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$Unique_ID{bob00128}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Brazil
Chapter 2D.   Sharecroppers and Tenant Farmers}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{P. A. Kluck}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{urban
migrants
population
social
percent
city
labor
work
rural
favelas
see
pictures
see
figures
}
$Date{1982}
$Log{}
Title:       Brazil
Book:        Brazil, A Country Study
Author:      P. A. Kluck
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1982

Chapter 2D.   Sharecroppers and Tenant Farmers

     From the abolition of slavery until the mid-twentieth century,
sharecroppers and tenant farmers formed the bulk of Brazil's plantation labor
force. They worked under a multiplicity of contracts and arrangement. Part of
this diversity reflected the variety of crops grown on fazendas. In return for
caring for a specified number of coffee trees, coffee plantations offered
workers a minimal wage along with a house and land for subsistence crops and
pasturage. In addition, workers received a piece rate for harvesting the
coffee beans. Planting the groves was done under a separate contract wherein
the family planted virgin land in trees and cared for them until maturity. In
return the family received little cash remuneration but planted corn and beans
between the trees and got the proceeds of the first coffee harvests.

     The rise of large-scale sugar mills on the northeastern coast in the
early twentieth century eclipsed sharecropping in the region. In the agreste,
however, assorted arrangements grew up in response to the variety of crops and
climactic conditions common to the region. Mid-sized landowners let plots to
sharecroppers who grew tobacco followed by corn and beans in a single
agricultural cycle. Cotton was typically sharecropped, and cotton
sharecroppers also split their subsistence crops with the landlord. The
traditional labor arrangement for cattle raising in the sertao was drawn along
the principle of shared returns; the vaqueiro received one-fourth to one-fifth
of a herd's calves along with the option of planting foodstuffs. In non-coffee
parts of the South, fazendeiros typically gave land in return for a portion of
the harvest of subsistence crops; alternately, they might leave a settlement
of squatters unmolested on fazenda land in return for a number of days' labor
from the squatters.

     Sharecropping varied regionally, but there was also tremendous diversity
in the terms a single plantation owner might offer his work force. Some hands
were simply resident laborers receiving a house and a small garden plot in
return for specified days of labor; still others received only a house. In
some cases a tenancy agreement might be contracted for a single year in which
an individual cleared the land and planted crops, then switched to a
sharecropping arrangement. Sharecroppers might split their harvest with the
landlord or, if they had a skill, give as little as 20 percent of their
crops. Fazendeiros varied too in the amount of seed they would provide and the
extent to which they reimbursed sharecroppers for improvements made on the
land and house. A variety of marketing arrangements where landlords bought
tenant crops at a discounted price plus the cost of credit a fazendeiro had
extended also entered into the balance. Workers were required to put in a
certain amount of labor on the landlord's crops, but here again, the actual
days and whether or not the sharecropper could hire a substitute varied. For
some skilled workers the fazendeiro might dispense with the general labor
requirement in favor of a simple sharecropping contract with a number of
specific tasks to be done.

     The plethora of contracts made the fazenda work force a highly stratified
one. The fazendeiro was at the top, but the steps in the social order were
minutely graded. Sharecroppers themselves contributed to this complexity.
Some were landholders in their own right or had a claim to a plot of land too
small to provide a living. Some were skilled craftsmen; others might own
shops. As a group they were highly mobile; in one plantation in Ceara in the
late 1960s the entire resident labor force had been born elsewhere. In an
average year (when there was no drought) over one-third of the resident labor
force left and was replaced. Most moves, however, were between fazendas in the
same municipality.

     The 1960s and 1970s did much to undermine the sharecropper's position in
traditional rural society. In the coastal Northeast and portions of the
agreste, mill owners took whatever land was marginally appropriate and put it
into sugarcane in response to government price incentives (see Agriculture,
ch. 3). Sharecroppers and tenants were displaced in the process. In the South
rising soybean prices encouraged owners to take land out of coffee,
eliminating yet more tenants. Between 1960 and 1975 the amount of agricultural
land held by sharecroppers and renters dropped nearly 40 percent; average
holdings declined by more than half from roughly 30 hectares per sharecropper
or renter to a scant 13. Even when sharecroppers were not expelled from
plantations, the land at their disposal was limited. Further, small farmers
who depended on rented land to supplement their inadequate holdings were
caught up in the same process. They were forced to seek wage labor as a
substitute for the income that rented plots had formerly generated.

Landless Laborers

     There were an estimated 5 million landless agricultural laborers in the
early 1980s; of these roughly 1.5 million had permanent employment. The rest,
commonly known as "cold lunches" (boiasfrias) or clandestines (clandstinos),
from their propensity to work without contract, were casual day laborers.
According to INCRA a number of seasonal agricultural workers had no documents
(which significantly limited their options for permanent work or receiving
social services). The proportions of women and minors were 87 percent and 95
percent, respectively.

