Historically abandoned by the State, Brazil’s poor and working class have seen a bad situation deteriorate as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. More than half a million people have died in little over a year – the second highest count worldwide – thanks in large part to the rightwing government of president Jair Bolsonaro. But while the deaths alone are an immense tragedy it is the pandemic’s socio-economic impact, like the virus itself, that will continue to disproportionately affect society's most vulnerable long after everyone is eventually vaccinated.
As the face of Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, with its breathtaking beauty, vibrant culture as well as its brutal inequality is an ideal microcosm to witness the pandemic’s ripple effects on the country's urban peripheries. From Rio's experience it is clear that, in the absence of an effective State presence, marginalized and vulnerable communities have once again been abandoned. This sentiment is perhaps best expressed in the phrase “nós por nós”, for us and ours: the people must help themselves and each other in order to survive.
Just Another Struggle
Covid-19 was first introduced to Brazil by members of its jet-set upper class after returning home to the country's major cities from trips abroad. Before long, the virus spread from gated beachside condominiums to the peripheries through the maids, nannies and doormen who served their worldly patrons. Rio’s first Covid-19 fatality was a 63-year-old live-in maid, Cleonice Gonçalves, who worked in the exclusive neighbourhood of Leblon – the second most expensive real estate in the country with a Human Development Index greater than Norway's. After returning from a vacation in Italy – just as the country was being gripped by the initial wave of the pandemic – the woman's employer called her back in to work without telling her she was feeling sick. Weeks later, Gonçalves was buried by her only son in the local cemetery next to their house. Unable to self-isolate in tight-knit and often densely populated communities, packed like cattle into an underfunded and dysfunctional public transit system, Rio's poor and working class were practically defenceless. As one local activist put it, “how can you practice proper hygiene when you can’t even afford hand sanitizer?” A common phrase during the first year of the pandemic was that the virus “doesn’t discriminate,” it’ll get you whether you’re rich or poor, black or white. Although true in a vacuum, the reality of a society steeped in racial and economic inequality reveals this to be a shallow appraisal. The majority of Brazilians are black or mixed race but they earn only half the salaries of their white compatriots while being on average 37 per cent more likely to die from Covid-19. Throughout the pandemic an overwhelmingly white upper class retreated into their home office compounds as the majority non-white working class continued to deliver their food, stock their pharmacies, bag their groceries, and clean their homes thereby exposing themselves to a much greater risk of contamination.
The favela is a physical manifestation of the issues of class, race and inequality present in Brazil's major cities. Nearly a quarter of Rio de Janeiro’s residents, some 1.5 million people, lives in one of its thousand or so ‘comunidades’. By no means unique to the country, these cities within a city are an organic response to an acute shortage of affordable housing and a lack of public policies encouraging social inclusion and urban integration. The name favela comes from a prickly flower found in the historically impoverished interior of the northeast of Brazil where, in 1897, soldiers sent to crush a peasant rebellion returned to Rio de Janeiro to find that the newly installed Republican government had broken its promise to provide them with homes in return for their service. The families of these soldiers and ex-slaves occupied what is now known as Providence Hill overlooking the city's old port (where millions disembarked in chains from Africa) beginning a long struggle for equality and civil rights that continues to this day. After a period of industrialization and waves of urban migration, the city fell into a long period of decay after losing its capital status. This coincided with a decades-long military dictatorship which (with the support of the Unites States government) was responsible for the torture, murder and disappearance of tens of thousands of real and imagined socialists throughout Latin America, many of them advocates for a more just and egalitarian society. The favela endures as a symbol of resistance and struggle against a State that has long neglected the rights of its most disenfranchised citizens. International events like the 2016 Rio Olympics, initially touted as an opportunity to tackle these systemic issues, resulted in the mass plunder of public funds, bankrupting a city still littered with abandoned and unused projects more than five years later. There are still not enough homes: the city has a shortage of a quarter million units while over a third of all existing homes lack even basic sanitation. A 2020 census estimated at least twelve thousand people were living on the streets of Brazil’s second largest city. After struggling for years through the worst recession in recent memory, millions across the country have slipped back into poverty and as parents lost their jobs, children lost sight of their future. Difficulty in accessing the internet means online learning is out of reach for the poorest students while some 35 million students nationwide have been out of school for more than a year. Inflation and high unemployment have combined to put Brazil back on the UN’s Hunger Map with the worst levels of food insecurity since 2004. As one of the world’s biggest agricultural producers the problem isn't a lack of food but a population that can't afford it. According to the Brazilian Research Network on Food and Nutritional Sovereignty and Security less than half of the country is eating properly while over nineteen million people are fully starving. While national unemployment at a record 14.7 per cent, in Rio de Janeiro one in five people are out of work. As usual, the poor suffer the most.
