The economic and political challenges confronting Brazil, Iowa City, Iowa, December 6, 2017

- [William Reisinger] ICFRC has been presenting community programs to address topics of international interest since the year when Vanessa Williams became the first African-American Miss America, which was 1983, and we thank our members, volunteers and interns, for making these forums possible over those many years. I also want to mention a couple of individuals who have played a very important part in the ICFRC's success over the years and whom we have recently lost. One is Hank Madden, who passed away recently, a long time supporter of the ICFRC and member, he was treasurer for a number of years. The second person I want to mention is RichardStanley of the Stanley family of Muscatine, and a very active participant in the Stanley-U of I Foundation Support Organization, which we mention each week as long time supporters. Dick did a tremendous amount to support international cooperation, international understanding, and that included the long standing support for our organization, so on my own personal behalf, and on behalf of the Council, I do want to say how sad we are at their loss, and our condolences to the family and friends of those individuals. All right, so again, let me thank the ICFRC financial supporters, the University of Iowa's International Programs and its Honors Program, the U of I Center for Public Policy, and as noted, the U of I, the Stanley-U of I Foundation Support Organization. They really provide the kind of support that we can't do without, let me also say that we are very grateful to today's special sponsors, Joyce and Dick Summerwill and Taxes Plus. As always, we also appreciate City Channel Four for professionally recording our programs for cable cast on City Channel Four, or 118-2, and the U of I Library's digital archives. So it's now my pleasure to introduce Dr. Mariano Magalhaes and Elisa Klewinski. Dr. Magalhaes is a professor of political science at Augustana College, where he teaches courses that focus primarily on the consolidation and quality of democracy in the developing world, with a special emphasis on Latin America. He was a Fulbright scholar at the University, Universidade de Brasilia in 2011, and he currently serves as director of the Brazil Term Study Abroad Program. He's director of the Africana Studies Program at Augustana, and chair of the division of social sciences there as well, so he keeps himself very busy. He has published articles on the impact of decentralization on democracy in Brazil, and other topics related to that country. Elisa Klewinski is a junior, double majoring in political science and environmental science at Augustana College, she recently spent five and a half weeks in Rio de Janeiro and Salvador, studying the nature of democracy and the state of economic development in Brazil. We're very grateful to them for agreeing to share their insights into Brazil's economic and political roller coaster. Please join me in welcoming them today. - [Mariano Magalhaes] Well, thank you very much for having Elisa and me here today, I especially want to thank Ed, for inviting me back. I was here about three years ago when this roller coaster in Brazil actually was beginning, politically and economically. I also want to thank Bill for the introductory remarks. As he said, our presentation today is going to be on the political and economic challenges confronting Brazil, primarily the political challenges. We'll touch on the economic challenges, but they'll primarily be about the political challenges. Oh wait, something's wrong here, on the slide, what's goin' on here? Challenges, Brazil takes off, I'm not sure, wait a second, wait, wait, wait, wait, okay, there we go, now we got it, okay. Not taking off, but has Brazil blown it, okay? And I think these two covers of The Economist are illustrative of the kind of schizophrenic assessment that so many observers make of the economic and political development in Brazil. One moment, several years ago, prior to what's happening now, Brazil was on the rise, it was growing economically at a very rapid pace, it seemed to be deepening and make its democracy more robust, and then all of a sudden, from 2013 or so, until now, things have gone off the rails, okay? And so, this is not uncommon, so what is a reality check, as far as democracy in Brazil is concerned? When democracy was reborn, so to speak, in 1985, a lot of the people that were examining the case of Brazil did realize that it was born or reborn with a lot of birth defects, as they said. They described it as a dysfunctional democracy, a feckless democracy, a drunk economy. The military was too strong, the political parties were too weak, and so we have the situation during the second half of the 1980s and into the 1990s, where things were looking pretty grim for the economy and for democracy in Brazil. The period between, roughly 1994 and about 2013, we do see a significant growth in Brazil, the second half of the 1990s, macroeconomic stability was achieved, inflation was tamed during the first part of the 21st century Brazilian economy grows even larger and more rapidly because of the commodities boom, in part because of that, civil society is growing stronger, participatory democracy becomes more widespread, and Brazil, more social programs are created under the PT government, the Worker's Party government, so we see an ascendancy, as far as the economy, and as far as politics is concerned, in Brazil at that time. Some of the scholars that study Brazil took that banner up, of triumphalism, so we have these two books that were written fairly recently, that talk about