     Numerous factors account for the dramatic increase in temporary labor,
among them changing cropping patterns and the growing mechanization of
agriculture. The Rural Labor Statute (1963) regulated contracts and salaries
for agricultural laborers. The legislation aimed at guaranteeing farm workers
and sharecroppers benefits comparable to urban workers. Its effect, however,
was to encourage plantation owners to limit their permanent work force and
rely instead on casual labor.

     From the perspective of the boias-frias this created a situation where
membership in a rural syndicate, although it guaranteed the benefits of a
formal contract, also limited employment opportunities. Further, although
boias-frias lacked legal guarantees and social benefits, their wages-on a
daily basis-were equal to or slightly exceeded those of permanent workers. In
fact, while real rural wages in general rose by roughly 50 percent between
1968 and 1977, those for casual laborers in Sao Paulo, where the phenomenon is
most common, nearly doubled.

     Boias-frias, of course, have no guarantee of employment. Casual laborers
are quite heterogeneous. They include those who work almost all year as a part
of a relatively fixed work group; those, often women and minors, who work only
periodically at peak seasons; and those who shift between agricultural and
urban employment. Small farmers represent another pool of potential
boias-frias; surveys in Minas Gerais and Sao Paulo found casual work accounted
for some 40 percent of the family income of small farmers. Some authors
suggest that the boia-fria phenomenon should be seen as part of a family's
survival strategy. A male boia-fria might work fairly regularly, and the
earnings of the women and children would supplement the family income. Urban
residence and employment opportunities provide a tenuous access to social
services unavailable in the countryside. It is clear as well that the wage
laborer's lot varies dramatically from one region to another. The options the
paulista has can hardly be compared to those of the Amazonian laborer who
spends his off-season in cheap hotels living on credit, waiting for another
employer to pay his bills and send him off into the bush again.

     The rise of wage labor, particularly casual temporary labor, betokens a
major shift in rural social relations. Some authors suggest that there may be
ties of patronage and loyalty between regular members of a work group and
their labor contractor. Others insist, to the contrary, that contractor and
boia-fria alike are at pains to limit their personal involvement. Certainly,
the statements of the boias-frias themselves indicate a turn away from
traditional social relations between patron and client. "I am a clandestino so
as not to be a captive [of anyone]," comments one-an attitude poles away from
a dependent relationship with a patron. Local landholders are unable or
unwilling to furnish the expected perquisites to their dependents, and the
rural masses are increasingly ready to seek alternatives to the "good patron."

Forces of Change

Migration

     Brazil's population is an increasingly mobile, migratory one: by the late
1970s nearly 40 percent of all Brazilians were resident in municipalities
other than their birthplace. Nearly half the total urban population were
migrants. Even focusing on those who had migrated within the last 10 years
revealed a substantial measure of mobility. Roughly one in five Brazilians
moved at least once in the 1970s, and among city dwellers the proportion was
one in four.

     Mass migration was a twentieth-century phenomenon. For most of the
country's history the population was concentrated in a narrow band of roughly
300 kilometers stretching along the coast from Sao Paulo northward. The
dramatic population shifts of the past century should be seen in the context
of 300 years of coastal living. In the 1770s nearly 90 percent of the populace
lived along the coastal belt between Sao Paulo and Recife; in the 1970s
roughly 70 percent did so. Both the mountainous coastal escarpment and the
lack of rivers flowing inland along the coast contributed to the interior's
lack of settlement. So too, however, did colonial policies; it was easier to
police the coastal cities and far easier to collect the royal fifth (tax) from
such cities than from thousands of settlements scattered throughout the
hinterland. Late in the colonial era and during the empire there was a slight
shift inland. The gold rush in Minas Gerais was the impetus for the first
large-scale push toward the interior; there was as well a steady increase in
the South's population through the government's efforts at colonization (see
Cultural Regions, this ch.).

     Beginning in the 1870s there was a shift in the population as prolonged
drought in the sertao drove Nordestinos to migrate and as expanding coffee
production in the South drew immigrants. Throughout the 1870s a small number
of slaves trickled southward from the declining sugar plantations of the
Northeast to Sao Paulo's coffee fazendas. An increasingly influential
abolitionist movement in the South limited their numbers. All told perhaps
15,000 to 20,000 slaves were imported-a fraction of the 1.5 million increase
in population Sao Paulo enjoyed between 1872 and 1900.

     International migration accounted for most of the population increase in
the Southeast and South; during the last 30 years of the nineteenth century,
international migration was roughly double internal migration. A variety of
factors combined to eliminate Nordestinos as a possible replacement for slaves
on coffee fazendas in the years following abolition. Paulista planters had a
clear hierarchy in their preference for laborers, and free Luso-Brazilians
ranked at the bottom of the list, below slaves and European immigrants.
Nordestino fazendeiros of course were opposed to a plan to limit their labor
supply; Nordestinos themselves do not appear to have been anxious to accept
the poor contract terms offered by the paulista coffee planters, terms
invariably inferior to those offered European immigrants. In addition, the
coastal or inland transportation systems were rudimentary in comparison with
the transatlantic passenger lines, making the cost of the two alternatives
roughly comparable.

