New Yorker on Brazil

My favorite magazine has written about my favorite subject! But though it's 14 pages long, the content perhaps isn't that interesting. This is in part because much of the content is basic information that one can find anywhere - explanations of what Bolsa Família is, the basic background of Lula and Dilma... all things one would know if they follow Brazil at all (and not necessarily closely).

But what is interesting is how the different politicians interviewed (the main ones are President Dilma, ex-President Lula, and ex-ex-President Fernando Enrique Cardoso). Both Dilma and Cardoso came off as thoughtful, dignified politicians. Lula, on the other hand, comes off as a man desperate to preserve his legacy. After impressing the journalist by personally serving coffee (rather than having a maid do it), he proceeds to move his chair in close and repeatedly jab his index finger into his interlocutor's leg while stressing how stupid people that are not Lula are.

The two most interesting topics he chose to approach were the legacy of the administration prior to his (that is, Fernando Henrique Cardoso's presidency) and his international diplomacy, including Brazil's nuclear deal with Iran, co-brokered with Turkey. Here's what he says about Cardoso:

"If we had continued the Cardoso policies, Brazil would be bankrupt. [...] Brazil worked out only because we changed his policies. The only thing we kept was fiscal responsibility. One thing - that's all. What happened after conquering inflation? We were very active in international policies. Brazil for many years had no policy for investment. No ability to generate jobs. No policies to redistribute wealth."

This is shameful credit-taking and up-is-down rhetoric. Lula knows that in reality he is vulnerable to the charge that he benefitted enormously from the progress his predecessor made, but instead of acknowledging it he doubles down on his critics. But Lula substantially maintained the policies he inherited from Cardoso. His famous Bolsa Familia was made by renaming a previous policy called Bolsa Escola. Though Lula increased the investment, it's still a patent lie that Brazil had "no policies to redistribute wealth". As for Brazil's "ability to generate jobs", what exactly did Lula do to generate jobs? Why should anyone believe that job creation in recent years in Brazil has been due to Lula, and not, say, to China's phenomenal growth, which has buoyed Brazil's export economy? You won't find an answer in the interview, or anywhere else that I know of. Credit where credit is not due.

As for the Iran deal:

"I traveled to Iran, against the wishes and advice of many friends and presidents, and what happened? They signed hte statement on nuclear proliferation, just as the Security Council wanted them to. But to my surprise they decided to keep sanctions, as a punishment for Iran. Why? Because they weren't the ones to get the deal through? That was the first time I had the feeling that jealousy in politics is a very delicate matter."

This is a preposterous version of events. Iran did not sign a meaningful statement on nuclear proliferation. I'm not going to try to explain what really happened in this diplomatic snafu (you can find a good write up here on Slate), but we can sum up pretty easily - Brazil either got taken for a ride by the Iranians or knowingly tried to push off a seriously deficient agreement with Iran as a breakthrough. In the lead up, there was a lot of press about how this showed that newly powerful players could make a huge diplomatic difference and help emerge from the same old stalemate, so it must have felt pretty bad for Brazilians when everyone started pointing out that the agreement was, at the very best, worthless. And instead of trying to learn a lesson from this, a year and a half later Lula is musing that he is not being lauded for this disaster because other heads of state are too petty to recognize his greatness. This is pathetic.

To be clear, I'm not anti-Lula, but I think it's worth being very skeptical of his view of his own presidency. He has maintained a high approval rating as much by very effectively figuring out how to take credit for everything good and blame others for everything else as much as by any genius for policy.

Another thing that stood out, or rather, utterly baffled me in the article:

While I was in Brasilia, I spoke with an economist named Ricardo Paes de Barros, a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He is the undersecretary of a new government agency that is charged with long-term planning, called the Secretariat for Strategic Affairs. He was organizing a workshop, at which the President was scheduled to give the opening remarks, on the politics of the new Brazilian middle class. "This new middle class, they talk a lot about meritocracy," he said, disapprovingly. "They forget that a lot of their success was based on solidarity. Suddenly, now I'm not so concerned about inequality. They start talking about merit. Wow, it's a big problem. People are very concerned. Very, very concerned. It will have very important political implication."

In fact, this is so deeply perplexing to me that I'm going to give it some days to sink in and talk about it more another day.

"Brazilians are rock stars in Miami right now"

The Financial Times reports that the South Florida real estate market, obliterated in 2008, is seeing a rebound due to the influx of rich Brazilians. Brazilians do love Miami. But will it last? My favorite part (because I like disaster) is the last paragraph where the university professor notes that a change in the exchange rate could send the market tumbling again as Brazilian cash in.

The Chevron Oil Spill

Reuters published an interesting article yesterday about a recent 2,400 barrel Brazilian oil spill (by contained) caused by the US company Chevron. For those of us that tend to be skeptical that it will be so easy for Brazil to obtain "developed-country status" within the next two decades, it supplies some interesting information. While the proximate cause was errors in Chevron's calculations of pressure and rock strength, the article argues that the ultimate cause is the vast difficulty involved in tapping subsalt oil supplies.

Though the Brazilian government has tightened restrictions following the 2010 BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, the fact that Brazil is counting so heavily on subsalt oil makes it likely that risky exploration will continue. Brazil has been making good progress since the end of hyper-inflation in the mid 1990s, but the country's political culture makes it difficult to take on some of its most glaring problems, such as education and health. Recent oil discoveries represented a way to take them on without making large sacrifices elsewhere, and the allure of billions to spend on social issues without cutting out other spending on voters is more than any government can resist. So don't expect Brazil to willingly slow down it's own oil development, given the huge payoff leaders can expect.

At the same time, even when moving forward as fast as possible, Brazil can expect to encounter further difficulties. As quoted in the article:

"This spill shows that there is much that we still don't know," said Segen Estefan, a professor of undersea engineering at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

"We have to recognize that we really don't fully understand the risks and need to do much more to not only make drilling safer but find ways to clean up spills. As you go deeper everything gets more difficult."

With things getting further behind schedule and many becoming impatient with the delay in payoff after the 2009 announcements of oil, it seems likely that the pressure to deliver results soon will risk bigger disasters.

Roubini on Brazil

The first time I sat down last year to try to learn something about now-President Dilma, one thing in particular leapt out at me. It was a brief passage that I found in Bloomberg (this was over a year ago, so I don't have the link) to the effect of this:

Reporter: Can Brazil keep growing at this fast pace without major structural reform?
Dilma, looking irritated at someone questioning Brazil's economy: Is Brazil growing now?
Reporter: Yes...
Dilma: Then it can grow.

Obviously, what struck me about it was the incredible stupidity of the presidential candidate (who is an economist), akin to someone in airplane that's out of fuel claiming she can fly for eternity. Dilma has growing on me since that offensively idiotic statement, especially with the ministerial bloodbath that is continually happening. But the issue of structure reform hasn't gone away, and as far as I can tell, probably won't in my lifetime.

Nouriel Roubini made headlines in Brazil today with skepticism about Brazil's future, noting that the few good years that Brazil has been having until now are far from a guarantee of future success. The main weaknesses that he pointed to in Brazil's economy:

-Dependence on commodities - as soon as commodity prices fall globally, Brazil will be in trouble.
-Lack of investment - despite various investment programs (PAC 1 and 2, investments for the World Cup and Olympics), Brazil is simply not capable of investing what it needs to guarantee future growth. This includes mainly education and infrastructure, which have the power to seriously limit progress if they stay the way they are.

On the plus side, all is well as far as energy, and at least the country's financial system isn't capable of destroying the economy for it's own gain.

In the end, pretty typical stuff that you'll read over and over again researching the Brazilian economy. Views on Brazil seem to have cooled a bit over the last year.

The Brazilian Communist Party?

I knew it existed somewhere in the back of my mind, but I had trouble visualizing it until recently - Brazil still has a communist party. It's called PC do B. I'm tempted to believe that they use the abbreviated form to avoid using the word "communist", but one has to think that if they wanted to play down the whole "communist" thing, they'd disband (Brazilians certainly have no problem forming new political parties), or at least stop using this as their logo:



Anyway, they came into the news recently the same way most politicians here do - fighting corruption charges. By now, a corrupt minister trying to hang onto his job isn't news. Probably most of the 36 (yes, 36! there are a lot of allies to please with ministerial positions, so you have to make up a lot of ministries if you are a Brazilian president) ministers are corrupt, but it still takes time for the press to mount enough pressure for them to have to leave their offices, as five have done since Dilma entered office this year. The new minister under fire is the Sports Minister, who is accused of receiving kickbacks from NGOs that received government funding.

