Brian Winter on Brazil, Argentina, and the Future of Latin America

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0:51Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Bridging the gap between academic ideas and real world problems. Learn more at mercatis .org. For a full transcript of every conversation, enhanced with helpful links, visit ConversationsWithTiler .com.

1:13Hello everyone and welcome back to Conversations With Tiler. Today I'm chatting with Brian Winter. Let me just give you the introduction from Brian himself. He's the editor -in -chief of America's quarterly and a long -standing analyst of Latin American politics, with more than 20 years following the region. He's lived in Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico. He was a correspondent for Reuters. He also has been vice president of policy for the America's Society and Council of the Americas. He's been called the best foreign expert on Brazil of this moment. He's the author of several books, including Why Soccer Matters, a New York Times bestseller, co -authored with Brazilian soccer legend Pele, the accidental president of Brazil, co -authored with President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and long after midnight a memoir about trying and failing to learn to tango in Argentina.

2:08He's a regular contributor to television and radio, a host of the America's quarterly podcast and a prolific barbecuer and chef. I very much enjoy following him on Twitter at Brazil, Brian, and that's Brazil with the Z. Brian, welcome. It's session honor, Tyler. Thank you for having me. I have so many questions. Let me start with a simple one. Why is Brazil stuck? Oh, my goodness. I actually, you know, I take a longer view on Brazil. I've been following the country for almost 20 years now. And I've seen progress. This is a country that has its challenges, but it is one of the hemisphere's most solid democracies.

2:50It is a country that has lifted millions out of poverty over the last 20 years. It's more of a middle class country than it used to be. And I know what you mean by stuck. It's an economy that doesn't grow nearly enough. It has this political turmoil that makes headlines every now and then. But if you take that longer view, it's a better place than it was when I first started following it back in the 2000s. But say they just grow at about 2%, which has been common lately, now that the China boom, the saw you boom are over, their fertility seems to be about 1 .55. I mean, what's the future? Don't they just shrink and get poorer?

3:26We might all shrink, Tyler. This is not a question that Brazil alone is facing. We're seeing it across the Western world. But the danger here is real. It's the same danger that faces China as well. It's the danger that these countries will get old before they get rich. And this is an issue we're seeing across much of the developing world. What's the future of migration into Brazil? So the US might be below replacement rates, but we can get a lot of the world's best immigrants. Brazil doesn't seem very interested in recreating its earlier early 20th century traditions. when it took in people from across the world.

4:02Why not? If that could change, is it just people coming from Partar Gwai? What's the future of migration to Brazil? It's been, as you rightly point out, Tyler, it's been a long time since Brazil was, you know, a real destination for immigrants. I'm actually working on a book about Sao Paulo right now and revisiting a lot of this history when they had a, what they called the immigrants in, which received, it was in Sao Paulo and it received thousands of immigrants at a time, mostly from Italy, also from Spain, but Brazil also has the world's largest Japanese population outside Japan. So many people came there from the old Ottoman Empire today, Syria and Lebanon, that the mayors of Sao Paulo over the years have had names like Kasab, Haddad, Maloof.

4:47I mean it does have that tradition of immigration, but that ended really with the great depression and the crash in coffee prices back when Brazil was producing as much as three quarters of the world's coffee. It was a real blow to them and kind of changed everything. And you're right. It's not a big receiver of immigrants today, although there are about 500 ,000 Venezuelans who've come there in recent years fleeing the collapse of the socialistic tatorship. There it has an equally sized population of people from Bolivia. So it still receives not as much as it otherwise might. I have to say that Portuguese is part of the challenge here.

5:24It's a language that not that many people know. And so, for example, even for the Venezuelans, that's out of a diaspora of 8 million. Most of them have gone to other Spanish -speaking countries, but the ones that have gone to Brazil have been pretty happy with their decision. Why is Brazilian agriculture not stuck? Productivity there seems to be very high, right? What's Brazil doing right in this one area? Well, you know, having a privileged location in the tropics and being able to have two harvests a year sometimes because of the climate and the soil, that helps. But plenty of countries have that, right?