     Most Nordestinos migrated to the Amazon Basin or to the growing urban
centers of the Northeast itself. That they were effectively precluded from
joining the labor force of the most prosperous region exacerbated the
country's already growing regional disparities. A mobile labor force was
lacking at just the point in time when it might have served as an
"equilibrating mechanism" to blunt differences in income and wages between the
South and the Northeast. As it was, the terms of labor most Nordestinos
encountered in the Amazon, where the rubber boom was just getting under way,
were scant improvements over those they had left in the overpopulated
Northeast as the drought abated and the rubber boom went "bust."

     International migration peaked early in the twentieth century; since the
1920s the single defining characteristic of population movements has been the
role of internal migration. In the 1920s and 1930s second-generation European
immigrants moved off the coffee plantations of Sao Paulo into the region's
cities and farther toward the frontier, in this case Parana. These former
agricultural laborers established themselves as the backbone of the petite
bourgeoisie. City-bound migrants became the merchants and entrepreneurs; those
who went to Parana bought property and continued farming. Continued migration
from the Northeast gave the coffee planters a steady stream of replacement
laborers.

     Since the 1940s there has been a new upsurge in internal migration as
well as a tremendous natural increase in the population. Like earlier
population shifts, there has been continued frontier settlement, and the
frontier itself has moved westward and northward. Above all, the 1960s and
1970s were decades of rural-urban migration. City-bound migrants were so
predominant that in rural Brazil only the frontier regions registered
significant gains.

     There were two distinct shifts in westward migration. The 1950s was the
peak period of Parana's settlement; in that decade migrants equaled one-half
of Parana's 1950 population. Goias, Mato Grosso, and (more recently) the
Amazon were migrants' destinations in the 1960s and 1970s (see fig. 6). The
two migration streams could hardly be more disparate. Rising demand for coffee
and foodstuffs precipitated the settlement of western Sao Paulo and Parana.
Public policy, in the form of moving the capital to Brasilia (in 1960) and
subsidized highway construction, was the driving force behind the push to the
West in the 1960s and 1970s. Nearly three-quarters of the migrants to Parana
were from the South, and they brought a significant fund of farm-management
and entrepreneurial skills. Half the migrants to the latest frontier have been
from low-income regions, especially the Northeast; they were driven to migrate
by droughts in the late 1950s and the early 1970s. Notes one author, "Migrants
were pulled into Parana by the promising economic opportunities and largely
pushed into Goias due to rural overpopulation, unemployment, and droughts in
the Northeast."

     These trends continued throughout the 1970s. Acre, Rondonia, Amapa, and
Roraima received substantial numbers of migrants-mostly from Parana and the
Northeast. Roughly three-quarters of the nonnative population in those regions
had arrived between 1975 and 1980. Para received migrants from Goias and Minas
Gerais and from Maranhao and other parts of the Northeast. The cities of Rio
and Sao Paulo continued to be frequently chosen destinations-approximately
one-quarter of their population had been born elsewhere. Roughly 200,000
migrated to Rio annually during the decade, more than 600,000 to Sao Paulo
(not counting re-migrants). In 1979 alone the state of Sao Paulo received more
than 1 million migrants.

     National censuses underrepresent the population's mobility in a variety
of ways: they neither reveal the frequency with which Brazilians change
residences within the same municipality nor measure repeated migration by
individuals or families. Short-distance moves are particularly important in
the countryside where they generally betoken a change of employers. Looking at
one northeastern plantation's labor force, sociologist Bernard J. Siegel found
that half of the sharecroppers had moved between fazendas in the same
municipality and that one-third had moved between adjacent fazendas. There is
considerable turnover in the plantation labor force. Case studies show
resident workers and casual laborers alike to be constantly evaluating other
employment options and numerous migration alternatives.

     Once a Brazilian undertakes long-distance migration, he or she is likely
to be involved in a process where move follows close upon move. The
probability that an individual who has migrated will do so again within a year
is 58 percent; it drops to 9 percent for the migrant who has stayed at one
destination at least a year. Questioning migrants to Brasilia (admittedly a
highly mobile group), researchers found that two-thirds had made at least one
move before coming to the capital; 20 percent had made three or more moves.
Nationwide roughly one-third of all migrants move again within five years of
their first move; within nine years nearly half do so.