Though I probably shouldn't, I am dispensing the whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing, since I just can't fathom a Brazilian minister of sports not using his position to get lots of kickbacks in the run-up to the World Cup. Communist or not, government ministers have one purpose - to funnel public resource to themselves and their allies.

Not Just Bahia

I live in one of the most backwards parts of Brazil. Here in the interior of Bahia, the economy, the educational system, and the local political culture have very little going for them. For that reason, I'm careful to avoid generalizing too much, so I don't do to Brazil the equivalent of characterizing the whole of the US based on what's going on in Louisiana.

Take, for example, local college students in the region. These days, college is starting to become reasonably accessible to the population. People whose parents never dreamed of going to college, and in many cases are functionally illiterate, now have children that are on their way to graduating. The problem is that the region has what to produce a college culture, at least the way I would ideally expect it to produce. No, I am not talking about beer bongs, but the important (even if it doesn't describe the majority) subset of people that exhibit the following:

-genuine curiosity about learning more about the world, and respect for knowledge and people that have it.
-inspiration when confronted with high expectations, and initiative to tackle tough problems without needing to be directed every step of the way.
-a new way of looking at things, and a resistance to the idea that what one has always known is the way things will always be.

At the time of this writing, I would say that in a class of 20-30 people at a given local college or university, 1-2 students can be said to have at least one of those traits. Setting aside some well-meaning but simply unprepared students that are somewhere in the middle, a large number of students in a given classroom seem to see college as a prison, and seek to adjust their time there accordingly. They fight the guards... or professors and administrators... every step of their four years in hopes of realizing the prisoner's ideal: to be present during the required 3-4 hours per day, but without having to actually read or discuss about anything about the subject they are studying, until the day they receive their parole... or diploma (these are mostly private schools after all, and they can't afford to kick out students that don't deserve to graduate). Students that excel and take an interest in the material are routinely mocked by the other students. At a given moment, a large percentage of students in class are texting or surfing the Internet, making fun of the professor or other students, or simply zoning out. Over half the students show up late, return after 30 minutes from the 15-minute break, and complain incessantly if forced to remain in the classroom until the time that class ends. The students care about two things (remember that learning isn't one of them): getting a passing grade (they will - remember, it's a private school); and being marked "present". The teacher who marks students late is justified, but still has to weather an incredible amount of arguing from students, who, if they put 10% of the effort they put into fighting about whether they were present or not into their school work, might learn quite a lot.

Of course, it's in the professors interest to play tough with the students, but the cost to breaking the underperforming equilibrium are high. A single step deemed as unfair (say, a test that they felt was difficult [it probably wasn't], or being tough with absences and participation grades) can launch serious protests among the students. They will scream in the professor's face, they will leave the room in rage (especially ironic if they are protesting the absence policy), and the 2-3 students that actually participate in the discussions will move to the back of the room and pout, leaving the professor to teach, essentially, to nobody.

Summing up? College here is basically a bad high school in the US. (Though to quickly dampen some of my views on students here, we have to remember how bad the education they are offered is before they make it to college, though this is a discussion for many another days)

Anyway, like I said, it's important not to generalize from a limited experience. But sometimes, however, it seems like I might be trying too hard. Here goes an interesting blog post from an American student at a university ranked at #13 in Brazil - incredibly enough, she finds the same problems in what can almost be called an "elite" school in Brazil, with may of the same fantastically low standards found in the interior of Bahia:

I have a confession to make. PUC is harder than Princeton.

Maybe not in terms of workload, or reading difficulty, or even the fact that all my classes are in Portuguese. PUC is hard because it feels like high school. I know that it’s only been two years, but I’d completely forgotten what it was like to be in a classroom and feel that nobody wanted to be there. “You have the right to miss up to 25% of the classes,” one professor explained wearily as students texted in the back of the room. “If you copy from Wikipedia on your midterm, we will find out,” said another. At one point during a Brazilian literature course, the professor was resolutely talking over at least 3 different whispered conversations; in a 4-person history seminar, the benevolent old professor actually had to shush 50% of the class.

PUC is hard to deal with because people don’t seem to care about the classes, or know why they’re there. All right, that’s not true of everyone. The four of us were talking before the history seminar, and one of the students is working 10 hours a night while writing his thesis because he has a one-year-old daughter. A rare few seem genuinely excited about the courses.

But often even I can’t understand why. I’ve witnessed professors come into class and spend the entire time reading out loud. I don’t mean reading prepared notes, I mean repeating the assigned text and occasionally elaborating. My course on Poverty and Social Inequality had a lively discussion the other day, but that’s only because everyone was complaining about the cost of living in Rio. (If there’s one thing Brazilians love, it’s complaining about food prices. Seriously. I swear, I can walk up to any carioca and whine about how much cheese costs at Zona Sul, and we can keep going like that for at least half an hour. Instant friendship.)

“Oh, you should be fine,” one PUC student said when I listed the courses I was planning to take. “Those are all in humanities. So pretty much you just have to show up to a few classes and then do all the readings right before the exam.” I laughed nervously, hoping he was kidding, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.

I might have been under incredible stress at Princeton, reading and writing at least 10 times more, but I thrived on my work. And so did most everyone around me. I’d come out of a really provocative seminar discussion walking on air; here, I have to show up to class, sit for 2 hours, and get my name checked off on the roll. (Yes, they call roll.) Sometimes it doesn’t feel like college so much as afterschool detention. So, yes, PUC is hard.

Gestão de Pessoas class #2

In my second week of administration classes, content related to education and development. A few topics that were presented:

In a discussion about measuring results correctly, we discussed the omnipresent government advertising that solely focuses on the amount invested in each project. This is an interesting topic that probably deserves its own future post. In any case, not only is there an incredible tendency to focus on investment rather than result, the figures are often ingenuous. The example presented in class was that investments in school snacks (yes, school snacks are a big issue in Brazil) rose by a huge percentage during the Lula administration, and this is presented as a government accomplishment. However, the money that goes towards school snacks is predetermined by law as a percentage of certain tax revenue, which is to say that the total investment has nothing to do with the administration. And this leaves aside the fact that it is clearly positive that the government is spending billions more on school snacks each year... if the US government advertised that school snack spending in 2011 was three times what it was in 2003 there would probably be riots. In any case, the example helps to show how Brazil's progress can easily be overblown and people are easily taken in by slick advertising.

Here goes a youtube video in which the Federal Government brags about the enormous increase in snack spending (a 131% increase per student) in a spot shot in a place that is utterly unlike any Brazilian school I've ever seen:



The class included a very long discussion of teaching credentials and motivation. The fact is that the municipal system (at least in this region) is designed with almost no incentives for the teacher. You pay is the result entirely of your education credentials, not your capability in the classroom. Beyond that, the pay scale makes no sense. If you have a quality four-year college degree, your pay raises 30%. If you add a "pos-graduação" (a one year specialist course) on top of that, your pay increases an incredibly 70%. And again, there is no relationship whatsoever between the advanced degree and performance in the classroom. The result? Teachers are incentivized to look for the easiest way to get any college degree and have no incentive (outside of the kindness of their hearts) to improve their teaching technique. Ideally, they will find a private school that offers a pos-graduação that requires a meeting every few months and that needs your money so bad that they can't fail. They get pushed through without learning anything, and the taxpayer is then on the hook for a very high salary for the region, upwards of R$4k per month (more than double what I could ever hope to earn, as a foreigner here that cannot get government work). Many of the worst teachers in the region still have incredibly salaries and will never be fired (and their students will never learn much from them) due to the fact that performance simply isn't measured.

I Take a Class

On Sunday, I took my first class in a pós-graduação (1- or 2-year "specialist" degree program) on management, which includes a good amount of content related to education, since the coordinator/professor was previously a teacher and the secretary of education of the small city of Capim Grosso, four hours north of Salvador. After each class, I plan to share whatever interesting tidbits related to education and development that come up.

From the inaugural class, the most jarring fact was that students in many of Capim Grosso's lower-quality municipal schools typically spend only 2.5 hours actually in class. Now, almost every school in Brazil has relatively little class time, since students go only in the morning or the afternoon (or at night, if you are one of the many working adults that still hasn't finished). But hypothetically, class goes from something like 7:30-12, with a short recess. The reality? Teachers show up after eight o'clock and often don't truly start class until around 8:30. The supposedly 15-minute recess goes on for at least 30 minutes (schools don't use strict bell systems like in the US, so students seem to go back to class more or less when they feel like it). And by the time 11:30 rolls around, there isn't a single teacher still in the classroom. And you can bet that a good portion of those 2.5 hours actually in the classroom are wasted too, depending on the quality of the individual teacher.

