In the midst of a rapidly shifting global economy, Brazil has emerged as a powerful new player on the geopolitical stage. Against all odds, the Latin American nation managed, in just three years, to repay a 2002 $15.5 billion IMF bailout loan thanks to aggressive economic restructuring and a series of alliances that have placed it at the center of political and economic power in the region.
From the outside, Brazil is a poster child for neoliberal capitalism. Yet inside the country, the lives of the Brazilian people are still marked by vast inequities in wealth and access to social services–a striking disparity with the nation’s newfound power in the global economy. In June of 2013, protests against the increasing costs of public transportation swelled to mass demonstrations against the Rousseff government’s failure to address this disparity, leading many to wonder whether the popular movements in Brazil may be just powerful enough to shift the nation’s influence towards a wholly new economic model based in regional integration.
The New Brazil explores this disparity. Will the nation serve as the glue that holds together the Latin American states, distancing themselves from the neoliberalism of the United States and Canada? Or will Brazil simply become another world superpower, able to subject the rest of Latin American to its will? Only time will tell.
Raul Zibechi is a journalist and social-movement analyst based in Montevideo, Uruguay. He is the author of numerous books including Dispersing Power and Territories in Resistance, both published by AK Press.
Tabela de Conteúdo
Table of contents:
Introduction
Chapter 1 – The Return of Sub-imperialism
The political climate in Brazil during the 1970s
Marini and the theory of sub-imperialism
Chapter 2 – The Widening of the Elite in Power
The trajectory of the labor unions
Unionists in state positions
The role of pension funds
A new class, or union capitalism?
Chapter 3 – The Construction of a Strategy
A history of plans and planning
Brazil in three epochs: the country’s Centenary
Centennial goals
Who’s who in the strategic plan
Chapter 4 – From the Strategy of Resistance to the Strategy of National Defense
The national defense strategy
A new military-industrial complex
Behind the nuclear weapon
Chapter 5 – The Reorganization of Brazilian Capitalism
The reorganization begins
Petrobras, the crown jewel
Petrobras and the export of ethanol
Infrastructure and energy investment
State and capital
Chapter 6 – Brazilian Multinationals in Latin America
The internationalization of Brazilian companies
Foreign investment in Brazil
Green-Yellow Entrepreneurs
Chapter 7 – The New Conquest of the Amazon
Hydroelectric dams in the Amazon
IIRSA: Integration by means of the markets
Winners and losers
Chapter 8 – Relations with Peripheral Countries
Paraguay, the weakest neighbor
Bolivia, gas and soybeans
Ecuador standing against Brazilian companies
The ‘strategic alliances’: Argentina and Venezuela
Is Brazil creating its own ‘backyard’?
Chapter 9 – Towards a New Center and New Peripheries
Neither guardian nor dependent
Ongoing debates
A wide-open scenario
Chapter 10 – The Anti-Systemic Movement within ‘Brazil Power’
Stagnation and decline of the movements of struggle
The ‘without’: reconfiguration and change
Appendix 1: Acronyms
Appendix 2: Major political parties in Brazil
Appendix 3: Top corporations
Map Index
Bibliography page 378, ends
Sobre o autor
Raúl Zibechi: Raúl Zibechi is an international analyst for Brecha, a weekly journal in Montevideo, Uruguay, professor and researcher on social movements at the Multiversidad Franciscana de América Latina, and adviser to social groups. He is a monthly contributor to the Americas Policy Program and author of Genealogía de la Revuelta and La Mirada Horizontal. His first book-length work in English, Dispersing Power, was published by AK Press in 2010.Ramor Ryan: Ramor Ryan is an Irish writer and translator based in Chiapas, Mexico, and the author of Zapatista Spring: Anatomy of a Rebel Water Project & the Lessons of International Solidarity (AK Press, 2011). His book Clandestines: The Pirate Journals of an Irish Exile was published by AK Press in 2006.
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