5 ms·

What is Happening in Brazil

141 points by paulovsk 13y ago

gcb0 13y ago
Stop this nonsense. Don't give voice to those people. Just the 1st paragraph shows he has no clue of what's happening. Nobody protested because of 20cents. Those were yearly protests by movement free pass (passe livre). Their goal is free public transportation and they do demonstrations for at least 10yrs. It's just for effect that they time the demonstrations to the fare raises. And now, the media giving voice to that kind of people is what made the govt get away with 20c less on the fare for this issue. It totally undermined the movement and alienated newcomers. Those people eager to appear in the media effectively destroyed the leadership and turned the protest into a headless occupy wallstreet kind of thing. Yesterday there were talks of the military taking opportunity and throwing A COUPE... Highly improbable but since now nobody has any direction, even within the gov, it was a real fear for some in the workers party that heads govmnt currently.
- gruseom 13y ago
  So if it didn't start because of public transport, why did it, and what is it about?
_delirium 13y ago
A somewhat different analysis of the current situation, reaching quite different conclusions: http://frombrazil.blogfolha.uol.com.br/2013/06/21/sao-paulo-protests-things-have-changed/ http://frombrazil.blogfolha.uol.com.br/2013/06/21/sao-paulo-... I hadn't seen until I read that that the original organizers of the protest, the MPL, have actually pulled out and denounced some of the current protestors due to them being coopted by right-wing groups. The blog post linked here makes a curious comment about "corruption... especially after the fall of the military regime". I'm not 100% sure if this is intended as a dog-whistle comment to the right, but it's a common sort of discourse among the right-wing, to excuse the dictatorship or even call for a new one by using corruption as the opening, since allegedly the dictatorship, for all its faults, was clean and got the trains running on time etc.
- natermer 13y ago
  Your link isn't working for some reason. Keep in mind that it's common for governments and other political organizations to insert agitators for the purposes of attempting to discredit or change the message of a protest. Happens very frequently. Also there is a large contingent of people that just like rioting. IE: "Now could be your only chance to torch a police car"
  - gasull 13y ago
    The link works for me. For those who can't access: http://web.archive.org/liveweb/frombrazil.blogfolha.uol.com.br/2013/06/21/sao-paulo-protests-things-have-changed/ http://web.archive.org/liveweb/frombrazil.blogfolha.uol.com....
- rauljara 13y ago
  I'm not sure the blog post you linked to reached any conclusions. It merely observed that not all of the hundreds of thousands of protestors are all of the same mind and political ideology. It would be pretty shocking if that were not the case. It ended wondering what would happen next, not declaring what would. Mass movements are unpredictable. So is life. You chose one line out of context from the original article to highlight a "dog whistle to the right" in support of a dictatorship while the rest of the article is an impassioned plea for human rights. Any time there's a mass movement, many different people will try to co-opt it. It doesn't mean that you should avoid supporting the movement. It means that it is very important to vocally support the parts of it that you do agree with, so that the parts you don't remain on the fringes. Acting like the whole movement is suspect because of a few strikes me as very counter-productive.
  - _delirium 13y ago
    I'm not intending to say that the whole movement is suspect; more that I'm wary of the particular linked blog post's analysis of the movement and what its aims are / should be.
Uperte 13y ago
Quote from prosecutor's FB according to this blog post: “I’m trying to get home for the past two hours, but I can’t because there’s some protesters blocking off traffic […] please, somebody tell the police that this area is under the jurisdiction of my court and, if any of them kill a protester, I’ll just archive the case”. Scary!
- angersock 13y ago
  Yep. I understand this as a humorous remark, no doubt, but there are certain positions of power from which I do not appreciate joking.
  - icebraining 13y ago
    It's a little more than just an humorous remark (EDIT: not that I'm assuming he would actually archive the cases); the original text seems much more hateful. The last part of the post is roughly: Shitty petistas¹. Motherfuckers. (...) I miss the time when this kind of thing was resolved with rubber (sticks) on the backs of the cowards... ¹ Supporters of the Partido Trabalhista, as far as I can tell.
  - katbyte 13y ago
    How is it possible for that to be taken as a humorous remark?
  - paulovsk 13y ago
    >"there are certain positions of power from which I do not appreciate joking." Exactly how I feel. And no way it was a joke, since he used bad words in the original post I haven't translated, which indicates he was really pissed off and writing fluently.