the triumph of Brazilian democracy, the triumph of the Brazilian economy. Of course, this was right before all things fell apart, essentially, in 2013, 2014, and into 2015. So where is Brazil today? I would sum up, where Brazil today is, in three problems that it has. It has an economic crisis that it's experiencing right now. We'll talk a little bit more about that later. It's slowly beginning to inch its way out of this economic crisis. Some of the indicators that are coming out of Brazil over the last two, three months, seem to indicate that things are starting to improve, but the baseline is so low that any kind of improvement can be seen in a positive sort of light. Another one that both political scientists as well as journalists have noted, is a serious crisis of representation in Brazil. And we'll touch on that a little bit more over the course of our presentation. And then, one that should be fairly common, or fairly familiar to us in America, is this deep political polarization in Brazil, since 2013. And the crises that Brazil is experiencing today are really the result of, and have produced a series of events, and I want to touch on the, which is the Car Wash Operation, and I'll talk a little bit about that in a minute, and the presidential impeachment of President Dilma in August of 2016. So, how many of you familiar with the corruption scandal in Brazil, okay? So not very many of you, so I want to spend a moment talking about this The Operation Car Wash is the largest corruption scheme ever uncovered in Brazilian history, okay, and it centers around the state-run energy company called Petrobras, which is one of the largest public-private firms in Brazil. Just to get an idea, up to now they speculate that about 5.3 billion dollars, 5.3 billion dollars have been stolen from the company over the course of, it was about eight years or so, that this scheme was in place. Just to get our ideas, it's hard to think about what 5.3 billion dollars is. So if you saved $10,000 a day, okay, $10,000 a day, it would take you 1,452 years to save 5.3 billion dollars. That's a hell of a lot of money that was stolen from this firm, okay? So how did this scheme work? So, essentially, 16 construction companies got together and decided to cooperate and coordinate their bids for Petrobras contracts and systematically overcharge the company, okay? So they got together, and they colluded with each other, right, so that they could make this money. Then, obviously, some of the managers at Petrobras turned a blind eye to these inflated bids, okay, allowing the construction companies to charge Petrobras these outrageously large sums of money. The construction companies then pocketed the proceeds from the inflated contracts and basically bribed or rewarded their partners in Petrobras with equally large sums of money, okay, so they could stay quiet about these inflated bids, okay? Then, some of the proceeds were eventually sent to friendly politicians, either as personal gifts, cars, boats, vacations, Rolex watches, large stacks of money were literally given to politicians, or illegal donations to their campaigns, okay? And this is how we get so many people involved in this corruption scheme, okay? So who are some of the key players in what's been happening in Brazil over the past four years? Okay, well, obviously there's Lula, okay? Lula, he was the founder or one of the founders of the Worker's Party, at the tail end of the military regime in 1979. He ran unsuccessfully for president multiple times until he finally won in 2002, and then won reelection in 2006, okay, he's currently facing charges of accepting bribes, okay, he was actually sentenced to 12 years in jail, he's currently appealing that charge in the court system. Dilma Rousseff, she was his hand picked successor. She was his chief of staff during the second half of his time in office. She never had run for, no, I shouldn't say that, she had never successfully run for elected office until she ran for president. She ran, and was elected, in 2010. She was reelected in 2014, and then in 2016, she was impeached, she was removed from office. It's also important to note that she was the director of the board of directors, the president of the board of directors of Petrobras during the time of the corruption scandal, okay, and that's an important point here, okay? And we'll get back to that. Eduardo Cunha, Eduardo Cunha is, was the Speaker of the House in the National Congress, who led the charge to impeach Dilma, at the tail end of 2015, and going into 2016, okay? So he was the one that was really pushing her to be impeached in the National Congress, okay? Now, it turns out, that in the end, Eduardo Cunha was charged with money laundering. He was kicked out of Congress, and is now serving 15 years in jail, okay? This is Brazil, okay? Sergio Moro, the guy next to Eduardo Cunha, he is the federal judge in Brazil that's kind of, taking the lead effort in going after these politicians, okay? And he's considered, basically, a savior, by most Brazilians, and a lot of Brazilians want him to run for president, okay, next year. So he's taken the lead in that, and he's actually, I think he was on 60 Minutes some time ago talking about the Another key character is Michel Temer, and he is, he was Dilma's Vice President, when she was reelected in 2014, he, alongside Eduardo Cunha schemed to get Dilma impeached, okay, he is from the second or third largest party, it depends on how you measure it, called the MDB, which political scientists refer to as a pragmatic party, it's kind of center-rightish, okay? I prefer to call it an opportunistic political party, full of crooks and