5:56Resils done something unusual. Well, there's an old expression that thankfully is a bit out of date now that held that Brazil was the most efficient farming country in the world until goods left the farm. And what that was a reference to was the fact that the roads, infrastructure, rail, ports, and so on were not really up to par. But there has been an improvement, not enough. But again, this is another area where of the last 20 years, this soil that used to travel over, you know, two lane or even one lane mud roads, at least now it's paved in a lot of places. And some of these rail links are also improving.

6:37So this is another area where I think if you, if you take that longer term perspective, things are getting a little bit better. What's the economic geography of Brazil going to look like. All the wealth, the wealth near Maturgroso and the North just very, very poor, or the North empty out, or how's that going to work? There used to be some modest degree of balance. That's true. Most of the population in Brazil and the economic center for sure was in the southeast and that means really Sao Paulo state, which is about a quarter of Brazil's population, but roughly a third of its GDP, Rio as well, the state of Minas Gerais, which has a name that tells its history, that means general minds in Portuguese, that's the area where a lot of the gold came out of in the 18th and 19th centuries.

7:25That's gone now, so it's not as much of an economic poll. You're right, Tyler, though, that a lot of the real boom right now, the action is in places like Matugroso, which is in the region of Brazil called the center west. That's soy country. I'm from Texas and Matogrosso is virtually indistinguishable from Texas these days. It's hot, it's flat, the crop is, you know, like I said, is soy, there's cattle ranching as well. Even the music, you know, Brazil has others have noted has gone from being the country of Bosnava and the Samba in the 1970s to being the country of Certa Nesio today. Certa Nesio is kind of a Brazilian cousin of country music.

8:08with accordions, but it's sung by people men mostly in jeans, big belt buckles, and cowboy hats. And so they're importing that not only that economic model, but that lifestyle as well. What is the great Brazilian music of today? MPB is dead, right? So what should someone listen to? Well, I have a guilty love for Sietta Nizio. Again, I've revealed myself as a Texan to your who likes the classics, like George Strait, Clint Black, and some of the big names from the 80s and 90s. The sertaneso is a bit different, but if hip hop is your thing, Anita Tutis is the big artist of the moment. But it's not to the despair of some that culture today, perhaps because it is somewhat derivative of country music in the United States.

8:57It is not taking over the world in the same way that Jean -Zilbert and Jean -Bertelzil and so many others did in the 1950s and 1960s. How do you think that being a Texan makes you more optimistic about Brazil if you would even accept the claim at all? Well, that's a really good question. I certainly make me appreciate the cowboy culture in Chujasco, which is the Brazilian barbecue culture as well. I think, you know, both places in addition to being, you know, hot and green are forward looking. I came to Brazil from Argentina. I lived in Argentina first. Argentina is a country that is obsessively focused on its past.

9:42That's a country that 100 years ago famously was one of the 10 richest countries in the world. And today is slipped back well into the middle of the pack, somewhere in the 60s, depending on what indicator you're looking at. And so, you know, Argentina is a tango. It's nostalgia, it's melancholy. And Brazil has always been about the future, sometimes to a fault. It's not a place where people remember precedent, or they remember lessons of history. They're focused on the future. And if you grew up in a place like Dallas, or like I did, which was built entirely for the most part in the 20th century, I think there's probably something of that that resonates with me.

10:22But is Brazil still looking toward the future? So as you know, they built Brazilia in the middle of nowhere. Whatever you think of Brazilia, it was quite an achievement. It's hard for me to imagine them doing that now. I've read that Outback Steakhouse is quite popular in Brazil. You've talked about rap music, derivatives of country in Western. Where's the real future looking forward looking element in Brazil? Where do you see it? I think you see it, this may sound a bit hokey, Tyler, but you feel it when you talk to people. It's a country of smiles, of people who sometimes live just incredibly difficult lives, talking about people who live in the periphery of cities like South Paulo and Brazil who spend five hours a day on a bus, commuting in and out of traffic in order to work minimum wage jobs, and these people enjoy life.

11:24Sometimes more than I would say often more than the people that I live among in Westchester County just outside New York, who I look around sometimes on the commuter train, and nobody but he looks happy. And I don't want to romanticize things. I think that you find unhappy people in Brazil too, but there is a joy in life that people manage to seize upon even when the economy is not doing well. Perhaps because they're accustomed to this kind of slow growth situation that we've been talking about. Here's a question from a reader and I quote, does the change in the style of play of Brazil's national soccer team over the last 20 years.

12:09More disciplined and rigorous, with fewer players free to create. A result of a change in the national culture or vibe, unquote. I think that Brazilians would probably tell you that actually the soccer team has not evolved enough because I would gently point out, because I know that there are Brazilian listeners here who will recoil when I say this, but it has been 22 years since Brazil won the last World Cup, which is quite serious for a country that has won five World Cup over the years more than any other country. And there is a real view that I hear from people in the country that actually part of the problem is that improvisation and talent are not enough anymore.

12:54And that Brazilian soccer really needs to professionalize. Now, they continue to produce amazing players. They are Vinicius Jr. and others. But they also have another disadvantage, which is that so many more of their players these days, they play club soccer in Europe. And if you look back at the Golden Age, the Age with Pele, these were players who played almost entirely on teams within Brazil who knew each other and perhaps that was an advantage as well. But do you think through something about the Brazilian spirit or national psyche that somehow worked better in the world of the 1950s and 60s, where improvisation was more relevant, maybe more productive, in a lot of area cinema.

13:42You have a movie such as Black Orpheus, I'm sure you know it. Is there anything comparable today that has global force, a Brazilian movie or something? What would it be? That's a good question, Tyler. and I, to be honest, I'm at a bit of a loss, and this is something that Brazilian commentators have also seized upon. This idea that the cool Brazil, the one that, you know, people of a certain age think of that comes to mind, the Samba, the Beats of Bossa Nova, Black Orpheus to take another, to take the example you cited. That's not present today. And there's been a lot of soul searching within Brazil as to why that is, they watch, for example, the prominent South Korea has taken on in shows like, oh gosh, what's the one on Netflix, the really violent one that everybody, squid game.

14:37A lot of Brazilians saw that in the cultural moment of K -pop and everything else and said, that used to be us. What has happened to us that were no longer in that on the main stage to the degree that we were in the past? You know, I think some of it is that others have caught up and then perhaps there's a cyclical element to this as well. I can tell you that Brazil remains a tremendously seductive place to visit. You spend time in places like Sao Paulo, Rio, Salvador and you still see echoes of that Brazil. that seduce the world once upon a time and continues to do so, not necessarily as part of pop culture, but certainly to people who visit.

15:22How is it that you understand the current crime situation in Sao Paulo? As I'm sure you know, the murder rate has dropped a great deal. But if you actually walk on the streets, it doesn't feel very good. In some ways, the older, more violent Sao Paulo seems cleaner or to have fewer derelicts. What's the general framework for making sense of what's gone on there? It's a really perceptive question, Tyler. Sao Paulo, the crime situation there, is it's a complex story. Their homicide rate has actually gone down more than 80 % over the last 25 years. It's a tremendous achievement. It was one of the world's most violent in terms of homicide.

16:03Cities as recently as the late 90s. And then that right now is only about 5 per 100 ,000, which is lower than the U .S. national average and quite a bit lower than many U .S. cities. But, and there's a button here. It is a city where you are still much more likely to be a victim of an armed robbery, of a car jacking, to have your cell phone taken from your hands. And so, a lot of people when they go there, either as visitors or members of the economic elite in Sao Paulo, choose to have armored cars choose to not pull out their cell phone when they're out on the street as a matter of fact with the spread of payment apps and Brazil's digital currency which is an amazing story in itself it's called PICS.

