.
The strong credit growth, which has been from 10% to 30% for every year shown here, has stirred plenty of debate about the health of Brazil's economy, especially in the middle of 2011. The blog brazilianbubble.com shares news daily to support its position that the Brazilian economy is headed for a disaster. Major publications like the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek have questioned the ability of Brazilian consumers to manage this debt, and praised strong credit growth as an indicator of economic strength (and the blog beyondbrics refers to the debate here). The layman can be forgiven for not being certain what to conclude, and we can expect public opinion to keep changing by the month.
But whether a bubble is on its way to bursting or not, it is certainly the case that these scintillating growth rates in credit can't go on forever. As of 2010, the World Bank has credit at 57% of the Brazilian economy, about double what it was in 2002. Of course, this is far from outrageous, as the world average is over 100%. But for lower-middle income countries, Brazil is above average, and given new concerns about inflation eating into disposable income in the country, its questionable whether Brazilians can afford serious continued growth in the cost of paying down debt.
No one doubts that credit has played a crucial role in Brazil's recent economic success. Brazil's leaders have defined their strategy as appealing to the "internal market" and developing consumption as an alternative to export-led growth. Consumption has become so crucial as an economic and political tool that a Brazilian political scientist has even attributed voting patterns to which candidate allows them to increase consumption the most. Almost everything, from a semester of English classes to a new stereo is paid in monthly installments - to the point where the displayed price is almost never what you pay up front. Consumers that don't want to pay interest rates (though most Brazilian consumers have falling for the trick of presenting up-front payment as a "discount" rather than avoiding interest) have to ask for the price "a vista". Consumption and credit are fully intertwined in the Brazilian economy.
Though credit growth is slowing, it should still continue to be significant. The Brazilian Central Bank expects growth of 15% in 2012, down from 18% in 2011. In the mid to long-term, responsible credit growth will only become more difficult as the market saturates.
What will replace credit as a major driver of economic growth in Brazil? It's possible that a coming oil economy will step in to fill the gap, or that the country will finally turn to real productivity gains down the line. But we should expect the low-hanging fruit credit has provided for the last decade to be exhausted soon enough, and a more arduous growth strategy based on investment and productivity to be necessary.
quarta-feira, 14 de março de 2012
Brazilian youth and the civil service exam
Globo's Jornal Nacional ran a positive story yesterday about people that made their dreams come true by passing in Brazilian civil service examinations. These are typically people that studied hard, graduated from college (or even two colleges) and even quit their jobs to spend a whole year studying for exams. Many took 6 or even a dozen exams, in as many states, before they finally finished in the top spot.
Civil service exams are a mania in Brazil. In small towns with no major company presence, civil service exams often seem the only real ticket to a high salary, doing something like working in a state-run bank or pushing papers in the social security office. Corruption is high, and Brazilian law accordingly requires the tests as a way to ensure that the candidate will be picked for merit. The interviewees on the news yesterday had acheived their "dreams" with government jobs such as financial auditors of government programs, or as judges or other public law officials.
Then came the salaries these people make. One auditor makes R$12,000 per month, 10 times Brazil's GDP per capita, and is about equivalent to what I or my wife can hope to make in an entire year as teachers. The girl that won the job (after taking six or eight tests) is 24 years old, and probably has done nothing in life beyond get her diploma and study for tests. A certain judge was earning a government salary of R$50,000 per month (yes, per month, not year), a sum similar to the earnings of the US President.
So in a year where minimum-wage earning police officers are fighting for raises, and on a day where the national teachers union is enacting a "paralization" (where they don't teach for a couple days, but without any demands - apparently just a quick flexing of the muscles) to bring attention to their low pay, why does Brazil shower preposterous salaries on officials like auditors? Obviously they should be high-quality employees, to avoid corruption. But these prices are many multiples of what similar people can probably expect in the private sector. And I doubt that coming in first place on an exam of minutia is a good indicator of high productivity at the work place. And given Brazil's labor laws, it's a good bet that almost no one hired by civil service examination will ever be fired if they don't do their job well.
Finally, there's the distortion of incentives. Brazil's best and brightest are dedicating years of their lives to study for tests to become highly-paid paper pushers, in guaranteed jobs where they have no incentive to perform well. Imagine all the better ways Brazil's tax dollars could be spent. And the productive things these apparently intelligent people might do with their time, if the government wasn't dangling obscene salaries in front of them.
Interestingly, Globo went on to interview students at a science fair in São Paulo, where they were hawking inventions such as an electricity-generating rocking chair, a cheap alternative to currently-used prosthetic feet, and a glove that translates sign language to spoken Portuguese, among others. I thought it was a pretty incredible show given the youth of he student participants. The report wasn't meant to contrast with the paper-pushing all stars interviewed before it, but when a student being interviewed said something like "it probably won't make any money, but I think it can help a lot of people", it made the segment on civil service examinations look even more pathetic.