In the infamous City of God over half the population of some 36,500 is unemployed, according to a recent study by the research collective Construíndo Juntos (Building Together). The study reveals that the greatest impact of the pandemic on the community by far has been job and income loss (59%), followed by mental health woes (16%) and only then the deaths and health effects of Covid-19 (11%). With 83% reporting difficulty covering expenses there was a 33 per cent explosion in the population classified as ‘low income’ (those making less than R$291 ($50) a month) while extreme poverty (those earning less than $2 USD per day) jumped from twelve to twenty per cent. Even during a global pandemic the State remains practically absent in the community. While 78 per cent of respondents admitted to being helped by local NGOs or church groups, just three per cent reported receiving emergency assistance from the government. It was the community itself, not the State, that came to people’s aid in a time of crisis. During the initial phase of the pandemic the federal government released monthly emergency payments of R$600 (US$115) to the most needy families. But it was hardly enough to keep up with a sharp increase in food prices. The payments were stopped then decreased to between R$150 (US$29) and R$375 (US$72), barely enough to feed a family for more than a week. While private donations helped to fill the gaps, as the pandemic dragged on the initial wave of charity receded with a tightening of purse strings. During the first six months of the pandemic in Brazil over a million US dollars were raised only to fall nearly 90 per cent over the next six months; a clear reminder of the limits of relying on private individuals and businesses to mitigate the consequences of a global crisis.
The impact of the pandemic on Rio's most vulnerable communities is sobering: the city's favelas have recorded over 6,000 confirmed Covid-19 deaths, more than entire countries (162, in fact, including China). Brazil's public health system is the largest in the world but it is chronically underfunded with one of the smallest budgets of any other comparable system. One arm of the State that has received ample support from the current government also operates on the ethos that “a good criminal is a dead criminal”. Police in Brazil kill more than anywhere else in the world and three out of every four people they kill are black. In many communities, heavily armed police patrolling the streets with large calibre rifles and armoured vehicles are the only visible sign that the State even exists. Although the country's Supreme Court barred security forces from conducting operations during the pandemic, police in Rio managed to kill over 800 favela residents in nine months. Their raids which purportedly aim to combat gangs and drug trafficking frequently involve human rights violations and the deaths of innocents (including children and pregnant women). In the first half of 2021 there were over 30 police “massacres” including one operation in the Jacarezinho favela where 27 residents, several of them teenagers, were murdered by police in the deadliest operation in the history of the state. Images on social media of exhausted public health workers warning about the seriousness of the pandemic circulated alongside those of police executions of young black men in the favela, like the one dragged lifeless out of the blood-soaked bedroom of a nine-year-old girl. Frequent and prolonged exposure to trauma involving death, violence and the stress of economic uncertainty leaves little question as to the source of mental health issues that are widespread in Rio's communities, many of which lack the public support infrastructure to combat poorly understood and often stigmatized mental illnesses. In the most recent Construíndo Juntos survey on mental health in the City of God, 88 per cent of respondents said their condition had worsened since the pandemic. Both domestic violence and feminicide, already high, saw sharp increases during the pandemic as unemployment, isolation and a culture of machismo combined into a deadly mix. According to the World Health Organization, Brazil is the most anxious country on the planet and the fourth most depressed per capita. In sheer number of cases, Brazil is behind only China and India, the world's two most populous countries.