superflit 13y ago
The Left started the protests to attack the gov. of Sao Paulo one of largest city in Brazil that is in the hands of 'right' wing. After the middle class joined the protest things changed because the middle class only see political 'right' or 'left' as: which hand is stealing? If it is 'center' is both... As the protest backfired agains the left and the president (left too) they are trying to get over the protest.. But it is a long way to put all sardines back in the can.
tomjen3 13y ago
Regardless of who started it, attacking peaceful demonstrators and journalists with that much tear gas is just wrong. When you add that those they attacked where chanting no violence and where running away, the police should have done nothing at all.
throwaway395748 13y ago
This has been a very depressing week. Regardless of the many fair causes being taken by the protesters to the street, as a Brazilian living in São Paulo, I was worried since the beginning that the whole thing would turn into the mess we can see now. And while I sympathize what many of these causes, the lack of a proper, unified list of demands makes the whole thing completely worthless in the best case, and quite dangerous in the worst. On the bright side, it was funny the watch the national and foreign media trying to understand what was going on. And then my own friends and coworkers who supported the whole thing trying to explain what they thought it was about (each one with a different explanation).
- justin66 13y ago
  > And while I sympathize what many of these causes, the lack of a proper, unified list of demands makes the whole thing completely worthless in the best case, and quite dangerous in the worst. "Represent us, not yourselves" is the message delivered by these sorts of protests. It's more effective than an itemized list. > And then my own friends and coworkers who supported the whole thing trying to explain what they thought it was about (each one with a different explanation). This makes perfect sense amongst people who aren't being represented at all well by their government - the government isn't just doing one thing badly, so of course there isn't agreement over what they're doing wrong. It says something kind of ugly about you that you think it's "funny."
- kandu 13y ago
  It is mind blowing to me that in a world where the internet makes it so easy to aggregate democratically the wishes of the masses, corrupt politicians that neglect the people they represent still thrive. If everybody would spent 10% of the time they spend on Facebook in order to express on a website the problems that they would like to be solved by the state and the solution to these problems that they support, the world we live in would be a much better one. I would guess that the value corruption takes away from the global economy is much higher than the value created by all of the startups that pretend to disrupt economies. Do you want to solve a global problem? Please solve corruption.
sambeau 13y ago
I was reading the European Convention on Human Rights recently and I was surprised to see that Article 2 explicitly allows for states to kill people to quell rioting or insurrection: Article 2 – Right to life : 2. Deprivation of life shall not be regarded as inflicted in contravention of this article when it results from the use of force which is no more than absolutely necessary: : c. in action lawfully taken for the purpose of quelling a riot or insurrection. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_2_of_the_European_Convention_on_Human_Rights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_2_of_the_European_Conve...
- obviouslygreen 13y ago
  Are there instances where this has been applied with commentary? That would be interesting to read; just based on the raw text, it seems to me this is closer to "if you have an allergic reaction to the legal application of tear gas while rioting and die, it's not our fault" and less like "if you're protesting and we don't like it, we can and will shoot you, and it's legal."
- ekianjo 13y ago
  Interesting. Maybe that explains why dictatorships actually signed it too.Is that only in the European version ?
- rayiner 13y ago
  You have to read "riot" in context of "insurrection." Armed uprisings are put down with lethal force. That's not inconsistent with western thought. E.g. its one of the first things the fledgling U.S. federal government did in response to a rebellion in Massachusetts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays'_Rebellion#Rebellion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays'_Rebellion#Rebellion. Vis-a-vis riots, read in the context of "insurrection" you might interpret it as referring to the kind of riots you see in say Bangladesh: labor strikes where people bomb things.
joseflavio 13y ago
Sorry, but I call bs on this blog: "Feel Free To Kill Protesters", who said this? The author doesn't point any reference to confirm this quote, and I could not find it nowhere else.
- weslly 13y ago
