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By Cliff Welch, São Paulo, Brazil | April 20, 2020 With the Covid-19 pandemic, most days’ news reminds me of Marx’s phrase about history repeating itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. As I regularly consume news about the United States, the tragedy plays out daily in the magnitude of the disease’s spread, the runaway death count and the ineffective, egocentric responses of President Donald Trump. In contrast, news about governors like New York’s Andrew Cuomo and California’s Gavin Newsom, stimulate hope. But, here in Brazil, hope is presented as a horizon sublimely blind to facts learned the hard way in globe’s far flung corners. President Jair Bolsonaro tells people to go back to work. He characterizes Covid-19 as a “little flu” and spectacularly defies prohibitions on social isolation and distancing. On April 19, he addressed a rally in front of the Brazilian Army headquarters in Brazil’s capital city. Defying social distancing guidelines, Bolsonaro’s supporters called on the Army to intervene by shutting down the congress and supreme court. “We don’t want to negotiate anything,” Bolsonaro told the crowd. “Count on your president…to guarantee…our freedom.” Two days earlier, he fired his health minister for advocating policies established by [...]

Labor Market and Labor Relations under the PT Governments by Ana Paula Fregnani Colombi, José Dari Krein | April 22, 2020 There is some consensus on the foreign policy of Dilma Rousseff’s government that Brazil lost prestige and international influence because of her lesser personal dedication. Against this consensus, the paper presents two alternative hypotheses for explaining its unsatisfactory outcomes: that there was no change in policy objectives but an adaptation to a more hostile context and that its limitations were structurally related to dependency on global corporations and to the increasing rejection of South-South politics by domestic business. If this analysis is correct, the structural limitations described require that the struggle to achieve an independent foreign policy involve deeper political and ideological battles and a more radical questioning of neoliberal capitalism. Abstract In its 12 years in government, Brazil’s Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party—PT) promoted inclusion through the labor market and through consumption with an increase in labor flexibility. Despite an increase in employment and incomes, the increase in the heterogeneity of the labor market and in flexibilization has resulted in a deepening of the insecurity and vulnerability of workers in line with the new trends that contemporary [...]