The words: “Le Brésil n’est pas un pays serieux”- Brazil is
not a serious country, pronounced by the Diplomat Carlos Alves De Souza Filho,
when he was Ambassador to Brazil in France, between 1956 e 1964, has echoed
throughout the world up to this day. Whenever the country is on the spotlight,
people are reminded of these words spelled out years ago.
The perception of Brazil, almost 50 years ago, was that
Brazil didn’t take things too seriously. Unfortunately, this hasn’t changed
much; today, not only foreigners but also we, Brazilians believe that nothing
in our country is to be taken seriously.
What is wrong with our country? What’s wrong with us, the
people? Our politicians became more corrupt; our people less and lesser
educated; our health system is not efficient, neither is our public transportation
system and public safety is as bad as everything else. Our roads and streets
have more vehicles than they could support.
Economically people might say that the country is doing well
because of the fact that many foreign companies came to Brazil, creating more
jobs opportunities. In a sense I agree with that, but I ask, at what cost? We
pay too much more for industrialized products, than in any other country and
yet, the products we buy do not have the same quality as they do in USA and
Europe. The international companies come to Brazil, because here their profits
are exorbitant; they can sale second class products as luxury products and Brazilian
costumers don’t care. Consumerism is stimulated through government subsidies,
which benefits big companies, increasing their profits.
The words Brazil is not a serious country, to whom it should
be applied? A country is the territory of a nation and a Nation is made of sufficiently
conscious people, about its unity, therefore, Brazilian people, according to Mr.
Filho, are not serious people.
We the people, tend to blame the government and
the politicians for everything bad that happens in the country, but the matter
of the fact is that we are as much responsible. Each person has its share of responsibility
about the good and the bad things that happen around us in our country. We
always ask the government to do something or everything for us, we rarely ask
what we can do to make Brazil, our country, a better place.
The government only exists because of people. There is no
government without people. People can live without government, but no
government can subsist without people’s support. If things are bad in Brazil,
our country, we, the people, are to be blamed for it, as much or even more than
our politicians, for they do not exist without us the people. We are co-responsible;
we are the ones who elect our government and our representatives in congress.
Our politicians do not respect us, and therefore, do not
represent us in congress accordingly, because they know we are weak as people. We
are weak because we do not have the conscious of unity, which is necessary to
make people powerful. We don’t think of Brazil as our own homeland, we are not
really patriotic. Our sense of nationalism and patriotism is limited to
Football; no wonder government has invested billions of reais to host
international football championships in Brazil, not mentioning the amounts of
money that is spent every year for national and local football championships.
If fact, we do not take things as serious as we should. Here
it reigns the law of “jeitinho” known everywhere as “jetinho brasileiro”, which
means to deceive people and bypass the rules to take advantage of everything
and everyone, to achieve personal goals. The “jetinho brasileiro” made us more
selfish, without a national conscience and less patriotic.
We, Brazilian people do not put the whole society before
ourselves, not even for the greater good. We don’t see our country as our land or
our community as our home to care for.
What is lacking is
education in Brazil. The numbers are scary, even when compared to our South
American neighbors. Brazil has a percentage of college students lower than Paraguayan;
Only 3% of Brazilians are bilinguals. The country has 9% of illiterates, in
Brazil there are 33.000.000 of functional illiterates. Last year 300.000 new illiterate
emerged. Among the 300 best universities in the world, has no Brazilian
university.
The UN 2012 Ranking, Brazil, which was already misplaced,
dropped 3 more positions, and today is the number 88 in the world. Brazil is
behind Belize, Fiji Islands, Chad, Azerbaijan, Mauritius, Uzbekistan, Mongolia,
Paraguay, Trinidad and Tobago, Belarus, Tajikistan, Botswana, Sao Tome and
Principe, Namibia, Saint Lucia, Moldavia .... Brazil managed to stay even
behind the Palestine that is at war.
An International embarrassment, but Brazilian people are
very happy for being five times world champion, playing FOOTBAL!
