by Nomad One and Nomad 8

Introduction: Brazil is a very big country with many large problems, which we are sorry to say, includes the government. This is one of the reasons we decided to come up with this sub-question, “Do the people at Graded vote for the same person for president as the poor people in Brazil?” On the one hand, we thought that it would be very interesting to dig up some deep information about the actual president of Brazil. Since, there are the elections going on at this moment, we thought it would be interesting finding out some people’s opinion about the two main candidates, Lula (actual president) and Alckmin. To sum up, Brazils’ large status differences do cause many political problems. Both Nomad 1 and Nomad 8 wrote this essay together.

Who Votes: Have you ever thought about who votes for who in Brazil? That was our second big question. After a lot of research, we found out, that in Brazil the lower class, mostly votes for Lula, because he promises a lot of things to them, but the great problem is that he never does it! The people don’t really care, because since they didn’t have the chance to study, they don’t really understand the word “corruption”. Lula promises he’ll put their sons and daughters in school, and give them food, they just vote for him! They are being abused by the government in some way, because he is fooling people, to vote for him. In another part of the country, the middle and upper class, they already have the conscience of what to do. Most of them will surely vote for Alckmin, now why? That is not a very hard question- they researched. They see that Lula is the president of Brazil, but he is only caring about the northern part of the country, and that he already wasted more money in advertisements then in Brazil, and his airplane, the AEROLULA, is worth 5 equipped hospitals, and now they have to chance to change this. People at Graded also think about that, but not everyone; let say Graded is a big circle and it is divided in two parts, one votes for Alckmin, another one for Lula, One are the people that work at the school, such as the cleaners and gardeners and the maintenance, and stuff will vote for Lula. Another half is the upper part, such as the superintendent, principals and teachers will vote for Alckimin. This is a little bit about who votes for who in Brazil... Now do you know who you’ll vote for?

After this long, detailed explanation about who votes for who in Brazil, you might want to know how does status interfere in all of this? The truth is that the status in Brazil is a major issue. It has a lot to do with the government. As you just read, here most of the poor people vote for Lula, for he is the one who promises them more things, though that doesn’t mean he sticks to his promise. The middle and upper class vote for Alckmin, who is a more educated candidate and promises more things that, are of the upper and middle class interest. You might think, well there are probably more middle class and upper class people than lower class people. WRONG! In Brazil the poverty is immense! For that reason there are many conflicts that aren’t found in many other countries. The majority of the poor people in Brazil don’t have much education. As a result they have poor jobs, some no jobs, and are hungry. Since, president Lula promises something called “bolsa de familia” which is basically an amount of money per month, given by the government to the poor people, so they can survive. That is one of the main reasons why the lower class votes Lula. Also he is caring out the electricity to the Northern “Sertão”. The “Sertão” is an extremely poor part of Brazil. In conclusion, status plays a big role in the Brazilian government.

Primary Source Interview: This morning November 11th, 2006, around 8:10, my group and I interviewed Ms. Bustiane. Ms. Bustiane is the head of human resources at our school. She and her team are the ones that take care of everything that has to do with people in the school like the hiring of new teachers. Going back to the interview, we found a lot of new important information that will help our sub-group. First of all to answer our first main group question, ‘Are the people who own status at graded the same as the poor people who own status in Brazil? , Ms.Bustiane had a very interesting answer. She said, “No way!” She thought Brazil was divided into two parts. The Northeast part, which she said is extremely poor, has no education and is very humble. Due to these facts, she considers them felling miserable. The Southern part of Brazil she says is richer and has more education. She also said that due to these devastating facts many of the people in the Northeast part of Brazil live of the ‘bolsa de familia’. This is $35.00 reais per month that President Lula gives these people, in order for them to buy some necessary supplements. Ms. Bustiane believes this is the only reason why President Lula won the elections. Adding on to this, the children don’t have a very good example of who to vote from their parents, so they vote who gives them food. In this case it is President Lula. It’s like a big circle, it goes on and on.
Ms. Bustiane also thinks that in order for this country to advance we have to start from scratch. First, we have to start with education. Everyone has to have the right to a good education. Secondly, she said we should put a ‘bomb’ to get rid of all the corruption. She believes that this country wouldn’t be in these conditions if there wasn’t so much corruption.
 

Talking about President Lula, Ms. Bustiane said that since, when Lula was younger he was also poor, and then all of a sudden he went to Brasilia, candidated himself for president and is elected! Wow, he went from not even having energy and water to having everything, a whole country under his power. Since, suddenly he had so much power, it has inevitable that he wouldn’t end up misusing it.

Moving on to the next point, Ms. Bustiane believes that the life of the students at Graded is completely different from the life of the people in Brazil. Our needs are much more different than theirs. They live their life to get the lowest amount of money so that they can take a coin or two home, and eat something! Ms. Bustiane said, “Their world is a big circle, and only that.“ I personally was amazed by everything that Ms. Bustiane said. Much of the information she gave us, I had no idea existed. Also I think she used very good ‘metaphors’, like thinking of Brazil in two parts. In conclusion, I believe this interview was a great source of information that has given our project a very interesting point of view.

1. Adolfo Hansen, João. 500 anos de Educação no Brasil. Belo Horizonte. Autêntica, 2000.
2.  “Reform Agenda”. Fact monster. Education, publishing as Fact Monster. 2000-2006.
3. October 24th, 2006. http://www.factmonster.com/country/profiles/brazil.html
4. “Verdadeiro ou Falso?”. Veja.com. Abril. 2006. October 26th, 2006. http://veja.abril.com.br/idade/exclusivo/eleicoes_2006/testes/respostas_verdadeiro_falso.html