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Socialism in Brazil is generally thought to trace back to the first half of the 19th century. There are documents evidencing the diffusion of socialist ideas since then, but these were individual initiatives with no ability to form groups with actual political activism.[1]
In 1892 the First Socialist Congress of Brazil occurred inRio de Janeiro. Later that year, inSão Paulo, another Socialist Congress, independent from the latter, took place. That same year the Workers' Socialist Party (Partido Operário Socialista) was founded in Rio de Janeiro. This is considered to be the first socialist party in Brazil. In 1895, also in Rio, the Socialist Workers Party (Partido Socialista Operário) was founded. That same year, Silvério Fontes, considered the first BrazilianMarxist, launched the Socialist Center ofSantos, which soon published the socialist magazineA Questão Social (The Social Question) and newspaperO Socialista (The Socialist).
The first major socialist party of the country was founded in 1902 inSão Paulo, under the auspicious ofItalian immigrant Alcebíades Bertollotti, who was once responsible forAvanti, the official newspaper of theItalian Socialist Party. That same year, the Socialist Collective Party (Partido Socialista Coletivista) was founded inRio de Janeiro, headed by Vicente de Sousa, a teacher at theColégio Pedro II, and Gustavo Lacerda, a journalist and founder of the Brazilian Press Association (Associação Brasileira de Imprensa – ABI). In 1906, the Independent Workers Party (Partido Operário Independente) was founded; it created a "popular university", which hadRocha Pombo,Manuel Bomfim, andJosé Veríssimo as teachers.[1]
The diffusion of socialist ideas increased duringWorld War I, but most of the Brazilianleft-wing groups were still alienated from the general public. In June 1916, Francisco Vieira da Silva, Toledo de Loiola, Alonso Costa, and Mariano Garcia launched theManifesto of the Brazilian Socialist Party (Manifesto do Partido Socialista Brasileiro). OnMay 1st of the following year, theManifesto of the Socialist Party of Brazil (Manifesto do Partido Socialista do Brasil) was launched, signed by Nestor Peixoto de Oliveira, Isaac Izeckson, and Murilo Araújo. This group launched Evaristo de Morais to the House of Representatives and published two newspapers,Folha Nova (The New Leaf) andTempos Novos (New Times), both short-lived.[1]
In December 1919, the Socialist League (Liga Socialista) was formed in Rio de Janeiro. Its members started publishing the magazineClarté in 1921, with the support ofEvaristo de Morais,Maurício de Lacerda, Nicanor do Nascimento, Agripino Nazaré, Leônidas de Resende,Pontes de Miranda, among others. The group would extend its influence to São Paulo, with Nereu Rangel Pestana, and toRecife, with Joaquim Pimenta. In 1925 a new Brazilian Socialist Party (Partido Socialista do Brasil) was launched, also formed by the group led by Evaristo de Morais.[1]
The foundation of theBrazilian Communist Party (Partido Comunista Brasileiro – PCB) in 1922 and its rapid growth suffocated the dozens ofanarchist organizations which had played an important role in staging major strikes during the previous decade. PCB staged major strikes throughout the 1920s. Also during that period before the1930 Revolution andGetúlio Vargas' rise to power, Maurício de Lacerda launched the short-lived United Front of the Left (Frente Unida das Esquerdas), whose purpose was to write a draft socialist constitution for Brazil.[1] The political agitation of the period included amovement in thetenente revolts context led by future communist leaderLuís Carlos Prestes. Also, as a part of the Tenente revolts, a short-livedcommune was formed inManaus. Prestes was invited by Vargas to lead the military efforts of his uprising against the São Paulooligarchy, but he refused; he was against an alliance betweentenentes and dissident oligarchs. He exiled himself in theSoviet Union and was admitted as a member of PCB. In Moscow, he accepted the task, proposed by theCommunist International, of leading a communist upheaval in Brazil.
Political activity was highly repressed during the Vargas regime. On November 23–27, 1935, Prestes'upheaval (Intentona Comunista) took place inNatal,Recife, and Rio de Janeiro almost simultaneously. It was led by theNational Liberation Alliance (Aliança Nacional Libertadora – ANL), an organization which gatheredanti-fascist (socialist, communist, liberals, progressive and nationalist) military officers. In Natal, the rebels even formed amilitary junta which ruled the city for four days. According to the official Vargas government account, the rebels killed 32 military officers in Rio de Janeiro, but the event is still questioned. The repression of the uprising resulted not only in the arrest of communist militants involved in it but also the persecution of popular forces in general.
