Eduardo Paes Determined to Destroy Rio de Janeiro through Useless Policies and Class Warfare

This past February, Rio de Janeiro's mayor, Eduardo Paes, launched the first step in his efforts to "clean up" Rio by banning beer vendors on the streets during Carnaval, a drastic and useless move that I hoped would be temporary. When I went to Brazil in June, I had a chance to see just how ugly and damaging Paes's clean-up efforts had become, undoing much of the harmless and enjoyable street life in Rio. Apparently, it has officially become Paes's goal to strip Rio of all of the harmless activities that one finds in public spaces, as he now has launched his assault on the most sacred sites in Rio: the beaches.

Under rules aimed at bringing order to Rio's famous beaches, ball games are among the undesirable activities being curtailed or banned as the city that will host a World Cup and Olympics within seven years seeks to clean up its act. [...]

The beach is just the latest target of a city-wide campaign to bring order to Rio, where traffic and other rules are often seen as optional. Though in place for nearly a year, the effort gained urgency with Rio's selection as 2016 Olympic host.

Rio state this month hired former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who takes credit for cleaning up the Big Apple, to help advise it on the Brazilian city's crime problems. Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes recently told Cariocas, as Rio residents are known, to stop being such "pigs," referring to their habit of leaving piles of garbage on the beach.

The man in charge of carrying out the new policy, public order secretary Rodrigo Bethlam, said the beach's central place in Rio life made the battle for order there crucial.

"The beach is an emblematic place. If we can succeed in organizing the beach, it means we can organize the city," he told Reuters

This is just ridiculous in so many ways (and keep in mind - we're talking about soccer in Brazil - this isn't just some passing hobby among a handful). Firstly, the beaches are in fact public spaces, meaning they are for use by the public. The notion that playing soccer on the beach (in areas that are informally designated as athletic areas) is somehow "disorderly" and cutting into the power of the state is absurd. Secondly, the idea that if you can organize the beach, you "can organize the city" is stupid beyond description. The beach is in no way representative of all of the non-beach aspects of the city - it is a place of leisure for most, and business for an handful. It is not the financial district. It is not the favelas. True, you do get to see the wide income gap play out on the beach, but solving the "problem" of people playing soccer or volleyball on the beach does nothing to address that income gap, nor to address the issues of murderous police, the drug trade, the enormous gap in wealth, or the troublesome and often disgusting racism and classism of Rio's elites and middle class. Cleaning up the pollution on the beaches is a great idea, but again, has nothing to do with pick-up games of soccer. And it's not like there's an absence of space - while the beaches do get crowded on hot weekends, Copacabana and Ipanema alone are 9 km (about 6 miles) long, and Rio has over 50 miles of beaches.

In other words, this is yet another effort on Paes' part to A) "clean up" the city through absolutely useless gestures that accomplish no real good and detract much from the quotidian in Rio, and B) are specifically targeted towards the middle- and upper-class cariocas who lament how the beaches have become so "dirty" in the last decade or so, as the poor from the northern zone had increasing access to the richer southern neighborhoods in Copacabana and Ipanema. It's the worst kind of "high-modernism" one can find - the state's efforts to control everything end up stripping daily life of all of its harmless joys, all so the state can impose its presence in an obvious way that does nothing to deal with the actual substantial economic, social, and political problems facing a city (or country). Paes could use his office to try to improve the social conditions in the favelas and build up a beneficial state structure; instead, he makes sales of beer on the streets illegal at Carnaval. He could try to end the impunity police face as they enter favelas and kill indiscriminately; instead, he wages a war on beach-front soccer. The uselessness and stupidity of this is just mind-boggling.

And the useless enforcement goes beyond just soccer, touching everything that makes beach life enjoyable in Rio:

Among other cherished beach freedoms being withdrawn are sales of food on skewers such as shrimp and cheese that are hawked by entrepreneurs plying the sands. No longer will beach-goers, known here as "banhistas," be able to bring coolers for drinks or play music on stereos.

The main targets of the new policy are the hundreds of "barracas," or huts, that dot Rio's beaches, renting out deck chairs and selling everything from beer to barbecued meat.