  - http://noticias.uol.com.br/cotidiano/ultimas-noticias/2013/06/10/promotor-que-incitou-violencia-contra-manifestantes-em-sp-tera-conduta-investigada-pelo-mp-para-oab-sp-houve-crime.htm http://noticias.uol.com.br/cotidiano/ultimas-noticias/2013/0... - http://g1.globo.com/sao-paulo/noticia/2013/06/apos-sugerir-morte-de-manifestantes-promotor-se-arrepende-e-exclui-post.html http://g1.globo.com/sao-paulo/noticia/2013/06/apos-sugerir-m... EDIT: You can see this in english here: http://frombrazil.blogfolha.uol.com.br/2013/06/14/fear-and-loathing-in-sao-paulo/ http://frombrazil.blogfolha.uol.com.br/2013/06/14/fear-and-l... (search for "prosecutor")
  - joseflavio 13y ago
    Unbelievable the downvote, it doesn't change the fact that Blog post has absolutely no references or names.
mtgx 13y ago
Politicians tend to become worse and worse thinking and seeing from experience that they can "get away with it". But in reality all this time, the population gets more and more frustrated, and it's only a matter of time before the population revolts. So far the Brazilian politicians have been lucky that all these 1 million people haven't become violent and ask for their blood. Because to be honest, I think at least some of the corrupt leaders need to be punished severely, possibly even with the death penalty (like Ceausescu was in Romania). It's really the only way they'll learn their lesson, and more importantly, future generations of politicians will know now to upset the population to the point where they'll revolt and ask for their execution. I'm not usually pro-death penalty, but if there's anyone deserving it, it's the oppressive/corrupt leaders that make millions of people suffer through their ruling. I definitely think the leaders intentionally abusing their own Constitution deserve the death penalty, because if they don't get that, then it's just an invitation for future leaders to abuse it. They swore to protect it and obey it, and there needs to be a way to force them to do just that. Otherwise what's the point? Imagine how different things would be in US, if politicians would fear death penalty if they abuse the Constitution, and keep passing unconstitutional laws. I feel almost the same way about bankers who get away with their crimes. How are they supposed to learn their lesson if they aren't even threatened by prison time, even though they lost the pensions and deposits of millions of people? If they think they have the potential to earn tens of billions of hundreds of billions from risking the money of those people, they'll be much more inclined to do it if they only risk a couple of billion in penalty, and that's it. The population is supposed to rectify these sort of abuses by the elite in a society. It's up to the population to ultimately decide how much of a punishment these people get, and if their "representatives" aren't up for it, then they need to change them, or at least scare them into applying their will.
- maratd 13y ago
  > future generations of politicians will know now to upset the population to the point where they'll revolt and ask for their execution. I agree with your post, except for this. If history has shown us anything, it's that they never learn.
  - PavlovsCat 13y ago
jonmc12 13y ago
This article left me thinking about how big of a mess the 2014 world cup could be - a whirlwind of political protest, drunken fans and violence. Brazilian leadership really has their work cut out of them. However, in China, where oppression and corruption also exist, the 2008 Olympics was an event of unifying nationalism. Then, as the article portrays, Arab countries can oust their leaders, but Brazilians choose to re-elect corrupt politicians. Why does it seem like communist countries can inspire nationalism and pride, and the people of dictatorships can change leadership. Yet, Brazil, as a democratic country, is depicted as imagining disgrace (in world cup / Olympics) and unable to instigate political change?
- alexqgb 13y ago
  Simply electing leaders isn't enough in systems with winner-take-all dynamics. Brazil, Turkey, and Egypt all encapsulate this basic truth. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/06/21/the_tyranny_of_the_majority_brazil_turkey_protests http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/06/21/the_tyranny...
- paulovsk 13y ago
  The most intelligent question ever raised that I saw. It left me thinking too, thank you.
fiatjaf 13y ago
I'm brazilian and this article is a lie. nobody has heard about anybody saying this, and the visions the author of the article atributes to all the manifesters are just his visions. also, the author is an idiot.
- jafaku 13y ago
  The videos are lying too? Those bastards...
- petegrif 13y ago
  Thanks for the detailed rebuttal. Your considered response opened my eyes to the reality of the situation. Many thanks.
noone1234456 13y ago
Just my 2 cents, but saying "paying one of the biggest taxes in the world" is really exaggerated
- hikarudo 13y ago
  Income tax might not be so high, but taxes for products are very high. Electricity: about 45%, gasoline: about 50%. Import tax/PIS/Confins/ICMS are calculated one after the other, so you pay tax over tax.
albertobrandao 13y ago
Great article. Congrats, bro.