Something which I had already known, but was also highlighted in the class: in Brazil, the school principals are political appointees. When a new mayor is elected, or an old mayor is removed due to corruption and a new one enters, the new politician is obligated to hand out jobs to all his supporters that got him there. As a result, the secretary of education is purged and the schools all undergo immediate change in directorship. Practically, this means both that the directors do not necessarily have any compelling technical reason to have the job (such as a skill of any type), and that tumultuous changes in schools that hurt teaching and reduce class time are frequent. Not only is the change frequent, but most politicians consider it obligatory to scupper everything the previous administration did, such as long-term educational planning. The result? Any real planning process is a waste of time. It takes a very long time, perhaps years, to formulate a competent plan for a municipal educational system with full feedback from teachers and the community. By the time you can start putting the plan into practice, the government will probably have changed. In the 12-year school career of one student, there is a good chance that three or more attempts to put a plan into place will come up, but none will achieve a lasting impact.

Brazilian Education in General

I've been writing a bit about education lately for a few reasons:

- It is crucial to Brazil's development. As implied in a few posts a while back, such as the one about Professor Rajan's comments and the Financial Times article about the possible end a Lulismo, at some point the easy gains are going to stop. Where does Brazil look for growth after that? Education is one important response. The Brazilian author of the book A Cabeça do Brasileiro also considers superior education to be Brazil's salvation, all of which merits closer study of what is really going on.
- If and when Brazil really becomes a major energy player, the idea is to use some of the wealth to improve healthcare and education in the country, meaning that things are going to keep getting more interesting.
- Education is bad in Brazil in general and extremely bad (compared to the world overall) where I live, in the interior of Bahia.

I plan to continue writing a great deal about Brazilian education going forward, but before diving in too much, I thought I'd take a step back to see where Brazil is in world education.

Here is an article about Brazilian education from the Economist, from back in December. In it, the author notes that the respected PISA examination tested 65 countries in math, reading and science, and Brazil come in 53rd place. And this is regarded as a serious improvement in a country where only a decade ago, most students didn't finish elementary school and most adults were functionally illiterate. So although the situation is pretty grave, at least it's getting better.

Since the article is concise and the numbers are shocking, I'm just going to post the text directly so readers (if you exist!) can see for themselves more or less the state of Brazilian education:

But the recent progress merely upgrades Brazil’s schools from disastrous to very bad. Two-thirds of 15-year-olds are capable of no more than basic arithmetic. Half cannot draw inferences from what they read, or give any scientific explanation for familiar phenomena. In each of reading, mathematics and science only about one child in 100 ranks as a high-performer; in the OECD 9% do. Even private, fee-paying schools are mediocre. Their pupils come from the best-off homes, but they turn out 15-year-olds who do no better than the average child across the OECD.

One reason the poor learn so little is that a big chunk of school spending is wasted. Since teachers retire on full pay after 25 years for women and 30 for men, up to half of schools’ budgets go on pensions. Except in places such as São Paulo state, which has started to take on the unions, teachers can be absent for 40 of the year’s 200 school-days without having their pay docked. More than a tenth of spending goes on pupils who are repeating grades: an astonishing 15% of those graduating from secondary school are over 25.

More recently, UNESCO ranked Brazil at 88th place in the world in education, behind powerhouses such as Bolivia. The low ranking was covered widely in the press.

In the next weeks (and months and years) I'll be considering further why Brazil ranks so low.

Birth Rates

National Geographic has a nice short article about the fall of birth rates in Brazil. I happen to live in one of the more underdeveloped regions of the country (the interior of Bahia), and while it's also clear here that younger generations have far fewer children than older generations, the extent of the drop on the national level still surprised me. My wife, who has over a decade of experience as a teacher, points to income level as an obvious part of the process: "Go to a private school, and almost all the children are only children. Go to a public school, and none are."

The article pins much of its argument on the power of Brazilian woman, including the phrase "no American today is in a position to call Brazil retrograde on matters of gender equity". Perhaps true of Brazil as a whole, but I'm sure plenty of progressive Americans would have no qualms about calling specific places in Brazil exactly that - I have personally met men here who think it's wrong for women to drive cars, who become uncontrollably emotive when they think about the progress gained for women at the expense of men over recent decades, and who describe themselves as "machista" because they don't understand that not being "machista" is not the same thing as lacking masculinity (or as being gay, as would be the immediate logical conclusion for most...). That may all be pretty anecdotal (and in any case, there are surely plenty of Americans that share similar attitudes), but here's something that I'm certain is sadly widespread here: women who cannot finish high school, go to college, or undertake some other positive activity (say, joining a theater group) because their boyfriends or husbands don't understand it and therefore won't allow it.

But rather than expounding any further on regional or class differences, my real contribution here will be to try to scientifically summarize local women's wisdom on child rearing by loosely translating two comments overheard by my wife on local buses in Senhor do Bonfim:

First:

"The way I like luxury, do you think I'm going to have a kid and have to share everything with him?"

Second (separate incident, not a conversation with the first):

"Having a child is wonderful and brings a house into harmony. I don't understand these people that get married but don't have children. You're going to get married just to stare at your husband's face for ten years?"

(Later on, the same woman is still sharing her philosophy on the family)

"And also, who has the arm strength to carry a child all day long? At 6 o'clock I just put him in front of the TV."

(Colleague asks if isn't bad for the child's development)

"No way! And you have to start doing it early. That way, as they get older they can entertain themselves and don't give you so much work."

Land of No Consequences

The current government federal government, under Dilma, has been on an incredible hot streak for losing its ministers due to corruption. As of yesterday, five ministers have stepped down from their posts since Dilma took power. It's arguably impressive that so many ministers are being forced out of their positions. But possibly even more impressive is the lack of any real consequences that they have to pay in the face of massive corruption, fraud, and theft. Take the case of the minister of tourism that was just discarded, Pedro Novais, as summarized in Folha de São Paulo:

Novais, from Maranhão, eighty years old, has had six terms in Congress. He is not notable for any project, any political articulation, or any great gesture. But he became minister for no reason and now he's becoming more famous everyday.

It's also worth noting that he looks like this:



The reference to the state of Maranhão links him to the notoriously corrupt President of the Senate, Sarney, which explains how he got as far as he got despite not having any accomplishments. Despite having an incredibly salary of R$ 26,700 per month (of which everything is pocket change because Brazilian congressmen don't pay for their own food, transport, housing, or staff), he still got into trouble but repeatedly putting his personal purchases (maid services for some of his homes, a driver for his wife, a motel party) onto the public payroll. And this is after eight subordinates were all forced to leave the ministry due to massive spending fraud (somehow, this didn't effect the minister personally). What will happen to him now that he has finally been forced to leave his post?

Not much. He'll go back to being a congressman, and will continue earning an exorbitant salary. He'll have no responsibilities except to continue to help enrich his political party. He'll probably take some time to think of very elaborate explanations for all the money he stole. He'll make repeated affirmations about the way he was mistreated by the press (if he is anything like his predecessors in leaving the ministry, he may even make grand pronouncements about how he and his party "are not trash to be swept"). He certainly won't go to trial or have to pay in any real way for using his position to enrich himself and his friends.

Some people might say that this light handling of criminals is exclusive only to the upper class. There is some truth to this; a crack dealer would not be forced to step down and merely sell marijuana if he were caught. But there does seem to be a streak of a complete lack of consequences throughout all levels of public administration, including schools.

I hear about a lot of examples through my wife, who is a local city employee as a teacher and educational program coordinator. The city has recently installed a finger-print scanner to register the coming and going of city employees. This, of course, is an incredibly stupid idea. Previous to the scanner, the government couldn't prove whether or not employees were showing up. Now all they need to do is show up at 8am, scan their fingers, and suddenly they're free until it's time to scan out at 5pm, and as far as the government is concerned, it is "proven" that they've been at work, regardless of the reality. According to my wife, some employees are taking advantage of this system in full - they are scanned in as working 40 hours a week, but they only show up a couple of afternoons a week to move some things around and give the impression that they've been working. The result? The projects don't work.

A friend of hers works as a secretary for for a school. Her coworker began to study education in a university, apparently exclusively as a way to reduce his hours (public employees can work part-time and be paid full-time if they are in school). Now, he cuts out of work at noon, leaves everything for his coworkers to do, and probably sits at home and watches TV.