Often emblazoned with their owner's name, they are colorful, if chaotic, fixtures of beach life that laugh in the face of sanitation rules but have their own loyal following.

Under the new rules, names or advertisements are out and they must accept being outfitted with all-white tents and equipment that, while smart-looking, are somewhat bland.

You want to eat on the beach? Sorry - that's no longer an option. You'll have to go to one of the high-end restaurants on the beach-front (restaurants that, not coincidentally, the poorer segments of Rio's population who come from the northern part of the city cannot afford). You want to rent a chair to sit on? Sorry - the guy who has a little tent and rents them out isn't allowed to do that anymore. Bring your own (which won't fit on the buses, again meaning that if you're not from that neighborhood, you're out of luck). Are you gay, and do you want to join other gay individuals in their own section of the beach? Sorry - the tents and flags that the gay community set up so others know where to find them aren't allowed, either. In short, Paes, in his increasingly ego-maniacal effort to control Rio, has launched blatant open class and cultural warfare, all in an effort to strip Rio of its vibrancy in the name of "order."

Fortunately, the people have begun overrule Paes on this one.

They are putting in place their own law, but it's wrong," said Marcel Damasceno de Matos, a 39-year-old who said he has worked his patch of Ipanema beach for 10 years.

"I have customers from the United States and other countries who come back year after year and look for my name. Now there's going to be a lot of confusion."

Still, in a country with no shortage of laws but a glaring lack of enforcement, not everyone on the beach is convinced that the shock of order will end up being so shocking.

"The law exists, but you're in Brazil," said Bernardo Braga, a 26-year-old model and student who was playing "keep up" on the Ipanema seafront.

"You just have to walk along here to see all the rules being ignored."

I already hope cariocas elect him out of office at the end of his term (which, unfortunately, is not for another 3 years). He has made it clear that important changes in the social and economic landscape meant to actually better the lives and existence of cariocas is not on his agenda. Instead, he is intent on imposing the state on the most mundane and harmless aspects of life, driving many out of their livelihoods, while issues like police violence, the drug trade, and disparities in wealth continue to plague Rio.

The Favelas, Infra-Structural Development, and the Eco-Wall: Good and Bad Manifestations of the Brazilian State

To build on Erik's post below, I wanted to add a little more on the so-called "eco-wall" put up around a favela in Rio. In addition to the report that CNN put up (it was actually the major story on cnn.com when I woke up yesterday morning, much to my shock and satisfaction, as stories about the favelas, and particularly the repression they face, are usually buried deep within CNN's site), there was another report that involved eyewitness journalistic accounts of the favela, which was not too far from where I lived in Rio (within 10 minutes, I could see the favela, and within 20 minutes, I could be in it).

For all of the talk of how "violent" the favelas and their residents are, I thought this part of the journalist's account was worth highlighting:
According to officials it’s an “ecobarrier” built to protect the surrounding rainforest, but a lot of people we talked to were offended.

They felt they were being caged in and saw it as an attempt to further separate the crime-ridden slums from the affluent condos on the beaches below.

But what struck me was just how safe Santa Marta was.

When I lived in Rio eight years earlier it was unthinkable to enter any favela without a police escort.

At night you could hear shoot-outs between rival drug gangs and nearby neighborhoods complained of “lost bullets” that tore through their homes while they slept.

That’s changed with Rio’s “pacification” plan. Santa Marta is one of the favelas that’s been occupied by police. They built a permanent headquarters in the community and have set up checkpoints where gangs used to sell drugs.

We actually saw very few police when we hiked along the winding paths, but the sense of security was palpable.

I commented on this "'pacification' plan" a couple of days ago. I don't know how "accurate" this journalist's report is - it is possible that it was just a particularly peaceful time when he was there, or that this was "pra ingles ver" ["for the English to see"], as they say. Still, I think there's a very real chance that his sentiment reflects the broader atmosphere in Santa Marta, and if what he saw and felt were the permanent conditions in Santa Marta, then I think the new approaches of the police may actually be working, at least in this favela. I've long said that infrastructural development in the favelas would be central to a shift in the policy towards Brazil's poor and marginalized; it seems that Santa Marta has only reinforced that suggestion.