     Numerous studies from the 1960s to the early 1980s sought to compare the
socioeconomic characteristics of migrants with the population at large, both
in the migrants' regions of origin and in their destinations. The reports of
these studies reveal a consensus that the "poorest of poor" were meagerly
represented among rural-urban migrants. Those who left for the city generally
out-ranked those remaining behind in educational attainment, income, and
social mobility. Some studies suggested that surveys have overstated the
migrants' educational background. It may be that the more educated migrants
did better and therefore remained to be surveyed, while their less educated
counterparts returned home or migrated elsewhere. Rural-urban migrants on the
averaged had less schooling than natives of the cities they migrated to.
Although education may have helped the migrant in adjusting to the urban
milieu in a general fashion, it bore little specific relationship to the jobs
migrants actually obtained.

     The principal difference between migrants and nonmigrants, of course, was
in occupation. Those who remained behind were overwhelmingly agricultural
laborers and small farmers. Migrants, regardless of how lowly their urban
occupations or how minimal their earnings, were financially better off than
they would have been had they remained in the countryside. Even allowing for
differences in the cost of living and the rural dweller's ability to produce
part of the family foodstuffs, studies estimated that the migrant increased
real earnings by roughly half in the city. A rural Nordestino tripled earning
potential by moving to Rio; a paulista manual laborer outearned the Nordestino
agricultural worker by five times. Further, however tenuous the migrant's
access to the much vaunted urban services, it was better than what the average
farm laborer or small landholder enjoyed.

     Migrants were more likely than natives to be employed-a relationship that
held true across the board for older or recent, make or female immigrants
alike. Older males were more likely to migrate when they perceived no options
at all left in their region of origin; younger males were frequently
persuaded that the city offered better opportunities. Young women generally
moved in order to work, whereas older women normally migrated to follow their
husbands. Most migrants found work relatively quickly; in one study conducted
in the late 1970s, two-thirds were employed within a month of arrival, and
only 15 percent took longer than three months to find a job. It was possible
that the migrant who failed to find work returned home relatively quickly, as
did the less educated. Skilled migrants were more likely to take longer in
finding a job; their relatively privileged position in the marketplace
permitted them to hold out for suitable employment.

     In the early 1970s women were more likely to migrate than men. Young
women were able to find ready employment as maids in urban households;
one-half to three-quarters of all female migrants began work in domestic
service. As a woman's length of residence in the city increased, she was more
likely to shift into work in industry or the social sector or simply get
married. Among migrants with 10 or more years residence, the proportion of
women in domestic service declined to 25 to 40 percent. Males generally began
their urban work careers in unskilled construction jobs; typically a migrant
would advance to more remunerative and secure work; the most successful
became taxi drivers or shopkeepers, although this was not the most common
career path. The migrant's situation in terms of income, employment, and
housing normally improved over time.

     Family and friends were pivotal in the migration process. Some surveys
indicated that as many as 80 percent of all rural-urban migrants stayed with
family or friends on their arrival in the city. It was through these same
personal contacts that most migrants found their first jobs. A network of kin
already in the city played a major role in the migrant's success. Most arrived
in the city with little financial cushion; many spent literally all their
money simply to get to the city. One migrant described her arrival: "The truck
owner asked each family how much they had, and charged the entire amount as
his fee." The more recent the migrant the less likely the individual was to
have arrived in the city without prior contacts. Part of the cumulative effect
of decades of rural-urban migration was an increasing pool of persons on whom
the potential migrant could call for aid and assistance in setting up in the
city. Migrants tended to settle where they first arrived, and a relative's
residence was probably the most significant factor in defining a migrant's
choice for housing and employment alike.

     Case studies offered glimpses of the fortunes of migrant families over
several generations as well as the migration process. A substantial portion of
migrants came to the city with their families in tow. In a study of migrants
to Rio de Janeiro, social scientist Janice Perlman found that over half came
directly to Brazil's second largest city from a distinctly rural setting, the
small towns or county seats in the interior; nearly 30 percent came from farms
or villages.

     A substantial minority of rural-urban migrants retained rights to
property in their place of origin. Often the had a claim to a portion of a
small holding that, if actually subdivided, would be too fragmented to provide
a living for any of the potential heirs. This underscores the extent to which
the city served as a safety valve for rural overpopulation. In one rural
municipality in the Southeast, for example, roughly 40 percent of the
potential agricultural population had migrated. By maintaining a claim to
land, the urban-bound migrant had a safety net should employment fail in the
city. The process of rural-urban migration could span the generations;
migrants were reluctant to foreclose any options that enhanced the family's
potential security. The successful first-generation migrant enjoyed
considerable occupational mobility and improved real earnings and level of
living, largely by leaving agriculture. Social and occupational mobility
stalled in descending generations; few of the rural-urban migrants' advantages
were passed on to children and grandchildren. A discouraging percentage did
not attend even primary school with any regularity, and most ended up in the
relatively low-level, unskilled, or semi-skilled jobs their parents and
grandparents had.