The system benefits incompetent people as well as lazy people. Once you are in, it doesn't matter if you have no clue what you are doing. No one is ever going to force you out of your position as a government employee, as long as there is no PF (FBI) investigation against you. It doesn't matter how inefficient you are personally making government.

There are probably hundreds of examples like these, and they all add up to local governments that simply don't work. Like Pedro Novais at the federal level, every year millions of idiots are put into positions of responsibility because someone has to please a voting bloc. The result is that competent people are left out, people that have no interest at all in the work they are doing end up in important positions (that they either don't bother showing up for or just use to steal money, which is basically the same thing), and half the social projects that the government boasts about end up going nowhere.

In the case of education, this certainly affects the quality of teaching. I understand from friends that teachers in state schools have vast amounts of bureaucracy to deal with if they are sick for a day. But this isn't the case of municipal teachers. And even leaving truancy aside, the quality of teaching inside the classroom of local schools is pretty much unregulated. In bad municipal schools (and there are many), any excuse not to give class will be taken (let's decorate the room today!). You can be an English teacher and not speak a word of English for decades in some schools, and you will be handsomely rewarded for your service.

Finally, this has a remarkable effect on students. As far as I can tell, students are generally not punished for bad behavior. I teach at the college level, and the results of all this are... interesting. In effect, the relationship between teacher and student gets turned on its head. A student that conducts (incredibly loud) conversation throughout class is not rude; but a teacher that asks him or her to be quiet is. A student that doesn't bother to turn in a homework assignment is pretty sure he or she can work out a deal with the teacher (and even students that haven't shown up to class until halfway through the semester will expect their teachers to figure out how to accommodate them). Plagiarism and cheating are widespread because students are not used to paying any consequences. Essentially, students do not expect their grades to reflect what they've learned and how their performance has been on school projects, but rather how well they get along with their teacher. Thus, the teacher can expect a lot of schmoozing before and after class, but not much his students during class. And they'll get pushed through to their diploma, one way or the other.

In the end, merit is pretty irrelevant in many aspects of Brazilian life, especially government service and public education. The individual response to this is only rational, after all - why bother working hard when you'll get a lot more benefits simply by having powerful friends, whether a politician or your teacher?

More naïveté about Brazilian education

In my last post, I argued that the author of A Cabeça do Brasileiro appears to be incredibly naive about the task of providing a college education for all of Brazils students - just offer it, and Brazil will become a first world country.

Right now, I'm starting to sense that this naïveté is fairly widespread. One hint came from today's articles about the ENEM exam (see here, for example), which was originally a test to measure what high-school graduates actually know, but has evolved to become more or less like the US's SAT exams (slowly supplanting a system in which students had to take individual entrance exams for each University they wished to apply to). The article is generally about the fact that public schools send proportionally far more students to take the exam than do public schools, a fact that should surprise nobody. Interestingly, the interviewee in the article gives all the credit to the quality of private school teachers while giving no thought to selection bias (that is, the fact that the smartest, wealthiest people in Brazil will make darn sure that their kids will never set foot in a public school. Or to put it another way, why pay for years and years of a private school education if you aren't even going to make your kid apply to college? If you don't care whether your kid goes to college or not, you probably put him in a free public school).

Here is the part that most interested me though:

There's still another matter that demonstrates the gravity of the situation. Public school students that take the exam in the year they graduate from high school are exempt from the R$ 35 sign-up fee for the federal exam. As the result demonstrate, however, many of the students favored by this policy still missed the test.

"This makes us rethink the idea that just freeing these students from the payment is enough. We need other mechanisms for incentivizing this group of young Brazilians," says Isabel Cappelletti, professor with the School of Education of the São Paulo Catholic University and a specialist in educational evaluations. "The new ENEM, as this new test model became known, was meant to encourage greater democratization of access to higher education, but this still isn't happening."

What? Students that have spent 9 years in educational crapholes (and many of which remain functionally illiterate on the day of their graduation) aren't rushing to college after the government did away with a R$ 35 fee?

The fact that this is news to educational specialists is a bit disturbing. There is a bug in Brazilian policy making, it seems, that convinces people that the problem in its entirety is "access". If you build it or make it free, they will come. This attitude can be seen not only in education, but in culture too. A large part of the Ministry of Culture's strategy for fomenting the arts (and along with it, the economy) is to increase access to things like cinema by shipping cinema equipment to every city. Once the people have access, so the logic goes, they'll fall in love with it and start paying for it in the future. It might have some effect, but I'm pretty certain that somewhere, some official will very soon will say to the press or to himself "This makes us rethink the idea that just giving people free Brazilian movies and equipment is enough to make them prefer Glauber Rocha movies rather than Friday the 13th part IV."

And why do you think Brazilians read a reported 1.4 books per year on average? You guessed it! The problem is access, in several sources I've come across over the months (and which I'll investigate and cite further later). But this is nothing more than incredible wishful thinking. If the problem is access, why have I never seen anyone in the library here in Senhor do Bonfim? If everyone wants books but just can't find them, isn't there a killing to be made by opening a book store around here? Of course not. The problem is not (or at least, not in its entirety) access. I can't tell you in a sentence what the problem is, but anyone who thinks that they can solve a serious educational problem here with one magic bullet is dreaming.

Book Review: A Cabeça do Brasileiro by Alberto Carlos Almeida

I found the book A Cabeça do Brasileiro in my friend's room a few weeks ago. Given that non-self help books are almost impossible to find in the region, and promising books that purport to teach you something about Brazil are hard to find anywhere, I took the opportunity to pilfer it immediately.

The thesis of the book is excellent for anyone wanting to get a clearer picture of what sorts of attitudes, behaviors and beliefs Brazilians as a whole can be said to hold. The book takes as its point of departure the work of the famous Brazilian sociologist Roberto da Matta, whose books provided most of the basic generalizations about Brazilian culture that are still used by anyone writing about the country today. Most famously, he characterized Brazilians, relative to Americans, as hierarchical, paternalistic, and familiar, three characteristics that stand in the way of a fully functioning democracy in the country. His ideas entered the mainstream and perhaps have become clichés - Brazilians can borrow the ideas to explain away pretty much anything with a quick recitation of "well you know, we're a paternalistic society". Author Alberto Carlos Almeida's task in A Cabeça do Brasileiro is to conduct a massive survey (called the Brazilian Social Survey) to figure out exactly to what degree da Matta's ideas can really be found in Brazilian responses to questionnaires.

One colorful example of de Matta's work is the difference between the phrases "do you know who you're talking to?" and "who do you think you are?" The legend goes that in a situation that pits people against each other in a conflict involving special treatment for one but not the other (let's say that someone thinks he's important enough to cut to the front of the line at the post office, rather than waiting behind the other customers), Americans and Brazilians resolve the situation in different ways. In the US, the person and the counter or other customers are likely to cut him down to size with "who do you think you are?" implying that everyone should receive the same, impersonal treatment, and sending him to the back of the line. In Brazil, however, the jerk is far more likely to get his way with "do you know who you're talking to?" and by exploiting some credential (say, a connection to a politician or a police officer) that spells out the trouble that awaits anyone who tries to interfere with him. It might not be that way in 100% of cases, but is this general description of the two countries true enough to be true?

Probably yes. To test if Brazilians are hierarchical, the survey asks respondents questions such as whether a maid should sit on the couch next to the lady of the house upon invitation to do so, or whether she should still watch TV on another chair or in another room in spite of the invitation. Another example is whether the maid should continue to refer to the lady as "madame" even if asked to simply say "you". The test is to determine whether the reader believes that there is an inherent difference between the two people (that is, a hierarchy) that requires that certain behavioral norms be followed even if the boss requests that they not be followed. Though in the case of watching TV most people felt it was ok for the maid to sit on the couch, Brazilians generally showed themselves to be against the use of "you" rather than "madame" for the maid to refer to her employer.

Of course, that situation is a bit difficult to compare to the US today, since no one but waiters in expensive restaurants say "the lady" or "madame" rather than "you", that I've aware of. Questions related to patrimonialism and civic spirit tend to reveal deeper differences. In one example, more than 70% of the population agreed with the phrase "Each person should take care of only what is theirs, and the government should take care of what is public". In other words, common citizens have no business influencing public affairs once they've voted for office holders, a sentiment very unlikely to gain support among 3/4ths of Americans. Though it received far less support, the following phrase is shocking for the fact that anyone, anywhere, could possibly agree with it: "If someone is elected to a public office, he or she should use it for his or her own benefit, as if it were his or her property". 17% of Brazilians agree with statement, which appears to legitimate corruption and is utterly at odds with the idea that public office belongs to the public, with its occupants merely passers-by that are responsible to the people. Brazilian politics is undoubtedly corrupt compared to US politics (which is not to say that US politics is not very corrupt; only that Brazilian corruption and use of office for personal enrichment is quite a bit more shocking, universal and unpunished).

