Brazil
Brazil is a constitutional federal republic composed of twenty-three
states (each of which has a directly elected governor and legislature),
three territories and a federal district (Brasília). In 1994, voters
elected a new president, two-thirds of the senate, and a new chamber of
deputies. This was only the second democratic election to be held in the
country since the end of military rule in 1985. Fernando Henrique Cardoso
of the Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (PSDB, Social Democratic
Party of Brazil) has been president since the beginning of 1995. Previously
he was minister of the economy, and was responsible for Brazil's latest
anti-inflationary economic plan. In the 1994 election, Cardoso was strongly
supported by Brazil's Jewish community, and this support continues.
As president, Cardoso has been widely applauded both inside and outside
Brazil for maintaining inflation at around 2 per cent per month, and for
helping to increase the level of foreign investment although, in 1996, he
experienced difficulties in continuing to reduce the budget deficit and
in keeping inflation down. For the majority of Brazilians, most goods remain
expensive. However, as the new economic plan has led to currency stabilization
and to a decrease in the prices of basic goods, the anti-inflationary policies
are generally popular.
In January it was reported that the Brazilian currency, the real, was devalued
to a new trading band of 0.97-1.06 to the US dollar. In February the government
imposed restrictions on foreign capital inflows, which had increased sharply
in the first weeks of 1996. The restrictions were imposed partly in order
to stem inflation.
The Social Security Reform Bill was approved in March, but it was in a watered-down
form. Also in March, the senate approved the Fiscal Stability Fund Bill,
which gives the government the right to reallocate 20 per cent of budget
funds without congressional approval.
Antisemitism has never been a major social problem in independent Brazil.
Historically, most Brazilians have had little contact with Jews or images
of them. Brazilian antisemitism is largely the creation of a few individuals
and is supported by a small, urban section of the upper and middle classes.
Brazil remained a colony of Portugal into the early nineteenth century and
thus was encompassed by the Inquisitorial tradition.
Modern antisemitism in Brazil dates from 1930 when, following the Depression,
a new nationalist and nativist regime came to power under the leadership
of Getúlio Vargas (1930-45 and 1951-4). At that time, nativism, of
which antisemitism was only one component, became popular among intellectuals
and the élite press. Groups that regularly attacked Jewish immigration,
including the Society of the Friends of Alberto Torres, had access to the
corridors of power. From about the mid-1930s, the government of Getúlio
Vargas tolerated antisemitic acts, including the virulently antisemitic
campaign of the Ação Integralista Brasileira (Brazilian Integralist
Party). When it was most popular, the party claimed to have 1 million members.
However, it is more likely that the party had at most 200,000 members.
During the period in which Vargas carried out most of his comprehensive
reform policies, the Estado Novo, parties such as the Integralists were
banned, but anti-Jewish immigration policies were adopted. These policies
were continued until Vargas was overthrown in 1945.
There are no indications that the state has either supported or actively
fostered antisemitism since then, and Jews have been present in the social,
political, economic and military life of Brazil. When Vargas was re-elected
president in 1950, he chose Horacio Lafer, a prominent member of the Jewish
community, as his finance minister. Lafer was instrumental in arranging
the immigration of about 10,000 Sephardi and oriental Jews from Egypt, Turkey
and Lebanon after the Suez crisis of 1956.
Discrimination on the basis of sex, race, religion and nationality is
unconstitutional in Brazil, but women, blacks and indigenous people continue
to experience discrimination.
The International Labour Organization notes that important differences in
wages continue to exist to the detriment of women and blacks, particularly
in rural areas. Most blacks are found among the poorer sectors of society,
and even though nearly half of the population has some African ancestry,
there are few senior officials in the government, the armed forces or the
private sector. Black-consciousness organizations challenge the view that
Brazil is a racial democracy with equality for all regardless of skin colour.
They also assert that most blacks experience racial discrimination when
looking for housing, employment or educational opportunities.
Brazil's indigenous peoples are also a main target of xenophobic sentiments.
The indigenous peoples (commonly referred to as "Indians") number
approximately 320,000, and are generally marginalized, even though the occupancy
of their traditional lands is legally protected by the 1988 constitution.
The constitution provides Indians with the exclusive use of the soil, waters
and minerals found in their land, subject to congressional authorization.
The regulations necessary for economic exploitation, however, are still
pending before the congress. Illegal mining, logging and ranching are a
constant problem on Indian lands, as a majority of them are illegally occupied
by non-Indians.