Urbanization

     On the eve of World War II fewer than one-third of all Brazilians were
city dwellers; by the early 1980s nearly two-thirds were. Population nearly
tripled during the period, and cities absorbed most of the increase. Far more
than the frontier, the city has been a "safety valve" for excess rural
population. Continued urban growth was a central feature of changing social
relations. Cities-previously enclaves of privileged planters and merchants
serviced by slaves and artisans-have become focal points of the changes taking
place in the society at large.

     Urban population growth has outstripped rural growth in every region of
the country-often dramatically so (see table 3, Appendix). Between 1970 and
1980 the rural population grew less than 10 percent, the urban by roughly 50
percent. In the Southeast there was more than a 7 percent difference in the
average annual rural and urban growth rates; rural population in fact declined
by nearly a quarter during the decade. During the 1960s the absolute growth of
the nine largest cities was three times that of the frontier. Even on the
frontier, i.e., the North and the Center-West, urban expansion in the 1970s
was double that of rural expansion. The expansion was even more spectacular in
that it capped four decades of continued urban growth.

     Urban growth has been concentrated in the largest cities (those over
100,000 in population). Nine officially designated metropolitan regions
together account for more than 40 percent of the urban population and roughly
30 percent of the total population (see table 4, Appendix). Sao Paulo and Rio
de Janeiro residents together equal nearly one-third of all urban dwellers,
and close to one in every five Brazilians lives in Greater Sao Paulo or Rio.

     The contemporary urban scene has its roots in the country's past
"boom-bust" cycles-above all, in the coffee boom and subsequent international
migration. Since the 1920s industrial development has played an increasing
role in urban expansion. The northeastern cities of Recife, Salvador, and
Fortaleza grew as colonial administrative centers or entrepots for the
exchange of cotton, sugar, slaves, and European manufactures. Rio's primacy
dates from the gold rush; it was also the seat of government after the
Portuguese court located there during its flight from Napoleon in 1808. Sao
Paulo's rise, which began in the 1870s, was truly meteoric. The town had
languished as an economic and cultural backwater throughout the colonial era.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries not even a wealthy paulista could
hold a candle to a modest sugar mill owner in the Northeast. Wedding clothes
were reused by couple after couple; on one occasion the town council
commandeered the only decent bed for a visiting dignitary. Between 1872 and
1900 Rio and Sao Paulo doubled their portion of the population. The turn of
the century was the high point of their preponderance among cities: together
they represented over 60 percent of the total urban population.

     There has been relatively little change in the relative ranking of major
cities by population from the 1870s through the 1970s. Sao Paulo overtook Rio
as the largest city in about 1960. The settlement of Brasilia and Goiania, as
well as the rise of some frontier cities, was a new development. Curitiba, its
population less than 100,000 in 1940, had over 1 million inhabitants in 1980;
metropolitan Curitiba numbered nearly 1.5 million. Urban development has taken
place at the expense of smaller cities (those from 20,000 to 100,000 in size)
as well as rural areas. Cities close to metropolitan areas have been
incorporated or effectively reduced to the status of satellite communities.
Aside from the nine metropolitan areas, only cities larger than 100,000 have
experienced significant growth.

     Beginning in the 1950s the locus of growth within metropolitan regions
shifted from the central city to the outlying suburbs. The Center-West has
experienced the highest rate of expansion-a reflection in part of the
minuscule levels of urbanization in that region earlier. Northeastern cities
have had the lowest growth rates. There was some evidence that cities in the
South were gaining on the primate cities of the southeast. Observers
speculated that businesses may have found some virtue in locating in the
South where cities could offer an educated labor force and a relatively
developed infrastructure at lower cost than in Rio or Sao Paulo.

     Massive urbanization is a uniquely twentieth-century phenomenon, and
traditional social relations have hinged on the plantation rather than the
city. Paradoxically, however, Brazil has never lacked an "urban ethos." The
numerous small towns and municipal seats of the interior regarded themselves
as urban and therefore privileged. However, limited the economic opportunities
or however rudimentary the amenities, they outstripped those enjoyed by the
vast majority of the rural populace. Town inhabitants viewed their way of life
(and, by extension, themselves) as superior to that of the "backward"
countryside. The town's weekly market was a social occasion bringing
cultivators from the surrounding area to sell and buy. The town-rather than
the plantation-was the center of domestic trade. Similarly, town festivals
were major annual events attended by everyone from the local environs. The
urban milieu has movimento (literally, movement) and continues to be the focus
of political, economic, and social action.

     Some of the most far-reaching changes in Brazilian society since World
War II have centered on the city. The rise of wealthy and influential
industrialists, the growth of a nonagricultural work force, and the expansion
of the middle class are all urban-based changes. Small towns as well have been
transformed. In the 1950s and 1960s fazendeiros abandoned their rural mansions
in favor of homes in local municipal seats. In one municipality, for example,
the number of town-dwelling landowners grew six times between the mid-1940s
and mid-1960s. Education has been a major drawing card for the town. In the
municipality of Cunha nearly three-quarters of all city-based fazendeiros
had chosen to move to town to educate their children. Finally, even the
relatively small urban centers have shared in the growth of public employment.
There are a few government jobs in even the most remote hinterland
municipalities. Anthropologist Charles Wagley has estimated that as much as
one-fifth of the populace receive some portion of their earnings from public
employment.

