God is Brazilian

People say it in a jest, to express a belief of good luck.  If God is Brazilian, Heaven is in Brasilia, Brazil’s capital.  The city’s inhabitants have the highest incomes of the country.  Far from being dull and devout, Brasilia’s lifestyle is entertaining, self-indulgent and borderline decadent.  In Brazil, God is notably indulgent with his flock; He has safely and comfortably accommodated the most chosen among the chosen in the three palaces of the Praça dos Três Poderes (the square of the Three Powers): the legislative, judicial and executive arms of the state.  The chosen people are the legislators of both the Senate and the Lower Chamber, the Congress.  After benefiting from decades of unlimited pampering, these select people have become immutable, unchallenged and indestructible.  They have morphed into a self-cloned tribe, a nepotistic oligarchy insulated from the Brasilia’ hoi polloi and the rest of Brazil. 

In Brazil, politicians have access to perks and privileges unfathomable to their peers in other countries: unrestrained freedom (e.g. they can switch parties at will), growing entitlements, no-string-attached budgets, and job security with mock accountability.   

One perk in particular is unique in its “Brazilianness”.  With a stroke of a pen, a Brazilian politician can switch race!  He/she has a large palette to choose from: black, brown, white, yellow or indigenous.  Race is a fluid concept in Brazil, the result of centuries of enthusiastic miscegenation.  Recent statistics indicate that 56 % of Brazilian are either Black or Brown and the white population has decreased to 43%.  Since 2014, election candidates have to declare their color/race, on the basis of what they look like, their external appearance (a marca, a term coined by Brazilian demographers) rather than their family origin like in the USA.

In 2020, thousands of politicians changed their race.  43,400 of them decided that their previous race was no longer adequate to stand for new election and, crucially, win re-election!!  Evidently, the requests for changes were supported by noble motives, existentialist justifications and even ideological considerations.  These changes took place under little supervision, and color fraud was reported.  A few candidates made a name for themselves as serial changers: white to brown and back to white.  In their majority, the little-known candidates changed from white to black/brown to take advantage of campaign fundings and TV air-time set aside for minorities.  Election campaigns are publicly funded, and special electoral funds are set aside to encourage blacks, brown, indigenous and also women to run for office.  Few get elected because of a deliberate lack of accountability and the pervasive macho and racist party milieu.  All the same, these changes are slowly changing party mentalities.   

Minority funds are chicken feed compared to the mega budgets the big parties, generally white and males, allocate to themselves through a perfectly legal process.  The emendas parlamentares, or parliamentary amendments are legal instruments set up to increase the legislative role in the budgeting process by allocating funds to politicians’ strongholds.  These transfers notably improve their chances of reelection.  Both Senate and Congress go into full predatory mode to syphon off billions of Reais to pamper their constituencies.  It is a perfect tool for mendacious and greedy politicians to Ad Vitam hold onto their constituencies and build powerful de facto dynasties.  The politicians are in the driver’s seat to decide the allocation of the emendas money, select the areas of investment as well as the beneficiaries.  Their investment choices rarely match or complement the government’s crucial objectives, such as education and health.  Large parts of the emenda money are wasted, spent without oversight: invoice-padding is a time-honored Brazilian practice.  The funds are handled like a slush fund, the sole purpose of which is to buy votes.  

This “emendas” business is another Brazilian peculiarity not enjoyed by other democracies.  As a result, both executive and legislative branches run investment budgets worth billions of dollars. The emendas are a national scandal which keeps growing exponentially to satisfy the legislators’ unstoppable appetite for tax payers’ money.  In 2023, legislators shamefully increased the size of their slush fund by reducing the government’s budget in health and education. The legislators allocated some R$ 40b (US$ 9b) to their pet projects.  The play The Little Shop of Horrors is staged on the square of the Three Powers!  In the play, a plant grows exponentially by sucking people’s blood.  It is a metaphor, for the many politicians who leech the nation wealth.

God may be Brazilian, but he seems to only protect the louts, corrupt and greedy.  In the matter of investment, a third group, even less virtuous is growing in strength in Brazil: the mafia.  While the Lula government and the legislative branches are bickering over their respective and competing budgets, the mafia or narco-milicia is laundering its ill-gotten gains in all kinds of economic pursuits from beauty parlors to clandestine gold mining operations and crypto-currencies.  The mafia is already a state within a state, it allegedly controls 58% of the city of Rio de Janeiro and large swaths of the Amazon region.  The mafia routinely provides votes to corrupt politicians notably in Rio de Janeiro and Sẩo Paulo.  It has been reported that the mafia is launching joint ventures with some of them.  It is about time that God closes the little shop of horrors.