In response to migrations by the poor (largely blacks or indigenous people),
from the north-east of the country to urban centres such as São Paulo
and Rio de Janeiro, attacks on these groups have increased, and the US department
of state annual report on human rights stated that 60 per cent of respondents
to a 1996 survey believe that measures should be taken to discourage migration
from the north-east.
In 1996, there were several attacks by neo-Nazi skinhead groups in cities
in southern Brazil. In March, skinheads murdered Carlos Adilson de Siqueira,
a twenty-three-year-old gay black man, in the southern city of Curitiba.
The confessed killer was a member of the Carecas do Brasil skinhead group,
purported to be composed of adolescents from prosperous families. The group
denied that it targets blacks, but admitted to persecuting homosexuals and
drug addicts. According to the Curitiba police, at least three neo-Nazi
groups with a total of about thirty members are active in Curitiba (see
PARTIES, ORGANIZATIONS, MOVEMENTS).
Contemporary Brazil has very few antisemitic movements. The fortunes
of the Integralist Party (see HISTORICAL LEGACY) revived with the country's
return to democracy in 1988. Currently, the party is based in the centre
of the state of São Paulo. It has only a few hundred members. The
Partido Nacional Revolucionario do Brasil (PNRB, Brazilian National Revolutionary
Party), established in 1992, is an avowed neo-Nazi party. It has a loose
following of about 200, which in a country of almost 150 million inhabitants
is quite insignificant.
Brazil has a small skinhead movement, which is modelled on the skinhead
movements of North America and Europe. Some of the principal skinhead groups
in Brazil are: the Skinheads, the Carecas (skinheads) do ABC, the Carecas
do Suburbio, the Carecas do Brasil, White Power and the SPF. Most of these
groups are based in, and derive their following from, the industrial suburbs
surrounding Brazil's largest cities, which have been hard hit by the country's
economic reform.
The number of skinhead groups in Brazil has barely grown in the last few
years. While some of these groups hold racist and white-supremacist views,
it would be a mistake to assume that all espouse principles of neo-Nazism.
Membership of these groups is often based on the attraction of thuggery
rather than political belief. There is little pattern to skinhead violence,
and while attacks are often targeted at migrants from the north-eastern
states, those of African descent, and even Jews and homosexuals, they appear
to be random rather than stemming from doctrinal belief and hatred of specific
ethnic groups.
There were no incidents of antisemitism recorded by the police, Jewish community or media in Brazil in 1996.
There are no regularly produced far-right periodicals or skinhead broadsheets in Brazil.
There is a growing evangelical movement in Brazil. Two of the largest evangelical churches, the Assembly of God and the Universal Church, have 12 million and 3.5 million members respectively. The Universal Church in particular has become a huge financial conglomerate, with ownership of banks, and an estimated annual turnover of $800 million. Universal Church candidates have had a growing success in recent elections. There have been reports of members of evangelical churches attending Brazilian synagogues in the apparent hope of converting Jews.
Literature denying the Holocaust continues to be published in Brazil,
almost always privately. These publications are mainly funded by Siegfried
Ellwanger, who is known as Castan, a wealthy industrialist living in the
state of Rio Grande do Sul. In his home state, Ellwanger is generally considered
persona non grata. His publishing house, Editôra Revisão
(Revision Press), has distributed an unknown quantity of its books free
of charge to politicians throughout Brazil. Ellwanger claims that his "Holocaust:
Jewish or German?" has reached its thirtieth edition and has sold 200,000
copies, but it remains unclear whether these suggestions are true. His A
Implosão da Mentira do Século (The Collapse of the
Lie of the Century), published in 1993, claims that the Holocaust is a "Zionist
lie". Editôra Revisão has also republished a number of
antisemitic works by other authors, including Henry Ford's The International
Jew and a Portuguese translation of The Protocols of the Elders of
Zion. Editôra Revisão's books are not available in any
of the major bookshops in Brazil, but they can occasionally be found in
independent and second-hand bookshops.
Holocaust-denial literature, in spite of its small circulation, often receives
disproportionate publicity. Attempts to repress the distribution of such
literature in accordance with Brazil's anti-racism laws have not been actively
supported by politicians and have failed under Brazil's freedom of speech
and press guarantees. When Editôra Revisão was removed as a
member of a publishers' consortium in Rio Grande do Sul in 1995, a local
judge reinstated it.
Brazil has long maintained close commercial ties with the Arab world,
trading arms for oil, especially with Libya, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and
Iran. This relationship has shaped Brazil's Middle East policy. Since 1991,
political and economic relations between Brazil and Israel have become increasingly
strong, partly as a result of the Brazilian backing of the annulment of
the UN resolution on Zionism and racism and especially in the wake of the
peace accord with the PLO.