I hope the day comes where the Brazilian dream is no longer passing the civil service examination to become a beaurocrat. Braziilan youth can do better.
Civil service exams are a mania in Brazil. In small towns with no major company presence, civil service exams often seem the only real ticket to a high salary, doing something like working in a state-run bank or pushing papers in the social security office. Corruption is high, and Brazilian law accordingly requires the tests as a way to ensure that the candidate will be picked for merit. The interviewees on the news yesterday had acheived their "dreams" with government jobs such as financial auditors of government programs, or as judges or other public law officials.
Then came the salaries these people make. One auditor makes R$12,000 per month, 10 times Brazil's GDP per capita, and is about equivalent to what I or my wife can hope to make in an entire year as teachers. The girl that won the job (after taking six or eight tests) is 24 years old, and probably has done nothing in life beyond get her diploma and study for tests. A certain judge was earning a government salary of R$50,000 per month (yes, per month, not year), a sum similar to the earnings of the US President.
So in a year where minimum-wage earning police officers are fighting for raises, and on a day where the national teachers union is enacting a "paralization" (where they don't teach for a couple days, but without any demands - apparently just a quick flexing of the muscles) to bring attention to their low pay, why does Brazil shower preposterous salaries on officials like auditors? Obviously they should be high-quality employees, to avoid corruption. But these prices are many multiples of what similar people can probably expect in the private sector. And I doubt that coming in first place on an exam of minutia is a good indicator of high productivity at the work place. And given Brazil's labor laws, it's a good bet that almost no one hired by civil service examination will ever be fired if they don't do their job well.
Finally, there's the distortion of incentives. Brazil's best and brightest are dedicating years of their lives to study for tests to become highly-paid paper pushers, in guaranteed jobs where they have no incentive to perform well. Imagine all the better ways Brazil's tax dollars could be spent. And the productive things these apparently intelligent people might do with their time, if the government wasn't dangling obscene salaries in front of them.
Interestingly, Globo went on to interview students at a science fair in São Paulo, where they were hawking inventions such as an electricity-generating rocking chair, a cheap alternative to currently-used prosthetic feet, and a glove that translates sign language to spoken Portuguese, among others. I thought it was a pretty incredible show given the youth of he student participants. The report wasn't meant to contrast with the paper-pushing all stars interviewed before it, but when a student being interviewed said something like "it probably won't make any money, but I think it can help a lot of people", it made the segment on civil service examinations look even more pathetic.
I hope the day comes where the Brazilian dream is no longer passing the civil service examination to become a beaurocrat. Braziilan youth can do better.
sexta-feira, 9 de março de 2012
FT on the Brazil's low growth
Now that Brazilian growth is entering a second year of low growth, the Financial Times claims that "carnival is over" for the country, which has grown 2,7% over the last year, following 7,5% growth back in 2010. Much of the cause of the problem, the editorial admits, is external - Europe's problems are grave, and together with the strong real, prospects are bad for exports this year. Yet the solutions proposed are all internal, basically reduced to "cut spending to reduce inflation".
The article makes writing editorials for the FT look pretty easy - it seems satisfied with citing a few well-known known facts about the country's economy, tying them together, throwing in a carnaval reference, and calling it a day. Some of the logic is also unclear to me, such as the need to cut welfare to reduce the custo Brasil. The major welfare program, Bolsa Familia, accounts for only 0.4% of the economy, and dozens of studies have it causing significant economic growth, making it a strange place for the FT to recommend taking the axe.
Welfare aside, the article tells Brazil what it already knows (or at least has been hearing for years), and probably isn't willing to do. Even if one really believes that the time to cut spending (rather than focusing on spending better) is now, will Brazil cut spending in a (non-federal) election year marked by an economic slowdown? Nope! I expect the government to prioritize credit and consumption growth, which has been a crucial ingredient in political success for the last decade. This FT editorial is falling on deaf ears.
The article makes writing editorials for the FT look pretty easy - it seems satisfied with citing a few well-known known facts about the country's economy, tying them together, throwing in a carnaval reference, and calling it a day. Some of the logic is also unclear to me, such as the need to cut welfare to reduce the custo Brasil. The major welfare program, Bolsa Familia, accounts for only 0.4% of the economy, and dozens of studies have it causing significant economic growth, making it a strange place for the FT to recommend taking the axe.
