What Will Become of Brazil? – Folha de S. Paulo, November 28, 1988

by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira

In any human group where members interact regularly, daily events are informally discussed, often leading to the creation of new words. These neologisms make expressing specific ideas or describing typical situations more concise and vivid. As they become more numerous, they form a kind of internal “jargon” unique to the group that creates them.

The same thing happens in the TFP. Among us, the “R Factor” is a new term that comes to the forefront whenever the pulse of national politics speeds up.

The phrase describes a steady pattern in our public and private lives. During the worst crises, when everything seems like it might unravel into chaos, the turmoil is often driven by an unseen, subtle part of the national temperament. Instead of erupting into violence, conflicts gradually lessen, and tempers settle down.

Once the chaos subsides, one finds — with a touch of surprise — that things have remained “just as they were before at the Barracks of Abrantes.” Or, if they haven’t remained exactly “as before,” at least the new situation resulting from the commotion — when examined closely — turns out to be much more similar to the previous one than one might have expected.

Given the current peak of socio-political unrest, there’s no need to cite very recent examples for illustration. However, even when looking at older events, such examples are plentiful. Independence separated us from Portugal, yet it left us the throne, the dynasty, the Pombaline regime of union between Church and State, a strong national unity, and the subjugation of the Black population. All of this lasted for nearly seventy years. Regarding national unity, it remains intact to this day. In the great upheaval of 1822, so much still remained.

The Republic emerged from the ruins of the imperial regime. Many believed that the Monarchy was gone forever. However, just before the Republic’s centennial, the Constituent Assembly reminds us that the republican regime still lacks any foundation for its “democratic legitimacy” beyond Marshal Deodoro’s sword.

The glaring incongruity of this situation did not escape the 1988 Constituent Assembly. Seeking to ground the current regime on more logical and stable foundations, it called for holding in 1993 a plebiscite in which the people could — for the first time — calmly choose between a constitutional monarchy and a republic.

Since the 1988 Constituent Assembly’s decision to call this plebiscite is almost the only one I agree with, I take this opportunity to warmly applaud what the Grand Assembly has decided on this point.

I now turn to the “R” (Remain) Factor of Tefepista jargon. No sooner was the plebiscite called than, after a hundred years of republican transformation, a swarm of small monarchist groups and movements emerged from the depths of the national landscape — some representing old heroic loyalties, others expressing youthful monarchist aspirations — all converging on imperial legitimacy, that is, on Princes Dom Luís and Dom Bertrand of Orleans-Braganza.

Ultimately, beneath the surface of Brazilian politics, one thing has remained, persisted, and survived — suppressed but not gone. Now, it is rising again: the monarchist tendency of many of our fellow citizens.

Furthermore, how many core values of the monarchical regime persisted into the Old Republic: the feudal system of rural land ownership, the electoral influence of the rural “colonels,” often the sons and successors of the Empire’s barons, and so on.

This persistent tendency should not be mistaken for ideological conservatism, as it is fundamentally a matter of temperament.

In my view, through a curious and tragic contradiction of history, this “R” factor was actually one of the main causes of the situation in which the 1988 Constituent Assembly left us: a Brazil transformed by an astonishing, deep, and nearly universal socialist shift.

The “R” factor — or something analogous to it — is scarcely mentioned today in political commentary. Yet it was precisely this factor that led, subconsciously, the vast majority of those classes naturally tasked with preserving the regime of free enterprise and private property — industrialists, merchants, farmers, urban property owners, and holders of highly paid public or private positions — into deep inertia, blind recklessness, and votes cast haphazardly in the Constituent Assembly elections.

From there, vain hopes and naïve optimism followed, forecasting victories that would never come. All of this culminated in backroom deals that deprived the so‑called conservative classes of any real influence in the Constituent Assembly. In the end, they counted the handing over of land — of unfathomable scope — almost as favors, and even as successes.

I thought about all this when I read in the newspapers that the new mayor of São Paulo, flying over our capital in a helicopter, decided it would be appropriate to send a message to the Federation of Industries (FIESP), whose striking building she could see below. The message had a deliberately friendly and conciliatory tone. It read: “I assure you that you can rest easy. We are not going to revolutionize municipal administration. We are not proposing a socialist solution for the city. We want to govern with competence and transparency, and that is in the business community’s interest” (Jornal da Tarde, 11/18/1988).

However, this message also had an obvious second meaning, which the writer failed to understand: “Don’t be afraid of me, because I intend to be nice to you.” This leads the reader to think: “The day she gets angry, woe to the Federation of Industries.”

What mayor of the Monarchy or the Republic would have thought that such a message aimed at the country’s top economic power would be appropriate?

Let the reader not think that I am claiming that Ms. Erundina spoke nonsense. She simply revealed a truth. It is that in this new Republic, private enterprise is little more than a mouse in the State’s hands.

This is because, lulled to sleep by the “R” factor, business owners and owners of rural or urban real estate let events drift into a situation where nothing — or almost nothing — actually “remained.” Unintentionally, the “R” factor committed suicide.

What will become of this Brazil, where nothing else has any serious chance of remaining?

Nonetheless, Brazil remains, and I share these thoughts in the hope that our country will not allow itself to be permanently infected by the deadly impact of the “R” factor’s suicide.