In 1936, Prestes and his wife,Olga Benário Prestes, then pregnant, were arrested as a result of their participation in the upheaval. Benário, a JewishGerman-Brazilian communist militant, was deported by the Vargas regime toNazi Germany. Benário was eventually killed at theBernburg Euthanasia Centre in 1942; she had given birth at the facility a few years earlier and her daughter,Anita Leocádia Prestes, was handed to Brazilian authorities by the Nazis at age one. With her father still in jail upon her arrival in Brazil, she was raised by her paternal grandmother Leocádia Prestes. Another victim of the Vargas regime was the Italian-Brazilian anarchistOreste Ristori, deported to theKingdom of Italy in 1936 and killed by Fascist police officers on December 2, 1943.
In 1937, Vargas imposed a Fourth Constitution for the country, the so-calledPolaca, after his government denounced that international military forces were trying to make a "socialist revolution" in Brazil, in what became known asCohen Plan. This false claim was a pretext for Vargas to perpetuate himself in power. Written by Justice MinisterFrancisco Campos, thePolaca was inspired by the authoritarianApril Constitution ofPoland, and was intended to consolidate the executive branch over the legislative and judiciary, implementing what became known as theEstado Novo regime.Polaca banned all political parties, implementedcensorship in the press, and suppressed even further the organized movements of workers and of the society in general.
After the end of the Vargas regime in 1945, socialist ideas started developing again in the Post-War period with the creation of the Democratic Left (Esquerda Democrática) party, which was eventually registered as theBrazilian Socialist Party (Partido Socialista Brasileiro – PSB) on the Electoral Justice Court in August 1947. The PCB was also re-legalized, but thefear of communism also increased among the middle and upper classes in the context of theCold War.
In 1946, Luís Carlos Prestes became the first self-proclaimed communist Senator of Brazil, a feat which would only be repeated sixty years later, whenInácio Arruda was elected to representCeará. By 1947, the PCB had nearly 200,000 members, having received 480,000 votes (nearly 9% of the total) in that year's legislative election. The party, however, was denounced as being "internationalist, and therefore not committed to Brazil's own interests" byEurico Gaspar Dutra in 1948, having its license revoked by the Electoral Justice Court. In 1956, clashes emerged in the party afterNikita KhrushchevdenouncedJoseph Stalin's policies at the20th Congress of theCommunist Party of the Soviet Union. The factionalization of the PCB accelerated after a new Manifesto was approved in 1958, proposing new ways of achieving communist goals, linking the establishment of socialism to the broadening of democracy. Some of its top leaders, dissatisfied with this guidelines, quit PCB and formed a new party,Communist Party of Brazil (Partido Comunista do Brasil – PCdoB), in 1962. As a result, both parties claim to have been established in 1922.
In 1955, theEpiscopal Conference of Latin America (Conselho Episcopal Latino Americano – CELAM) was created in Rio de Janeiro. It pushed theSecond Vatican Council (1962–65) toward a more socially oriented stance. CELAM is the main basis for the foundation of theLiberation theology, which would play a significant role on the Brazilian left in the following decades, before declining in the late 1990s.
In 1961, after the resignation ofJânio Quadros, Vice-PresidentJoão Goulart, asocial-democrat with popular reform proposals, took office. He would, however, rule the countryde facto only in 1963, after areferendum ended the parliamentary system approved by the Congress to prevent the Military Forces from overthrowing him from office due to his progressive views. During Goulart's government, PSB's president João Mangabeira became Justice Minister. Amilitary coup in 1964 deposed Goulart under charges that he was leading a socialist revolution with his Basic Reforms (Reformas de Base) program. Goulart's biggest political opponent – and coup supporter – wasCarlos Lacerda, son of Maurício de Lacerda, founder of PCB who later joined theNational Democratic Union (União Democrática Nacional – UDN), an anti-Communist party.
With the 1964 coup, all political parties were banned, and socialist organizations had to act clandestinely once again. The creation of bipartisanship in 1965 by a presidential decree allowed moderate left-wing politicians to join theBrazilian Democratic Movement (Movimento Democrático Brasileiro – MDB), the party of consented opposition to the military regime.
In the second half of the 1960s and all through the 1970s, socialists and other opposition groups to the military dictatorship suffered relentless persecution. The vast majority of militants in armed organizations that fought the regime professed socialist ideas, ranging fromLeninism toMaoism. As during the Vargas dictatorship, theguerrilla warfare carried out by Communist groups was used by the regime's propaganda as a justification for repression. The slow redemocratization process initiated byErnesto Geisel in the second half of the 1970s yielded its first gains on the following decade, when socialist and communist parties were once again able to organize freely and stand their own candidates.