16:50A lot of Brazilian friends I know have stopped taking their cell phone out of the house at all because they're afraid that either the phone will be stolen or they'll be the victims of a kidnapping and made to empty their account. So that's a reality. That's serious. And so I've been very interested in the progress that they have made on the homicide front. But when you talk to ordinary people, regular people in Sao Paulo, the perception is that violence has not gotten any better. And there's another issue here, which you made reference to, which is that the street population has, by some measures, tripled in the last 10 years.

17:34Now, some of that is the pandemic, but there seem to be other factors as well. What do you think will happen with crime in Rio de Janeiro, the city? Well, is that even stable? It can't continue, right? It seems something has to give. Rio, in some ways, is a repeat of the story that I just told about Sao Paulo, but without the progress from a security standpoint. It remains very worthwhile to visit. It's also an economic center, a cultural center of the country. There's a lot more to these places besides just street crime. But the fact is it's a very complicated situation. You have these groups that Brazilians call militias, which sounds like militias, but they're really best thought of as paramilitary groups.

18:22These are groups that are often composed of police officers who control organized crime in vast areas of the city. And look, it's another area where Brazil has worked to do. And these are challenges that are faced all across Latin America. I mean, one of the big stories happening in Latin America right now is this spread of organized crime, which was already bad. I mean, this has always been an issue as long as I've been following the region. But with the doubling in the production of cocaine that we've seen over the last 10 years and keeping in mind that almost all the world's cocaine is produced in just three countries that's Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia, the smuggling routes lead out of those countries and touch virtually every other country in Latin America.

19:13And the illegality and organized crime that that takes root around that is the source of a lot of these issues. What do you think is the most significant change of mind or change of opinion? You've had in the last ten years about race relations in Brazil. So one reads a great deal about this. Obviously it's different from America, but since you've started, what has it you've changed your mind about? What new insights do you have now? You didn't have ten or twenty years ago. So, race is a subject in Brazil that I always approach with humility as an American, because we of course have our own Ampli -Documented issues.

19:51And racism in Brazil is different in some ways, but similar in others. There has been a huge debate within Brazil about identity and the nature of Brazilian racism over the last 10 years or so. One consequence of this Tyler is that the percentage of people who identify as black or mixed race has gone way up in census data in that time. It's gone from, I believe, somewhere in the upper 40s to about 56 % today. And it's not because Brazil became more black or had more mixed -race people, but because people are more inclined to identify themselves as with pride as being part of that group. And it's all a saga that has been going on for hundreds of years, that has echoes in the same history that we have here in the U .S.

20:54But in some ways, it happens on a bigger scale in Brazil. Here's a figure that people are always surprised, Americans are always surprised to learn. Brazil imported more than 5 million people from Africa, from the 16th century through 1850. That is more than 10 times the number of slaves that were imported into the United States. And so we're talking about an issue that has had reverberations that in some ways are far bigger. At the same time, there was always more mixing of the races in Brazil. So segregation in along racial lines was never a thing in part because it was not feasible, because there had been so much mixing.

21:38But there was a long tradition in Brazil, especially among the elite, of claiming that there was no racism in Brazil. And I think that the country has come to grips with the fact that that's not true. That there was racism, that it was different from racism in the United States. but racism nonetheless. And so people are grappling with that at the same time that they're more inclined to identify themselves as black, which is a fascinating thing to watch. For you, which is the most interesting ethnic small town in southern Brazil? Ethnic small town, you're referring to like the German communities and places.

22:13And like Palmer Rota, somewhere like that, which for me was fascinating. I'd like to hear your story of Pablo Rada, but I have to say my favorite example of an ethnic enclave in Brazil is actually in São Paulo. It's a neighborhood called Lieberdaggi, which means freedom, means liberty. And this was the poll for the Japanese community that came to Brazil starting in the 1900s and as I said earlier is the biggest Japanese community outside Japan. They have integrated themselves exceptionally well into the country. You walk through this neighborhood and you see sushi places, ramen restaurants, and then coconut water and tropical juices.