That said, I think the eco-wall is absolutely the wrong kind of infrastructure to establish in the favelas. As I said in comments to Erik's post, I think the problems with the eco-wall are twofold. It was nearly impossible for Santa Marta to spread into the forest due to its location - the mountains around it are simply too steep. While the favela did manage to creep into a part of the mountains, the settled area is already steep enough that they have to have a tram to take residents from the bottom of the hill to the top. In that part of Rio (Botafogo), the mountains simply are unable to even support favelas, so deforestation for settlement is near impossible. My second problem (as much with the article Erik originally commented on, as well as the broader question at hand) is that it treats eco-protection and segregation as an "either/or" proposition, when it's not. It's absolutely possible (and, in this case, likely) that you could do eco-protection while (further) marginalizing sectors of society. Ultimately, this to me is segregation, plain and simple: where Santa Marta is located butts up against the federally protected forest of Tijuca, which is the largest urban forest in the world. What is more, Santa Marta simply cannot expand, and really hasn't - it was the same this past summer when I went to Brazil as it had been when I was first there in 2005. If this were an earnest effort to protect the environment without segregating the poor, it would have happened elsewhere in the city - not Botafogo.

Given the new tactics in São Paulo and the apparent success (though I'd like to see more reports) of the new tactics in Santa Marta, I feel that for the first time, there is a not-illegitimate hope that the violence in the favelas may have a real chance to decline. To re-state my original skepticism, the fact that Santa Marta is one of over 1000 favelas in Rio alone means there is a very long way to go. Still, these efforts indicate that, for the first time ever, the federal state and state government of Rio may actually be taking measures to establish infrastructural improvements that could decrease the violence. But eco-walls like the one in Santa Marta are counterproductive, as they produce no real benefits and antagonize residents that the state is trying to win over.

Seeing Evo Morales Speak

This past Tuesday, I had the enormous privilege of seeing Evo Morales speak at Columbia University as part of the World Leaders forum that Columbia hosts every year. It was a fantastic opportunity, and Morales didn't disappoint, talking for about 55 minutes and then spending another 30 minutes answering questions.

The first thing that struck me is how dynamic, charismatic, and well-spoken he is. I realize "eloquent" can and often does carry all kinds of racist connotations, but "eloquent" is exactly what he was. His detractors in Bolivia and elsewhere often call him an "uneducated Indian" (this was a common refrain among the right in Brazil), but anybody who's seen him speak could attest that it's far from the case. He did an excellent job discussing life in Bolivia, his path to the presidency, foreign policy and politics, and some of what he's done as president and what he still wants to do, but he did it all extemporaenously. It may have been a speech he's given before and been able to rehearse, but that didn't detract from its excellence. If Morales is "uneducated," then George Bush is a nobel laureate.

As for the actual content of his speech, it was also excellent, and quite thought provoking. In discussing his campaign for the presidency, he called the American ambassador to Bolivia his "best campaign manager." Apparently, in 2005 as the campaign went on, the U.S. ambassador repeatedly spoke out in public as saying that Morales was a terrible, terrible choice, going so far as to make the hyperbolic and ridiculous claim that Morales and coca growers were "just like the Taliban." Morales was clearly amused by and grateful for these claims, obviously believing that the U.S. ambassador's opposition and, by extension (as the ambassador is just the state's spokesperson for the government s/he represents), Bush's opposition, were key in making Morales a popular choice among many Bolivians who may have been hesitant towards Morales but had a rather low opinion of Bush's beliefs and attitudes. In short, Morales felt that at least some of his votes probably came from the fact that some Bolivians felt that if Bush believed Morales was a bad choice for Bolivia, then Morales clearly must be a good choice.

