Chronicle of a Defeat Foretold: The PT Administrations from Compromise to the Coup
by Ricardo Antunes, Marco Aurelio Santana, and Luci Praun
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 employment, 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 intensified 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.”
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