In January 1979, at the XI Steelworkers Congress, the proposal to launch theWorkers' Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores – PT), ademocratic socialist party, was made. Its official foundation would occur a year later at the Catholic school Colégio Sion (Sion High School) in São Paulo. PT is a result of the approach between trade unionists of theCentral Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT), intellectuals, artists, Catholics influenced by liberation theology, and the old Brazilian left. The party, however, can be described as aNew Left party, once it refused "taking the path of the old Latin American left, in the form of the guerrilla movement orStalinism".[2]
In 1984, theLandless Workers' Movement was created as a reaction to the military regime's failedland reform program. This socialist group grew rapidly, becoming the largestsocial movement organization inLatin America, with an estimated 1.5 million members organized in 23 out of Brazil's 26 states. PT and MST have been closely linked to each other since the mid-1980s, but have grown apart in recent years.
![[icon]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aWiki_letter_w_cropped.svg) | This sectionneeds expansion with: History after 2016, including Lula's third election and tenure, should be added. You can help byadding to it.(October 2023) |
In 1988,rubber tapper,unionist andenvironmental activistChico Mendes, a member of the PT and an activist for the preservation of theAmazon rainforest was assassinated in his house inXapuri,Acre. He is recognized today as one of the first leaders of the Brazilianeco-socialism movement.
In the 1989 election, the PT formed a socialist coalition with the PSB and PC do B and hadLuiz Inácio Lula da Silva as its presidential candidate. Although opposed because of hisland reform proposals, Lula declared that neither he nor his party had ever beenMarxist in a televised debate. The democratic socialistDemocratic Labour Party (Partido Democrático Trabalhista – PDT), the only Brazilian member of theSocialist International, which claimed to be the actual heir of Goulart's and Vargas'Brazilian Labour Party (Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro – PTB), launchedLeonel Brizola as their presidential candidate. Lula narrowly beat Brizola in thefirst-round and went on to the second round of the election, losing toneoliberal candidateFernando Collor de Mello.
After two unsuccessful attempts (losing both toFernando Henrique Cardoso, aSocial-Democrat, who soon adhered to theThird Wayneoliberal agenda), Lula was eventually elected in 2002. In spite of criticism of his government for alliances with right-wing politicians and practicing some unorthodox neoliberal politics.[2] Even so, Brazilians were overwhelmingly supporting a candidate and a party that harshly criticized the pro-capitalist orthodoxies of neoliberalism and contemporary globalization.[3] Which caused the departure of some factions of the PT, Lula claims he still has "socialist skills".[4] After a pension reform that removed social rights, in addition to the establishment of alliances with the BrazilianRepublican Party and theLiberal Party, a major departure from his government and his party was from the group which created theSocialism and Liberty Party (Partido Socialismo e Liberdade – PSOL). In general, the left criticized the Lula government, especially its economic policy.[5]
In 2010, PT'sDilma Rousseff was elected the first femalePresident of Brazil. During her term, Rousseff maintained a majority approval rating throughout her first term.[6] there werewidespread protests for better living standards (for example, In 2016, even after more than a decade of socialist rule, the general tax system still remained regressive.[7]), nevertheless her first government was approved by 63% of Brazilians, while her personal approval rating was at 79%, a personal high. Rousseff was also cited as the preferential candidate for 58% of the voters in the2014 presidential election, in which she was reelected.[8] Just in 2015, Rousseff's popularity began to decline and in February 2015, a month before the2015–2016 protests in Brazil began, Rousseff's approval rating dropped 19 points to 23% with 44% disapproving of her.[9] which ended up resulting inDilma Rousseff's impeachment process. Dilma Rousseff lost the impeachment battle but won a separate Senate vote that intended to ban her from public office for eight years. She added: "They convicted an innocent person and carried out a parliamentary coup."[10]
The president who succeeded Dilma Rousseff wasMichel Temer, who brought great names from historical communism to compose his government, such asRoberto Freire (Ministry of Culture[11]) andRaul Jungmann (Ministry of Defence[12]).
In April 2018, former President Lula wasarrested[13] as part of the large-scale anti-corruptionOperation Car Wash under charges of money laundering and corruption, just months before that year'sgeneral election, of which he was the frontrunner.[14] Under Brazil'sClean Record Law, candidates who have been convicted by a decision of a collective body are ineligible to run for eight years, and so the arrest effectively ended Lula's candidacy.[15] His party put forward former Mayor ofSão PauloFernando Haddad as their official candidate on August 31, with Federal DeputyManuela D'Ávila as his running mate, solidifying an alliance with theCommunist Party of Brazil. The Haddad-d'Ávila ticket would lose the general election tofar-right candidateJair Bolsonaro, marking the strong shift in brazilian politics since Lula's realigning victory in2002.
The following parties have more than 350,000 members:
The following parties have less than 350,000 members and, amongst them, only the Socialism and Liberty Party is represented in theChamber of Deputies:
The following parties are not legally recognized by theSuperior Electoral Court and, therefore, are not allowed to participate in elections:
The socialist movement in Brazil include names like:
