Brazil is steeped in crises as it prepares for the 2016 Olympics, opening Aug. 5 in Rio de Janeiro. Leading politicians face corruption probes; the president faces impeachment; the economy is in a deep recession, with oil revenues down severely and unemployment and inflation running above 10 percent; and the Zika virus continues to spread alarm. Historian Jerry Dávila specializes in the history of Brazil in the 20th century. He also directs the Lemann Institute for Brazilian Studies at the University of Illinois, which oversees dozens of teaching and research collaborations with Brazilian counterparts on a broad range of topics. He spoke with News Bureau social sciences editor Craig Chamberlain.
So why is all this happening now?
Rio’s Olympics bid came when Brazil’s economic boom fed confidence that the country was emerging as an economic power with a rising standard of living for all. The Olympics are being held instead within a perfect storm of political and economic crises. Both of these moments, of confidence and crisis, are expressions of an ongoing process of democratization following the longest military dictatorship in Latin America, a dictatorship whose economic schemes created a crippling debt crisis whose effects are still felt today.
Beyond holding elections, democratization in Brazil involves building political institutions that function within and reinforce the rule of law, and building a model of citizenship that all people have access to. Both of these are ongoing projects. Since democratization began in 1985, economic reforms have stabilized the currency and managed the burden of debt, social policies have expanded access to public health and education, and hunger and extreme poverty have been dramatically reduced.
Economically, Brazil remains dependent on global commodity prices and has suffered from weakening export demand from China. Politically, it relies on coalition building that the party in power often achieves in ways that have institutionalized corruption.
President Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment trial is being held on the grounds that financial juggling by her administration created the false impression that it was meeting the budget surplus needed to manage the debt inherited from military rule. But the impeachment is taking place amid anxiety about Brazil’s recession and an investigation that has exposed extensive kickback schemes within entities like the state oil company Petrobras, involving politicians in Brazil’s governing coalition.
The Olympics will come off splendidly. But they will take place in a country where most people will be focused on bigger questions.
What do these stories of widespread corruption tell us about the state of Brazilian democracy?
The corruption investigation is a success of the democratization process. The investigation has named dozens of leading politicians, including the acting president, the president of the senate and the president of the lower house, who recently stepped down. The capacity to investigate and bring to trial such powerful people is a significant achievement in a country where they typically have been above the law.
The emerging scientific understanding of the Zika outbreak reflects other gains. Though Brazil is negatively associated with the outbreak, it is Brazilian public health officials and scientists who have drawn the link between the virus and microcephaly. One of the early pressures amid democratization was for universal access to health care. In addition, Brazil has an exceptional public health institute, the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, located near the Olympic venues, that plays a role combining those of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health in the U.S. This infrastructure created the ability to correlate Zika with microcephaly.
Challenges remain, such as the limitations of the school system in meeting special needs of students like those born with microcephaly. And recession is felt acutely by the millions who had begun to experience higher living standards during the years when the bid to host the Olympics was made, and fear the loss of those gains.
There have been stories about delays in preparations for the games, as there seem to be in the months just prior to every Olympics. So will Rio be ready?
The Olympic venues will be up and running in time for the games. The same is not true for the city’s investments in transportation infrastructure, and in the improvement of environmental conditions, particularly of waterways. This has been very frustrating for Rio’s residents. The promise the games initially held for Rio was great. The city was Brazil’s capital prior to 1960, and the infrastructure projects for the Olympics represented the first comprehensive citywide urban planning project since that time. As Brazil has gone into recession and as the royalties from offshore oil production that Rio receives have dwindled, the city projects beyond the Olympic venues have stalled or delayed.