Brazil's future More personal security, less inequality

Fernando Henrique Cardoso on Brazil's future

More personal security, less inequality

The Economist: Can we start with the way Brazil’s place in the world is changing? Brazil seems to be trying to create a new sort of world power—a “soft power”.

Cardoso: In the last century Brazil’s economy grew very consistently up to 1980. Only Japan grew faster in per-capita terms. From that point on Brazil has been always looking for roles. In Brazilian people’s minds, we are a giant. But our size, for so long it was an illusion. We did not yet have the capacity to play an important role. We were all the time envisaging what we might become.

Brazil aspired to be part of the core group of the League of Nations; after the Second World War Brazil raised that possibility again [during the creation of the United Nations]. Churchill vetoed it, saying that the Americas could not speak with two voices. Churchill was wrong. So we have always aspired to a big role.
In the 19th century, because of the struggle between Spain and Portugal, we were involved in wars in the South, and the Brazilian empire was perceived by our neighbours as a trap. Then the axis moved towards the United States and Brazil became a Republic and much more quiescent—and again hesitated. To what extent would we play a hegemonic role in the region? We never assumed such a role. We preferred to be more loved than feared.

At the end of the last century, the economy became so vigorous, we had established democratic traditions and we rediscovered our cultural particularities. These give us a sense that maybe we can play a role in the area of “soft politics”: not just to be economically strong, but also because of our capacity to accept others, to be tolerant. We love to consider ourselves as open-minded, as a racial democracy. It’s not entirely true, but it’s an aspiration with some ingredients of reality. Because in fact we are more tolerant than several other countries.

Compare the United States and Brazil. Both are countries built on migration, but in Brazil migrants have fused much more, and what has been even more impressive is that the cultures have mixed. We do not have a Black culture in Brazil, and a White culture. It is senseless in Brazil to speak about a Black culture: it is our culture.

And we are very accepting of variety in religion. We are not intolerant—Brazilians are syncretists, not fundamentalists. And because we are a country composed of migration we have contacts with many different parts of the world. Lots of Brazilians are Japanese and maybe more than 10m are Arabs. More than that are Germans; there is no other country in the world with more Italians, in absolute numbers. And all this fused. We never exactly know our descendancy.

Brazil has always been in favour of multilateralism, instead of bilateral relations, and of trying to negotiate, to bridge. Brazilian diplomacy is based on that. We need to look South, to the basin of the Rio da Plata—and to America; both relations with America and the South. There are elements of flexibility in Brazilian culture; they originate with the Portuguese, not only in Brazil.

If you compare the Portuguese and the Dutch in Africa, it is quite different. The Portuguese always had sexual relations with the native people. There is a phrase I like to repeat when I’m in Spain. In the eighteenth century the Marquess of Pombal [Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo; the first minister of the Kingdom from 1750 to 1777] sent a letter to his brother, the viceroy of the North of Brazil, saying, we have to promote the Portuguese who marry indigenous women, because it is better to have half a Portuguese than one Spaniard! They were fighting the Spanish and worried about the demographic question. They felt the children were somehow Portuguese. That was not common in the Spanish world. They kept more separate.

Then in Brazil, the dominant ruling class normally tried to disguise the fact that inequality was so high. One of the ways to disguise differences is to treat people as if they are closer than they really are, to speak as if we were equal. To some extent this is a tricky thing, even if people are not aware of it: it is a way to maintain differences without provoking a strong reaction. The traditional part of the ruling class in Brazil will always be mild, soft, always saying “please”, not ordering. This is not the same now with the new bourgeoisie: they are much more arrogant than the old traditional elite groups in Brazil. They are different; more capitalist.

The Economist: Let’s talk about those social changes. Brazil has changed an enormous amount in recent years.

Cardoso: The landmark was the new Constitution. The beginning was the struggle against the military and the strikes, and the new constitution was the baptism of a new society.

The Economist: It’s still changing. This Republic is young; the Constitution was only written in 1988. You’re working out your institutions still. You are part of that process of institution-building, possibly the most important of all Brazil’s institution-builders.

Cardoso: The sense of institution has always been very present in Brazil, compared with other parts of the New World. The Portuguese monarchy was stable, and we were heirs to the Portuguese crown. All the institutions came here with the king of Portugal and Rio [de Janeiro] became the capital of the Portuguese Empire. And simultaneously this is a highly disorganised society! It is difficult to combine these facts: that we have institutions and simultaneously we are very ready to disobey them. It’s a flexibility—the jeitinho. It is good and bad. In some aspects our legislation is wonderful but the practice is a disaster. For example, we have very strict rules for the behaviour of public servants and politicians, and with respect to public money. And in spite of that corruption is there.

The Economist: Is corruption increasing?

Cardoso: Always we have had some degree of corruption, here and there, but the system was not corrupted. Now the system allows corruption as a normal ingredient. Everyone knows that when you organise a cabinet you have to share power with parties. But you are not sharing power, you are sharing opportunities to have good contracts.

The Economist: Was that not the case for you?

Cardoso: No, no, no. Maybe in one or another case, but now the whole system is based on this. This is novel. It’s a very bad development. In the political culture flexibility has become… not flexibility, but tolerance of crime. You have institutions, you have tribunals—but nobody is in jail.