141 points by paulovsk 13y ago

gcb0 13y ago

Stop this nonsense. Don't give voice to those people. Just the 1st paragraph shows he has no clue of what's happening. Nobody protested because of 20cents. Those were yearly protests by movement free pass (passe livre). Their goal is free public transportation and they do demonstrations for at least 10yrs. It's just for effect that they time the demonstrations to the fare raises. And now, the media giving voice to that kind of people is what made the govt get away with 20c less on the fare for this issue. It totally undermined the movement and alienated newcomers. Those people eager to appear in the media effectively destroyed the leadership and turned the protest into a headless occupy wallstreet kind of thing. Yesterday there were talks of the military taking opportunity and throwing A COUPE... Highly improbable but since now nobody has any direction, even within the gov, it was a real fear for some in the workers party that heads govmnt currently.

gruseom 13y ago
So if it didn't start because of public transport, why did it, and what is it about?

_delirium 13y ago

A somewhat different analysis of the current situation, reaching quite different conclusions: http://frombrazil.blogfolha.uol.com.br/2013/06/21/sao-paulo-protests-things-have-changed/ http://frombrazil.blogfolha.uol.com.br/2013/06/21/sao-paulo-... I hadn't seen until I read that that the original organizers of the protest, the MPL, have actually pulled out and denounced some of the current protestors due to them being coopted by right-wing groups. The blog post linked here makes a curious comment about "corruption... especially after the fall of the military regime". I'm not 100% sure if this is intended as a dog-whistle comment to the right, but it's a common sort of discourse among the right-wing, to excuse the dictatorship or even call for a new one by using corruption as the opening, since allegedly the dictatorship, for all its faults, was clean and got the trains running on time etc.

natermer 13y ago
Your link isn't working for some reason. Keep in mind that it's common for governments and other political organizations to insert agitators for the purposes of attempting to discredit or change the message of a protest. Happens very frequently. Also there is a large contingent of people that just like rioting. IE: "Now could be your only chance to torch a police car"
- gasull 13y ago
  The link works for me. For those who can't access: http://web.archive.org/liveweb/frombrazil.blogfolha.uol.com.br/2013/06/21/sao-paulo-protests-things-have-changed/ http://web.archive.org/liveweb/frombrazil.blogfolha.uol.com....
rauljara 13y ago
I'm not sure the blog post you linked to reached any conclusions. It merely observed that not all of the hundreds of thousands of protestors are all of the same mind and political ideology. It would be pretty shocking if that were not the case. It ended wondering what would happen next, not declaring what would. Mass movements are unpredictable. So is life. You chose one line out of context from the original article to highlight a "dog whistle to the right" in support of a dictatorship while the rest of the article is an impassioned plea for human rights. Any time there's a mass movement, many different people will try to co-opt it. It doesn't mean that you should avoid supporting the movement. It means that it is very important to vocally support the parts of it that you do agree with, so that the parts you don't remain on the fringes. Acting like the whole movement is suspect because of a few strikes me as very counter-productive.
- _delirium 13y ago
  I'm not intending to say that the whole movement is suspect; more that I'm wary of the particular linked blog post's analysis of the movement and what its aims are / should be.

Uperte 13y ago

Quote from prosecutor's FB according to this blog post: “I’m trying to get home for the past two hours, but I can’t because there’s some protesters blocking off traffic […] please, somebody tell the police that this area is under the jurisdiction of my court and, if any of them kill a protester, I’ll just archive the case”. Scary!

angersock 13y ago
Yep. I understand this as a humorous remark, no doubt, but there are certain positions of power from which I do not appreciate joking.
- icebraining 13y ago
  It's a little more than just an humorous remark (EDIT: not that I'm assuming he would actually archive the cases); the original text seems much more hateful. The last part of the post is roughly: Shitty petistas¹. Motherfuckers. (...) I miss the time when this kind of thing was resolved with rubber (sticks) on the backs of the cowards... ¹ Supporters of the Partido Trabalhista, as far as I can tell.
- katbyte 13y ago
  How is it possible for that to be taken as a humorous remark?
- paulovsk 13y ago
  >"there are certain positions of power from which I do not appreciate joking." Exactly how I feel. And no way it was a joke, since he used bad words in the original post I haven't translated, which indicates he was really pissed off and writing fluently.