scoundrels, essentially, okay. Now, the interesting thing about Michel Temer is, many things, actually, he is actually charged even at this time, he was under investigation for accepting illegal donations to a campaign that he ran earlier in his career, okay, so he was already under investigation for that, okay. More recently, he has been charged with obstruction of justice and racketeering, okay, so basically, he's been charged with being the head of a criminal organization. Let that sink in for a second, okay? The president of one of the largest democracies in the world is charged with being the head of a criminal cartel. Only in Brazil, okay? Okay, maybe not only in Brazil, okay. I added this person down here, Jair Bolsonaro, he is a federal deputy. He is currently running for, he's a, or a pre-candidate for the election next year, in 2018. He's a far right politician, he's sexist, he's racist, he is anti-gay, does this sound familiar to us, yeah, okay? He's pro-torture, okay, yeah, he once said on the floor of the chamber that he would rather have his son die from a horrific car accident than be gay. When he voted for the impeachment to take place, with Dilma, he voted in honor of the memory of a well known torturer during the military regime. And this is a guy that's running for president next year, okay? We have the protesters, obviously, Brazil has been convulsed with protests over the last, roughly, four years or so. Against bringing the World Cup to Brazil, against hosting the Olympics in Rio in 2016, pro-Dilma, anti-Dilma, anti-Temer, and so on and so forth. So it's been, for a Brazilian like myself, it's been very, I've been very proud of the fact that people have actually taken to the streets in such large numbers, both for and against a lot of different issues. The Brazilian Congress is a key player, obviously, 'cause it's playing the role of trying to figure out what to do with this mess, okay? And actually, it's involved in the mess, quite frankly. The Brazilian Congress has the, takes the prize for the country with the largest number of political parties represented in the legislature. So here in the United States, we have two political parties, all right, represented, Canada has what, maybe a handful of political parties represented in its Parliament, Italy has 10, 12, something like that. Brazil has 26, 26 political parties. It is a perfect example of what political scientists would call extreme multipartism, okay? Extreme multipartism. So, in addition to that, because of the, and a lot of the politicians have been involved in that, over 140 members of the National Congress are under investigation for corruption, okay? The National Congress when you combine the Chamber with the Senate, has about 600 members, so we're talking about one in every four, roughly, one in every four members of the National Congress under investigation for corruption, okay, and these are the people that are making decisions about impeachment as far as Dilma and so on and so forth, okay? I have a timeline for what has happened. I'm going to breeze right through this, okay, to get us up to date and Elisa can talk about her experience in Brazil. So Dilma was reelected in 2014 in October. In March of the subsequent year, it comes out that Petrobras was implicated in this massive corruption scandal. Tons of people, hundreds of thousand people, take to the streets in protest against President Rousseff, who, as I mentioned, was the chairperson of the board of directors during that time. More allegations come out against the PT, against her, the economy continues to decline significantly, more protests happen later on in the year. A couple of months later, in October of 2015, we come to find out that the federal government borrowed, literally, billions of dollars to offset the 2014 budget shortfall. They reopened a probe that accused President Rousseff of misusing funds during her election campaign. People start talking about potential impeachment of the President, people take to the streets in that same month, divided over the legality of whether Dilma could be or should be impeached. In December, two years ago, Congress does agree, finally, not finally, but agrees to launch impeachment proceedings against President Rousseff. In March of 2016, Temer, the junior partner, the PMDB decides to leave the government. This was an interesting moment in Brazil, too, because it was at this time that Dilma tried to appoint Lula, the former president, and her mentor, as chief of staff. But the courts said, "No, you can't do that." The reason she wanted to have him as her chief of staff, 'cause they would provide him with immunity against charges that were being leveled against him for accepting bribes, okay, so she couldn't do that, again, only in Brazil. Okay, anyway, so in April, so just a month later, the lower house votes in favor of sending impeachment to the Senate against her, she obviously accuses her opponents of launching a coup against her, the, a month later, in May, the senate votes to subject President Dilma to an impeachment trial. She has to step down, and in August, as Brazil is embarking on hosting the Olympics, they do vote to remove her from office. Michel Temer is sworn in as president to serve the rest of her term until January of 2019. Two months later, Brazilians go to the polls to elect mayors, okay, so this was the first test for what the hell is going on here, and the results, politically, of the economy deteriorating so dramatically, and the political system being so messed up, so I want to quickly give you this information, so if you see here, the PSDB, is the opposition political party, the PMDB is the one