Other useful results, generally expected, include:

-Brazilians typically trust their family members to a great degree, but trust no one else, including friends, neighbors and colleagues (a fact that can be said to inhibit the development of non-family businesses, associations, NGOs, advocacy groups, etc).
-A majority of Brazilians believes that their destiny is in God's hands, and that the influence of destiny is more powerful than their ability to counter it (that is to say, relax and don't blame yourself if you can't achieve what you'd like).
-In perhaps the greatest point of departure between Brazil and the US, Brazilians have a far greater propensity to trust the government (ironically, given its corruption and the same Brazilians' negative evaluation of government performance) over the private sector, and a surprising number of people are in favor of government censorship of the opposition, government price controls and more.
-A majority of Brazilians admit to racial bias indirectly (for example, by answering the question "Which of these men would you want your daughter to marry?" by selecting a white mechanic over a black lawyer or teacher), adding interesting data to the old debate about whether Brazil is a racist or a classist country (why can't it be both?).

Though some individual numbers manage to shock, the thrust of the book is mostly to confirm through rigorous surveys what many people were already saying about the country. But as obvious as some results may seem, probably none of the clichés about Brazil are without their critics, but these critics now have large amounts of survey data straight from the mouths of the Brazilian people to contend with. The book succeeds in painting a picture that is somewhat troubling for Brazilian democracy, given the large number of citizens that do not believe in basic concepts like equal rights/impersonal treatment of citizens, civic spirit (that is, common citizens banding together to solve their problems with or without government help) and the basic idea of public service (as opposed to private enrichment), and so much more. The book, however, goes beyond merely painting a picture of Brazil and tries to take a look at where all this is going and how it might be best resolved. And this is precisely where it starts to get a bit less satisfying.

Now, I don't know a great deal about statistics. But I read Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam, who is listed as one of Almeida's influences in doing the research and writing the book. What I most remember from Putnam is the intense rigor of his statistical analysis (probably everything I understand about what you do and don't know from reading statistics comes from reading Putnam). When there is a potential whole in Putnam's argument, he sorts out as much evidence as he can for and against. He looks at all the possible counter explanations to his hypotheses. For example, if Putnam states that old people trust their friends and neighbors more than young people in 2010, he will then go on at length to make sure we know everything we can about whether this is difference is a result of what generation we are looking at (that is, the characteristic is due to when that person was born, and probably won't change in the person's lifetime) or a difference due to age itself (that is, younger people will start to trust their friends more as they age, and in the future they will come to resemble today's old people). Almeida does not show much interest in these differences in explanation, and appears to attribute almost every difference between young and old people to generation (that is, he believes that the attitudes of today's young people will be the attitudes of tomorrow's old people).

One point made in the book over and over again (in every chapter) is the difference that education level makes. Generally, the attitudes that Almeida mostly characterizes as "backwards", such as low trust in non-family members, high tolerance for corruption, and a worldview strongly influenced by belief in hierarchy and destiny, and trust in the federal government as the solution to Brazil's problems, are associated with low education levels. Time after time, he notes that education is the solution to Brazil's problems. On page 120 he makes a typical comment after a quick discussion of Brazilian fatalism: "Consequently, the obvious recommendation for those that want to combat this mentality is: universalize higher education". Somewhat shockingly (to me, anyway), nowhere in the entire book does he ever entertain the idea that correlation might not be causality in this case. The idea is simple: what if people that don't believe in destiny are more likely to pursue higher education?

It's not a crazy thought, since someone who thinks his future is firmly in god's hands may be less incentivized to work hard to improve his lot. Both backwards thinking and a lack of education could be the result of the same common third factor... perhaps poverty itself, or a cultural value system that would resist the effects of higher education. And it's not a trivial nit-pick either; the Brazilian educational system is already inefficient, with higher spending relative to results achieved than its Latin American neighbors. Yet Almeida doesn't show any interest in actually demonstrating one of the most belabored points of his book, that Brazilian backwardness will be solved by churning everyone through the university mill. Here are a few reasons why he might be wrong that higher education provides a solution to many of Brazil's anti-democratic tendencies:

- Students that come from families with "backwards" value systems may either be unable to absorb new ideas in universities, or perhaps unwilling to.
- The expansion of higher education would invariably result (or actually, is resulting) in a great drop-off in quality of teaching, meaning that diplomas get handed out, but values don't change and nothing gets learned.
- Universalizing higher education means pushing the worst students into the system, without any promise that they'll get something out of it.

And I'm sure there are more concerns we should have here too. I currently teach at a very low-quality higher education institution in rural Bahia, which is basically home to the most "backwards" people that Almeida manages to find in his survey. From my experience, I feel at liberty to speculate that the university experience is not fundamentally changing these students' values. They enter the school wanted to avoid homework, spend their classtime in idle conversation, and fight the teacher at every step when he or she tries to make them understand a new concept. Cultural values (especially the lack of real value of education, which is supplanted by the value of a diploma and a higher salary) prior to their entry in the university appear to prevent these students from obtaining the benefits that Almeida predicts they will have. Thought there may be some positive results of the four years they spend there, I suspect that many will just get their diploma (for it's a private school, and they have to keep pushing the students through to avoid bankruptcy) and run. Yet in Almeida's universe, anyone studying higher education is on the fast track to contributing to an enlightened and democratic Brazil...

At one point, Almeida makes an incredibly naïve statement, in my opinion, to the effect of "Perhaps by the time higher education is universal in Brazil, all American students will have master's degrees." Given that only 30% of Americans have a four-year degree, this is not going to happen anytime soon, and I'm not even sure that an increase in this number is a tendency, much less an eventuality. In my opinion, he is simply out of his depths and needs to do a lot more research specifically about education in order to make any sort of credible claims about how higher education is going to solve Brazil's problems.

The data in the book is extremely interesting and essential for anyone that wants to understand Brazil better. Almeida's text, however, generally ranges from explicit description of the data ("as we can see in the table, 87% of people believe...") to unsubstantiated public policy recommendations. It might make for good controversy here and there, but for the most part, the reader might as well just read over the data and decide for himself rather than to take Almeida's word for it.

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And a final remark I wanted to make, that didn't fit into the steam of consciousness I wrote above; although Almeida presents his analysis as a data-driven test of da Matta's theories, he also starts with a great deal of baggage that make his analysis more than just a come through the objective data. He starts with the assumption (though he is not an economist) that the state is not fundamental to the functioning of the economy and that the liberal economic position is the "correct" one (he might be write in many cases, though not necessarily in all of them). He briefly apologizes for dividing the country into two "halves", one being archaic and the other modern. In the modern half, the typical person is a young, working man living in the capital of a state in the South of Brazil (the most developed region of the country) and has a university degree. In prototype of an archaic Brazilian is an old small-town woman in Brazil's undeveloped Northeast, who is retired or doesn't work and has little to no education. If this book had been written by an American, public condemnation in Brazil probably would have run him out of the country. I salute Almeida's bravery in writing the book with his opinions being stated outright, but I also feel he's gone beyond the call of duty in interpreting his findings through his own, personal lens in some cases.

Rajan on Brazil

University of Chicago professor and ex-chief economist of the World Bank did an interview with Brazilian magazine Veja, published online today. Rajan has distinguished himself by being one of the first to clearly foresee the economic crisis brewing in the United States, back in 2005. He also published the book Fault Lines, which is the book that most aggressively attempts to push the crisis back to an ultimate cause, starting with flattening wages and increasing consumer and housing credit in the 1970s. In the Veja interview, he argues that the panics we are seeing now are the tip of the iceberg, with perhaps a full blown crisis still to come. He also weighs in on Brazil's position. It's nice to hear from him on the subject given his eminence and track record in getting the economy right. But he doesn't provide much that we aren't hearing elsewhere. Among the major takeaways:

Brazil has a currency problem (no secret to anyone here) caused by a reliance on commodities and the vast amount of foreign investment flooding in. Brazil's real is twice as expensive compared to the dollar these days as it was back around 2003, making it ever harder to be competitive in exports. In recent years, Brazil has seen a growing budget deficit due to cheap imports and tough times for exporters. The solution has been to try to limit the flow of capital from abroad, but it is clearly not working. The banking authorities cannot effectively fight the rise of the currency and inflation at the same time.

