By Michael Löwy
Brazil is one of the countries with the highest level of social inequality in the world. The country has been described as a sort of 'Swiss India', where the rich live as though in Switzerland, while the lives of the poor are similar to those of their counterparts in India
The electoral victory of Lula, the candidate of the Workers Party (PT), in 2001, raised immense popular hopes that this condition of 'social apartheid' would change and that that a new orientation towards the needs and aspirations of the poor would be implemented. These hopes were, to a large extent, disappointed as the government formed by Lula continued to implement the same neo-liberal economic policies as the previous right-wing presidents. One can speak of a 'social-liberal' government in so far as the neo-liberal economic orientation - severe cuts in social programs in order to pay back the debt to foreign banks was complemented with some social measures for the poorest layers, such as the program 'Zero Hunger'.
One of the first neo-liberal reforms introduced by Lula was a change in the Brazilian pensions system, dismantling previous social benefits accorded to workers. When PT senator Heloisa Helena and a few other PT members of parliament opposed this reform - which had always been rejected by the PT while it was in opposition – they were excluded from the PT in spite of wide protests both in Brazil and internationally. A statement signed by well known figures of the left across the world called on the PT leadership not to expel her, but to no avail. Heloisa Helena and her friends, with the support of hundreds of other ex-PT activists, decided to create a new party, the PSOL, Party of Socialism and Liberty ('sol'in Brazilian also means 'sun'). Two years later, after a serious corruption scandal involving some of the main leaders of the PT, an important section of the party's left, including several members of parliament and well known figures of the Christian left, decided to join the new party.
Heloisa Helena, the candidate of the PSOL for the coming presidential elections in Brazil (October 2006) was born in Alagoas, one of the poorest states of Brazil. A nurse by profession, she was elected senator and soon became a leading figure in the PT's left, before her exclusion. She is a young woman of remarkable charismatic power and the only female candidate in these elections; a Christian Marxist, she does not hide her commitment to socialism, to anti-imperialism and to the struggle of the Brazilian workers and peasants for social liberation. Her fiery speeches in the Senate, denouncing political corruption and the policies favoring the oligarchy, have gained her much popular sympathy, well beyond the organized ranks of the radical left.
While Lula and Alckmin- the candidate of the conservative right-wing coalition - were expected to monopolize the presidential election, the presence of Heloisa Helena introduced a new and unexpected dimension in the political debate: she is the only candidate to raise a radical criticism of neo-liberalism from a socialist perspective. She has received the support of a large spectrum of socialists, trade unionists, leftist intellectuals and Christian liberationists, and she currently stands at 12% in the opinion polls.