Brazil since the end of the Cold War
It is impossible to set a date on "the end of the Cold War", simply because the "end of the Cold War" was not an event but a process starting with mutual realization of the futility and destructiveness of a costly endless conflict between the "Great Satan" and the "Evil Empire", going through a period of dTtente, and fizzling out (hopefully) into an uneasy and ambiguous "peace". For the purpose of this summary survey, we have researched databases in the United States and in Brazil, and selected articles from American and Brazilian periodicals published from late 1990 through early 1992.
Jim Rohwer, writing in The Economist, titled his article on Brazil today, "The Blessed and the Cursed".
"The only thing standing between Brazil and Asia-like rates of economic growth is lousy government... Rio de Janeiro is still the 'marvelous city', a hedonistic paradise of green mountains looking down on blue sea. The state of Spo Paulo, with the world's second most populous city (there are 17 m Paulistas) and almost half of Brazil's industrial output, still vibrates with entrepreneurial energy and prosperity... One of the greatest natural wonders, the Amazon rain forest, has proved more resistant to man's attacks than was feared a few years ago; even now only 8% of it has been burnt... In fact, Brazil has changed a lot over the past half-decade, almost entirely for the worse. In these five years, Brazil has had ten finance ministers, ten central bank governors, five doses of economic shock therapy and four currencies... Real GDP in 1991 is likely to be less than it was in 1986. Real GDP per person may be as much as 10% less - nearly as low as it was back in 1978. It is likelier than not that the economy will shrink again in 1993. If so, that will make for the third straight year of economic contraction, and the fourth year in five of a shrinkage in industrial output" (65).
Strikes are now...