23:01This neighborhood is also notable for other reasons, and prior to becoming a Japanese neighborhood in the 17th and 18th century, well, the name tells it all. Liberdagi. It was one of the first neighborhoods where freed slaves in Sao Paulo lived, and it has that whole history that is also being uncovered kind of as we speak as this part of this moment of racial awakening that I already described. For me, Parmato da was so boring, it was interesting. incredibly quiet north German architecture. The dialect maybe almost sounded like Platt Deutsch. I'm not sure. People didn't believe me when I said I was an American.

23:40None of the categories made sense to them. People were friendly. It felt German. This was the 1990s. It was like a time warp more than anything. No way in Germany would be the way Parmaroto was in the 1990s. Brazil has that there are dishes and dances of the old Japanese community that have been preserved in Brazil in a way that they were not in Japan. So it's a country in part because of that rich tradition of immigration that we were discussing earlier that has all kinds of enclaves like that that are fascinating to visit. Where is the best Trorosco in Brazil? Mmm, that somebody's ranch if you can manage.

24:21Let's say in commercial markets. I would say outside of quarter Chiba in some of the suburbs, but I'm not sure this plenty of parts I've never been to. It's hard to go wrong. I've had some amazing Chujasco in Sao Paulo, but also up in the new cattle country up in Matogroso. You know, they bring it. Well, I assume a lot of your audience has been to the all you can eat, of the U .S. of Brazilian barbecue here in the U .S. It's basically like that, but what you don't always get here in the U .S. is these vast buffets of other things where you can get your pecania, which is the classic. They always translate that as rump state, which makes it sound terrible, but it's the best, most classic Brazilian cut.

25:06But to then line that up with hearts of palm that are sometimes almost the size and diameter of like a flagpole. Those are my favorite. Yeah. That's a real treat. That's a real treat. That's a real treat. That's a real treat. Yeah. That's right. Oh, some questions about other countries. If we look around Latin America, one can see that Nicaragua and Cuba are quite safe. The cost of getting there has been way way too high, right? They're not successful countries. But does that strengthen the case for Bucalae that in essence there's not any simple way to a safe Latin American country if you start out dangerous?

25:45Well, what you say is true in the sense that police states can be quite safe. And Nicaragua and Cuba are places where no type of dissent is tolerated today. El Salvador, it's not there yet. I think it's fair to wonder whether that is what Naïb Bukhela has in mind. And of course, Naibu Kale being the, you already named him, the very charismatic millennial El Salvadoran leader with the backwards baseball cap. What he has done is throw more than 1 % of his country's population in jail over the course of a year. And El Salvador is not a big country, so to put that in proportional terms, to do the equivalent thing in the United States, that would be putting more than 3 million more people in jail in the course of 12 months.

26:39That's how dramatic what Bukele has done. And so far, it has met with success in terms of reducing homicide numbers. El Salvador's official homicide index is now lower than that of the United States. There's some question about whether those numbers are accurate, but there's certainly the trend is real, is very clear. The problem of course is that he's done that without, in many cases, do process for the people who he's put in jail. What's there a better alternative? Well, I think yes, but it takes time. It involves building up your police forces, professionalizing your judiciary, and sending people the old fashion way to jail by putting them on trial first for societies that are not willing to tolerate that that don't have that patience because they think that they're going through a crisis and emergency.

27:42I have to say I mean I understand why Bukele has an approval rating upwards of 80 percent because the results are real and the history of the world is full of societies, including democratic societies, that have been willing to suspend civil liberties in the name of a national emergency. We did that here in the United States during the Civil War, and with the suspension of Abius Corpus, we did it with the internment camps of the World War II era with the Japanese population. And, you know, we as a society almost always regret these things after the fact, but they're seen as necessary at the time.

28:24The real debate for me that Bukheli awakens is, we may think, I may think, that what Bukheli is doing is anti -democratic. But if he just was voted a second term as president with a huge mandate, then arguably El Salvador's society has a democratic sovereign right to make that decision and to sign off on what he's doing, which is again, sending a lot of people, including almost certainly innocent people to jail. And if that's a cost that Salvadoran is society is willing to take, then perhaps they have a right to do that. It remains to be seen how exportable that model is to other countries in the region.