This humorous observation was amusing, but it also was great point that really got me thinking about how ineffective the Bush government has been at foreign policy. It's not just that Bush has pretty much taken the perfectly wrong path in dealing with the world (even before it threw away the goodwill we got for 9/11); it's that he has consistently, repeatedly, and clearly made the wrong choices in how he deals with countries again and again, yet he continues to try to bully the world expecting different results this time. His claims against countries have repeatedly emboldened them and made their leaders more popular at home, and yet he continued to speak but against these leaders, expecting the population to suddenly say, "hey, Bush is right!" The administration's refusal to dialogue with anybody and its stubbornness, perfectly embodied by Bush himself, has not only alienated the U.S. from the rest of the world, but that Bush's tactics have helped lead to exactly the results he may have wanted least (condemning Morales so strongly only helping the referendum further being an example). In other words, Morales's anecdote really encapsulates just how much the Bush administration's foreign policy has been equally arrogant and blockheaded - it's not just that it assumes an air of superiority that disregarded what sovereign nations might think is best for them; it's that it continued the same mistakes again and again in dealing with those nations and their peoples.

Morales also stressed the importance of dialog in international relations, and in this regard, he really reminded me of Lula. Morales made clear that he wasn't ideologically aligned with or against anybody, but was simply interested in trying to make the best political and economic negotiations he could for his own country. If there were breakdowns (as in the case of the U.S.), it wasn't through failed dialogue, but through the absence of dialogue, not from Bolivia's side, but from other countries. While he avoided explicitly mentioning Bush, he did say he looked forward to meeting with Obama at some point, and it wasn't difficult to read between the lines of his statements that he clearly thought that the U.S. really had a better chance in foreign policy with Obama than with Bush. However, he also raised the interesting comparison of Obama to himself, insisting that nobody compare the two, because Obama never had people spitting on him, he didn't face a societal structure in which it was difficult financially and socially for him to gain access to higher education, and he never had to lead strikes and face the threat of prison and abuse from police forces in the way Morales and indigenous leaders in Bolivia did. While that comment could have come off as arrogant and belittling, it didn't, instead serving as a strong reminder that, while Obama has indeed made enormous strides in arriving to the presidency, the contexts matter greatly in making such comparisons.

Another thing I noticed, and that I thought was of tantamount importance, was the complete absence of any mention, explicit or tacit, of Hugo Chavez or Venezuela. The U.S. media tends to always lump those two together when discussing Bolivia, and Morales often comes off as little more than a subservient follower of Chavez's "Bolivarian mission." Nothing could be further from the truth, and Morales's talk hammered home exactly what Morales is: a former poor, indigenous farmer who rose to the presidency of Bolivia and who only wants to see see Bolivia improve and to see the majority of Bolivians who have historically and perpetually been kept in poverty and away from national sources of power (political and otherwise) and wealth gain fair access and have a chance to succeed, too. And the goal of making life better for all Bolivians is not only a fair goal, it should have been done centuries ago. That Morales is finally doing this doesn't make him some some dangerous "communist" leader who follows Chavez around out of a lack of any convictions of his own and a little-brother-like devotion; it just makes him a president who has his own population's interests in mind, and is working to improve life not for some wealthy minority, but for the majority of his country's citizens. In that regard, given Bolivia's history and the functioning of a very small political/economic aristocracy there, and the changes Morales has brought about (including, hopefully, a fairer and just constitution this January), he's been hugely successful.

One final thing that struck me was what was in one way the relative "conservatism" of Morales in terms of fiscal policy. In discussing the conditions Bolivia was facing domestically when he was inaugurated, he stressed that, since 1940, there had not been one year where Bolivia was operating at a surplus. Simultaneously, the previous (neoliberal) governments had done little to actually help Bolivia financially (as opposed to helping themselves and the political elite), so that in 2004, the year before Morales's victory, Bolivia was pulling in $300 million in revenues from natural resources. In contrast, Bolivia had a net gain last year of over $2 billion, and while the rise in oil prices explains some of that increase, it's also aided by Morales's nationalization projects that, among other things, demanded fair prices for Bolivia's resources (rather than selling them off at discounts to foreign companies and pocketing the money), as well as the fact that, by nationalizing some industries, the money provided income for the state that had previously gone into the pockets of foreign national businesspersons who were already rolling in money. Yes, Morales has expanded some state programs to help the poor gain better access to good schooling, resources, food, health care, etc., but he has done so because he's created a budget surplus that allows the state to provide those services (as it should). That's hardly a "destructive" or "communist" vision.

