Social apartheid in Brazil

The term social apartheid has been used to describe various aspects of economic inequality in Brazil, drawing a parallel with the separation of whites and blacks in South African society under the apartheid regime.[1][2]

Contents

Origins

According to Maria Helena Moreira Alves, early 20th century inequalities between rich and poor were exacerbated by the differing treatment of urban migrants during and following the Great Depression, when internal migrants, who were mainly descended from Amerindians or African slaves, were given no government assistance or training in adapting to large urban centers, and thus were pushed into a "social apartheid", forced to live in slums and take unpleasant and menial jobs that whites shunned. By contrast, European, Arab and Japanese immigrants were directly assisted by a number of government programs, as well as other benefits.[3]

Racial and class basis

Some consider that these parallels between South Africa during the apartheid era and modern-day Brazil are strengthened by that fact that inequities in the economic and social status particularly affect Afro-Brazilians.[5] According to São Paulo Congressman Aloizio Mercadante, a long-standing member of Brazil's leftist Workers' Party (PT), "Just as South Africa had racial apartheid, Brazil has social apartheid."[1] Journalist Kevin G. Hall wrote in 2002 that Afro-Brazilians trail White Brazilians in almost all social indicators, including income and education, and those living in cities are far more likely to be abused or killed by police, or incarcerated.[1]

Brazil's social situation also has negative impacts on educational opportunities for the disadvantaged.[6] The wealthy live in walled-off gated communities, and the disadvantaged classes do not interact at all with the wealthy "except in domestic service and on the shop floor".[7]

According to France Winddance Twine, the separation of both class and race even extend into what she terms "spatial apartheid", where upper-class residents and guests, presumed to be white, enter apartments buildings and hotels through the main entrance, while domestics and service providers, presumed to be black, enter at the side or rear.[8]

Civil rights activist Carlos Verrisimo writes that Brazil is a racist state, and that the inequities of race and class are often inter-related.[9] Michael Löwy states that the "social apartheid" is manifested in the gated communities, a "social discrimination which also has an implicit racial dimension where the great majority of the poor are black or half caste."[10] Despite Brazil's retreat from military rule and return to democracy in 1988, social apartheid has only gotten worse.[6]

Effects on street youth

Social apartheid is also tied to the exclusion of poor youth (particularly street youth) from Brazilian society.[11] The role of the police in keeping the inhabitants of Brazil's many favelas from impinging on the lives of middle- and upper-class Brazilians is key to maintaining this state of apartheid.[12]

Professors of Anthropology Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Daniel Hoffman describe this discrimination against and exclusion of slum and street children as "Brazilian apartheid", and state that "[t]he hidden and disallowed part of the discourse on Brazil's street children is that the term is, in fact, color coded in 'race-blind' Brazil, where most street kids are 'black'." They write that in order to protect themselves, poor children often carry weapons, and that, as a result, "[t]he cost of maintaining this form of apartheid is high: an urban public sphere that is unsafe for any child."[13]

Tobias Hecht writes that rich Brazilians see the often violent street children as a threat, attempting to marginalize them socially and keep them and the poverty they represent hidden from lives of the wealthy elite. According to Hecht, the persistent presence of these children "embod[ies] the failure of an unacknowledged social apartheid to keep the poor out of view."[14]

Economic effects

Social apartheid is a common theme in studies of the implications of Brazil's huge income disparities,[7] and the term "social apartheid" (and the inequities associated with it) are recognized as a serious issue even by Brazil's elites, who benefit from it:

Despite decades of impressive economic growth, the striking social inequities remain. In a recent survey of 1,500 of the most influential members of Brazil's political and economic elite, close to 90 percent believed that Brazil had achieved economic success and social failure. Close to half viewed the enormous inequities as a form of "social apartheid".[15]

Cristovam Buarque, governor of the Federal District from 1995 to 98, Minister of Education from 2003 to 2004, and currently (Democratic Labour Party) senator for the Federal District argues that "Brazil is a divided country, home to the greatest income concentration in the world and to a model of apartation, Brazilian social apartheid."[5] He writes that that instead of "a spectrum of inequality", there is now "a break between the included and the excluded. In place of inequality, and that has arisen a separation, a social apartheid". He argues that society is threatened by "a gap between the rich and poor so big that in every country there will be separate growth, along the lines of South Africa under apartheid", and that while this is happening globally, "Brazil is its best example".[2]