However, this relationship may be marred by recent security reports that
suggest that Brazil's southern border with Paraguay and Argentina, home
to a large number of Middle Eastern people, has become an area of easy access
into Latin America for terrorists such as those alleged to be responsible
for the 1994 bombing of the building of the Asociación Mutual Israelita
Argentina (AMIA, Israelite Argentine Mutual Association) in Buenos Aires
(Argentina).
Another indication of recent social attitudes is the result of an opinion poll conducted in 1995 by a prominent polling service: it indicates that 87 per cent of the whites questioned displayed racist attitudes towards the non-white sectors of society.
The 1988 Brazilian constitution makes the public expression of religious
or racial prejudice a crime carrying a mandatory prison sentence and no
possibility of bail (article 5, XLII). This legislation has rarely been
used. In 1994 the law was used to remove explicitly antisemitic books from
circulation. Specific state-based laws against antisemitism are also effective.
A law banning the use of the swastika was approved by the federal senate
in 1994. Those convicted of using the symbol of the swastika are liable
to be sentenced to between two and five years in prison.
In September 1990 the then president, Fernando Collor de Mello, signed law
8,081/90, which made illegal all discriminatory acts and prejudice on the
grounds of race, religion, colour, or ethnic or national origin. This law
was used, in preference to the constitutional article 5, to convict Ellwanger
(see HOLOCAUST DENIAL).
Ellwanger was brought to trial under Brazil's anti-racism laws in 1995,
but was found not guilty of racism, on the grounds that he was exercising
his constitutional right to free speech in denying the Holocaust. An appeal
brought by the Federação Israelita do Estado de Rio Grande
do Sul (Jewish Federation of Rio Grande do Sul) was successful: in October
1996, the third criminal court of justice of Rio Grande do Sul found Ellwanger
guilty of racism. He received a two-year prison sentence, which was substituted
by a three-year community service penalty.
In December 1996, Alberto Nasser, president of the Confederação
Israelita do Brasil (CIB, Brazilian Jewish Confederation), announced that
the Jewish community would formally request the federal legislature to investigate
the post-war arrival in the country of Nazi loot. According to Nasser, "If
such assets really entered Brazil their value would have been far in excess
of $300 million and they would not have been deposited in the banking system
but destined to finance the enterprises of Nazis who fled to some of the
Brazilian states."
Nasser's statement followed a presentation to that effect to the Brazilian
treasury minister, Pedro Malan, himself a former president of the country's
Banco Central. Whereas Malan confirmed the Brazilian government's complete
goodwill towards the requested investigation he was also somewhat pessimistic
about the outcome, if for no other reason than that in the 1940s and 1950s
there were no archives and the Banco Central had yet to come into being.
The responses to incidents of antisemitism have been rapid and widespread.
As noted above, Brazil's Jewish community is vigilant and brings every case
of antisemitism to the public sphere via protests. The Federação
Israelita do Estado de São Paulo has created a permanent commission
to fight racism. Together with the Latin American Jewish Congress's section
for inter-religious affairs, the Federação has actively fought
against racial hatred with support from the Brazilian National Commission
for Catholic-Jewish Dialogue, an affiliate of the National Conference of
Brazilian Bishops.
São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro have recently created special police
units to investigate racial crimes, although proving a racial motivation
is notoriously difficult. The Federação Israelita do Estado
de São Paulo has a permanent member on the São Paulo unit's
advisory board.
The grassroots antisemitism that exists in Brazil is a result of the
limited contact between a relatively small community of Jews and the mass
of Brazil's impoverished urban and rural people. Jewish issues are kept
out of the spotlight and Brazil's strong rhetoric of ethnic, cultural and
racial tolerance is backed up by law, making public antisemitism a crime.
The Middle East peace process has created a positive image of Israel, and
by extension, of Jews. The active involvement of some Jewish community leaders
in popular movements that seek to combat hunger, poverty and discrimination
is widely publicized and helps to present Brazilian Jewry in a socially
conscious light.
Despite the continuing presence of skinheads in Brazil and their bigoted
ideological roots, the nature of skinhead activity seems to indicate that
its nature is closer to thuggery than to antisemitism or racism. In fact,
much of the evidence that can be seen to suggest that Brazil's skinhead
or neo-Nazi movements are growing can also be interpreted as the result
of better reporting techniques and an increasing unwillingness among Jews
and non-Jews alike to let antisemitism in rhetoric or action pass without
comment.
If any contemporary challenge exists, then it is to be seen in the fact
that the Brazilian anti-racist laws are frequently rendered ineffective
by the broad interpretation of the basic right of freedom of speech.
© JPR 1997