To be clear, I'm not a Morales hagiographer, and I had some problems with some things he said, particularly in how he staked out the economic successes of the future in Bolivia. He paid lip service to the understanding that oil would not be there forever, nor could Bolivia stake its financial futures only on natural resources that would have a diminishing market, but then he went on to say how promising oil was for at least the next few decades. What is more, he then went on to discuss Bolivia's lithium deposits and how much they would help Bolivia in the future as lithium-powered batteries for cars increased even while oil demand decreased. However, that comment was completely disconnected from his previous line that Bolivia couldn't stake its economic future to exhaustible resources either for which the market would eventually wear down or the resources would disappear. In short, he claimed that Bolivia couldn't rely strictly on finite natural resources for its own financial well-being, yet he offered no alternatives that weren't natural resources that Bolivia could exploit.

That said, it was a really good talk with a good audience (it was clear that, while he had some adoring fans in the audience, he also had some pretty fierce oppponents). Ultimately, what emerged from his presentation was that the U.S. media (and what population does know about him) has virtually no understanding about the man or about what he is doing as leader of his own country. People may have their criticisms about him (and they certainly do, in Bolivia, Brazil, the U.S., and elsewhere), but by and large, those criticisms are baseless and completely out of touch with what Morales himself does, how he sees politics and society in Bolivia, and what he wants for his country.

RIP: Charles Tilly

Charles Tilly, one of the leading scholars on the nature of the nation-state, has died of lymphoma at 79. I'd never met Tilly - I was really hoping to actually have a chance to at least see him at Columbia come the fall, even if it was a brief meeting. Unlike Rob, by the time I got around to reading Tilly, I had already really had my general notion on the roles and functions of states challenged, and had come to some pretty thorough beliefs on the role of the state in society myself. That said, his work was still really impressive, and has indirectly influenced my own thinking on the state in my dissertation. From those who knew him, it seems he couldn't have been a nicer guy, and a down-to-earth academic who didn't let the petty politics of academia affect him (Crooked Timber has a post up including one of his own self-descriptions: "Among Tilly’s negative distinctions he prizes 1) never having held office in a professional association, 2) never having chaired a university department or served as a dean, 3) never having been an associate professor, 4) rejection every single time he has been screened as a prospective juror. He had also hoped never to publish a book with a subtitle, but subtitles somehow slipped into two of his co-authored books.") He will certainly be missed by those who never knew him but who loved his work, and moreso by those who counted him among their family and friends.

Militias in Rio's Favelas

BBC News ran a very good report about militias in the favelas this week. I've commented before on how corrupt police are often extorting civilians and using violence against them when the favelados speak out, sometimes in an extremely gruesome fashion, and any arrests against police corruption strike me more as an effort to look like the police are trying to clean up, rather than any real effort at reform. In this light, the BBC article is one of the best I've seen yet in really getting into the details of how militias (which, as the article alludes to, are generally corrupt officers and ex-cops trying to make extra money in the favelas) operate, and the consequences of their presence.

There are several comments I'd like to make on this. First, the people interviewed in the article (and the article itself) make it seem as though it's a question of drug lords vs. militias, but it's not so simple. Often times, these militias end up becoming involved in the drug trade too, unable to deny the lure of the money they can make. They have even gotten in turf wars with drug dealers in other favelas in the past. Likewise, drug gangs also offer health services, internet, and "protection" to the favelados, sometimes (though not always) as extortion. So presuming that it's an "either/or" proposition distorts a much more complex dynamic involving "protection" and the drug trade.

Secondly, you see rhetoric throughout the article, both from those for and against the militias, that the state can't exercise its control in the favelas, and this fact either justifies or explains the presence of the militias, depending on which side of the argument one falls. However, I really don't see how this is the case, and nobody offers a good explanation of why the state can't. Rather, I think the state simply doesn't. Although there have been some changes in administration under Sérgio Cabral, governors in Rio (and it is more their jurisdiction than the federal government's) have tended to offer no social services for the favelas (the only exception to this being Leonel Brizola, who worked heavily on infrastructure such as roads, electricity, plumbing, and schools in the favelas in his two terms as governor from 1983-1987 and 1991-1994). At best, governors pop up in the favelas when it is election season to act like they "care," but afterwards, it's usually a mixture of ignoring the social needs of the favelados and sending in the police to tackle the drug gangs. Neither of these approaches really shows any strong effort of the state to effect change, nor do they explain why the state "can't." As Brizola's administration and recent concerted efforts to follow up police action with social programs in São Paulo demonstrate, it's not that the state can't; it's that the state chooses not to.

