Racism in São Paulo under FHC: from lunchbox carriers to 'ill-informed backwoods'

The Brazilian elite – whose most significant sector lives in São Paulo – never accepted Getúlio Vargas, nor Lula, as expressions of broad popular sectors that escape their control. They always lost to Getúlio and they always lose to Lula.

Then they resort to discrimination and racism. In the 1950s, the UDN even proposed qualitative voting. Where has it ever been seen that the vote of an engineer is worth the same as the vote of a worker, for goodness sake? One would be worth 10, the other 1. Tired of losing to the working majority, they wanted to change the rules of liberalism that they themselves preached, to see if they would have better luck.

Regarding language, at that time a politician, Hugo Borghi, referred to the workers who voted for Getúlio as "marmiteiros" (lunchbox carriers), a derogatory term for those who brought food from home to work. It was a way of discriminating against workers coming from someone who didn't even work, much less know what a lunchbox was.

Getúlio adopted the expression, which then came to be used positively, identifying "marmiteiro" (lunchbox carrier) with a worker.

The relationship of this elite with Lula reproduces, in everyday terms, the same type of cliché and discrimination. On the one hand, it tries to convey the idea that the popular sectors that vote for the PT were bribed by Bolsa Família and other government policies, in the same way that was done in relation to the minimum wage during Getúlio's time.

Now FHC [Fernando Henrique Cardoso] is talking about people "from the backwoods, poorly informed," who for that reason would not succumb to the accusations and arguments of the PSDB [Brazilian Social Democracy Party] and would continue voting for the PT [Workers' Party]. He is certainly pointing to the population of the Northeast and the populations of the urban peripheries, beneficiaries of social policies or holders of salaried jobs, who vote concentratedly for the candidates with whom they feel identified with the effect of these policies on their lives.

Previously, when this northeastern population, completely abandoned, even by the FHC government, voted predominantly for the right – for Arena, PFL, and its successor, DEM – it was not considered "misinformed." When its awareness begins to awaken, these discriminatory practices appear.

Since they haven't yet read FHC's articles, they remain misinformed, allowing themselves to be deceived, bribed, and manipulated by the government and left-wing parties. When the information properly reaches these remote areas, they will recognize that the best government Brazil has ever had was FHC's; those who succeeded him were charlatans who distributed crumbs to deceive the people.

This reproduces the old elitist sentiment of the 1932 counter-revolution, which has as its icons, still venerated by the São Paulo elite, the bandeirantes – Indian hunters – and Washington Luís, famous for believing that "the social question is a police matter".