Brazil does not stand out for the speed with which it overcomes its historical challenges, but it has potential, some of which has already blossomed, to change this trajectory.
Only when its journey as an autonomous nation was going far, more than 160 years after breaking colonial ties, did the country reconcile itself with the only regime capable of realizing the ambitions of peace, inclusion, and prosperity of its numerous and diverse population.
Today, on the bicentennial of Independence, Brazilian democracy has thrived longer than ever. Threatened by a relapse of the authoritarian cancer, a wound that slumbered without being eliminated, it does not, however, give the slightest sign that it will succumb this time.
A European incident, the Napoleonic invasion of the Iberian Peninsula, was probably decisive for the peculiar Brazilian history in the context of the Americas.
Also in 1822, with the nation, was born the primordial and persistent conflict within Brazilian society between the forces of openness and those of oligarchic predation, with ample advantage for the latter.
The Republic gave little vent to the rise of new actors in a population that was expanding as a result of immigration and the drop in mortality. Politics continued to restrict broad popular participation in the regime's first century.
Violent disruptions sponsored by the Armed Forces began to compose the landscape of the 20th century until the end of the dictatorship in 1985.
Under the democratic rule of law, the country finally managed to deal with the ghosts of authoritarianism, building an institutional arsenal that makes it very difficult for a relapse to take place.
It also began to gradually get rid of the statist and interventionist fat that clogs the arteries of productivity and disconnects Brazil from the world. Legislation and bureaucracies equipped to curb predatory environmental practices and encourage sustainable ones in the most diverse sectors —agriculture, mining, infrastructure, urban sprawl — are also typical of the regime inaugurated by the 1988 Constitution.
For a little under 40 years, therefore, democracy has enabled a multifrontal assault against the age-old barriers that prevent tens of millions of Brazilians from achieving happiness and material comfort. The opponents of the open, prosperous and solidary society are still in sight, some in government, but they have lost historical precedent.
May 200 more years of Independence come, but may they be others — democratic, prosperous and inclusive in their entirety.
Translated by Cassy Dias