Welfare aside, the article tells Brazil what it already knows (or at least has been hearing for years), and probably isn't willing to do. Even if one really believes that the time to cut spending (rather than focusing on spending better) is now, will Brazil cut spending in a (non-federal) election year marked by an economic slowdown? Nope! I expect the government to prioritize credit and consumption growth, which has been a crucial ingredient in political success for the last decade. This FT editorial is falling on deaf ears.
segunda-feira, 5 de março de 2012
Tough job
I occasionally use this blog to say various negative things about Brazilian education. It’s worth taking a minute to look at the reality some teachers face in the classroom while trying to educate deeply underprivileged children.
João is a six-year-old who studies in a public school in the center of a small city in the interior of Bahia. His teacher has already taught some of his numerous older brothers and sisters and has a good idea about his difficult family situation. His family can’t afford to buy new clothes, and few days ago he showed up at school in pants so tight that he couldn’t zip them up. Every time he came back to the bathroom, class had to be stopped so the teacher could help him out. He often has no breakfast to eat before he goes to school. While he’s there, he’s unable to pay attention and spends a good portion of his time yawning loudly to get the teacher to look at him. When the teacher asks him if he knows why he shouldn’t engage in certain proscribed behaviors, he gives a well-rehearsed answer that he learned at home: “Because God’ll punish me.” When the teacher asks him why he needs to get a good education, the answer is equally practiced: “They’ll take away our welfare (Bolsa Família)”.
Recently, he showed up at school bursting with pride because he’d done homework for the first time. But when the teacher looked, he’d only written his name on it, and left the rest of the sheet blank. When the teacher asked why, he explained, “My mom didn’t know how to help me.” The activity had been to write the first letter before each word, along the lines of putting the “A” before “pple”.
It’s tough to imagine that a teacher, no matter how good, would be able to help him keep up with his better-off cohort, fully equipped as it is with breakfasts and literate moms. Long before children set foot in their very first classroom, a crucial part of the difference between private and public education in Brazil has already been put in place.
João is a six-year-old who studies in a public school in the center of a small city in the interior of Bahia. His teacher has already taught some of his numerous older brothers and sisters and has a good idea about his difficult family situation. His family can’t afford to buy new clothes, and few days ago he showed up at school in pants so tight that he couldn’t zip them up. Every time he came back to the bathroom, class had to be stopped so the teacher could help him out. He often has no breakfast to eat before he goes to school. While he’s there, he’s unable to pay attention and spends a good portion of his time yawning loudly to get the teacher to look at him. When the teacher asks him if he knows why he shouldn’t engage in certain proscribed behaviors, he gives a well-rehearsed answer that he learned at home: “Because God’ll punish me.” When the teacher asks him why he needs to get a good education, the answer is equally practiced: “They’ll take away our welfare (Bolsa Família)”.
Recently, he showed up at school bursting with pride because he’d done homework for the first time. But when the teacher looked, he’d only written his name on it, and left the rest of the sheet blank. When the teacher asked why, he explained, “My mom didn’t know how to help me.” The activity had been to write the first letter before each word, along the lines of putting the “A” before “pple”.
It’s tough to imagine that a teacher, no matter how good, would be able to help him keep up with his better-off cohort, fully equipped as it is with breakfasts and literate moms. Long before children set foot in their very first classroom, a crucial part of the difference between private and public education in Brazil has already been put in place.
FHC interview in The Economist
For those that learn about Brazil reading books from the US or the UK (say, The Forgotten Continent by The Economist's Michael Reid, or the duo of books from 2010, The New Brazil and Brazil on the Rise, reviewed elsewhere in this blog), former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso typically comes off quite well. Before entering the presidency, he was the man that solved Brazil's inflation problems. While in office, he made some reforms that have turned out well by some measures, like the privatization of state-run companies has turned tax dollar-draining duds into global powerhouses (including Vale and Embraer). He also started several social programs (that have since been rebranded by his competitors) and got the ball rolling to try to improve Brazil's dismal public education. He spent years abroad after becoming a persona non grata for opposing the dictatorship, and is an accomplished academic with a PhD in sociology.
He had some faults too - there was undoubtedly some level of corruption in his privatizations, and his second term in office was unsuccessful (though perhaps this can be attributed to a lack of sufficient corruption - he didn't buy off congress to support his agenda).
In Brazil itself, evaluations of the former president are far from universally positive. In Bahia, a stronghold of his opponents in the Workers Party, he is detested by a large part of the population, often irrationally so; my wife refuses to use academic books with his name on them, even if they'd be useful for a college paper. As far as I can tell, the chasm between the international view of FCH comes down to two important points that separate Brazil from the US and UK - identity politics as practiced in Brazil, and a culture of training people to use the word "neoliberal" a lot, and with great disdain, about people that try to reform Brazil's bloated government.
