Brazil and the PT as the Popular Face of Neoliberalism: A Contradictory Terrain for Education and the Politics of Knowledge

Abstract

Under the emblematic leadership of Luiz Ignacio “Lula” Da Silva, the election of the Workers’ Party (PT) to national government in late 2002 represented hopes that neoliberalism would be challenged and a new more popular, participatory, and inclusive model of development and democracy fostered. However, the Lula governments, and now that of his chosen successor Dilma Roussef, held a trump political card; their relationship with Brazil’s organized popular classes, which their predecessors from the traditional political elites had lacked. Their was their historic emergence from within the popular classes in the late 1970s had created relationships of trust, history, and loyalty between sections of the organized popular classes and the PT. This has enabled the PT to stabilize neoliberalism in Brazil by becoming the popular democratic face of the neoliberal historic bloc.