that I mentioned that is Michel Temer's political party, but notice the PT. The PT went from 2012, having 655 mayors elected, to 254. So a precipitous drop in the support for the PT. So a lot of people were blaming the PT for what was going on, okay, and you'll note also in the state capitals, in 2012, the PT had four elected, four PT members elected mayor, in 2016 they only had one, okay, and that was from the state of Acre, which is this really remote state in northern Brazil, which really doesn't have much significance at all, okay, so there was this precipitous decline in the importance of the PT, electorally, okay. So, continuing very briefly, in 2017, this year in May, a tape actually comes out that has President Temer's voice on it encouraging bribing a witness to keep him quiet, okay? Temer denies it, he says it wasn't his voice. Okay, well, it was doctored. Again, does that sound familiar to you guys? You know, they're like taking lessons from each other, I'm not sure, at the time, more violent protest, protests erupt in Brazil again, some of them actually turn violent. In August of this year, Congress voted on whether or not President Temer should have these charges investigated by the Supreme Court. They don't approve that, overwhelmingly they say, "No," that he shouldn't be investigated. How was this accomplished? Basically, Temer bought them off, okay, he bought their vote with patronage, with government jobs, with regulations and so on and so forth. In September of 2017, two, couple of months ago, three months ago now, this is really interesting. There was a speech that was given by this Army General here where he basically said, is it tells a story that, well, better watch out, if things don't improve, the military could intervene, okay, so this was a bit of a scary moment for people who support democracy in Brazil at that time. I will note that the high command of the military chastised him for saying that, they disciplined him and sent him to a remote area of the country, as punishment for actually saying that, but it was scary, because another general also agreed with him in a way, in another speech. A second vote was held in October, on different kinds of charges against Temer, again, Congress voted against sending those charges to the Supreme Court, okay, again, why? Because Temer was able to buy off their votes, okay, and he wasn't there, so this is the situation we find ourselves in now, this is the timeline. I want to pass the presentation on to Elisa now, who's going to talk a little bit about her experience in Brazil, and a little bit about what she learned from her conversations with Brazilians. - [Elisa Klewinski] Hello everybody, as you know, I'm Elisa Klewinski, and I'm a political science and environmental science major at Augustana College. Oh, is it the mic? Okay, how about that, better? Okay, I just reintroduced myself, I'm Elisa Klewinski. But, we spent roughly five weeks before our trip to Brazil at Augustana studying a lot of the economic and political climate that's going on in Brazil. We wanted to make sure that we were going to Brazil understanding that things about Brazil aren't exactly weird, but they're different. So trying to culturally sensitize some people, but the second two weeks, us and 25 other students and another faculty member, Dr. Marme, our economics professor, we spent two weeks in Rio de Janeiro in a hotel, about a block or two away from the beach, and three weeks in Salvador, Bahia, where we stayed in host families, usually one student per host family, and then we studied simultaneously at a language school called ACBEU in Salvador. And we were really excited when we first got to Rio, it really was an immersion experience for a lot of people. We got to go to the beach, obviously, tourist activities and we, we were allowed to do tourist activities in both places, actually, and in Salvador, we were really able to go to more things like soccer games and host, we had a host family cooking contest, and we went, actually, on weekend excursions and tours, to places, inland Bahia, called Lencois, and desert region, and a place called Morro de Sao Paulo, which is an island off the coast of Salvador. So it was all wonderful, for the most part, and we were simultaneously taking classes and attending presentations and lectures and visiting favelas to really understand more about Brazil and its current climate and stuff, but it wasn't all fun and games, and it wasn't all beautiful. Living in the host families for about three weeks, we were allowed to see from a perspective of a citizen, kind of the day to day challenges that Brazilians face when it comes to infrastructure and transportation, and just day to day problems, as well as witness things like the extreme pollution and the extreme levels of poverty and corruption, even. What this trip meant for me, was actually unique, and I think that's why Mariano chose me to present to you today, because my mother, actually, her family is from Brazil, so I still have family in regions of Rio and Sao Paulo, and in our time in Rio, I was able to meet some of my family for the first time, so that was a really cool experience for me. This was actually also my first time out of the country, and my first time to Brazil, so this was the first time I was experiencing my family's culture and half of what makes up my identity outside the walls of my own family's homes. And on the right is, actually, my host mother, and I felt I needed to put her up because we really got close during our trip there, and I don't know if that was because of the, there was a lesser, a smaller language barrier, I think, compared to the other students, as