The Covid-19 pandemic has further exposed the inequity inherent in a number of so-called democratic societies like Brazil. Rio de Janeiro and the City of God may seem like distant worlds with their own peculiar histories and circumstances, but it would be a mistake to assume that their problems are purely domestic, contained and isolated within their own borders. Our reality is that of an increasingly interdependent global economy which has facilitated the spread of not only the deadly coronavirus but also neoliberalism; what Chilean writer and professor Aldo Madariaga calls “a political project that aims not only to reduce the power of the state but, more concretely, to undermine the efforts of any collective actor.” Throughout its history Brazil, like much of Latin America, has exported its poverty along with its great natural wealth at bargain prices to the benefit of wealthy, largely foreign investors at the expense of the the workers. A ruling class long accustomed to gorging on the obscene privileges gained from this criminal exchange continues to sell out the country’s future in order to maintain its death grip on power. Though the country is rich the people are poor. Brazilian elites continue a centuries-old tradition of barricading themselves from reality through decadence, escapism and self-worship, submerging themselves in deranged fantasies of American-style ostentation. Meanwhile the working classes from north to south continue to share in a common struggle against injustice and inequality. An Uber driver in Toronto is paid more than his counterpart in Rio but both are forced to risk their lives working during a pandemic with few if any protections in the gig economy. In both cities it is impossible for the vast majority of people to own a home or even rent an apartment near job centres. In both countries, a lack of affordable housing translates into an explosion in the number of people living on the streets of major cities, where authorities criminalize poverty through the use of increasingly militarized and violent police forces who value the rights of developers and private property over those of their fellow human beings.
This is the world we live in and it will only continue to get worse unless something drastic is done. The coronavirus as shown the cracks in the neoliberal system more clearly than any time since the Great Recession. Unless something drastic is done, unless our representatives can take some leadership instead of acting like crisis managers at a PR firm, what is coming will be much worse than the most recent pandemic. In the absence of strong, progressive leadership from above it must come from the grassroots, from the people themselves. Below I’ve shared some stories of a few individuals with important perspectives from the ground-level.
Stories
The Struggle Continues
The 2014 parliamentary coup saw the overthrow of president Dilma Rousseff – Lula's handpicked successor of the left-leaning Worker’s Party (PT) – signalling the end of nearly a decade of moderate redistributionist policies. This period saw tens of millions of families lifted out of poverty with the expansion of welfare, access to healthcare, education and credit. But the party was unable to put an end to the deep-seated political tradition of porkbarrel clientelism – the "Brazil cost" of getting things done – and in many ways it was business as usual. As China's economy cooled, so did its appetite for Brazil's raw materials and a lack of economic diversification began to show. At the same time, ongoing investigations into systemic corruption (which Rousseff refused to impede) saw politicians in the crosshairs clamouring to save themselves. In an act of self preservation congress capitalized on public dissatisfaction with the economy, impeaching the country's first female president on a budget technicality. Rousseff was followed by the profoundly unpopular interim administration of Michel "the Vampire" Temer, himself under investigation for facilitating bribes. In the name of austerity, his government made cuts to social spending that resulted in a sharp decrease in the quality of life for all but the country's rich. The 2014-2016 Brazil recession saw a decade's worth of progress against inequality all but erased. Four years later, from his base in Rio de Janeiro, Jair Bolsonaro rode into the presidential palace on a tide of resentment. As an anti-politician and vocal authoritarian he capitalized on widespread anger by disparaging congress and the judiciary, thereby positioning himself as a mythical saviour for the soul of a nation; a conservative bulwark against 'cultural marxists' and a battering ram at the gates of a decadent and corrupt political system.
