Brazil: An Inconvenient History (BBC)

[freshwest]

We don't hear much from the nation of Brazil. It's older than the USA.

Slavery and its effects have been the major force of life there for 500 years according to this BBC documentary.

The video is a mindblowing exercise of how a minority continues to rule a country and how the people appear to be winning in the end, despite all.

I've heard some very good and very bad things about Brazil. I'm not sure when this was put out or if things have changed.

It says a lot about how Brazilian society has evolved, and how inequalty has been maintained - but there may be changes.

YES! the online magazine reported this move forward:

The City that Ended Hunger


A city in Brazil recruited local farmers to help do something U.S. cities have yet to do: end hunger.

“To search for solutions to hunger means to act within the principle that the status of a citizen surpasses that of a mere consumer.”

by Francis Moore Lappe - Feb 13, 2009

In writing Diet for a Small Planet, I learned one simple truth: Hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food but a scarcity of democracy. But that realization was only the beginning, for then I had to ask: What does a democracy look like that enables citizens to have a real voice in securing life’s essentials? Does it exist anywhere? Is it possible or a pipe dream? With hunger on the rise here in the United States—one in 10 of us is now turning to food stamps—these questions take on new urgency.

To begin to conceive of the possibility of a culture of empowered citizens making democracy work for them, real-life stories help—not models to adopt wholesale, but examples that capture key lessons. For me, the story of Brazil’s fourth largest city, Belo Horizonte, is a rich trove of such lessons. Belo, a city of 2.5 million people, once had 11 percent of its population living in absolute poverty, and almost 20 percent of its children going hungry. Then in 1993, a newly elected administration declared food a right of citizenship. The officials said, in effect: If you are too poor to buy food in the market—you are no less a citizen. I am still accountable to you.

The new mayor, Patrus Ananias—now leader of the federal anti-hunger effort—began by creating a city agency, which included assembling a 20-member council of citizen, labor, business, and church representatives to advise in the design and implementation of a new food system. The city already involved regular citizens directly in allocating municipal resources—the “participatory budgeting” that started in the 1970s and has since spread across Brazil. During the first six years of Belo’s food-as-a-right policy, perhaps in response to the new emphasis on food security, the number of citizens engaging in the city’s participatory budgeting process doubled to more than 31,000...

And when imagining food as a right of citizenship, please note: No change in human nature is required! Through most of human evolution—except for the last few thousand of roughly 200,000 years—Homo sapiens lived in societies where pervasive sharing of food was the norm. As food sharers, “especially among unrelated individuals,” humans are unique, writes Michael Gurven, an authority on hunter-gatherer food transfers. Except in times of extreme privation, when some eat, all eat...

A lot more details and pictures:

http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/food-for-everyone/the-city-that-ended-hunger

So, we will see. This is liberating to individuals, giving them freedom to make personal progress and it is unifying several social groups.

Some are working to do this here, but forces opposing rely on right wing ideology and division to keep it from coming forth.

[Warpy]

1. Brazil has started to tackle some of the tough problems we're still in denial about

but their leftist governments still have to tread very carefully around the petulant rich. They seem to be doing so successfully, as the soundness of their economy indicates.

They still have massive problems. At least they recognize them as problems and that is a great part of the battle against them.

[nightscanner59]

2. Very interesting thank you.

Sao Paulo holds an inexplicable attraction to me, every time I see it on video the more I want to go visit.

[freshwest]

4. I was interested in seeing Brasília, the capitol:

Last edited Fri Jan 10, 2014, 01:18 AM - Edit history (1)

http://www.mariaameliadoces.com.br/index.php?mad=nav/page&pagina=Brasilia

Rio de Janeiro also intrigued me:



São Paulo looks like Europe:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A3o_Paulo

The largest city in the southern part of the western hemisphere. It will have many experiences for you.

Brazil appears to be a very old and a very young country at the same time. it's impressive, and not in our news very much. We are kept isolated and depressed by our media, and there are so many other ways to live and be happy in the world

Glad you enjoyed the video.

[maindawg]

3. Ok I watched it.

What a horrible way to live your life. Treating people worse than you treat pigs.And the Church was 100 % on board.They even invented a justification. Very sad history what the world did to Africa. Mans inhumanity toward man.
So the Portugese just sort of arrived in South America and moved in. They wanted to build plantations and so they decided to enslave the natives. That never works because they always either die or run away. So they imported like 400 million ,I think the guy said, worked them to death and kept going. It was so bad that they only expected the slave to live for one year.
Now days, things are great. Everyone is mixed race, and the new pope is from South America I think so the Church has switched sides and not only does the church not like slavery, but the new pope is on the same side as the poor. From what I gather.