Leonel Brizola - Late Brizolismo (1979-1989)

Late Brizolismo (1979-1989)

Brizola returned to Brazil with the avowed intention of restoring the Brazilian Labour Party as a radical nationalist Left mass movement and as a confederacy of historical Vargoist bigwigs. However he was hampered in that by the emergence of news grassroots movements such as the new trade unionism centered around the São Paulo metalworkers and their leader Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, as well as the Catholic grassroots organizations of the rural poor spawned by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, CNBB. Eventually, he was denied the right to use the historical name of the Brazilian Labour Party, previously conceded to a rival group centered around a military dictatorship-friendly figure, the Congresswoman Ivete Vargas, Getúlio Vargas' grandniece. Instead, Brizola had to found an entirely new party, the Democratic Labour Party (Partido Democrático Trabalhista, PDT). The party joined the Socialist International in 1986, and since then the party symbol contains a hand with a red flower (symbol of SI).

Brizola quickly restored his position of political prominence in his home state of Rio Grande do Sul, at the same time acquiring political preeminence in the State of Rio de Janeiro, where, en lieu of associating with official trade unionism, he searched a basis of support among the unorganized urban poor, by means of an ideological tie-in between traditional radical nationalism and a charismatic lumpen-friendly populism, in what a scholar called "the aesthetics of the ugly": for his accusers, Brizola and his Brizolismo stood for shady deals with the dangerous classes; for its supporters, they stood for the empowerment (although in a paternalistic fashion) of the destitute, the lowest, least organized and poorest layers of the working classes ("Politics, from a Brizolista viewpoint, is above all to assume a radical option for the poor and the meek"). In short, the late Brizola shunned the class-based, corporatist character of his early populism, adopting instead a Christian rhetorics of friendship to the "people" in general, more akin to the Russian narodniks than to classical Latin American populism. Such radical populism, however, required the charismatic and highly personal leadership of Brizola's in order to function effectively; in his absence - or without the presence, at least, of his persona - the PDT could never become a contender to power, something that hampered its development on the national level.

In 1982, Brizola entered the race for governor of the State of Rio de Janeiro, in the first free and direct gubernatorial elections in that state since 1965. He ran a ticket of candidates for Congress that tried to compensate his party's lack of cadres by offering a rooster of people with no previous ties to professional politics, such as the Native Brazilian leader Mário Juruna and the singer Agnaldo Timóteo. At the same time, he centered his personal campaign on burning issues such as education and public security, offering a candidacy that had clear oppositional overtones and proposed to upheld the Vargoist legacy. By developing a nucleus of combative militants around himself - the so-called Brizolândia - Brizola led a campaign that melded violent confrontations and street brawls with a paradoxically festive mood. Brizola kept and expanded his nationwide political visibility during his controversial first term (1983–1987) as governor of Rio, during which he developed his early education policies in a grander scale, by means of an ambitious programme of construction of huge fundamental and high school buildings, the so-called CIEPs(" Integrated Centers for Public Education") whose architectural project had been made by Oscar Niemeyer and were supposed to function on a day long base, providing for feeding as well as for recreational activities to students. At the same time, he developed policies for providing public services and recognized housing property for dwellers in shantytowns. In a nutshell, Brizola opposed policies for shantytowns based on forcible resettlement to housing projects, proposing instead, in the words of his chief adviser Darcy Ribeiro,that "slums are not part of the problem, but part of the solution" - once property rights were acknowledged and basic infrastructure provided, it was up to the shantytown dwellers themselves to find their own solutions as far as house-building was concerned.

Also, Brizola adopted a radically new policy for police action in the poor suburbs and slums (favelas) within the Rio de Janeiro metropolitan area. Alleging old relations and modus operandi were founded on repression, conflict and disrespect, he ordered the state police to be refrain from random criminal-searching raids at favelas and also repressed the activities of vigilante death squads, which included policemen on leave. These policies were opposed by the Right, who contended that it made slums an open territory for organized crime, represented by huge gangs like Comando Vermelho (Red Command), by means of a conflation between common criminality and leftism: it was alleged that gangs had been born through the association of common convicted prisoners and leftist political prisoners in the 1970s.

Brizola's policies, which included a no small amount of porkbarrel poor management and wild spending of public funds, nevertheless procured for him the political clout required for running for president in 1989.

It was during the 1989 election that Brizola's charismatic leadership would expose its shortcomings, as he finished the first run third, losing the second position, which would have qualified him for a runoff, by a very narrow margin to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, whose Workers' Party had exactly the cadres, the professional activism and the deep penetration in the organized social movements that Brizola's lacked. Eventually, Fernando Collor de Mello was elected in the runoff. Brizola carried the elections regionally, winning huge majorities in both his home state of Rio Grande do Sul and in his adopted home state of Rio de Janeiro, but never got more than 2% of the votes from São Paulo state.

Brizola, however, was a staunch supporter of Lula's candidacy in the 1989 run-off elections, something he justified by an humorous declaration before PDT cronies the was to remain to this day in Brazilian political lore: "I will be candid: a politician from the old school, Senator Pinheiro Machado, once said that politics is the art of swallowing toads (engolir sapo). Wouldn't that be fascinating to forcefeed Brazilian élites and having them to swallow the Bearded Toad, Lula?"