Urban Elite and Middle Class

     During the past century Brazil's former elite-a minute group of
landowners with narrowly agrarian interests-lost its importance. By the
mid-twentieth century urban industrialists and financiers, numerically and
politically insignificant for most of the First Republic (1894-1930), sat at
the top of a steep social pyramid. To say that social mobility has been
limited and that the elite remains a privileged fraction of the populace
should not obscure the extent to which the rich and the powerful of the early
1980s comprised a group vastly more diverse than their late
nineteenth-century counterparts.

     The contemporary elite includes top-ranking military officers and civil
servants, prominent politicians, industrialists, commercial and financial
powers, the largest landowners and owners of agribusinesses, and groups
peripheral to the power structure, such as bishops and labor union leaders.
The cleavages and divergences among the various strata offer a dramatic
contrast with the cohesion of the earlier agrarian elite. Not even the
business community and the military rulers are always of a single mind, nor
are politicians in unfailing accord with the military (see Interest Group
Politics, ch. 4). Nor, for that matter, do bureaucrats charged with overseeing
the economy always agree with the priorities of those whose bailiwicks are
concerned with culture, social welfare, or foreign relations. A new
generation of labor union leaders, increasingly militant and critical of
government policies, are clearly at odds with the powers that be. So too are
many leaders of the Roman Catholic Church for whom the regime's vehement
anticommunism is neither enough to ensure against secular policies (such as
legalized divorce) not to afford much common ground for dealing with issues
such as social justice and equity, which are of concern to many bishops (see
Religion, this ch.).

     The rise of the industrial-financial bourgeoisie was linked to foreign
immigration during the coffee boom. Brazil's elite is not only diverse in the
roles it plays in the nation's politics and economy but is also ethnically
diverse. Nearly half the largest concerns were founded by immigrants. The
typical career path that led to the role of manufacturer began in commerce and
the marketplace. The successful agent for a foreign firm had strategic
knowledge of the market, access to foreign sources of credit, and familiarity
with the channels of distribution. By the beginning of World War I, more than
half the chief import firms were also engaged in manufacturing.
Luso-Brazilians entered industry as well; almost all who did so came from
the landowning elite. The European immigrant who began a career as a
craftsman and ended it as a factory owner was a rarity, but the pattern was
still vastly more common than among Luso-Brazilian artisans. Government
policies aimed at controlling the supply of coffee in the early 1900s meant
coffee planters reaped substantial profits that could be reinvested in
industry.

     The socioeconomic transformation since the early 1930s has permitted real
social mobility, but to a limited number. Mobility essentially stops at the
lower reaches of the middle class. The emphasis on higher education as an
avenue of upward mobility has meant substantial opportunities for the urban
middle stratum of society, but at the same time those with little access to
educational resources have suffered. Surveys in the 1970s of the elite's
social background found that more than one-third of those interviewed came
from the middle segments of the urban population. Similarly, educational
requirements for military cadets have worked to the advantage of the offspring
of middle-class and skilled workers. Between the mid-1940s and the mid-1960s
there was a precipitous drop in the number of cadets from landowning and
professional families and a concomitant rise in recruitment of sons of skilled
workers as well as those of military personnel. Overall, the middle class has
made its greatest gains in the expanding government bureaucracy and the
administration of public enterprises.

     Regional differences, changing educational choices, and students' family
backgrounds have had a combined and distinct impact on elite career patterns.
Since the 1950s economics and engineering have gradually replaced law as the
preferred fields of study for the elite. The process has not been uniform. A
degree in law continues to find favor among the scions of leading political
and military families. It is a course of study congenial to older elite
families as well as those outside the Southeast. Elites of industrial and
commercial background, by contrast, have favored engineering in preparation
for entering the family firm, while those of the middle class have viewed
economics and business administration as the most promising avenues of upward
mobility.

     Aside from the military, whose leaders attended the Superior War
College (Escola Superior de Guerra-ESG), there are marked regional disparities
in the universities educating Brazil's elite. In the early 1970s more than 40
percent of the elite polled had been educated at the Federal University of Rio
de Janeiro or the University of Sao Paulo. Both schools were among the first
to offer courses of study in tune with the changing requirements of the
economy and the growing emphasis on "technocratism" within the public sector.

