Brazil’s president raises welfare payments ahead of election

Vincent Bevins – The Los Angeles Times, 5/1/2014

President Dilma Rousseff announced increases in payments for Brazil’s poorest citizens in honor of the country’s May 1st celebrations as she gears up to campaign for reelection in October.

Rousseff used a nationally televised speech Tuesday to defend the legacy of her Worker’s Party’s 11-year tenure and criticize opponents, who accused her of using the event to bolster her flagging voter support.

“Together, we will continue to make all the changes needed to improve the lives of Brazilians, especially the poorest and the middle class,” Rousseff said before announcing support for a higher minimum wage, and a 10% hike in cash transfers to 36 million Brazilians who are unemployed or earning low wages. She spoke of the need to “pay back a great debt we still owe to Brazil’s poorest workers.”

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Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff’s firs term revisited: economically, nothing to be proud of

Patricia Rey Mallen – International Business Times, 3/12/2014

Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff is facing tough times. With a presidential election later this year, both the government and independent economists are taking a hard look at how her term panned out for the country — and it’s not looking very good.

Rousseff inherited the country’s leadership from her mentor, fellow leftist Luiz Inácio (Lula) da Silva of the Workers Party. In his two terms (2003-2011), Lula pulled Brazil from developing nation to all-around emerging market star. During his mandate, Brazil’s GDP grew in spurts, including an 8 percent jump in 2010. South America’s largest economy managed to skirt the global financial crisis, and his administration rolled out successful social programs, like the signature Bolsa Família which provided income to poor families, making Lula one of the most popular leaders in Brazil’s history.

While Rousseff has maintained popularity in line with her predecessor’s, figures show that during her tenure Brazil has entered an economic rut. Growth has been slower, inflation higher, and, for the first time in decades, Brazilians rose in a street upheaval that rocked the nation in 2013.

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Brazil tacking income inequality ahead of world cup

BBC, 2/19/2014

Beyond the excitement of the World Cup and Carnival, Brazil is tackling many problems which resonate around the world including income inequality and worries about an economic downturn.

The government has made a big push to lift people out of poverty. In the last decade alone, 40 million Brazilians have entered the middle class.

But as the BBC’s Katty Kay reports from Rio de Janeiro, it’s just a start.

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How Brazil keeps people alive while crops and livestock die

Will Carless – Global Post, 2/14/2014

In a tiny hamlet in the northeastern Brazilian state of Pernambuco, Esdras Furtado Ferreira and his wife Francisca Lopes Furtado stood in their postage stamp of a front yard and looked across the plains.

A distant gray rain cloud crept across the horizon that afternoon in November, in the first sign of storm they had seen in weeks. The farming couple hoped it would come their way.

Their hamlet, Villa de Seringa, looked almost like a bomb had hit it. Shells of buildings rotted in the heat. Stray dogs scratched under abandoned cars. Only a handful of families remained.

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Brazil’s bolsa familia scheme marks a decade of pioneering poverty relief

Jonathan Watts – The Guardian, 12/17/2013

As one of the poorest residents in the poorest county in Brazil, life has always been a struggle for Maria Eunice Alvis.

The roof of her adobe home leaks during the storm season and vermin pose a constant threat to the health of her 10 children. There is so little money to go around, the family often goes hungry.

For most of her 40 years, survival depended on farinha, the yellowish flour from the manioc root. In wealthy cities like Rio de Janeiro or São Paulo, this is a powdery side dish. But for Alvis and other disadvantaged families in Belágua, Maranhão, it was until recently the only staple that got them through the hard times.

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A welfare check under fire in Brazil

Stephen Kurczy – The Christian Science Monitor, 11/17/2013

Eliane Antunes doesn’t expect her grandchildren to walk through gunfire. But in Maré, a shantytown abutting Rio de Janeiro’s international airport, their walk to school passes through a war zone between rival drug gangs.

That puts more than just an education at risk. It can mean that the family won’t receive a welfare check from Bolsa Família, which requires recipient children to have good school attendance.

For Ms. Antunes, it meant her family was suspended from the program for three months.

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Brazil’s Bolsa Família: welfare model or menace?

Taylor Barnes – The Christian Science Monitor, 11/17/2013

The streets in this run-down town of 130,000 are nearly empty during work hours. There are few jobs here. But in the wee hours of the morning, bleary-eyed workers pile into buses headed for Rio de Janeiro, about two hours away, or the Petrobras state oil refinery under construction in nearby Itaboraí.

But one office in Maricá is bustling: the government benefits center. About 20 women and children fidget on the worn chairs lined in front of the cramped office where notebooks filled with applications for antipoverty programs are stacked almost to the ceiling.

Many are here applying for the Bolsa Família conditional cash transfer (CCT) program, a landmark poverty reduction effort in Brazil that has helped raise 36 million Brazilians out of extreme poverty and is currently celebrating its 10th anniversary. In Maricá alone, some 6,000 families receive monthly payouts.

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