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Brazil Conflict and Nonviolence
Conflict and Nonviolence
While avoiding open conflict, Brazilian society has gone through
transitions that in general have moved in the direction of modernization
and democracy. Considering the decimation of Indian populations
and the maintenance of African slavery long after it had been abolished
elsewhere in the Americas, Brazil's colonial and imperial history
was characterized by violence. At the same time, however, there
is a strong Brazilian tradition of nonviolent resolution of conflicts.
There was no war of independence against Portugal, but only local
or regional conflicts, such as the Cabanagem (1835) in the Amazon,
the War of the Farrapos (1845) in Rio Grande do Sul, and the São
Paulo Civil War (1932) (see The Empire, 1822-89; The Republican
Era, 1889-1985, ch. 1). Although Brazil participated in the Paraguayan
War, also known as the War of the Triple Alliance (1864-70), most
conflicts with neighboring countries were solved peacefully. The
transition from empire to republic in 1889 was also relatively smooth.
There was no generalized civil war, but there were isolated events,
such as the resistance of a millenarian group at Canudos in the
Northeast, described in Euclydes da Cunha's classic Os sertões
, translated as Rebellion in the Backlands . In contrast to Spanish
America, which fought protracted revolutionary wars and split into
many separate countries, Portuguese America held together in one
huge country. Although there were many violent episodes, Brazilian
history, on the whole, has been remarkably peaceful.
Despite its nonbelligerent heritage at the national level, Brazilian
life is marked by considerable violence on a day-to-day basis. Indians
and slaves, or their descendants, have always been victimized. The
rural bandits (cangaceiros ) of the Northeast, of whom Lampião
is the most famous, battled rival groups and backlands colonels
in the early 1900s. In the post-World War II period, the struggle
for land pitted rural workers and their leaders against the landowners
and their hired gunmen, resulting in the murder of leaders and even
priests, most notably in frontier areas. Chico Mendes, a rubber-tapper
leader killed in Acre in 1988, was the most widely known among hundreds
of victims. In 1995 and 1996, there were massacres of landless workers
in Rondônia and Pará. In urban areas, especially the
largest, violence has become commonplace, with frequent thefts,
robberies, break-ins, assaults, and kidnappings. The police themselves
are sometimes involved in criminal activities. In Rio de Janeiro,
the government has little control over the favelas, which are dominated
by gangs that control informal gambling (a numbers game called jogo
do bicho ) and drug trafficking as well as influence local politics.
For the most part, contemporary violence cannot easily be construed
as a class struggle, at least as a struggle that involves collective
consciousness and action. It is essentially particularistic and
opportunistic at the individual level, although it often reflects
perceptions of social injustice. Avoidance of more organized conflict
between the privileged and the poor in Brazil can be attributed
in part to the corporatist (see Glossary) system set up during the
regime of Getúlio Dorneles Vargas (president, 1930-45, 1951-54)
in the 1930s and 1940s. This system was designed to preempt direct
class confrontation through well-controlled concessions to workers.
The system of government-regulated labor unions and clientelism
(see Glossary) reached its limits in the 1960s. In 1964 a bloodless
military coup prevented it from going farther in the direction of
the dispossessed.
The authoritarian military regime, which lasted from 1964 until
1985, used torture and killing to repress opposition, including
cases of armed struggle between 1966 and 1975, but was gradually
worn down by democratic pressures and sheer fatigue. From 1976 until
1994, political efforts on the right and the left focused on redemocratization,
with greater popular participation. Revolution and repression were
set aside. Once again, a major transition occurred with relatively
little violence, at least as compared with Chile and Argentina,
for example.
Data as of April 1997
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