Starting Anew Upon an Unsteady Past: Brazil's New Hope

Modern day Brazil is a land of industry made up of urban towns and citizens longing for the opportunity to work hard and prosper. Liberalism has become widespread across the nation as Lula and the Workers' Party fight for the Brazilian common man, blazing a new path toward progress for all the nation's citizens. The people are optimistic. But behind the Brazil of today are decades, even centuries of events and policies which have contributed in shaping the nation's current-day conditions. Certain social, economic, and political conditions still influence conditions in modern-day Brazil and while post-military regime governments have made efforts to create a more egalitarian society, they must solve a number of major problems before their goal can be realized.

Brazil's social structure remains influenced by conditions which were prevalent in the nation's social history. The low social status of blacks in Brazil, for example, is especially influenced by the nation's history. The nation's legacy of slavery and unwillingness to distinguish amongst races (until the early 2000s when the Brazilian government willingly admitted the nation's racism) have created a nearly insurmountable social barrier and has consistently placed blacks as least affluent racial group in Brazilian society (Htun, p. 61). And due to a national deficiency of racial consciousness, the country has not seen a wealth of Afro-Brazilian movements on a grand scale, leaving no influential marches or demonstrations to further the plight of the Afro-Brazilian community (Htun, p. 65). According to the 1999 national household survey, blacks represent 64 percent of citizens living in poverty, 69 percent of citizens living in extreme poverty, receive an average of 2.3 years less education than their white counterparts, and are less likely to achieve literacy or access to adequate sanitation facilities (Htun, p. 63). Undoubtedly, the social condition of Afro-Brazilians remains heavily influenced by their nation's social history.