well as, a lot of the familial feelings that, about Brazilians was really familiar, and I think that helped us bond a lot. During our time there, we wanted to focus on aspects of democracy and aspects of the economy, and really, this is all coming from the perspective of and conversations that I've had with students from schools in Rio like FGV, and schools like ACBEU in Salvador, people on the beaches, people we met at bars, at hotels, at clubs, and also our host families as well as my Brazilian relatives. So this is, by no means, a representation of all Brazilians, I'm not speaking for all Brazilians. And this is by no means scientifically rigorously researched data, but it is coming straight from Brazil. Here's some interesting characters that Mariano has already highlighted, and I just wanted to share some of their impressions, or at least the Brazilians I talked to, their impressions of these characters. And Michel Temer, their current president, as you know, is a leader of a criminal organization, and basically, the majority of Brazilians really do hate this guy, his approval rating is fairly, fairly low. But I think that some people give him a little bit more credit than he is due, because the economy is doing a little better under his administration, but we all know that he overthrew Dilma Rousseff, the next character on my list. She was just recently impeached, and she wasn't exactly a politician. She was more or less handpicked by Lula, so when she was elected into office, I don't think she was prepared for the kind of political culture that Brazil sort of has within their legislature. The economy did do very poorly under her administration, and I think a lot of people blame her for that, but I think there were a lot of things that she had to fight against under the administration, especially being one of the very few women represented in the legislature. Lula da Silva, as we know, he's sort of the former president and sort of an underdog because he came from lower means, lower socioeconomic status, so he was able to relate to populations in Brazil of poverty and undereducation and stuff. But it's, as much as he did a lot for disadvantaged communities, he also ended up stealing a lot of public funds as well, along with his party, so this is a very divisive person at this point, because there are a lot of people that would support him, and there are a lot of people that simply see him as another thieving politician. My cousin, my own cousin from Rio, actually, she's a lawyer in Rio, Fernanda, she said that if he was to run for office again and was reelected, that she and millions of other, would move out of the country. They're just tired, I think. So next on the list is Judge Sergio Moro, he's the lead prosecutor in the Lava Jato case that Mariano had mentioned, and people sort of see this character as a hero. He's the first person in a long time to really be putting politicians in jail for the kinds of crimes that they're committing. And then Jair Bolsonaro, he's a candidate for presidency in 2018, and from the perspective of the Brazilians that I've talked to, this really is a Trump-esque candidate. They've compared him a lot to Trump, and they've talked about him a lot. But the overall consensus that I had gathered was that Brazilians are critically disillusioned with politicians and they consider them slimy, they consider them corrupt scoundrels who don't hold the public interest and really have a hard time representing people in Congress, and in their legislature, they're just draining the swamp and filling it with their cronies. So I've noticed some patterns during our conversations, that began to emerge since I was collecting different opinions and having different conversations. And one of those patterns is the relationship between Brazilians and the state of the democracy in their country, and from the conversations I've had, most Brazilians feel that democracy is the number one system that they would want, they want to see it implemented in their country, and they believe that it's the right way to go, but they are also concerned because they believe that the country is doing this incorrectly, that democracy has actually failed in many ways, and they aren't sure if it's what they need right now. And this is because, just, they just barely crawled out of this recession that they've had, so the main thought on a lot of Brazilian's minds is that at the end of the day, they have a job, and at the end of the day their families are being fed. So they're not talking about civics, and they're not talking about their political right or their political abilities. Another pattern that I noticed was that they can no longer really trust their representatives and lawmakers. And this was something that was made clear to them through events like the 2014 FIFA World Cup, and the 2016 World Olympics, because these are all events that had promised economic prosperity, not just to larger businesses, but to the average Brazilian as well as small business owners. And when all this money goes missing, and upwards of five billion dollars gets stolen or mismanaged, like in the case of Lava Jato, they start wondering, "Where are these funds going?" And they're going directly into the pockets of the political elite, and the big business conglomerates, really. So they don't feel like they hold their interests anymore. So when I asked them if they see a future for themselves, I get mixed reviews, they have growing confidence in their courts, especially because Sergio Moro is actually putting jail time up as a sentence for a lot of these politicians. It's a sign to the Brazilians that I've had conversations with