Political effects

Former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2011) was quoted in 2002 by Mark Weisbrot in The Nation as saying he was "fighting to bring the poor of Brazil out of economic apartheid".[16] His loss in the Presidential election of 1994 to Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1994-2002) has been attributed in part to the fear Lula aroused in the middle class by his "denunciations of the social apartheid which permeated Brazilian society."[17]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ a b c Hall, Kevin G. "Brazil's blacks get affirmative action 114 years after emancipation", Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, May 31, 2002.
  2. ^ a b Buarque, Cristovam, "The Northeast: Five Hundred Years of Discoveries", in Sachs, Ignacy; Wilheim, Jorge. Brazil: a century of change, University of North Carolina Press, 2009, p. 280.
  3. ^ "Internal migrants from Brazil, many the descendants of Indians or African slaves, were totally abandoned to their own endeavors in the city, with no governmental subsidies, no programs of immigration support, no job training, and no housing programs to help the process of adaptation. In short, Brazilian migrants found themselves pushed into a social apartheid in the slums of the city, their jobs limited to those that white would not touch, such as garbage removal, hard construction work, and menial jobs in industry. In contrast, many European and Japanese immigrants came under the auspices of programs organized by their governments which assisted them with the cost of their transportation and of housing, helping them find employment, trained them, and provided a number of other benefits." Alves, Maria Helena Moreira "Sao Paulo: the political and socioeconomic transformations wrought by the New Labor Movement in the city and beyond." In Gugler, Josef. World Cities Beyond the West: Globalization, Development and Inequality, Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 202-203.
  4. ^ Black condition in Brazil
  5. ^ a b Buarque, Cristovam. Lula's Brazil Is Indebted to the World for So Many Broken Hopes, Brazzil Magazine, August 23, 2005.}
  6. ^ a b "In Brazil the military have returned to the barracks but despite their replacement by elected governments, the drift into social apartheid and moral disintegration continues. Those who continue to orientate their educational practices by the principles of popular education now face a new and more complex conjuncture." Ireland, Timothy. "Building on experience: working with construction workers in Brazil" in Boud, David J. & Miller, Nod. Working with Experience: Animating Learning, Routledge, 1996, p. 132.
  7. ^ a b "Few studies, for instance probe the implications of these distressing conditions for social, class, and political relations. In those that do, "social apartheid" is a common theme—a class gulf so wide that interaction ceases, except in domestic service and on the shop floor. Social apartheid is the motive force behind the spread of closed residential communities in São Paulo—one of the few going concerns in an otherwise sluggish real-estate market. According to the advertisements, these communities are enclosed behind walls five meters high, protected by sophisticated security systems, and patrolled by round-the-clock guards who also carefully screen all visitors. Maids and other day laborers are searched every time they enter or exit. Inside are gracious homes and children playing in the street as in any affluent suburb in the United States, except that this is an island in a sea of squalor." Schneider, Ben Ross. "Brazil under Collor: Anatomy of a Crisis", in Camp, Roderic Ai. Democracy in Latin America: Patterns and Cycles, Rowman & Littlefield, 1996, p. 241. ISBN 0842025138
  8. ^ Vasalians often described what can be called a form of spatial apartheid that they encountered in the city of Rio. This racial and class segregation is reflected in the design of apartment buildings in elite neighborhoods. The spatial geography of urban Rio bears some striking similarities to the Jim Crow southern United States. There is a social entrance, reserved for building residents and guests who are presumed to be white, and a service entrance, located at the side or the back of these buildings, for the exclusive use of domestic mads and service providers, who are presumed to be nonwhite or black." Twine, France Winddance. Racism in a Racial Democracy: The Maintenance of White Supremacy in Brazil, Rutgers University Press, 1998, pp. 80-81.
  9. ^ Verrisimo, Carlos. Apartheid in Americas, CrossRoads, December/January 1994/1995.
  10. ^ There also exists a real social apartheid throughout the country which is seen in big cities through the physical separation of mansions and the wealthy quarters, surrounded by walls and electric barbwire and guarded by private armed guards who carefully patrol all entrances and exits. It is social discrimination which also has an implicit racial dimension where the majority of the poor are black or half caste. Lowy, Michael. Brazil: A Country Marked by Social Apartheid, Logos: A Journal of Modern Society and Culture, Volume 2 Issue 2, Spring 2003.
  11. ^ Brandão, Caius. The Landmark Achievements of Brazil's Social Movement for Children's Rights: The Social Apartheid in Brazil, New Designs for Youth Development, v.14-3, Fall 1998.
  12. ^ "The total number of favelas in Brazil is 3,905... Given their proximity to the elite neighbourhoods, they have become a daily nightmate for the predominantly white middle- and upper-class population of Rio. The role of the police, as an ex-minister in the city stated, is to maintain a state of social apartheid 'without the need for the fences they use in South Africa, because they don't come down from the hills, they don't organize themselves.'"Erdentuğ, Aygen and Colombijn, Freek. Urban Ethnic Encounters: The Spatial Consequences, Routledge, 2002, p. 119.
  13. ^ Scheper-Hughes, Nancy; Hoffman, Daniel, "Brazilian apartheid: street kids and the struggle for urban space", in Scheper-Hughes, Nancy; Sargent, Carolyn Fishel (eds). Small Wars: The Cultural Politics of Childhood, University of California Press, 1998, p. 360. ISBN 978-0-520-20918-3
  14. ^ "The perception of street children as a threat is rooted in the contradiction between the desire to keep children socially marginal, docile, and out of view, and the existence — precisely at the center of urban life — of street children who often exercise violence, something normally deemed the province of adults. Street children are a reminder, literally on the doorsteps of rich Brazilians and just outside the five-star hotels where the development consultants stay, of the contradictions of contemporary social life: the opulence of the few amid the poverty of the majority, the plethora of resources amid the squandering of opportunities. They embody the failure of an unacknowledged social apartheid to keep the poor out of view. Hecht, Tobias. At Home in the Street: Street Children of Northeast Brazil, Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 214.
  15. ^ Eakin, Marshall Craig. Brazil: The Once and Future Country, Palgrave Macmillan, 1997, p. 114.
  16. ^ Weisbrot, Mark. As Brazil Goes..., The Nation, September 16, 2002.
  17. ^ "Lula's campaign tactics (his lengthy tours of the country, or caravanas), his obviously proletarian origins and his denunciation of the social apartheid which permeated Brazilian society frightened the middle class. Cardoso received 54 per cent of the vote as compared to Lula's 27 per cent (S. Branford and B. Kucinkski, Brazil:Carnival of the Oppressed. Lula and the Brazilian Workers's Party, London, Latin American Bureau, 19945, p. 4)." Lievesley, Geraldine. Democracy in Latin America: Mobilization, Power and the Search for a New Politics, Manchester University Press, 1999, p. 99, note 63.

