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March 2006
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Members : 17360
Content : 3757
Content View Hits : 29521341
Content : 3757
Content View Hits : 29521341
Clientelism, a patron-client relationship that rests on personal loyalties and quid pro quo between individuals of normally different social status, is a reality that has existed in Brazil since its first day as a colony. Indeed, when seafarer Pero Vaz de Caminha wrote to Portugal's King D. Manuel on 22 April 1500 officially informing him of the country's discovery, he considered the occasion opportune to request of the monarch a good job for his nephew.
According to polls, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has emerged unscathed from the political crisis of corruption his government suffered in 2005. With his popularity on the rise, it is likely he will be reelected for another four years in October. Nevertheless, there are indications that important changes have taken place that will limit his possibilities. 
The construction of a buildings complex covering a 30,000 square meters area in the Brás neighborhood, in the city of São Paulo, between 1886 and 1888, in São Paulo, was an ambitious project. At the time, the Brazilian city, which today is the fourth largest in the world, was little more than a village. 
At this beginning of the century, no ideological map exists, only ruins of "isms." The political terrain has been bombarded by the changes of the 1980s and 1990s. To be understood, each concept requires the use of adjectives. Snaking through each country, a "Gold Curtain" has replaced the "Iron Curtain." This curtain no longer separates ideologies or regimes but, rather, social groups: the included and the excluded; the rich and the poor. 
The ashes were still being washed from the streets that staged the Rio de Janeiro Carnaval when Brazilians' eyes immediately turned to the two big events ahead in 2006: the soccer World Cup in Germany in June-July and the national presidential elections in October. If for the first no Brazilian has any doubt about who is going to win, for the second things are not so sure.