He alludes to credit threats, and though doesn't get into it much, he makes one very crucial point: once the credit ball starts rolling, it becomes very hard for politicians to stop it once it gets ugly. [quick background: Brazil's position regarding consumer credit is debatable; Brazilians tend to say it is contained and far below US crisis levels compared to the size of the GDP; others have noted that the important metric is not the absolute size of consumer debts, but the cost of servicing them relative to income for much of the population (which comes to something like 25% of income for many people).]

Brazil needs to invest more in infrastructure (again, this is no secret to anyone that has paid attention to Brazil of late). There are severe bottlenecks on roads and ports that increase costs and hurt competitivity. Brazil is required to invest in infrastructure (roads, trains, etc) for the World Cup and Olympic Games, but Rajan sees the effort as insufficient to solve Brazil's problem and make it more competitive. [As a side note, recent corruption scandals have shown that the people responsible for trying to modernize Brazil for the big events are incredibly corrupt. Ministers are being fired right and left, especially the Minister of Transportation, who spent large portions of the budget enriching his family and friends, and then requested more money from the Federal Government to cover the shortfalls his corruption produced.]

Finally, he produces some words of wisdom I hadn't seen before: Brazil needs to get out of this mess not through clever tactics like manipulating exchange rates, but by actually modernizing its manufacturing sector and becoming effective, like Canada and Australia did in the past when their currencies were made uncompetitive by large capital inflows. Not a short term project, and in my view, probably not one that the Federal Government can manage politically due to corruption, a bad education system, and a host of other problems.

Lula's Economic Model to Reach its Limit?

The Financial Times has a new article casting doubts on the ability of ex-president Lula's economic model to continue producing strong growth in Brazil.

As defined in the article, the Lula model is the "combination of social welfare hand-outs, generous pay rises, easy access to credit and stable economic management". His "neoliberal" predecessor having righted the economy in the 90s (which was suffering from hyperinflation), the previously radical Lula left the macroeconomic system as it was and introduced a shift in focus from reforming the state to increasing its size and its welfare expenditures on the poor.

The model has worked well until now. Consumer credit has increased drastically over the last decade, but from levels so small that few have seen much risk in them. The increase in welfare has made life better for millions, and the poor spend this money and help keep the economy spinning. And strong confidence in Brazil's economic policies has brought in more foreign investment.

But there are reasons for concern. While loyal followers are prone to babble on with phrases to the tune of "Lula is a better economist than the economists", many refuse to see the important dose of luck that has benefitted the country in recent years, and the FT article does a very good job of pointing this out. Most specifically, Brazil, whose major export is agricultural commodities, has enjoyed years of high growth due largely to booming demand from China (Brazil's biggest trading partner) and other developing markets. In exchange, Brazil imports an incredible amount of consumer goods from China, households become better equipped with furniture and electronics, and people are satisfied as long as things keep growing. But will the commodity boom last forever?

One concern is the relationship between inflation and the value of Brazilian currency. The real has increased in value constantly over the year, as investors have been attracted by high interest rates. The government cannot reduce interest rates due to fears of inflation, so they rely on taxes and other means to reduce the influx of foreign capital. But this maneuver is no longer successful in limiting the real's rise, and Forbes recently reported that the Brazilian government is unlikely to fight the rise of the real effectively given fears of inflation. This will continue to hurt the competitiveness of Brazilian exports.

The FT points out that the state comprises 40% of GDP, but does not confer the same benefits as similarly expensive governments in more developed countries, because it is extremely inefficient. This is most clearly seen in the case of public works projects. The city of Salvador, for example, boasts the most expensive commuter train system in the entire world, per kilometer of track; it was originally alloted R$1 billion to create 41 kilometers of track, but it ended spending that entire amount (and an entire decade of time) to construct 6.7 kilometers, and even then it was not yet functional. The process involved fraud and cartels in the bidding process as well. It is among the worst managed public works projects in the history of mankind. And preparations for the World Cup seem likely to increase the number of public embarrassments. Not only is the country able to muster relatively little money to finance investment, but when it does it simply cannot target the money without bleeding it out to corrupt bureaucrats and their friends. After some reforms made by the presidents prior, one of Lula's legacies will be a commitment to the fast growth of the state, which has expanding to 24 ministries, up from 13 in the 1990s.

Though credit has not traditionally been seen as a threat, that may be beginning to change. A credit watch agency revealed recently a 22% rise in bad loans, and some suspect a possible credit bubble, though the FT notes that loans are far safer and more frequently collateralized in Brazil, reducing the risk. But even if the result is not a crisis, it is at least worth considering that consumers are going to reach their limit and that credit will falter as a contributor to strong growth.

The article does not go into what lies in store as Brazil transitions into an oil economy. But the major lesson of the recent success of Brazil is worth taking into account: luck propelled Brazil in recent years a lot more than most people seem to think. We'll see how Brazil does when its luck changes.

Portugal Circa 1800: An Incredibly Crappy Country

Brazilians I know have an animosity towards Portugal that I've never understood. It comes out only every once in a while, especially during the World Cup. They get riled up and say things like "That lousy Portugal never invested even a cent in Brazil!"

Which stirs a variety of thoughts. First of all, why would they? Brazil was a colony and Portugal was a tiny country that desperately needed cash to defend itself and stay afloat. Who could realistically expect Portugal to make philanthropic investments in Brazil if Brazil existed as a colony only for the benefit of Portugal? And on the other hand, aren't many of the people complaining the descendants of these same Portuguese? It's like chimps blaming bonobos (to be clear, I am not claiming that Brazilian are similar to chimps) for things not having turned out the way they wanted. And finally, you don't see most sane Americans still grumbling about the British, despite their repression of the American colonists. Does it really make sense to still hate Portugal for Brazil's underdevelopment?

Yes, it probably does. I had no idea how thoroughly crappy of a country Portugal actually was in the colonial era until I picked up a recent book called "1808", a Brazilian history book by journalist Laurentino Gomes about the year in which the Portuguese crown fled Europe under threat from Napoleon and ruled its Empire from Brazil for a spell. Boy, was Portugal crappy! Some relevant points from the book:

--Portugal circa 1800 was the most Catholic country in Europe. 10% of the country's population "belonged to religious orders or remained dependent on monastic institutions in some form". The incredibly hegemony of Catholicism in the country had a number of ill events, such as...
--Portugal was incredibly averse to science and medicine. In fact, the man who was to be prince at the time (1808), the older brother of the prince Dom João, died from smallpox. His mother did not have him vaccinated due to the believe that medicine should not intervene in matters to be decided by god.
--Portugal roundly rejected freedom of thought and/or speech. It was the last country to continue with the inquisition, including barbaric executions of doubters of church doctrine (including witches, Moors, Jews, and the like).
--The country was profoundly illiterate and uneducated. It produced no great thinkers during the time of the American and French revolutions (though the inquisition did kick some writers and poets out). However, the same country had produced innovations in navigation and great adventurers 300 years prior, indicating that it was the country's intellectual climate as dictated by church and state, and not its population, that was at fault.

If it managed its own people in Portugal so badly, you can only imagine the situation in Brazil. The colony was used for the extraction of mineral goods along with tobacco, sugar and slaves, all of which was done so as to bring in as much revenue up front as possible, which did not encourage any innovation of any type. Brazil was divided up into a number of sub-colonies (captaincies), and the governor of Brazil was instructed to avoid allowing each of them to speak to each other. Books were frowned upon and publishing was impossible. Literacy rates were in the single digits. Foreigners, including German explorer Alexander von Humboldt, were looked on with suspicion and official communication to governors warned them to beware anyone that might "excite" the population. The major Brazilian newspaper of the time, the Correio Braziliense, was published from London since it could not be published in Brazil. Furthermore, the emperor bought off the publisher with a stipend in order to guarantee good press. Expressing ideas in public and even meeting in public was an offense that could result in one being shipped off to Africa. A Literary Society was formed in Rio in the late 1700's with official contributions. But soon after it was broken up when suspicion arose that the group, which largely discussed science and literature, was plotting a coup against the monarchy. Several of the suspects (society lawyers and doctors and the like) spent years in prison for participating in the book club.

In sum, the organization of Brazil pretty much revolved around suppressing communication and new ideas, and the compounded total crappiness of the existence of the mainstream Portuguese and Brazilian populations certainly outshone their British and American counterparts. I will no longer question Brazilians when they complain about the bad influence of the Portuguese in Brazil.