     In the early 1980s higher education continued as the quintessential
avenue of mobility for the middle class. It allowed the child of modest
background a chance for a niche in society's upper echelons. The system was
undoubtedly elitist, but it was hardly caste like. The expansion of higher
education and increased public employment have had as almost their sole
beneficiaries the middle ranks For the ambitious individual of relatively
modest origins, education offered an opportunity for public employment. Entry
to the world of business, industry, and finance was, with the exception of
government-owned companies, far more limited. Those families who were already
firmly established in the upper class, of course, educated their offspring,
but they would, in any event, have had access to elite channels through their
wealth and family ties. Poorer Brazilians, by contrast, would certainly have
had greater advantage had the educational resources gone to primary or
secondary schooling instead of higher education.

     If education offered some opportunity for advancement, marriage did not.
Most Brazilians chose spouses of similar social class and background. The
trend was most clear among labor leaders, more than three-quarters of whom
married within the ranks of manual labor; none married above the middle class.
Children of professionals were slightly more likely than others to marry above
their family's station. Education over a two-generation span, then, did lower
certain otherwise impervious social barriers. Offspring of large landowners,
senior military, and prominent political leaders intermarried; industrialists
and financiers, by contrast, tended to marry those of comparable occupational
background or those of professional families. Social networks reflected the
differences in family background among the various segments of the elite.
Businessmen tended to have extensive kin ties within the industrial-financial
community. They exhibited a certain clannishness conforming to the traditional
upper class norms for kinship behavior (see Family and Kin, this ch.). The
elite from middle-class families tended to rely more on ties of friendship
formed in the course of their education and professional life.

Urban Lower Classes

     The cities' lower orders comprised overwhelmingly first-, second-, and
third-generation rural-urban migrants. They have shown a persistent
resourcefulness in dealing with the problems of living in an urban setting
with little money and limited job skills. Urban population growth has been far
greater than the increase in industrial jobs. The surplus has been absorbed,
after a fashion, by the public and service sectors. Economic development
generated substantial opportunities for the skilled and educated; it did so
at the expense of widening the income scale. In 1960 the top 10 percent earned
over 30 times the bottom decile; by 1976 the disparity had nearly doubled: the
top decile earned nearly 60 times the income of the bottom 10 percent. Even
within the lower reaches of the income scale, however, there is marked
differentiation. The urban lower class work force is stratified by age and
sex; in addition, the fortunes of those employed by large enterprises involved
in modern industrial production are much better off than those in small-scale
operations or those who find only temporary work.

     Lower class families have developed distinctive employment strategies to
ensure the household income. Until the economic downturns of the early 1980s,
at least, the rule had been high underemployment and relatively low overt
unemployment. The typical family strategy was to have the adult male fully
employed and to count on the adult female and adolescent children to generate
additional income. The "informal sector" served as a buffer for the young, the
old, and women. Earnings were low (except for young adult males) and often
uncertain; nonetheless, they were worlds better than absolute unemployment.

     Lower income city dwellers unearthed a plethora of make-do jobs to eke
out a living. Women did housework and took in sewing; children ran errands,
shined shoes, and bagged groceries-the possibilities seemed endless. Odd jobs
(biscates) played a significant role in generating income for migrant and
native families alike, particularly with the restrictive wage policies of much
of the 1960s and 1970s. The informal sector has blunted the impact on
families, if not individuals, of increasing wage differentials and rising
inflation. Further, the lower the family income the higher the portion of it
that comes from the informal sector. Poverty can almost be defined as the
family's total reliance on odd jobs to the exclusion of regular wage labor.

     Men typically began their work career doing odd jobs as adolescents. For
them the switch to a regular, if poorly remunerated, job marks the first step
up the occupational ladder to relatively skilled, secure, and well-paid work.
Young adult males could earn substantial amounts as casual laborers. If they
failed to make the switch to permanent employment by their mid-thirties or so,
their position in the market eroded fast. Women found the change to a
permanent job more difficult and were more likely than men to spend their
entire lives in poorly paid casual jobs.

     In the early 1980s housing remained a major problem for most of the urban
lower class, and the typical solution could be seen in the urban and suburban
shantytowns (favelas) in the environs of any city. In legal terms favelas are
defined by their tenuous claim to the land they occupy: squatters began by
settling seemingly unowned vacant spaces. After settlements are in place,
legal claims to the land multiply. One favela located in a swamp north of Rio
de Janeiro had 16 claimants within a few years of the initial settlement. The
earliest favelas date from the 1920s when refugees from the Canudos uprising
in Bahia emigrated to Rio (see Religion, this ch.). The 1930s saw a hefty
increase in the numbers of favelas, but the truly astronomical growth in the
settlements came after World War II. Formerly almost the exclusive domain of
rural-urban migrants, by the 1970s favelas included more and more natives who
saw the shantytown as an answer to rising rents.

