Neo-development of underdevelopment: Brazil and the political economy of South American integration under the Workers’ Party

ABSTRACT

This article critically assesses Brazil’s role in the South American regional integration process. My hypothesis is that despite the rhetoric of Brazil’s Workers’ Party (PT) governments about a ‘new developmentalism’ project to support ‘post-neoliberal’ regional integration, the structural continuities imposed by neoliberal macroeconomic policies have constrained all possibilities of overcoming underdevelopment. In the realm of regional integration, the driving force has been the internationalization of oligopolic Brazilian business in a process that promised Brazil a leadership role in the subcontinent. This frame has fostered business based on the overexploitation of labour and the destruction of the environment, enforcing trends that deepen the structures of economic dependency and social conflict. The political outcome of that process is that the PT has contributed to contain social pressures, both in the domestic and in regional contexts, as Brazil has played a moderating role in South America’s so-called progressive wave.

KEYWORDS:

• Brazil
• neo-developmentalism
• neo-liberalism
• South America
• Workers’ Party

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. All Portuguese quotes have been translated by the author.

2. The National Bank for Economic and Social Development, by its full name, is a state-owned development bank that was founded in 1952.

3. The PIS and the PASEP are compulsory savings required from companies, established by Brazilian law in 1970.

4. Powerful Brazilian soybean growers in Paraguay, for example, get their inputs mostly from Monsanto. At the other end of this supply chain, the commercialization of the soybean is undertaken by corporations such as Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland and Bunge.

5. In June 2013, massive mobilizations occurred in over a hundred cities against fare hikes for public transport, poor-quality education and health care services, and the immense public investment in ‘mega-events’ such as the 2014 Football World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games.

6. The Puntofijo Pact was an agreement between the leading political parties in Venezuela in 1958, which led to an alternation in the presidency between the two principal parties, the AD and Copei. The Pact was interrupted only by the election of Hugo Chávez in 1998.

7. The term ‘sociedad abigarrada’ was coined by Bolivian intellectual René Zavaleta Mercado (1935–1984) to refer to his native country where different ethnic groups do not mingle (Zavaleta Mercado, 1982).

8. ‘Sumak kawsay’ (also ‘sumaq qamaña’) refers to an heterogeneous set of conceptions that reclaim indigenous values as a counterpoint to market relations. It has played an important political role in recent years, particularly in Bolivia and Ecuador.

9. Venezuela’s political developments under Chávez have been described as the ‘Bolivarian Revolution’, evoking South America’s independence leader Simón Bolívar (1783–1830) who nurtured projects of regional integration.

Additional information

Funding

I thank the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) for its support for this research [grant number 2014/05549-3].

Notes on contributors

Fabio Luis Barbosa dos Santos

Fabio Luis Barbosa dos Santos is an economic historian, professor in the Department of International Relations at the Federal University of São Paulo and Research Associate in the Society Work and Politics Institute (SWOP), University of the Witwatersrand. He is the author of Origens do pensaemento e da política radical na América Latina [Origins of Latin American radical thought and politics] (2016, Editora Unicamp); and Alem do PT – Crise da Esquerda Brasileira em Perspectiva Latino Americana [Beyond PT: The crisis of Brazilian left in South American perspective] (2016, Editora Elefante); A history of the South American Pink Tide 1998–2016 (forthcoming, Brill, Studies in Critical Social Sciences).