In the case of identity politics, Brazilians consider FHC to be arrogant and out of touch with common people. He may well have a fantastic ego, and his professorial demeanor can be offputting to some. Like any politician that wants to survive, he spins things to be favorable to him, and wants to convince the world that his contribution was important. On the other hand, he is probably just as often the victim of spin against him. He once argued that a serious problem in education was the fact that teachers are the lowest-level professionals - that is, that teachers are typically people that can't get a better job. He's completely right, but the statement was turned into an attack on teachers by his opponents, who spun the statement to mean that teachers are a bunch of lazy bums. To this day, he is dispised by a large contingent of Brazilian teachers (explaining the misunderstanding of his statement does nothing to alleviate the hatred).
Personally, I don't care very much for identity politics. As for the charge that FHC gave the country away to foreigners, Brazil is profiting still from changes he and others brought about (but most people are attributing economic growth to Lula instead). So, though I try to maintain a healthy skepticism, and by default consider any Brazilian politician corrupt, I tend to more or less see FHC as the international press does.
Take a look at the current interview with him in the Economist - it's mostly politics with only a bit of information about Brazil's economic development (regarding economic development, the most interesting part is perhaps some quick mentions of the rising middle class in Brazil and how it is more market-oriented and less dependent on government, which might herald changes further down the road). But he comes off as a pretty reasonable guy. He takes credit for Brazil's recent success (such as when he mentions that everyone was afraid of Lula undoing all the progress "he" had made), but he is also anxious for new leaders to step in. He admits to mistakes. He might criticize Lula and other opponents, but he does so reservedly and rationally.
Contrast this with Lula's interview in the New Yorker some months ago (which I summarized in another entry), in which Lula spends the entire time insisting that black is white - his bungles are actually the pride of others, inventions of others never existed, everything before him was doomed to failure.
You probably shouldn't draw too many conclusions about real presidential performance based on their interviews, but then again, if so many people love Lula and hate FHC becase of their personality differences, why can't you make an equally superficial judgement?
He had some faults too - there was undoubtedly some level of corruption in his privatizations, and his second term in office was unsuccessful (though perhaps this can be attributed to a lack of sufficient corruption - he didn't buy off congress to support his agenda).
In Brazil itself, evaluations of the former president are far from universally positive. In Bahia, a stronghold of his opponents in the Workers Party, he is detested by a large part of the population, often irrationally so; my wife refuses to use academic books with his name on them, even if they'd be useful for a college paper. As far as I can tell, the chasm between the international view of FCH comes down to two important points that separate Brazil from the US and UK - identity politics as practiced in Brazil, and a culture of training people to use the word "neoliberal" a lot, and with great disdain, about people that try to reform Brazil's bloated government.
In the case of identity politics, Brazilians consider FHC to be arrogant and out of touch with common people. He may well have a fantastic ego, and his professorial demeanor can be offputting to some. Like any politician that wants to survive, he spins things to be favorable to him, and wants to convince the world that his contribution was important. On the other hand, he is probably just as often the victim of spin against him. He once argued that a serious problem in education was the fact that teachers are the lowest-level professionals - that is, that teachers are typically people that can't get a better job. He's completely right, but the statement was turned into an attack on teachers by his opponents, who spun the statement to mean that teachers are a bunch of lazy bums. To this day, he is dispised by a large contingent of Brazilian teachers (explaining the misunderstanding of his statement does nothing to alleviate the hatred).
Personally, I don't care very much for identity politics. As for the charge that FHC gave the country away to foreigners, Brazil is profiting still from changes he and others brought about (but most people are attributing economic growth to Lula instead). So, though I try to maintain a healthy skepticism, and by default consider any Brazilian politician corrupt, I tend to more or less see FHC as the international press does.
Take a look at the current interview with him in the Economist - it's mostly politics with only a bit of information about Brazil's economic development (regarding economic development, the most interesting part is perhaps some quick mentions of the rising middle class in Brazil and how it is more market-oriented and less dependent on government, which might herald changes further down the road). But he comes off as a pretty reasonable guy. He takes credit for Brazil's recent success (such as when he mentions that everyone was afraid of Lula undoing all the progress "he" had made), but he is also anxious for new leaders to step in. He admits to mistakes. He might criticize Lula and other opponents, but he does so reservedly and rationally.
Contrast this with Lula's interview in the New Yorker some months ago (which I summarized in another entry), in which Lula spends the entire time insisting that black is white - his bungles are actually the pride of others, inventions of others never existed, everything before him was doomed to failure.
You probably shouldn't draw too many conclusions about real presidential performance based on their interviews, but then again, if so many people love Lula and hate FHC becase of their personality differences, why can't you make an equally superficial judgement?
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