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John Robb had a post today on the latest developments in the police v. PCC battle in Sao Paulo and reminded me I was saving up some material to blog on Brazil, to follow up this post from a couple of weeks ago.
A good friend of mine, born in Massachusetts but fluent in Portuguese and married to a lovely Brazilian woman, said to me the other day: “Brazil is like a big carcass being ripped apart by hyeanas.” The PCC problem in Sao Paulo is just one part of it, and probably the lesser.
The bigger problem, as discussed in my previous entry, is the completely lawless destruction of the Amazon. Not to go all ecowarrier but for the near future this will probably have a larger global impact and is being driven by a simpler motivation, greed. The government won’t step in effectively because the necessary individuals are corrupted and external intervention is a non-starter due to Brazilian nationalism.
To a degree, the PCC and Amazonian issues are driven by the same underlying cause: Brazil is a country with a tiny, ultra-wealthy ruling elite, who think nothing of jetting to Miami for a hairdo and dinner, and a huge improverished peasant class, millions of whom live in cardboard and newspaper shantytowns called invasions with no water or sewage
treatment and minimal electricity provided by illegal taps.
Two of the commonly cited examples of economic success are widespread use of ethanol and exported beef; even proud Brazilians will brag on them at parties. Both, however, are actually causing much more harm than good. To provide grazing for the always increasing cattle herds and farm land to grow the corn and grain to feed them and produce the ethanol, more and more land is required.
Where is the land coming from? Criminals and corrupt politicians! Even Lula da Silva, the left winger elected President in 2002 on promises to reform the system and dig the country out from under the thumb of the IMF and World Bank, has found it impossible to put a dent in the system. Da Silva’s re-election this October, considered a lock weeks ago, is now under severe pressure from a renegade senator even further to the left who split off from the ruling party because it failed to deliver on the 2002 platform.
Guns are as, or perhaps even more, freely available in Brazil as in the United States. Over the last 20 years groups of armed men have simply shown up in the Amazon and the nation’s countryside, chopped down as many of the beautiful old growth hard wood trees as they could carry off and set fire to the rest to clear the land for ranchers or farmers. Politicians and police are paid to do nothing and the ones who refuse the payola are killed or transferred to ineffectual postings.
The people who lived on the land head for Sao Paulo, Rio and the other big cities where nothing but more misery awaits them. The hovels, which can spring up over night, grow into the huge tracts known as favelas. Brazil’s most brilliant futebol players, Ronaldinho and Robinho being the latest global superstars in a line going back to Pele, often emerge from these ghettos but other than the dozens who escape via sports each year few residents have little such hope.
Except, of course, through crime. My friend says that middle class Brazilians travel between home and work, shopping or school in constant fear of carjackings, kidnappings or worse, windows closed, doors locked and guards opening electric gates at the last possible moment and for the shortest time span so no one can sneak inside.
The recent actions of the First Command of the Capital (PCC) gang, the focus of Robb’s attention, is an early indicator that the largest country in South America may soon become the next failed state in our hemisphere, joining Columbia and Peru, but with horrifically more serious consequences than increased drug trafficking.