Chronicle of a Defeat Foretold: The PT Administrations from Compromise to the Coup

• Date: 01 January 2019
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X18807210
• Published date: 01 January 2019
• Subject Matter: Articles

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 224, Vol. 46 No. 1, January 2019, 85–104

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X18807210

© 2018 Latin American Perspectives

85

Chronicle of a Defeat Foretold

The PT Administrations from Compromise to the Coup

by

Ricardo Antunes, Marco Aurelio Santana, and Luci Praun

Translated by

Daniela Issa

The period in which the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores—PT) was in power

in Brazil was characterized by limits and contradictions with regard to policies on employ-

ment, unions, and the fight against poverty. An analysis of the factors that contributed to

the end of the 14-year cycle of consecutive presidential terms highlights the combined

impacts of the international economic crisis, a deepening political crisis with charges of

corruption, the destabilization of the party’s political alliances, and mass discontent inten-

sified by fiscal adjustment measures that further penalized the already stressed working

class. The PT once in power did not motivate resistance, advances in social and union

struggles, or social movements, and when it finally attempted to reach out to other social

movements it was too late. With the coup represented by the impeachment of Dilma

Rousseff in 2016, Brazil entered once again into what Florestan Fernandes has called

“preventive counterrevolution.”

O período durante o qual o PT (Partido dos Trabalhadores) esteve no poder no Brasil

caracterizou-se pelos limites e contradições das políticas públicas referentes a emprego,

sindicatos e à luta contra a pobreza. Uma análise dos fatores que contribuíram para o fim

do ciclo de 14 anos de sucessivas presidências petistas assinala o impacto conjunto da crise

econômica internacional, o aprofundamento da crise política com base em acusações de

corrupção, a desestabilização das alianças políticas do partido e o descontentamento exa-

cerbado pelo ajuste fiscal que penalizou ainda mais a já combalida classe trabalhadora.

Uma vez no poder, o PT não encorajou a resistência, ou os avanços nas lutas sindical e

social. Quando finalmente tentou ligar-se a outros movimentos sociais já era tarde demais.

Com o golpe representado pelo impeachment de Dilma Rousseff em 2016, o Brasil nova-

mente ingressou no que Florestan Fernandes denominou “contra-revolução preventiva.”

Keywords: Workers’ Party, Lula and Dilma administrations, New unionism, Political

crisis and coup, Brazil

Ricardo Antunes is a professor of the sociology of labor at the Instituto de Filosofia e Ciencias

Humanas of the Universidade Estadual de Campinas. Marco Aurelio Santana is an associate pro-

fessor of the sociology of labor in the Instituto de Filosofia e Ciencias Humanas of the Universidade

Federal do Rio de Janeiro. Luci Praun is a visiting professor of social sciences and humanities at

the Universidade Federal do ABC. Daniela Issa is a sociologist and a participating editor of Latin

American Perspectives.

807210LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X18807210Latin American PerspectivesAntunes et al. / PT ADMINISTRATIONS FROM COMPROMISE TO THE COUP

research-article2018

86 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

After a period of stability and growth in the first decade of the 2000s, Brazil

entered a cycle of profound economic, social, political, and institutional crisis.

Just as its prosperity period was largely prompted by international conditions,

the most fundamental causes of the current Brazilian crisis are rooted globally.

They are part of a capitalist movement in the last decades of the twentieth cen-

tury that sought to stimulate its cycles of accumulation and escape, even if only

temporarily, its own limitations. In an era of financial capital and peak globaliza-

tion, these crises have become more frequent and profound around the globe.

The impact of the 2008 crisis on various countries is part of this process.

Initially, it affected capitalist countries in the center such as the United States,

Japan, Germany, England, France, and Italy. However, because of the global,

unequal and combined nature of the crisis, it eventually extended to many

other nations, affecting both countries of moderate development such as the

BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) and, more profoundly,

the periphery as a whole. The repercussions of the crisis in Brazil, at first con-

sidered “insignificant,”1 little by little began to undermine the project of the

Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party—– PT), in power since Luiz Inácio

da Silva (Lula) was elected in 2003. The project, implemented in both of his

consecutive presidential terms and as of 2011 by his successor, Dilma Rousseff,

showed clear signs of disintegration in June 2013, when street riots reached

their peak. As the project was winding down in the course of the deepening

world economic crisis, a large proportion of Brazil’s working-class young peo-

ple took to the streets. Subjected to the increasing precariousness of the employ-

ment market, with no access to quality education, at the mercy of a precarious

public health system, and lacking prospects of any kind, they found in the

increase in public transportation prices in 2013 a sort of catalyst of their discon-

tent. At the heart of the youth movement and the wave of strikes in the country

in that year was the failure of a project that had early shown limitations and

contradictions. Brazilian reality was beginning to be revealed and with it, inde-

pendently of their achievements, the social and political failure of the PT gov-

ernments.

What were the main components of the PT’s policies with regard to social

and labor rights, and were their effects positive or negative? Did they amount

to a victory for the social forces of labor or a failure that amplified the profound

crisis of the PT governments? This article provides a critical analysis of the PT

experiment that may provide some answers to these questions (see also

Antunes, 2004; 2006b; 2015a; 2015b).

From ConFrontation to Compromise

Brazil had a prominent role in the worker and union struggles of the 1980s,

managing to stall the implementation of neoliberalism, which had already

begun its expansion in Latin American countries such as Chile, Argentina, and

Mexico. Brazil at that time was swimming against the current of these regres-

sive tendencies. While for capital this was a “lost decade,” for union and popu-

lar movements it was a successful one. In the aftermath of the historic strikes

in São Paulo’s ABC region at the end of the 1970s, with the emergence of the

“new unionism” strikes became widespread throughout the country, reaching