superflit 13y ago

The Left started the protests to attack the gov. of Sao Paulo one of largest city in Brazil that is in the hands of 'right' wing. After the middle class joined the protest things changed because the middle class only see political 'right' or 'left' as: which hand is stealing? If it is 'center' is both... As the protest backfired agains the left and the president (left too) they are trying to get over the protest.. But it is a long way to put all sardines back in the can.

tomjen3 13y ago

Regardless of who started it, attacking peaceful demonstrators and journalists with that much tear gas is just wrong. When you add that those they attacked where chanting no violence and where running away, the police should have done nothing at all.

throwaway395748 13y ago

This has been a very depressing week. Regardless of the many fair causes being taken by the protesters to the street, as a Brazilian living in São Paulo, I was worried since the beginning that the whole thing would turn into the mess we can see now. And while I sympathize what many of these causes, the lack of a proper, unified list of demands makes the whole thing completely worthless in the best case, and quite dangerous in the worst. On the bright side, it was funny the watch the national and foreign media trying to understand what was going on. And then my own friends and coworkers who supported the whole thing trying to explain what they thought it was about (each one with a different explanation).

justin66 13y ago
> And while I sympathize what many of these causes, the lack of a proper, unified list of demands makes the whole thing completely worthless in the best case, and quite dangerous in the worst. "Represent us, not yourselves" is the message delivered by these sorts of protests. It's more effective than an itemized list. > And then my own friends and coworkers who supported the whole thing trying to explain what they thought it was about (each one with a different explanation). This makes perfect sense amongst people who aren't being represented at all well by their government - the government isn't just doing one thing badly, so of course there isn't agreement over what they're doing wrong. It says something kind of ugly about you that you think it's "funny."
kandu 13y ago
It is mind blowing to me that in a world where the internet makes it so easy to aggregate democratically the wishes of the masses, corrupt politicians that neglect the people they represent still thrive. If everybody would spent 10% of the time they spend on Facebook in order to express on a website the problems that they would like to be solved by the state and the solution to these problems that they support, the world we live in would be a much better one. I would guess that the value corruption takes away from the global economy is much higher than the value created by all of the startups that pretend to disrupt economies. Do you want to solve a global problem? Please solve corruption.

sambeau 13y ago

I was reading the European Convention on Human Rights recently and I was surprised to see that Article 2 explicitly allows for states to kill people to quell rioting or insurrection: Article 2 – Right to life : 2. Deprivation of life shall not be regarded as inflicted in contravention of this article when it results from the use of force which is no more than absolutely necessary: : c. in action lawfully taken for the purpose of quelling a riot or insurrection. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_2_of_the_European_Convention_on_Human_Rights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_2_of_the_European_Conve...

obviouslygreen 13y ago
Are there instances where this has been applied with commentary? That would be interesting to read; just based on the raw text, it seems to me this is closer to "if you have an allergic reaction to the legal application of tear gas while rioting and die, it's not our fault" and less like "if you're protesting and we don't like it, we can and will shoot you, and it's legal."
ekianjo 13y ago
Interesting. Maybe that explains why dictatorships actually signed it too.Is that only in the European version ?
rayiner 13y ago
You have to read "riot" in context of "insurrection." Armed uprisings are put down with lethal force. That's not inconsistent with western thought. E.g. its one of the first things the fledgling U.S. federal government did in response to a rebellion in Massachusetts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays'_Rebellion#Rebellion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays'_Rebellion#Rebellion. Vis-a-vis riots, read in the context of "insurrection" you might interpret it as referring to the kind of riots you see in say Bangladesh: labor strikes where people bomb things.

joseflavio 13y ago

Sorry, but I call bs on this blog: "Feel Free To Kill Protesters", who said this? The author doesn't point any reference to confirm this quote, and I could not find it nowhere else.