that democracy is up and running in their country. But there is concern of a lot of backsliding, because currently, former President Lula is rattling around the country, campaigning. We actually ran into him in Rio, some fellow students ran into him, yeah, at a protest rally, and he started speaking and they had to get out of there 'cause it was getting a little rowdy. But there are a lot of poor people that would support Lula and vote him right back into office, regardless of the fact that they know he's stolen millions of dollars of public funds. Public funds that are desperately needed by the Brazilian citizens for public institutions, for infrastructure, social programs, these are funds that should be going towards the public, but they're not, they're going to the top couple percent. So, just because some Brazilians see some sort of progress, whether it's in their daily life or in the economy, they don't really care about what kind of corrupt representative is in office, as long as something's getting done, and this is a political culture, cultural phenomena that sort of happens in Brazil called , which essentially means they steal, but they get things done. And in many cases, that's what we see now. It's a culture that has really influenced the way that they elect their representatives and how they stay in office. So we don't really know what's going to happen in the future of Brazilian politics, especially with the next elections, we have a Trump-like candidate, we have a former corrupt president, we have a current corrupt president, we have, maybe, a future corrupt president, but that is information that Mariano definitely knows more about than I do, so. - [Mariano Magalhaes] Okay, so, I want to, there's a couple of slides that I wanted to show but I talked too much, Elisa, this is not your fault, I talked too much at the beginning. My students know that if they get me talking about Brazil, I'll just keep going on and on and on and on, so, I try to avoid doing that, but there's some data on confidence institutions, kind of, Elisa looked at it at the micro level, at the individual level, I have some data on confidence in institutions more broadly that I can talk about if you're interested, over time, then, what to expect next year, just briefly, as Elisa mentioned, Lula, this is the most recent poll that's out, does garner in the opinion polls, 35% of support in the election for next year. Now, it's too early to tell exactly what's going to happen, but that's a large number of voters that are willing to vote for Lula despite the fact that he's been fairly credibly charged with something very serious, as far as his behavior is concerned. You see Jair Bolsonaro there at 13%, not that much, but I think there was a survey done in the summer, there was a 10%, so he's climbing, as far as his support is concerned. But I wanted to kind of conclude this conversation, and what are some of the main takeaways? Well, first of all, as we mentioned, Brazil is deeply divided, from poor and rich, the haves, have nots, divided ideologically between the left and the right. Most Brazilians are, indeed, fed up with the political elite. If we go back to the chart about confidence, and you'll notice that the confidence in political parties, confidence in the federal government, confidence in the national Congress, are incredibly low. So there's not a lot of trust in these people, and for a lot of political scientists that study Brazil, what this boils down to is what I said at the beginning, a real crisis of representation. The ability to actually have vertical accountability, to be able to have the voters hold these people accountable for what they're doing in office is a real problem, and again, as been hinted here, these are things that we see happening in the United States as well, right? More and more people disenchanted with politicians or with traditional politicians, the ability to represent in a meaningful sort of way the American public is being challenged or being tested, and we're deeply divided in the United States. In Brazil, there are positive signs. One of the things that we didn't talk about was the Ministerio Publico, the Ministerio Publico is considered a fourth branch by many people in the Brazilian government, this is the public prosecutor's office, and it exists at the federal level, the state level and the municipal level. And this is an office with a lot of independence, and is very actively going after politicians and government officials for transgressions, for crimes that they committed. So they're really active doing this, and they've been doing this for the past 10 years or so, so even preceding the current crisis. Politicians are actually going to prison, as Elisa talked about, Sergio Moro is actually putting people in jail, they're actually serving time. This was unheard of, even 15 years ago, when we started talking about all the corruption in Brazil, and we started seeing all the cases of corruption coming to the fore in Brazil. So at that level, we see some, what's called vertical accountability happening, or vertical accountability mechanisms being strengthened in Brazil, especially the courts and the Ministerio Publico. On the society part of it, I am particularly pleased, I guess you can say, that even prior to the current crisis, the economic crisis, the political crisis that has engulfed Brazil, Brazilians, not only have they gone to the streets, to protest everything that's happening in Brazil as far as the political elite is concerned, the corruption, the impeachment of Dilma, the galpe that was perpetrated against her, but also just generally, society in Brazil has become much more