An update on Brazil's crazy political scene

In April a former colleague from college asked me how were things in Brazil, and this is what I answered.

----------------------------------------------------------

I'm sure you heard our president was impeached, but I need to start my report from this point, because all that is happening now is a consequence of this impeachment.

When Dilma was in office, the House of Representatives’ leader in Brazil, Cunha, was being investigated by the federal police for acts of corruption (bribes, favoring his companies on public contracts, deviating money from public contracts to his own account, and so on). His party, PMDB, was part of the government, as the vice president, Temer, and the Senate leader, Calheiros, were in his party too, and they supported president Dilma’s government.

As investigations continued, other people from PMDB, found themselves involved in those scandals, including these two I have just cited.

Cunha asked for Dilma’s suport and her party, PT, in order for investigations to stop. Dilma refused to comply with this request.

PMDB, then, decided to start an alliance with the government's opposition, which has just lost the presidential election and was also being investigated, and other opposing parties with the objective to out Dilma.

The majority in Congress voted for her impeachment, but, because Dilma didn't commit any crime or illegal action, they couldn't take away her political rights. The situation is very absurd, because she can still run for office anytime she wants.

The vice president became president, and his new allies from the opposition became part of his team of secretaries. They are the majority in Congress and they are taking this opportunity to pass "unpopular" laws and renovations to existing laws.

They limited government expenses for the next 20 years, therefore, even if our economy grows, the country will not be able to adjust its expenses on education or health care, for instance.

Now they are trying to change working and retirement laws.

Regarding working laws, thee current legislation would lose its power, because the employer would be allowed to not follow it as long as they have employees consent. This means that employees could be harassed to accept longer shifts and lower wages, with no protection from the judiciary branch.

Today we have a public retirement system, with no minimum age for retiring, but with a minimum time of contributions, which are taken automatically from our pay checks. The new government wants to create a minimum age of 65 years old for everybody, and 49 years of contribution are going to be required in order to retire with the same working salary. People who works in rural areas, teacher, nurses, would all be under those rules, even workers in high risk jobs.

There are other measurements to decrease the size of our government and transform constitutional rights into privileges.

On Friday, the entire country is organizing a strike, paralyzing public transportation, schools and public services. There is also going to be a protest asking for new elections, democracy, and against those laws I told you before.

I hope it works out, because in past protests police act with violence, the mass media didn't report them and nothing changed.

People are worried Congress will cancel next year's election.

This government has a 4% approval rate according to the latest polls. And the worst part is that the people in Congress are owners of big companies and would benefit from these changes on the working and retirement laws. If they find a way to stay in office without the people's approval, we are doomed.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Since then, this is what happened:

• The general strike took place, paralyzing schools, public services and public transportation, with no effect in the politics whatsoever;
• The current president, Temer, was caught in a big bribery scandal, with recorded phone calls in which he agreed n buying Cunha’s silence and a recorded video of an assistant receiving a suitcase full of money paid by a company called Friboy in exchange his influence in changing laws, but nothing has happened with him;
• Temer has also exchanged support in congress by limiting the creation of indigenous reservations from legislators who own big plantations;
• The current government has changed Brazil’s educational system without consulting its population, decreasing the subjetcs taught in public schools and creating a bigger gap between private and public education; and
• The ex-president, Lula, who had a very popular government, was considering being candidate in the next presidential elections and had great chances of winning according to the latest polls, was charged guilty for exchanging public contracts from Brazilian oil company Petrobras for an apartment for himself, but there are no documents indicating that he owns the apartment or no money trace indicating he received anything from anybody in exchange of his influence.

Well, this is how we have been living down here, with no certainty of justice or any of our democratic institutions. I’ll let you guys know if anything new comes up around here. Wish us luck.

Is there democracy in Brazil?

Protest in Paulista Avenue, São Paulo, September 11th, 2016.

I am sure that you all know about Brazil and how it is the biggest country in Latin America, one of the biggest economies in the world, home of the largest rain forest on the planet. I also know that you realize the country's relevance in the world scenario so here is a few paragraphs describing Brazil's political situation today.

Since the day after the last presidential election the opposing candidate, Aécio Neves, threatened President Dilma of taking her out of power by any means possible. A series of accusations were made and investigated, but none proved to be real. Still, congress impeached Dilma, the elected president who has never done anything illegal, to put in her place a vice-president charged with corruption and who cannot be a candidate in any election for years, Temer.

Of course, when Brazil voted for Dilma, also voted for Temer. But their platform and promises on which they've got elected was thrown into a trash bin on the day Temer stepped into office. He changed the government team, shut down important offices, and invited Neves, the losing presidential candidate, with his political partners, to be part of this new government, whose plans include privatizations of many state companies, changes on our universal health care systems, on our educational curriculum, and on our worker rights and retirement. None of these actions were presented, debated, voted or talked about.They are being imposed by the president with "Medidas Provisórias" and will probably pass in congress.

You must be wondering, "why would Brazilian congress pass all these bills without popular consent?" Here is why: there is an alliance between congress, the illegitimate presidential team, the judiciary branch and the Brazilian elite to stop investigations on corrupt politicians, raise judge's salaries, and change Brazilian policies in favor of the rich, who will be able to hire people for a lower wage. There are audio recordings of Temer's team scheming all that horrible plan all over the media, and still, nothing has happened to stop this coup.

There is no democracy in Brazil.