Throughout the pandemic, Bolsonaro has projected himself as a man of the people by arguing against a lockdown in order to keep the markets open. This was a demand of the investor class that backed him heavily in the 2018 election, embodied by finance minister and neoliberal economist Paulo Guedes (who worked for the rightwing Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet). As Brazil's economy – and its elite – thrive on cheap labour, they made sure the great wheel of consumption kept turning at the cost of workers’ lives. But while the poor struggle to keep their heads above water the rich have never had it so good. During the first year of the pandemic, Brazil welcomed 22 new members to its billionaire's club. Never before has so much wealth been transferred upwards so quickly. When Bolsonaro dismisses the virus as just a “little flu”, unemployed single mothers as lazy, journalists as liars and human rights only "for the right people”, he is channeling the sociopathic tendencies of a detached elite perennially paranoid of surrendering their privileges. The same conservative reactionary forces that gave assent to the 1964 military coup continue to oppose even modest reform in a country that seems to be going backwards. Many, including the president, still refer to the military taking power from a democratically elected government as a "revolution" against a communists. The Brazilian junta were famously spared from being prosecuted for their crimes and were instead granted amnesty. In his vote in favour of Rousseff's impeachment, congressman Bolsonaro made a dedication to the colonel who brutally tortured her while she was in prison. Today, nearly half of all government positions are occupied by active duty soldiers, more than at any time during the dictatorship. "Bolsonarismo", with its core base of support in the military and police, is an expression of repudiation from the reactionary rightwing of Brazilian society towards the country's democratic accomplishments and the progressive society imagined in the 1988 constitution.
The issues Brazil faces are neither unique nor isolated to Latin America. Like the United States and Donald Trump, the underlying sentiments that gave Bolsonaro power will outlast him. The only other country hit harder by the pandemic is itself a continent-sized, regionally distinct and diverse nation plagued by inequality. Both nations' political classes are largely deferent to the interests of industry, corporations and wealthy elites at the expense of a working class facing diminishing returns. Coupled with the festering of old wounds dating back to colonization (Brazil imported more slaves than any other nation, being the last country in the Americas to officially outlaw the institution in 1888) it is a recipe for chaos. Parallels can even be drawn with so-called progressive societies in the European Union and Canada. Though with much lower levels of inequality, both are approaching their own state of “Brazilianization”, a phenomenon the writer Alex Hochuli describes as “the undoing of modernization through its principal process—the coming apart of formal employment and of the rise of precaritization…growing inequality, oligarchy, the privatization of wealth and social space, and a declining middle class.” In many ways the institutions of feudalism, mercantilism and imperialism, rather than disappearing altogether, simply mutated into the current global capitalist economic system. In a cycle of endless consumption fuelled by cheap labour, profits are maximized for increasingly powerful corporations and their wealthy owners who in turn fund political campaigns and steer legislation that serves their own narrow, selfish interests. Short of profound change, the current system is likely to result in deepening inequality, societal unrest and environmental collapse, potentially putting an end to the brief history of human civilization on our planet.
Progress, however one defines it, is never guaranteed. In a democracy it is the product of persistent struggle and sustained participation from everyday citizens, especially members of the working class. But what happens when the State and its democratic institutions are perceived to be dysfunctional, corrupt, or hijacked by powerful private interests? As the pandemic has shown, when people lose trust in the ability of their government to deal with a crisis, cynicism and apathy can give way to rage and nihilism. In desperation, people put what little faith they have left into demagogues while those with few options take matters into their own hands or self-destruct. If we are to avoid catastrophe and start building a society that doesn't just pay lip service to the ideals of justice and equality, we would do well to learn from the experiences of working-class people in places like Brazil, with their resilience and spirit of solidarity embodied by the phrase "nós por nós": the people, together, for themselves.
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Copyright 2021 Andrew Christian Johnson