organized, much more mobilized, much more robust in Brazil, and that's a good sign for democracy, so where does this presentation conclude? Basically, I would say, and most of the scholars would say, that Brazil has an established democracy. It is consolidated, if you will, but it has flaws, like many new democracies, right? And that it is still in the process of becoming a better democracy, thank you. - [William Reisinger] All right, so this is terrific, lots of great questions here, so I'll begin with this one. Are there in Brazil today, young leaders who might fill the ranks of the country's leadership? - [Mariano Magalhaes] Young leaders. I would say, yes. Especially on the left, because what, I think what gets missed in all of this and especially the journalistic accounts of what's happening, especially within the Worker's Party, Dilma's party, Lula's party, is that at the state level, at the municipal level, especially in the south and the southeast of Brazil, the party is still very committed to its inclusionary policies, very committed to a program that is geared towards helping the poor, the excluded, the marginalized. And so, I can't point to specific leaders in Brazil that are younger, but on the left there are people that are most likely emerging again at that municipal level in Sao Paulo and Rio at the state level in states like Porto Alegre, I'm sorry, Rio Grande do Sul and things like that, that are, could be on the rise in the near future. Maybe not for 2018 presidential election, that won't happen, but perhaps we start seeing them emerge in 2020, when we have the next mayoral elections. But I think, on the left. There are some politicians, younger politicians, on the right, especially in the northeast. The current mayor of Salvador, which is a city we visited, he is the, ACM Neto, he is the grandson of a very famous politician, Antonio Carlos Magalhaes in that state, and he's really making a name for himself as mayor, so it's likely that in the future, he'll at the very least become governor of Bahia, and perhaps has a potential to becoming president someday. But a few people on the right as well. - [William Reisinger] I'm going to combine a couple of questions here that have to do with Brazil's military. So if you could say a little bit about how strong the military is, in Brazil's politics, and then address a pointed question, would a takeover by the Brazilian military result in more or less corruption? - [Mariano Magalhaes] So what was the first part of the question? - [William Reisinger] Just that, how strong is the military? - [Mariano Magalhaes] How strong is the military? So I actually wrote my dissertation on civil-military relations in Brazil, but that was in 19, in the 1990s. I've been trying to, I try when I can, to stay in touch with the literature on the Brazilian military. I would say it's still, it's still strong. I mentioned at the beginning of the presentation that the military left power in a very privileged position, institutionally, and as far as resources are concerned, but those have been chipped away over the subsequent 25, 30 years or so. Institutionally, they've been, a lot of their positions in the cabinet have been removed, a lot of the resources that had been going to the military, they've dwindled through economic crises, and so it's still fairly strong, in some senses, but it's not, it's not, there's not a consensus about whether the military should step in. My research seemed to indicate that they would not want to step in. It was too detrimental to their organization, to the corporate ethos of actually stepping in and getting rid of corrupt politicians and starting anew. Having said that, there is some popular support for an authoritarian solution to the current crisis. Within the military, and I mentioned the Army General that spoke out in favor of a military intervention if necessary, but even at the kind of civil society level, I had one student whose mom, whose host mother in Salvador pointedly said that she would prefer to go back to a military regime, okay? That was her opinion, that things would be better. Now, would they actually be better? I doubt it, I don't think they would be better. I mean we wouldn't know about it, most likely, it wouldn't be as covered by the media because the military regime probably wouldn't allow that, if we're talking about a military authoritarian government. So I don't think it would get any better, quite frankly. - [William Reisinger] How did the Petrobras scandal come to be known as Operation Car Wash? - [Mariano Magalhaes] Okay, so the way I understand the story, is that part of the money that was laundered from the Petrobras company was laundered at or through this gas station in Brasilia that was also a car wash. So when they found these people there, the media began dubbing this the Car Wash Investigation, because they found, I guess, they arrested somebody there that had wads and wads of money that they were transferring to somebody else, a politician or a construction firm executive or something like that, but it was the location, it was the gas station, it was the car wash where they first found out that there was a connection to Petrobras. - [William Reisinger] Laundering more than the cars, okay, got it. Given the role played by the judge you mentioned who's seriously attempting to hold corrupt officials accountable, can you tell us more about how judges are appointed, by whom, for what length terms, et cetera. - [Mariano Magalhaes] I'm not an expert. - [William Reisinger] Okay, so he says he can't tell us any more. Do you have any sense of whether the judge's life might be in danger from his hard line toward