Brazil in the age of modernity: the case of Ceará

Abstract

This article critically exposes a process by which in the mid-1980s, a younger entrepreneur generation in Ceará, Brazil, takes their state problems into their own hands. By advocating a market-based strategy, these business people attempt to transform a backward, ill-conceived, and agricultural state into a modern and industrial society. Once in power, these youngsters overlook their political commitments and pursue a cynical policy that undermines the deepening impact of social inequality, structural unemployment, increasing starvation, and all modern ills. Today, another younger generation, of the like, wants to remove their old bosses advocating the same criticism, but they also want their interest to look as the interest of the whole. These people propose rhetorical and intangible projects. Why can't workers develop this dynamic relation with power, as the business people can? Asks the author.