References

  • Alves, Maria Helena Moreira "Sao Paolo: the political and socioeconomic transformations wrought by the New Labor Movement in the city and beyond." In Gugler, Josef. World Cities Beyond the West: Globalization, Development and Inequality, Cambridge University Press, 2004. ISBN 0521536855
  • Buarque, Cristovam. Lula's Brazil Is Indebted to the World for So Many Broken Hopes, Brazzil Magazine, August 23, 2005.
  • Buarque, Cristovam, "The Northeast: Five Hundred Years of Discoveries", in Sachs, Ignacy; Wilheim, Jorge. Brazil: a century of change, University of North Carolina Press, 2009, p. 280. ISBN 9780807859278
  • Brandão, Caius. The Landmark Achievements of Brazil's Social Movement for Children's Rights: The Social Apartheid in Brazil, New Designs for Youth Development, v.14-3, Fall 1998.
  • Eakin, Marshall Craig. Brazil: The Once and Future Country, Palgrave Macmillan, 1997, ISBN 0312162006.
  • Erdentuğ, Aygen and Colombijn, Freek. Urban Ethnic Encounters: The Spatial Consequences, Routledge, 2002. ISBN 0415280850
  • Hall, Kevin G. "Brazil's blacks get affirmative action 114 years after emancipation", Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, May 31, 2002.
  • Hecht, Tobias. At Home in the Street: Street Children of Northeast Brazil, Cambridge University Press, 1998. ISBN 0521598699
  • Ireland, Timothy. "Building on experience: working with construction workers in Brazil" in Boud, David J. & Miller, Nod. Working with Experience: Animating Learning, Routledge, 1996. ISBN 0415142458
  • Lievesley, Geraldine. Democracy in Latin America: Mobilization, Power and the Search for a New Politics, Manchester University Press, 1999. ISBN 0719043115
  • Löwy, Michael. Brazil: A Country Marked by Social Apartheid, Logos: A Journal of Modern Society and Culture, Volume 2 Issue 2, Spring 2003.
  • Rocha, Jan. Brazil In Focus: A Guide to the People Politics and Culture, Interlink Books, 2000. ISBN 1566563844
  • Scheper-Hughes, Nancy; Hoffman, Daniel, "Brazilian apartheid: street kids and the struggle for urban space", in Scheper-Hughes, Nancy; Sargent, Carolyn Fishel. Small Wars: The Cultural Politics of Childhood, University of California Press, 1998. ISBN 978-0-520-20918-3
  • Schneider, Ben Ross. "Brazil under Collor: Anatomy of a Crisis", in Camp, Roderic Ai. Democracy in Latin America: Patterns and Cycles, Rowman & Littlefield, 1996. ISBN 0842025138
  • Twine, Francine Winddance. Racism in a Racial Democracy: The Maintenance of White Supremacy in Brazil, Rutgers University Press, 1998. ISBN 0813523656
  • Street, GPS. As Brazil , Sao Paulo, October 29, 2001.
  • Verrisimo, Carlos. Apartheid in Americas, CrossRoads, December/January 1994/1995.
  • Weisbrot, Mark. As Brazil Goes..., The Nation, September 16, 2002.
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