Jaguarari through time

The small city where my in-laws live, Jaguarari, gives me the impression that it hasn't changed much over the years. The population is expanding and houses are reaching up the hills somewhat, and the old pastureland behind my in-laws' house has been parceled out to become new houses. But on the other hand, the city has no industry, new houses look the same as old ones, and new businesses are typically more of the same (a new bakery, bar or restaurant that sells the same things as the rest). Since 2007 (the first year I saw it), the traditional Saint John festival in June has hired more expensive bands, but otherwise been the same.

Nevertheless, recent conversations have started to give me a better idea of just how much things have changed. My mother-in-law grew up outside the city, a 90-minute walk over the hills, in a mud-and-stick house in what was at the time a coffee-growing community. The house still stands decades later, but no one lives in it. All the inhabited houses are made of bricks and concrete, and running water is being hooked up now. The few people that still live in the little community (most have moved into the city center leaving only a ) have given up on coffee and focus mostly on bananas, complemented by honey and a few other fruits.

The path between this community and the main part of Jaguarari is fairly lush and hilly, compared with the flat and dry cactus-strewn sertão that surrounds it. But it isn't what it used to be, or so they say. Apparently many plant and animal species have been lost during decades of land clearing for cattle pasture. My mother-in-law told me a story about a young girl she was friends with as a child, who used to also steal her lunch from the pot first, before anyone else had sat down at the table. The girl's mother resolved to put an end to this, and one day put a "dragon" in the stew. Apparently a "dragon" is a bat-like beast (but not a bat, I asked several times to make sure) that is incredibly ugly, but no longer exists in the region. In any case, the girl was severely traumatized by finding it in the stew and never again ate before the rest of the family.

Besides dragons, the region of decades past also included the presence of a shape-shifter, who would play tricks on the children by turning into trees and spying on them, and of course the infamous "cangaceiro" bandits of the 1930's, the most notorious of which was Lampião. Lampião reportedly tried to invade Jaguarari at some point, but the hills closed in to form a wall that kept him out. (Readers should not that there probably isn't a single city in Northeastern Brazil that doesn't have an outrageous story involving Lampião)

As incredible as those stories are, they are easier to believe than a story my father-in-law tells me; that education in Jaguarari is much worse than it was in his time. Given the isolation of the area, the difficulty of imagining how exactly students will apply what they learn in chemistry class, and the fact that, as semi-literate as the region is right now, the young population is certainly far ahead of the older population, I just can't believe this. School attendance rates in his time, which would be the 60s and 70s, were far lower then. I attribute this story to bias or rising standards for education, which make failure more apparent if not more frequent.

As recently as the 1980's, the central area of Jaguarari (which includes a nice and well maintained series of public squares that serve as a general meeting place as well as a space for concerts, sports, and all manner of other events and competitions) was just a rough dirt patch. It still held concerts though, and the excellent northeastern musician Zé Ramalho even gave concerts back then.

Old traditions have died out. My wife tells me about how terrified she used to be during Carnaval in Jaguarari. It was nothing like the famous Carnaval of Rio though -- it was mostly old timers fashioning scary costumes and running from house to house to terrorize kids. Moms would give them a few bucks to go away, and the money would be used to pay for the costumes and keep the tradition going. But once the new generation was hooked on TV and video games, no one is interested in parties or traditions that don't revolve around famous bands playing in the square.

More recently, the region was significantly influenced by a population of Gypsies until the mid-1990s or so. According to my mother-in-law, they first lived in tents outside of town and, as time went on, moved into houses. Either they become richer and richer, or more and more willing to flaunt their enormous wealth. Gold teeth and loan sharking were popular on the one hand, and stealing from the outdoor market on the other. All of it was very recognizable from the international reputation of Gypsies. In any case, around 15-20 years ago they packed up and moved to Juazeiro, a bigger city to the north, reportedly in part because of growing friction with the community -- the governor at the time took measures to make sure that they left. The local graveyard apparently still has lots of luxury goods that have been left behind by the graves of dead Gypsies.

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My temptation is generally to think that things don't change too much in these small towns, and that development is going to be very hard for Brazil's arid interior to achieve. Nevertheless, it's easy to see how much really changes in a generation, for better or for worse. Though the picture that comes to mind when I think of the year 2030 is pretty much what it is now but with more computers and fewer young people (due to declining birth rates and accelerated migration to bigger cities), there must be some surprises in store that I can't imagine.

Vote Buying in Bahia vs Polarization in the US

Here goes a link with a good and brief description of some political aspects of Brazil (or at least the state of Bahia), coming from a paper :
http://iis-db.stanford.edu/pubs/23028/No_119_Varieties_of_ClientelismCDDRL.pdf

The section relevant to Brazil starts on page 24.

Political polarization in the United States at least seems to outdo itself even more outrageously each time around, from the Clinton years to the current budget fiasco. But which is worse for a country's development, a situation of complete polarization, where political change can come only with slow-changing demographics, or complete apathy, where money buys everything?

I realize that the US and the Brazilian state of Bahia don't fit these descriptions exactly, but they are pretty close. Here in Bahia, voters are nakedly for sale. Though strong trends towards Evangelicalism can change this further down the road, for now it appears that very few people care about party affiliation. If they do, it is generally insofar as a party at the municipal level may get more resources if it is aligned with the same party at the state and federal levels. A partial exception to this might be the Worker's Party, which could garner more support among young people due to its association with the extremely popular ex-president Lula. But I believe that even this is limited in the region, and I've never seen almost any evidence of a party platform or ideology during a local campaign. The article cited above notes that in Brazil, only 10% of people are affiliated with political parties. Even the politicians didn't care much for keeping party affiliation traditionally, leaving it to the highest bidder, but new legislation may influence that. For working adults, what matters is not which candidate will adopt policies that will make the city better for their children, but which will put more money in their pockets next year. If this isn't done directly with cash, it's done with government jobs, which in these small towns in the interior account for an enormous portion of the total. Statistics show that "public administration" accounts for over 25% of the GDP of the city of Capim Grosso, for example. And I know that over half that money goes to payroll (the legal limit is 54%, but Capim Grosso is currently over the legal limit). When the mayor changes, so do all the school principals and almost anyone in public administration that the new mayor can remove. The mayor cannot remove employees that entered based on civil service examinations ("concursos públicos"). However, anecdotally I've heard of cases of the mayor or his allies influencing test scores to benefit the sons and daughters of their favored electorates, and any mayor will do what he can to limit the number of "concursados" as much as he can in order to free up political capital.

The prevalence of vote buying almost certainly gives it inertia as well - a do-gooder would have incredible difficulty to buck the system. If all his competitors are offering compensation for their votes, and the voters are demanding it, how can anyone trying to do otherwise compete?

This contrasts starkly with the case in the United States. Issues such as abortion, complete immaterial here, can go a long way towards deciding elections in the US. Rather than being practically obligated to switch positions frequently depending on the political winds as local politicians do here in Brazil (for a councilman to curry favor with a newly-installed mayor, for example), it is almost impossible for an American politician to change his or her mind without significant reputation damage, meaning that it is only done by turning the smokescreen on full-blast on the public, even if the the change of mind is prudent.

So what's worse, party affiliations (and thus voter intentions) that are decided by high school and never revoked regardless of the circumstances, or party affiliations that are signify nothing other than the pool of people that will get new jobs after the election? In either case, arguing the merit of politics is useless, since an American's mind can't change and a Bahian never really cared about the policy in the first place. So I guess it's a draw.

Good times for Brazilian agriculture

Agriculture is already huge in Brazil. Soybeans compete with EMBRAER's airplanes for the top spot in Brazilian exports year on year, and the country is among the world leaders (if not the leader) in chicken and beef exports as well. And now, in addition to all this, comes a few new pieces of news.

For one, today Lula was awarded the World Food Award, given by the aptly named World Food Award Foundation in Iowa. It was founded by the famous Norman Borlaug of the Green Revolution fame. Lula won the award on the basis of the apparent success of initiatives undertaken or expanded by his government, including Fome Zero (literally Zero Hunger), and Bolsa Família (Family Grant), both welfare programs for the very poor. Lula has taken advantage of this to claim that Brazil represents a model for the developing world to follow, and to push his Brazilian choice for heading the UN's FAO.

In addition, Reuters launched a piece arguing that Brazil is poised to become a big deal in cotton and corn, in addition to soy, in which it is already the world's second exporter as a result of China's incessant demand. The article notes that there are technical impediment to reaching this goal, including the eternal infrastructure problem (such as clogged roads and ports), but also fertilizers, which for some reason are not an industry in Brazil. But in the medium term, high prices of these crops are leading farmers to invest in more acreage in the Brazilian savannah.

