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Brazil's Collor Faces the Acid Test
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19774 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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3 / 1991 |
3,141 Words |
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William Perry
William Perry was director of Latin American affairs on the
National Security Council under Ronald Reagan. He is now
president of the Institute for the Study of the Americas. |
Young, handsome and athletically energetic, Fernando Collor de Mello, 41, came out of nowhere to win Brazil's presidency in the first direct elections for that office in nearly three decades. When he assumed his duties on March 15, 1990, he seemed to embody his country's high hopes for a fresh, dynamic kind of leader capable of restoring the South American giant's stalled developmental trajectory and institutionalizing a popular, democratic system of government. And, to the international community, he appeared a powerful addition to the emerging generation of hemispheric leadership committed to breaking with tired, old formulas, ready to yank Latin America out of its miseries and into the mainstream of international life.
On the crest of a great wave of popularity, Collor plunged immediately into a bold and broad series of initiatives aimed at economic recovery and reform along free market lines and restoration of Brazil's formerly bright prospects within the global community. One year later, many important endeavors have been energetically begun--but mountainous problems remain. The Collor administration now faces the decisive phase in its five-year mandate--when it must confront both the enduring obstacles to long-term, effective governance and reform of Brazilian institutions and the limitations of its own style and capabilities.
The critical importance of this period for Brazil--and of Brazil for Latin America and the industrialized democracies, especially the United States--should not be underestimated. This nation is, after all, the 10th-largest economy in the world--comprising half of South America's population and GNP and almost one-third of these numbers for Latin America as a whole. Clearly, its future economic and political course of development will exercise a powerful influence, both directly and by way of example, on its neighbors.
Although each country in Latin America is far more unique than most outside observers imagine, to some extent Brazil's circumstances illustrate the problems faced by most of the region's societies and governments. It is just that the opportunities and difficulties exist on an enormous scale and that Brazil's political culture is all its own. Like most of Latin America, Brazil is a traditionally underdeveloped country (with an increasingly westernized elite) that developed rapidly after World War II. The very pace of economic development and politicization gave rise to social unrest and "subversive" activity in the context of the Cold War, which produced the advent of military government in 1964 (as it did in Peru in 1968; Argentina, 1966 and 1973; Ecuador, 1970; Uruguay, 1971;
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