Summary

Manufacturing industry - Boasting one of the ten largest industrial parks in the world, Brazil is, nevertheless, far from being a major player in the international market. Lacking an effective policy designed to foster technological innovation, the country has always been a great exporter of commodities. Standing out among the numerous reasons for such a situation is the huge gap separating enterprises and universities.

Economy - In 2004, the number of wealthy individuals in Brazil had a dramatic rise, hitting around a hundred thousand people with more than US$ 1 million invested in the financial market. At the same time, there are approximately 22 million dispossessed people who live on an income that is lower than a quarter of the country’s minimum wage.

Health - Over the past years in Brazil, the pharmaceutical industry’s demand for snake poison as an input for medication has stimulated an unprecedented activity: the raising of snakes in order to export the poison. Recent drops in the product’s price on the international market, however, have hit hatcheries, which are now looking for alternatives, such as selling the meat and the skin of the reptiles.

Racial issue - In spite of its being veiled, racism is still very much present in the Brazilian society. To face this problem, both the state and non-governmental organizations have been implementing actions in the areas of education, employment, and health to address the needs of the discriminated groups. Although African-Brazilians constitute the largest group affected, several other ethnicities are victims of prejudice in the country.

Brazil - The situation of the Conceição das Crioulas quilombo (Black community composed mainly of slave descendants), situated in the Pernambuco countryside, serves as an example of what happens in countless other similar Brazilian communities with respect to the issue of land ownership, a constitutional right that is hardly ever respected.

Education - France’s cultural influences in Brazil are undeniable, especially in the fields of literature, philosophy, and the humanities. At the time of its foundation, the University of São Paulo (USP), the country’s first, counted in its faculty with a significant number of French professors, commissioned by the government to launch the institution’s activities.

Emigration - North of its territory, deep in the Amazon Forest, Brazil borders the European Union. The Oiapoque River separates the state of Amapá from the French Guiana, a French department which attracts many Brazilians in search of better living conditions. Yet wages, paid in euros, do not always compensate for the hardships they find there.

Environment - The utilization of toxic industrial waste in the production of micronutrients is under investigation by federal prosecutors. Such practice, widespread among the sector’s companies, brings about the contamination of the soil, endangering the fauna, the flora, the rivers, and, ultimately, human health.

Folk art - The Jequitinhonha Valley, in the state of Minas Gerais, has always been known as one of the country’s poorest regions. This reality, however, is changing thanks to the support of state-run programs, the effort of non-governmental organizations but, above all, the art of skilled craftspeople, whose work attracts the interest of tourists and buyers from Brazil and abroad.

Literature - Glauco Mattoso is a writer, a poet, a translator, and a musical producer whose literary work has transcended the influences received from the tropicalista movement and concretism. Blind for ten years now, the artist is a homosexual, a sadomasochist, features that exude from his work, making it irreverent and libidinous.

Interview - Despite all the fame and respect he gained as a composer, Paulo Vanzolini reveals he has never played a musical instrument. At the age of 81, he says he has always been a scientist, in love with zoology. A USP medical school graduate with a PhD from Harvard, Vanzolini gave this exclusive interview to Problemas Brasileiros.

Thematic panel - Adib Jatene is a doctor and has held several public offices in the health field, including that of minister. Hence his unrivaled knowledge of the country’s public health reality. It was on this subject that he addressed the members of the Federação do Comércio do Estado de São Paulo’s Council of Economy, Sociology and Politics, describing the chronology of the problems, some remarkable achievements, like the victory over poliomyelitis, and especially the origin of Brazil’s deficient health and disease prevention services, which is attributed to a chronic lack of resources.

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