Brazil, an unequal balance

During the 1930s, one could statistically regroup Brazil, the United States and Australia as being on the same economic playing field. Today, Brazil finds itself far down the list of well-being.

If, on the one hand, Brazil is counted among the big economic powers (11th in the world), the “other” Brazil is at the top of the list of unequal distribution of riches, just behind Sierra Leone. Half the population of 180 million share the same size piece of the economic cake (13% of GDP), as does one percent of the richest part of the population.

UNICEF estimates the number of street children at 120 million though out the world. Half of them are in Latin America and around 12 million in Brazil. And this number seems to have doubled in the last ten years. The World Health Organization put the number of Brazilian street children at seven million in 1994.

In the beginning of 2003, a former metal worker became the president of this big country. Luiz Inacio da Silva (Lula) was elected on the promise to reunite the two Brazils. “Hunger zero, illiteracy zero, favelas zero,” declared Lula at his inauguration.

But it is not easy to balance the economic with the social. Brazil has the largest debt of the Third World with 430 billion dollars owed to foreign banks. Even if Lula doesn’t have “the power of God to do miracles,” he is trying to forge a new path.

And he seems to have been given a chance to do just that after winning a landslide victory in the recent elections. Lula has a good track record and the people apparently believe him when he says he will tackle corruption. The country has a sound growth rate and steady progress in high-tech industries such as aviation with the successful constructor of short-haul planes, Embraer.

But the other Brazil won’t wait forever. Lula has another four years to prove his new model for social justice and economic prosperity.

Pix Aid