Thirdly, given that the militias are already basically extorting favelados, suffice to say that I find politician Jair Bolsonaro's proposal in that the state should suport them...less than satisfactory. For all of the absurdities within the argument (ignoring the extortion, believing militias automatically reduce violence in all situations, the fact that militias don't really bring any significant social changes to the favelas), perhaps the most ridiculous is the argument that the state should support the militias because of the rhetoric above that it can't patrol the favelas itself. If the state has the money to support the militias, why not just fund your own state employees to establish control in the favelas?

Finally, I think the treatment of BOPE is problematic. The article cites residents who live in the Tavares Bastos favela, which is right next to the BOPE elite police headquarters, as speaking highly of what BOPE has done for them. While the proximity of BOPE no doubt has an effect, both the residents of Tavares Bastos and the article more broadly make its eem as though BOPE is a great force of change, not subject to the problems of the regular police, an image further propagated in the recent film Tropa de Elite, and as both Venha Futuro and I have commented, that is far from the case.

Overall, though, the article is one of the first and best I've seen at dealing with the militias in the favelas, an overall underdiscussed subject. I suspect the militias don't come up as much for many reasons (they don't fit neatly within the "drug lords-vs.-noble cops" narrative; they undermine the notion that the problems in the favelas are due only to poverty, race, or the drug gangs; nobody in Brazil knows how to or is willing to deal with the widespread social problems that result in cops going crooked; etc). It's really good to see BBC dealing with it, particularly using the terms they use ("take over;" "kind of dictatorship"), and it's really worth reading.

Dealing with the Issue of Unemployed Youths in Brazil

The Latin Americanist points us to this IPS story on the exclusion of young people throughout Latin America:

"Seven million young Brazilians and nearly 800,000 youngsters in Argentina swell the ranks of a veritable army of Latin American youths who neither work nor study -- a phenomenon that threatens to continue reproducing poverty unless effective measures are urgently taken to integrate them in society, say experts.
In Brazil, those who do not work or attend school make up nearly 20 percent of young people between the ages of 15 and 24, according to a study on youth development drawn up by sociologist Julio Jacobo Waiselfisz."

I can't address the other parts of Latin America too well, but this is definitely the case in Brazil, and not just among those who cannot afford to go to college. Even those who graduate from the federal universities (the highest level schools in Brazil are public) are having an extremely difficult time finding jobs. Certainly, students who graduate in some areas, such as computer science or international business, aren’t struggling as much as students from other areas, but by and large, most graduates are directly affected. Students in engineering and medicine are finding the job market saturated, a direct result from the military dictatorship’s policies in the 1960s and 1970s of emphasizing these areas as part of the state’s vision of “development” for Brazil. And as difficult as it is in those areas, students who finish with bachelors’ degrees in the humanities and social sciences are having an even more difficult time.

One of my wife’s cousins offers a telling example of the struggles and exploitation students face at the undergraduate level. She was a student at a federal university in Minas Gerais, getting her degree in architecture with an emphasis on historical restoration projects. While in school, she had an internship at the university’s museum. Despite three years’ experience in the museum, she was let go upon graduation because they could underpay some other college student instead of offering her a full-time job and have her take the job of somebody who already worked there as a full-time employee. My wife’s cousin repeatedly tried to get work in historical restoration, but was repeatedly turned away because she “lacked real experience.” The trap here was obvious – she couldn’t get a job because she didn’t have the “experience,” yet she couldn’t get the “experience” without getting a job. She was facing the prospect of having to work some menial job in retail or worse because she couldn’t get a job in her field, a prospect that thousands of college graduates in Brazil face.