People has gone to the streets of all major cities in Brazil in peaceful protests against Temer and asking for their right to choose their president. There has been no coverage by any of the major networks, which are also part of this coup alliance. Worse, people are being spanked, bombed, and shot in these protests. They are taking away our right to speak.

There are military and police infiltrated in social networks on the internet, spying on people who organize protests against Temer. 26 people were arrested last week in a meeting to talk about protesting. And they were just talking. 

I have been in a protest with my mother and sister. We were walking peacefully screaming "elections now" as loud as we could. Suddenly we heard explosions. People started running. There were stun grenades and grenades with some sort of gas that make people sick and breathing almost impossible. Police was shooting people from behind their back with rubber bullets. By people I mean many women, elderly, children, man... I saw a scene I have only seen in movies. It looked like a war zone. 

I cannot describe with words how it feels to run for your life when you have done nothing wrong. How it feels to have to protect your mother and sister from the police, whose only job is to protect people. How it feels to be shut up by force. How it feels to not have a voice.

It did not happened only once. This scene has been repeating every week. 

I am not sure if there will be presidential elections in two years. I am afraid I am living a new dictatorship, in which opposing political parties will become illegal and there will be only candidates aligned with the government. This wouldn't be the first dictatorship in Brazilian history.

Now you know.

Validating an undergraduate diploma in Brazil

Not that many people know, but Brazil hasn't signed any international treaty regarding undergraduate diplomas. Therefore, foreign degrees are not valid in Brazil and vice-versa.

If you intend to go to a grad school here, or work at a job which requires an undergrad education, you must have a Brazilian undergraduate degree, or validate your foreign undergraduate degree. I am currently going through this  process and will give you some tips on how to do it.

First of all, you need to check if your foreign degree has a correspondent course in a public university over here. At least 70% of the classes taken have to match with those from the Brazilian course. Once you find a University with a similar degree, you can access the institution's website and check the required documents for the validation. 

The institution analyzes these documents and decides if the degrees are compatible, then it gives you a Brazilian certification, which functions as a diploma from that institution.

Try not to do the validation process at USP. Although it is the biggest and most prestigious public university in Brazil, they are very bureaucratic and you will be going from office to office trying to find someone who has the right information for months. Their working hours are confusing and finding someone who can help you over the phone is impossible. And everyone to whom I talked told me the process can take up to 2 years and there is not much you can do if they decide your degree can't be validated. I suggest trying federal universities such as Unifesp or Ufabc. At Ufabc they let you take classes as a special student in case your validation is denied due to lack of classes, so you don't lose your money.

Usually, the documents needed for validation are: the undergrad diploma you want to validate, the corresponding transcript, the syllabus from all the classes you have taken or the course catalog, a letter stating that the foreign university is accredited (it can be issued by the accreditation institution), and a high school diploma. They may ask you to fill a form and provide some sort of ID.

The undergrad diploma, accreditation letter, transcript, and syllabus or course catalog must be authenticated by the Brazilian consulate from the country where they were issued. In order to do so, you should mail  the documents to a Brazilian consulate with a US$ 5  money order per document and an already sealed and addressed envelop so they can send them back to you. You can find more information here. Make sure to send the documents to a consulate in the area from where your degree was issued. If you studied in NYC you must send them to the Brazilian Consulate in New York. If you send them to the one in Chicago, for example, they won't authenticate them.

You will also need to get a certified translation of your undergrad diploma, the accreditation letter and transcript. You can find a Brazilian certified translator here.

Now the only thing left is to  pay the validation fee. In federal colleges, such as Ufabc, it costs R$ 1300 to validate your diploma. Each university has a different payment method and they usually have it explained in their website. After paying, you just need to take the documents and the receipt to the University you have chosen and hope for the best.

In Ufabc it takes 2 months for them to analyze and decide whether they will validate a diploma or not. As I said before, if they decide not to, you can take the missing classes as a special student over there and then get your validation. If the answer is yes, there is a R$100 fee to finalize the process, and then you should be good to go.

Here is the website from Ufabc explaining how they do the validation. 

Good luck for all of you who are planning on doing this, I hope this helped!

Prison's violence

According to the UN's Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD/UN), 40% of prisoners in Brazil have not been judged yet, they are temporary prisoners. Many of them would not be found guilty or would have alternative penalties if it wasn't for the Brazilian Judiciary system's inefficiency and lack of public defenders.

Actually, for the UN, the main reason for the overpopulated prisons in Brazil is the small offer of public defenders. A  report from WDGA reveals that a public defender may work on 800 cases at the same time. The problem is that a lawyer here is treated like a luxury article, but every one should have access to them. The consequences of a broken penitentiary system are felt by us regularly.

Almost half of the inmates are in jail without even being found guilty. The prisons are crowded, dirty, not well maintained, and the people are not treated humanly, as seen on the video which caught correctional officers torturing inmates last year. Any one in this desperate situation, without legal means, authorities, or government to be protected, will search other alternatives that will allow their survival. The organized crime inside prisons offer these conditions that the Estate refuses to provide.

And all the violence that we inflict upon them returns to us in the form of attacks on buses and other terrorism acts.

Isn't it time for us to review the authoritarianism of our penitentiary system? And the justice, when will she be for every one?

Meanwhile, the governor of Maranhão, Roseana Sarney, explains that the violence there is because Maranhão is wealthier now.