Brazil is a country known for its beautiful landscape as well as its vibrant people. From the lush jungles of the Amazon to the Iguazu Falls along the Brazil-Argentina border, this tropical paradise is both breathtaking and awe inspiring. Thus, tourists flock to Brazil for the scenery as well as checking off two of many traveler’s “must-do bucket list items” attending Carnival and visiting the statue of Christ, the Redeemer (number 1 on the New 7 Wonders of the World list) (Craven, 2018; Harrington, 2018). However, none of these wonderful or fascinating topics are the reason that Brazil has currently been in the news. With the turmoil caused by the massive corruption scandal known as “Operation Car Wash”, the leadership of Brazil has become infamous.  This investigation began in 2014 as a means to investigate “allegations that executives at the state oil company Petrobras had accepted bribes from construction firms in return for awarding them contracts at inflated prices” (Brazil corruption scandals, 2018). However, this inquiry grew into an even bigger scandal with many more additional probes than ever imagined.

In the past four years, the investigation has uncovered “millions of dollars in kickbacks” by “more than 80 politicians and members of the business elite” (Brazil corruption scandals, 2018). In favor of leadership that supported their moral beliefs, many Brazilians were in favor of stomping out this corruption.  In fact,  based on the famous GLOBE study performed by House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman, and Gupta (2004), Latin American countries (including Brazil) prefer leaders that promote “charismatic/value based” (enigmatic and influential with a foundation in ethical principles)  actions while  being “team-oriented” (empathetic while emphasizing comradery)  and “self-protective” (self-absorbed and egocentric) (as cited in Northouse, 2015, pp.440-442). Thus, when the much beloved Ex-President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was found guilty of taking kickbacks and was sentenced to 12 years in prison, his successor Dilma Rousseff was impeached in 2016 for misappropriation of funds, and Ms. Rousseff’s vice-president and successor Michel Temer had been implicated in the “corruption scandal”, many of the Brazilian people were completely devastated. They no longer had leaders to trust and believe in.

Northouse (2015) noted “in leadership, ethics has to do with what leaders do and the nature of leaders’ behavior, including their motives. Because leaders often have control, power, and influence over others, their leadership affects other individuals and organizations” (p. 262). Thus, the people of Brazil are in search of a new leader for Brazil. This has provided an opportunity for candidates from 5 different parties to take control of Brazil. Not surprisingly, the election was held on October 8, 2018 with no absolute winner. To be elected as president, the candidate must obtain 50% of the votes. However, the surprise was in the distribution of votes. The results were 46% in favor of Jair Bolsonaro of the Social Liberal Party (PSL) and 29.3% in favor of Fernando Haddad of the Worker’s Party (PT). Thus, a second election will be conducted between Bolsonaro and Haddad only. Although the Worker’s Party has won every election since 1998, the findings of “Operation Car Wash” has placed the party’s reign in question and afforded the opportunity for a militant candidate to be the front-runner (Solomon-Brady, 2018).

Since 1985, the people of Brazil have reveled in the freedom of a prosperous democratic society attained after more than 50 years of militant leadership that had tortured, banished and even killed hundreds of Brazilian citizens (CIA, 2016; Londoño, & Andreoni, 2018; Moran, Abramson, & Moran, 2014). However, with the lack of ethical leadership in current times, it appears that the people of Brazil are looking for answers at almost any cost. Based on the results of last Sunday’s election, the majority of votes were obtained by Mr. Bolsonaro a strong supporter of military leadership and law enforcement controlled extermination of criminals. Thus, “Brazilians sent an unmistakable message: They want a drastic course correction. And if a measure of authoritarianism is required, so be it” (Londoño, & Andreoni, 2018).  Although all Brazilians want to prove that the country’s elite are not above the law and thus to ultimately have a society free of corruption, there is a very strong possibility that the only way to achieve this may be to “clean house” and start over. Thus, the next election could shake the society of Brazil to its core.  As noted by Watts and Lemon (2017), “whether or not this purge proves a cure for Brazil will depend not just on who falls, but on who follows”. Hence, Brazil and the rest of the world will have to wait until October 28, 2018 to find out if Brazil will continue to be a democracy or once again revert back to military rule.

 

References:

Brazil corruption scandals: All you need to know. (2018, April 8). BBC News. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-35810578

Central Intelligence Agency. (2016). Brazil. In The World Factbook. Retrieved from https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/br.html

Craven, J. (2018, May 14). 5 Ways Cristo Redentor is iconic. ThoughtCo. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/reasons-why-christ-the-redeemer-statue-is-so-popular-4123653

Harrington, J. (2018, April 4). History of Carnival in Rio De Janeiro. USA Today. Retrieved from https://traveltips.usatoday.com/history-carnival-rio-de-janeiro-11711.html

House, R. J., Hanges, P. J., Javidan, M., Dorfman, P. W., & Gupta, V. (Eds.). (2004). Culture, leadership, and organizations: The GLOBE study of 62 societies. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

Londoño, E., & Andreoni, M. (2018, October 18). Brazil edges toward Bolsonaro as a ‘Last Resort’ leader. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/world/americas/brazil-elections-bolsonaro.html

Moran, R. T., Abramson, N. R., & Moran, S. V. (2014). Managing cultural differences (9th ed.). Oxford,UK: Routledge. ISBN: 978-0-415-71735-9

Northouse, P. G. (2015). Addressing ethics in leadership. In Introduction to leadership: Concepts and practices (pp. 261-276). Boston, MA: SAGE.  Retrieved from https://reserve-libraries-psu-edu.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/ler/100/10044.pdf

Northouse, P. G. (2015).  Culture and Leadership. In Leadership: Theory and practice (pp. 427-466). Boston, MA: SAGE.  Retrieved from http://ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/login?url=http://reserve.libraries.psu.edu/ler/100/10039.pdf

Solomon-Brady, H. (2018, October 8). Brazil Elections 2018 – Who won the first round of voting and when is the second vote? The Sun. Retrieved from https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7413705/brazil-elections-2018-vote-polls-first-round/

Watts, J. & Lemon, S. (2017, June 1). Operation Car Wash: Is this the biggest corruption scandal in history? The Guardian.com. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/01/brazil-operation-car-wash-is-this-the-biggest-corruption-scandal-in-history

I remember the first time I noticed the children living in what I saw as trash heaps on the sides of the roads while we drove from the airport to my grandparent’s home.  My father is from Lima, Peru and came to the states in college.  When I was young we would return every couple of years to visit the family, typically over the Christmas holidays.  I had been there several times before that particular year, but for some reason at age twelve was when I really started to notice and put everything together.  My grandparent’s house was on a charming street and there was a high privacy wall that surrounded the courtyard.  Behind that wall for years I had been being kissing cheeks and being fattened by the cook as I was becoming a “skinny American”.  I never noticed beyond those walls, beyond the turtle in the courtyard, the birds in their cages, the late-night parties with costumes, food and drink.

That year I during one party I recalled a memory of a party a couple years earlier.  It was a celebration for the birthdays of December and January.   There were so many people there spilling from the house into the courtyard.  As my mother would say, “everyone is coming”, this really does mean everyone!  After nightfall I was running and playing with the other children as the toddlers and babies slept on couches or piles of blankets nearby by when suddenly the ground shook, there was a loud boom and the lights flickered and then went out.  Children screamed and people started lighting candles and holding lighters up to help everyone see.  Some men in the courtyard turned the car headlights on and shown them into the house.  I couldn’t understand a lot of the words the grownups were using and I remember being confused while they just kept reassuring the children everything was fine. Radios and televisions were being turned on and everyone hushing each other so they could listen.  The party ended on that note and slowly people started picking up their children and heading home.  I later learned that the loud boom was an explosion.  A group of, at the time they called them rebels, named the Shining Path had set a bomb at electricity towers.

This trip when I was twelve started to connect many dots of memories for me as it seemed I was coming into an age of reason.  The children living in tin houses as I drove from their airport were just like me, but they lived in poverty.  Poverty at a level that I had never seen in the City of Chicago where I was growing up.  Other instances started connecting for me.  My mother took me to a mall to purchase a dress for yet another party and there, standing at the doors, were guards dressed in fatigues with rifles.  There were tanks parked outside residential homes with guards on each corner. Whenever I would try to ask why, my mother would just hush me and tell me to stop speaking English.  She feared that if someone realized we were American, we would be kidnapped.  We had a driver who went with us everywhere.  He would give us sweets and mind us while our parents shopped or had long conversations.  I later wondered if he lived in one of those tiny tin houses.

The experiences that I was able to have going to Lima every couple of years gave me a great appreciation for America.  My father was in the upper class in Lima but he still had to worry about things like bombings, kidnapping, car bombs, assassinations and just straight violence on the street unlike what we see in America.  I understood deeply why my parents worked so hard to come to America.

In 2003 Brazil founded a government program called the Bolsa Familia which grants monthly aid to households that are living in extreme poverty.  In order to receive these benefits which equal to about 25$ a month, the government requires that children attend school on a regular basis and are regularly monitored for their health.  This program now reaches over 46 million people and is credited with “lifting tens of millions of Brazilians out of poverty while reducing the country’s notorious inequality” (Long, 2017).

Now this program that has helped so many has become a casualty of  Brazil’s budget cuts.  In 2017 the deficit was at a whopping 139 billion reals which is around $44 billion.  This has caused the Brazilian government to start cutting back financially on their commitment to social assistance programs like the Bolsa program. Unfortunately, this only added to the extreme poverty of the country and even though the recession has ended the ones who continue to suffer are the lower and middle class citizens of Brazil.

Unfortunately this type of dilemma can be seen more often than not and the ones that end up suffering the most are the poor and the children.  I have seen it in my travels around the world and I have seen it in my own back yard.  Everyday you hear about budget cuts and we go about our day and yet do we know who they affected? Who did they stop funding?  This year before the school year started we (I work at a school) divided our staff into two groups and got put on school buses.  We then set off on a “field trip” to the surrounding neighborhoods from where our families and students reside.  For many it was an eye opening experience because they were not from the area and had never really went into the neighborhoods.  We were able to see first hand how budget cuts affected neighborhoods.  For example, in one of the more affluent neighborhoods we saw a brand new middle school with a new foot ball field that had a turf field. It was beautiful!  We didn’t think too much of it until we went to the other side of town (literally just over the bridge).  When we got to the south side of town we encountered another newly built school with a  great football field but their field didn’t have turf it had grass. Why the difference?  Didn’t they deserve the same? The answer was not enough money in the budget.

As the trip continued we saw places that were places that used to be beacon of light and hope to me when I was a kid closed down because they just simply ran out of money.  Places like the Boys and Girls club, were no longer operating or were run down only open for a couple of hours on certain days.  This is something that happens all over this country and the world because unfortunately when cuts need to be made the first ones they come for are the poor and the children.  This is something that I would hope will change one day since it just exacerbates poverty, despair, crime, lack of education, and just a lack of hope.

 

References

Long, C. (2017, September 26). ‘Hope Is the Last Thing That Dies’: Brazil’s New Poor in an Age of Austerity. Retrieved from https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/23231/hope-is-the-last-thing-that-dies-brazil-s-new-poor-in-an-age-of-austerity

Moran, R. T., Abramson, N. R., & Moran, S. V. (2014). Managing Cultural Differences (9th ed.). Oxford: Routledge.

I’ve been reading a lot about the economic crisis in Venezuela. Hyperinflation as well as food and medicine shortages plus cuts to power are driving Venezuelans to bordering countries in mass numbers. To date, 2.3 million people have left since 2014. Ironically, this is doing nothing but continuing to hurt and already crumbling economy. With minimal tourism, Venezuela relied on its residents to keep the economy churning. With so many fleeing, things are getting more and more dire.

This is in contrast to the overall story being told throughout Latin America, one where most countries are thriving and continuously transitioning into the modern world, including modernizing their economies, social institutions and infrastructures. Interestingly, Venezuela is one of the countries that is a full member of MERCOSUR, which created a partial common market in Latin America and is one of the key economic developments there. It was designed to encourage flexible and fluid trade and create a free market in Latin America. While it increased trade tenfold in the 90’s when it was established, it has since fallen short, prompting critics to wonder if it is slowly making its way into being obsolete.

But the issue with Venezuela’s economy may be more Venezuela’s fault than MERCOSUR’s. In 2016, the country was suspended from the bloc because it failed to meet it’s minimum standards, which included that the country had not incorporated key rules on trade and human rights into national law. Was it these mistakes that cost Venezuela the economic freedom and success that other members of MERCOSUR have experienced? With 1,000,000% inflation expected in Venezuela by the end of this year, only time will tell.

“Mercosur Suspends Venezuela over Trade and Human Rights.” BBC News, BBC, 2 Dec. 2016, www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-38181198.

“How Venezuela’s Crisis Developed and Drove out Millions of People.” BBC News, BBC, 22 Aug. 2018, www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-36319877.

Moran, R. T., Abramson, N. R., & Moran, S. V. (2014). Managing Cultural Differences (9th ed.). Oxford: Routledge.