[note: I don't know when I wrote this draft, but then I went looking for it as I set upon writing something else. Doesn't hurt to publish this fragment now, I suppose.]
This morning, I was reading the Brazilian magazine Carta Capital, which reads like the Economist but is much much closer to Keynes than to Friedman. Anyways, the article in question described how other developing countries are exporting the "Brazilian model" of social welfare programs. The unqualified but far from total success that programs like Bolsa Familia have had are truly remarkable. The article continues discussing the plans that the Dilma administration has in expanding many of these programs started under Lula. The article also briefly makes vague reference to critiques of the program from the left and the right. And, after discussing Dilma's latest welfare program, the article concludes with the rather cryptic sentence:
"Vamos ver como a turma da Avenida Paulista vai reagir."
[We'll see how the Avenida Paulista crowd will react.]
I thought the sentence was as clever as it was misleading. Two key issues were left unresolved by the author's concluding sentence. First, why does the Av. Paulista crowd matter in an article that is largely talking about social welfare programs that are largely targeted at rural areas and urban peripheries? Second, just who is exactly is the Av. Paulista crowd?
Are they the protesters that are continuing to shut down the main avenue of the city over a series of interarticulated but politically separate social movements? Are they the bankers and financial interests who have always dominated the Avenida Paulista? As one friend put it, the reference to the paulista crowd is polysemic.