weslly 13y ago
- http://noticias.uol.com.br/cotidiano/ultimas-noticias/2013/06/10/promotor-que-incitou-violencia-contra-manifestantes-em-sp-tera-conduta-investigada-pelo-mp-para-oab-sp-houve-crime.htm http://noticias.uol.com.br/cotidiano/ultimas-noticias/2013/0... - http://g1.globo.com/sao-paulo/noticia/2013/06/apos-sugerir-morte-de-manifestantes-promotor-se-arrepende-e-exclui-post.html http://g1.globo.com/sao-paulo/noticia/2013/06/apos-sugerir-m... EDIT: You can see this in english here: http://frombrazil.blogfolha.uol.com.br/2013/06/14/fear-and-loathing-in-sao-paulo/ http://frombrazil.blogfolha.uol.com.br/2013/06/14/fear-and-l... (search for "prosecutor")
- joseflavio 13y ago
  Unbelievable the downvote, it doesn't change the fact that Blog post has absolutely no references or names.

mtgx 13y ago

Politicians tend to become worse and worse thinking and seeing from experience that they can "get away with it". But in reality all this time, the population gets more and more frustrated, and it's only a matter of time before the population revolts. So far the Brazilian politicians have been lucky that all these 1 million people haven't become violent and ask for their blood. Because to be honest, I think at least some of the corrupt leaders need to be punished severely, possibly even with the death penalty (like Ceausescu was in Romania). It's really the only way they'll learn their lesson, and more importantly, future generations of politicians will know now to upset the population to the point where they'll revolt and ask for their execution. I'm not usually pro-death penalty, but if there's anyone deserving it, it's the oppressive/corrupt leaders that make millions of people suffer through their ruling. I definitely think the leaders intentionally abusing their own Constitution deserve the death penalty, because if they don't get that, then it's just an invitation for future leaders to abuse it. They swore to protect it and obey it, and there needs to be a way to force them to do just that. Otherwise what's the point? Imagine how different things would be in US, if politicians would fear death penalty if they abuse the Constitution, and keep passing unconstitutional laws. I feel almost the same way about bankers who get away with their crimes. How are they supposed to learn their lesson if they aren't even threatened by prison time, even though they lost the pensions and deposits of millions of people? If they think they have the potential to earn tens of billions of hundreds of billions from risking the money of those people, they'll be much more inclined to do it if they only risk a couple of billion in penalty, and that's it. The population is supposed to rectify these sort of abuses by the elite in a society. It's up to the population to ultimately decide how much of a punishment these people get, and if their "representatives" aren't up for it, then they need to change them, or at least scare them into applying their will.

maratd 13y ago
> future generations of politicians will know now to upset the population to the point where they'll revolt and ask for their execution. I agree with your post, except for this. If history has shown us anything, it's that they never learn.
- PavlovsCat 13y ago

jonmc12 13y ago

This article left me thinking about how big of a mess the 2014 world cup could be - a whirlwind of political protest, drunken fans and violence. Brazilian leadership really has their work cut out of them. However, in China, where oppression and corruption also exist, the 2008 Olympics was an event of unifying nationalism. Then, as the article portrays, Arab countries can oust their leaders, but Brazilians choose to re-elect corrupt politicians. Why does it seem like communist countries can inspire nationalism and pride, and the people of dictatorships can change leadership. Yet, Brazil, as a democratic country, is depicted as imagining disgrace (in world cup / Olympics) and unable to instigate political change?

alexqgb 13y ago
Simply electing leaders isn't enough in systems with winner-take-all dynamics. Brazil, Turkey, and Egypt all encapsulate this basic truth. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/06/21/the_tyranny_of_the_majority_brazil_turkey_protests http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/06/21/the_tyranny...
paulovsk 13y ago
The most intelligent question ever raised that I saw. It left me thinking too, thank you.

fiatjaf 13y ago

I'm brazilian and this article is a lie. nobody has heard about anybody saying this, and the visions the author of the article atributes to all the manifesters are just his visions. also, the author is an idiot.

jafaku 13y ago
The videos are lying too? Those bastards...
petegrif 13y ago
Thanks for the detailed rebuttal. Your considered response opened my eyes to the reality of the situation. Many thanks.

noone1234456 13y ago

Just my 2 cents, but saying "paying one of the biggest taxes in the world" is really exaggerated

hikarudo 13y ago
Income tax might not be so high, but taxes for products are very high. Electricity: about 45%, gasoline: about 50%. Import tax/PIS/Confins/ICMS are calculated one after the other, so you pay tax over tax.

albertobrandao 13y ago

Great article. Congrats, bro.