The analysis suggests that it will take time for Brazil to become a significant player in exporting these crops. But if it does, the addition of two more large exports means more diversification in the country's economy and further cementing of Brazil's status as a new leader in agriculture.

Petrobras sponsors parties, for some reason

In the neighboring city of Jaguarari, Brazilian oil giant Petrobras is sponsoring the famous São João festival. São João is a celebration specific to northeastern Brazil. In the old times, it was a harvest festival. Traditionally, it involves eating certain seasonal foods (oranges and peanuts, in addition to odd parts of the goat) while listening to forró music. Now, it involves wearing a straw hat and listening to music that is nominally forró, but in actuality is mostly (incredibly loud) pop songs about women's underwear, with an accordionist accompaniment. Anyway, the question I wanted to ask was: why is Petrobras sponsoring the party?

The answer is probably politics. Jaguarari is run by the Worker's Party, which also rules at the federal level. Although Petrobras is publicly traded, the Brazilian government is the largest shareholder and the company is accordingly subject to political whims. This means that the company can be used to manipulate politics. In the case of Jaguarari, it seems like it would be tempting to use Petrobras to sponsor parties that will make Worker's Party politicians look good and help them hold onto power. 133 cities in the state of Bahian are benefitting from Petrobras largess this year.

Petrobras is known to engage in politics. According to a recent Reuters article, Petrobras's stock has declined of late supposedly as a result of suspicion of political interference. Politicians rely on big companies of this type to create jobs. The social benefits they create are important for politicians to make sure it looks like they are running the economy well. In certain situations, the long-term health of the compnay and the needs of politicians may collide. When they do, Brazilian politicians almost surely win out.

Book Review: The New Brazil by Riordan Roett

Blessed are we lovers of books about Brazil in English, with both The New Brazil and Brazil on the Rise having come out around the same time in 2010.

But do you need to read both of them?

Having just done so, my answer is: probably not. I enjoyed doing so, partially because reading much of the same information twice in many cases helped me to absorb more of it (I am finally getting the dictators from '64-'85 straight: Castelo Branco, I forget the second one but I know it has "e" between the two last names, Medíci, Geisel, and I forget the last one again. But it's better than it was!). Of course, I could do that by reading the same book twice. And maybe some people can only afford one book. As a result, I am ready to announce the winner. And it is: Brazil on the Rise.

The New Brazil isn't bad. It's a bit longer than Brazil on the Rise, which gives it more time to discuss Brazil's history in more detail, which I certainly appreciated; Brazil on the Rise goes through Brazil's history at an incredibly fast pace. The New Brazil is more dedicated to politics and the Brazilian economy (there are none of the obligatory sections on soccer and carnaval), and I expected the book to seem more sophisticated and leave me feeling like I know a lot more about these things than Brazil on the Rise. But it didn't.

The major issue, I think, is that Larry Rohter, the author of Brazil on the Rise, is a long-time journalist in Brazil. Therefore, he is not only a very experienced writer and good at saying a lot with few words, but he also seems to have spoken to several important people in every important area of political, economic and social life in Brazil. Riordan Roett, on the other hand, is a... (wait while I look this up, because I have no idea)... professor of political science. He is clearly a smart guy. He has certainly read a lot. But his book is more clinical, with no personal touch. The book could have been written by someone who reads a lot and has never left the US, which is definitely not true of Rohter's book And though I figured that wouldn't matter to me before I read the book as long as the information was good, upon finishing it I find that the clinical approach was far less memorable.

The approach matters. Roett goes through Brazil's development in chronological order. Rohter organized his book into a number of arguments. In one section, he is claiming that Brazilians are wrong when they say their country is not racist. In another, he is questioning Brazilian strategy with their newfound oil deposits. He challenges and debates every step of the way. Roett is content to mostly provide a description of where things are going and why. It makes for a good reference, but not a great read.

Juazeiro and Petrolina: intro

About two hours north of where I live are two mid-sized cities separated by the mighty São Francisco River. One, Juazeiro, is in my state of Bahia, and the other, Petrolina, is in Pernambuco. My first introduction to them was unpleasant; Juazeiro is the home of the Federal Police station where I am periodically obliged to turn over various documents and fees. My original foray into Petrolina was made to get a stamp on the copy of my passport that the courthouse in Juazeiro refused to provide. The cities are dry, flat, fairly ugly and significantly hotter than where I live.

In the year 1867, fellow traveler Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, on post as a diplomat from Britain, also visited Juazeiro during a voyage along the length of the São Francisco. His evaluation of the budding attempts at developing the region’s agricultural potential: “Grape growing will hardly be possible in this climate where the hot season is also that of the rains. The same bunch will contain ripe, half ripe, and unripe berries which make a good vinegar.”

Today, despite Burton’s prediction, the Juazeiro/Petrolina region is the country’s largest exporter of fruit, including 95% of grapes and mangoes. The region has established a (terrible Brazilian) wine industry. And despite the many strikes against these cities in terms of climate and location, Petrolina in particular has become very attractive to young people. Young students that I taught English to love to visit – it has a real mall (the only one within hundreds of kilometers) with a movie theater, as well as a McDonald’s. And the economic opportunities for adults are plentiful as well, making Petrolina one of few cities in the Brazilian interior that sees more people immigrating than leaving. And it is all, apparently, due to intelligent use of irrigation.

Movie Review: Lula, The Son of Brazil

This movie is a bit old already, having come out in the beginning of 2010. Nevertheless, I recently found myself recalling it, and asking myself, "Why did I hate that movie so much?" I was inspired to ramble in this blog while looking for an answer.

It’s not because I hate Lula. I became a pretty big fan after I read about him in the book A Death in Brazil as a college student, before he became president. These days, I might consider his accomplishments as president to be a bit overrated – but certainly not enough so to explain the revulsion I experienced while watching this movie. And besides, plenty of people that hate Lula liked the movie.

The acting might be part of it. But not necessarily because of the actors themselves. The actor who plays Lula’s father, is pretty terrible here. Yet, he comes across to me as an excellent actor in other films I’ve seen him in. It may be related to the fact that the role he plays mostly calls for him to stagger, bottle in hand, after Lula (in his boyhood form) and try to hit him, while bellowing “You can’t study! You have to work! You have to worrrrrrrrrk!” The mom has a similar lack of depth, though she is the polar opposite. Most of her utterances seem suspiciously designed for posterity, and are mostly very brief monologues about how she takes care of her own children (despite being poor!) or bromides about work first, fun later.

But even then, there are plenty of movies that have shallow, two-dimensional characters but that I enjoyed anyway. Like High School Musical II.

The plot, perhaps? Now we are getting closer to the mark. The story is told as a series of vignettes from Lula’s life, starting with his birth in Northeastern Brazil, jumping to his journey south to São Paulo, then to his childhood as an outrageously cute orange seller in São Paulo, them to the time that he had to borrow a jacket to get into a movie theater, then to the time his house flooded, then to the time he passed a test to become a trainee as a lathe operator, then to the time…. ZZZZZZZZZZZ

There in rarely a compelling reason for a scene to exist other than to show that “this really happened”. However, for perhaps the first time in movie history, a film has managed to show objectively pretty interesting information in a way that becomes less interesting than the same information written on a piece of paper.

The film is thin on conflict. Lula himself resolves his “conflict” with his father by moving out of bottle’s reach of him early on in the film. His relationship with his mother and other family members is perfect. Every negative element in his life, if the film is to be believed, is completely exogenous. Challenges come in the form of very evil people (his father and the police under the influence of the dictatorship), floods, childhood poverty, dictators, disease and death. And Lula can overcome all of this because his mother taught him to be pure of heart.

Tellingly, the film ends after the formation of the Worker’s Party, but before he becomes further involved in politics, and long before his history of presidential campaigning. The conflicts in his life that I am most curious about, regarding the moral and philosophical compromises he had to make to go from leftist radical out of power to a president that maintained intact the economic policy of his predecessor once in power, are conveniently left out, as are the scandals that plagued the end of his first term. In the end, Lula gets the same treatment as his parents – he is reduced to just about the most easily understood essence possible. The problem is that he is a fascinating, complex, and difficult to understand phenomenon.

What’s left? A series of out-of-context telenovela scenes that create a myth about how a poor Brazilian can go the distance by listening to mom. A good recipe for popular success in Brazil I suppose, but not a good movie.