Machines | Urban and Rural Community in Sao Paulo Brazil

The video, Rural and Urban community development: Sao Paulo Brazil, basis comes from various lectures given at the University of Sao Paulo. Lectures covered topics ranging from health care to waste management, tropical disease to history, and agriculture business to bio-fuels. Through these lectures I gained insight into Brazil's influences, traditions, goals and practices. My interest in community development came about during Professor Fernando Peres' lecture, Anti-rural values of Brazilians: how Brazilians view agriculture and the transformation of machinery. For me this lecture connected all the critical issues covered during the course. Brazil has gone through five major economic periods including the brazylwood, sugar cane production, gold mining, coffee production, and rubber production era. Each era focused on selling to external markets and on a single major product. During this time agriculture was the largest contributing sector of Brazil's GDP. The Import substitution industrialization (ISI) from 1930-1990 however changed the long term trend of an agriculture based economy (Arbelaez, 2013). The 1920s Modern art week began the Brazilian society's transition into a new national identity. This was followed by the 1930's Lieutenant Movement and the Vergas presidency. The movement's goals were to eliminate public corruption, create a universal voting system, industrialize and urbanize Brazil, create national integrity, and promote nationalism. This movement became the guide to Brazilian society and still remains present in Brazil (Peres, 2013). The Lieutenant movement pushed for the transformation and industrialization of Brazil and reached into the agriculture sector for financing and a workforce. Prior to the movement eighty percent of Brazil's population was living in rural areas and worked in the agriculture sector. Brazilian government enforced export tax and an import contingency, along with undervalued the exchange rate and set food price ceilings. These laws negatively affected the agriculture sector but allowed Brazil to man the building of large cities using the agriculture surplus. Industrial workers received social security, health benefits, insurance, minimum wage, and other government subsidies none of which were given to the agriculture sector until the 1970s. Peres gave the following example in his lecture: during the period of high inflation instead of raising the minimum wage so people in cities could afford food the government set low food price ceilings throughout the country. Brazilian government also put a zero import tax on cotton so the textile industry could purchase cheaper cotton from other countries. Policies like these greatly affected the agriculture sector bankrupting farmers and sending them into the cities. Within forty years of the Lieutenant movement only twenty-five percent of Brazil's population remained in rural areas (Peres, 2013). Effects of the Lieutenant movement's goal to industrialize and urbanize Brazil can be seen when looking at the state of Sao Paulo. Sao Paulo is located in the south eastern part of the country and has a population of forty-two million; it is equivalent in land size to the state of Nebraska which only has a population of two-million. Over nineteen million people alone live in Sao Paulo city making it the largest metropolitan in the Southern hemisphere. Sao Paulo city is also the industrial center of Latin American and is the heart of Brazil's most important industries. A lot of energy goes into supporting a large population like Sao Paulo. Lectures taken at USP covering waste management, recycling, water governance, natural resource economics, and bio-fuels revealed the stresses Brazil's large municipalities pose on the water, waste, and transportation systems. The video covers Sao Paulo city's lack of proper water control and issues of water pollution and scarcity. It also looks at the city's waste and recycling system and Brazil's goals for improvement. Finally it touches on the presences of public transportation in large cities and the need to improve urban mobility. Despite the issues of large cities people are still moving to urban areas for jobs and better opportunities. Rural anti values established during the lieutenant movement also remain present and farmers continue to have poor reputations. Cities like Sao Paulo face issues of overcrowding and the population puts pressure on the city's water, waste, and transportation systems.