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.