     Favelas represented a solution to urban housing for a plurality of
metropolitan residents. The magnitudes were simply astounding. By the early
1980s an estimated two-thirds of the population of Greater Sao Paulo were
inhabitants of favelas (favelados); roughly one-third of Rio's residents found
housing in favelas. Baixada Fluminense, to the north of the city where many
of the favelas were, grew from some 30,000 in 1930 to approximately 2.5
million in 1980. Because Rio is surrounded by mountains and has little room
for favelas to spread, the city has perhaps the highest density of squatter
settlements in Latin America. The level of crowding reached what one observer
termed "Asian proportions."

     Favelas have been damned by conservative and reformer alike as cesspools
of corruption, decay, and social disintegration. There can be little doubt
that the standard of living of the favelados is marginal. Access to water and
electricity is frequently limited. In the worst favelas unsanitary living
conditions, overcrowding, and poor nutrition have led to rampant disease and
high rates of infant morality. Those in industrial areas are subject to levels
of pollution that almost defy description. In Cubatao, near
Santos, particulate pollution was more than twice the level that, according to
the World Health Organization (WHO), causes excessive mortality. Forty infants
per 1,000 births were stillborn, and another 40 died within the first week of
life. In less bleak circumstances favelados endured their particular
privations with a combination of resignation and equanimity. In one favela
located on a swamp subject to annual floods, residents yearly bricked up
windows and put in cement sacks to divert water from doorways.

     Despite the squalor and ramshackle houses, social scientists note that
the favela is a "self-created solution to the severe housing shortage."
Because the initial cost of occupancy is almost nothing, a shack in a favela
permits the family  to accumulate funds for the gradual improvement of its
home. Overall, most favelas are reasonably organized communities whose
residents have created a variety of associations to obtain better services,
provide the basic amenities, and fight against eviction. The social life of
the favela is well developed, and favelados maintain membership in athletic
and social clubs as well as the ubiquitous samba schools. Favelas have a
full-blown and diverse religious community,typically including a Roman
Catholic congregation, several Protestant evangelical sects, and a variety
of macumbistas (practitioners of macumba, an Afro-Brazilian spiritualist
cult). As it matures, the settlement normally spawns a variety of small-scale
commercial shops. These indeed are essential to many families' survival,
because favelado merchants normally sell in the small quantities poor families
can afford and offer credit to their customers.

     The launching of a settlement can be a highly orchestrated event. In one
Rio favela the organizer restricted invaders to married men with children,
regular jobs, and no police record. Many favelas have a high level of social
cohesion and an effective system of mutual assistance. Favelados can rely on
their neighbors for small loans, babysitting, the use of space in their
refrigerators, help in making improvements on their houses, and the like.
Nearly three-quarters of favelados surveyed in the early 1970s belonged to one
or more favela associations. Far from representing the nadir of social
disorganization, most favelas show a careful husbanding of extremely limited
resources. Where space permits, favelados keep small livestock, and where
their tenancy seems at all secure, they are ready to make improvements on
their homes. As settlements age, brick and wood structures tend to replace the
more primitive wattle-and-daub structures.

     Favelas have never found much favor in more privileged urban social
strata. The first call for their eradication came in 1937; in 1947 the
Commission for the Eradication of Favelas suggested returning the favelados to
the states from whence they had migrated. Mid-1970s government policies aiming
at removing the favelas culminated a long history of official disapproval.
Regime efforts were directed toward resettling the favelados in low-income
housing.

     However well intentioned, the policies operated to the disadvantage of
the poorest of the favela populace. Low-income housing was invariably located
farther from the jobs of the favelados; the increase in travel time, to say
nothing of expense, was significant. Some former favelados ended up paying as
much as a quarter of their income on transportation. Worse still, others lost
their jobs completely as a result of undependable public transportation.
Others were forced to rent a room in the city and commute to the suburbs on
the weekends. The distance from the city center limited the opportunities for
women and children to earn income by doing odd jobs, and the economy of
families became even more marginal. For favela merchants the move spelled
disaster because they were unable to pay the rents of the storefronts in the
low-income housing. It was a double loss because no one stepped in to fill
the void: the shops stood empty because former favelados could rarely
afford prices that would entice merchants to locate in the area.

     Fees and mortgage payments, although they were intended for low-income
families, amounted to as much as  75 to 80 percent of the household's
earnings. Within a matter of years some three-quarters of those resettled were
in arrears. Even attempts to hold housing costs to 25 percent of earnings were
ineffective because family income was so uncertain and variable. Families
having the lowest incomes abandoned public housing in favor of other favelas.
By the late 1970s those in slightly higher income brackets had already begun
to take over the public housing units.

     In the late 1970s the regime redirected its efforts. The income
restrictions on public housing were eased slightly, permitting lower
middle-class families to take advantage of an alternative clearly beyond the
reach of the poor. The number of families in arrears on mortgage
payments dropped to a fraction of its former level. Recognizing that finished
housing of any sort was beyond the reach of the poorest of the urban
populace, the government directed its efforts toward legalizing and upgrading
the favelas already in place. Favelados were to receive title to their land,
water and electricity, and assistance in improving their homes.