the corruption activities? - [Mariano Magalhaes] Yeah, so that's an interesting question. I haven't heard anything about whether Sergio Moro's been threatened, his life has been threatened, I do know that there have been judges in Brazil, kind of activist judges going after politicians, the political elite, the economic elite, that have been targeted for assassination, okay, and that have been assassinated, clearly as reprisals to some of the decisions that they made to put people in jail, economic elite and political elite. So it wouldn't surprise me if some of these judges were actually under threat from people that didn't want their names to get out, or didn't want to go to jail, or were concerned about family members going to jail and things like that, so I would say that that does happen, I just haven't heard about it. - [William Reisinger] So I think, Mariano, you mentioned in your remarks that you would touch lightly on economics and quick come back to it. Well, we've got a bunch here of really interesting questions that would have you say a little bit more about the economic situation in Brazil and, in particular, its international economic situation, whether international markets are playing a role in any way, in the unfolding problems there, and what its role as a regional leader might be, how that's affected by its economic problems, and one, in particular, close to our hearts, can you sort of talk about Brazil versus Iowa in corn and bean production and international trade in those kind of agricultural commodities? - [Mariano Magalhaes] Okay, so, in terms of the economy, as I mentioned in the presentation, there seems to be some evidence to suggest that the economy is improving in Brazil, if I'm not mistaken, there's been projections for decent growth of the GDP, unemployment rates are continuing to decline in Brazil, in particular, unemployment, or employment in the informal economy, that's not regulated by the state, has gone down, and so more jobs are being created in the formal economy, so things seem to be improving. The exchange rate has, which has fluctuated dramatically over the last few years, seems to have stabilized. And over the last three or four months is kind of sort of going down, which is beneficial to Brazilian goods that are exported abroad. As far as regional impact of Brazil economically, it's interesting because Lula, when he was president, he was very much in favor of projecting Brazil abroad, not just regionally, but also internationally, okay, so he traveled extensively to Europe, to Africa, Asia, traveled within Latin America, and he really tried to project this new idea of anti-Chavez leftism in South America, to become kind of the regional leader as far as the economy and politics was concerned. Brazil was pushing really hard during the Lula administration for a seat on the Security Council of the United Nations, it was in competition with India, for example, but once Lula left office, that pretty much fell by the wayside. Dilma was not particularly interested in the international aspect of projecting Brazil abroad, it wasn't something that she was necessarily good at, and then when the economy started to tank, and when the political situation began to deteriorate, in 2015, deteriorate dramatically, all attention was focused inward, okay, so they really didn't have time or the energy or the effort to really try to reverse things. Whether it was under Dilma, or currently under Michel Temer, okay? - [William Reisinger] Alright, so this will be the final question then. Can you tell us more about the relationship between Brazil and Argentina, as well as its other regional neighbors? - [Mariano Magalhaes] Okay, so historically, there's been a significant rivalry between Brazil and Argentina, both countries see themselves as the regional hegemons, if you will, politically, economically, and diplomatically. That started to change in the, roughly, the late 1980s into the early 1990s, in particular, economically, when Argentina, Brazil, and a couple of other countries created a common market called Mercosur, so we see growing ties economically between Argentina and Brazil over the last, roughly, 25 years or so, economically. I would say politically, there hasn't been a lot of progress, as far as political rapprochement is concerned, their friendly relations with Argentina, but the key partnership is really economic, as far as Argentina-Brazil is concerned. Now, obviously, there's still the very significant, to Brazilians, rivalry between the two countries as far as soccer is concerned, which taints it, and I will say this, that Brazilians were very happy that Argentina lost to Germany during the World Cup, 'cause that would've been really really bad for Brazil to have its regional rival win the World Cup in Brazil. That would've been really really bad, thank you. - [William Reisinger] It's a, yes, it's. All right, so we conclude our program now. We are very grateful to Dr. Mariano Magalhaes and Elisa Klewinski for their remarks today, that were very enlightening. I want to also thank, again, our sponsors, International Programs, the Honors Program and the Public Policy Center, all at the University of Iowa, as well as the Stanley-U of I Foundation Support Organization for their generous support and today's special sponsors, Joyce and Dick Summerwill, and Taxes Plus, and also, again, we thank City Channel Four for making our programs available to viewing audiences. So Mariano and Elisa, as a small token of our appreciation, it gives me great pleasure to present you each with the coveted Iowa City Foreign Relations Council mug. Thanks everyone for joining us, we are adjourned.