However, the Brazilian government has quietly been trying to address this problem. Using federal money, it has begun a series of programs that seek to offer decent (but not great) paying internships to university graduates that help them to gain experience in their fields. My wife’s cousin managed to get a government-funded position working on historical restoration in Paraty, a city on the coast in southwestern Rio de Janeiro state. Paraty not only has beautiful beaches that attract tourists both within Brazil and from abroad; it also has an enormous historical patrimony-district that is protected by law. My wife’s cousin has landed a job with IPHAN (Instito Patrimonico Historico e Artistico Nacional) through this government program to work in Paraty for two years. This opportunity lets her (and others) gain experience in their field and have a job upon finishing undergrad, and gives them a chance to be better equipped for a job market that demands “experience”.

Nor are the programs limited to historical renovation. One of my wife’s friends graduated with a degree in Social Sciences. She was struggling to find a job in her area instead of some job involving menial tasks in retail or as a secretary (pretty women in Brazil have a particularly difficult time, and often end up as secretaries, hired for their looks in an extremely gender-biased and objectifying process). However, through the same broad government efforts, she got a job teaching sociology as part of an integrated program of education in the small city of Macaé, in Rio de Janeiro. The program is designed to help students who underperform or who have particular needs that need to be addressed in school. Thus, while she teaches these students about sociology with an emphasis on their hometown of Macaé, another person teaches biology, using Macaé as its basis; another, history; another, math; and so on. In this case, the benefits from the government program are triplicate: my wife’s friend has found a decent-paying job out of university with a degree in social sciences; the program is helping her to gain experience for the future, when she enters the job market; and children whose educational needs had previously been ignored are now receiving the attention and education they need, with this integrative program focusing on their city helping make learning easier and more accessible to them.

The benefits of these programs are clear. Not only is the government using federal money for these decent-paying “internships” (though they are far more secure and less exploitative than most internships) to help try to address the employment issue among the young. It is directly helping those graduates gain work experience for a job market that is often hostile to those who are “lacking experience” yet for whom the market does little to help them gain that experience. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, local areas in Brazil are directly benefitting. In the case of Paraty, the city gets help improving its historical renovations and protection from people who are educated in these areas, which in turn will help the city protect its land while bringing in more tourist money, thereby aiding the entire area (which includes an indigenous aldeia and a quilombo in the areas around Paraty). In the case of Macaé, the government programs are directly addressing education needs that had been previously ignored, giving disadvantaged students new opportunities and possibly offering a better future than they previously might have had.

To my knowledge, these types of programs seem to aid graduates of the federal university system. There may be other programs I don’t know about that will help students who graduate from private universities, technical schools, or even high schools, but there may not be, too; I only know of direct cases for those who have graduated from the federal universities. And certainly, the programs do not help everybody, so that those in rural areas, the poor, or those facing other economic or social roadblocks may not have the same opportunites being provided for them that the government is offering university graduates. Still, I find it extremely encouraging that, instead of ignoring the problem or chalking it up to the “vagaries of private employment,” the current administration is trying to do something to address this problem. Not only that, the administration has created programs that will and are directly aiding smaller towns like Paraty and Macaé. The fact that the government is doing so in a way that Brazilian society sees real rewards from the investments of the government, both in the opportunity for employment for university graduates and for the ways in which the programs directly aid local communities in Brazil, is extremely encouraging.

As I've Said Before...

Months ago, I commented that taxes are not evil - they are a daily necessity that pay for basic things such as infrastructure and services the state provides, and that instead of getting outraged about whether taxes go up or not, we should get outraged on how our taxes are spent (outrage over spending on state highways is stupid; outrage on spending for a trillion dollar war that could have repaired highways multiple times over is not stupid).

Sure enough, it looks like the Minnesota disaster is going to lead to a raise in taxes (gas in this case) to pay for infrastructural improvements. Once again, it's this simple folks: if we want services like roads, interstate highway systems, fire departments, clean water, etc., you have to pay for it. As they are services states do and should provide, it will cost tax money. It's that simple. So next time somebody starts blowing up about the rates of taxes, remind them that, even with increases, the United States has some of the lowest tax rates in the world, and those taxes don't just pay for programs like Medicare and Medicaid, but things like the highway or bridges systems that, we learn too late, are in bad shape.