Birth and Rise of the New Republic: a Brazilian TL

[ByzantineCaesar]

So organizations like ALADI and SELA would get more of a chance if there's no NAFTA?

I’m not sure if it’s going to be ALADI or another complementary organization (e.g. CELAC), but yes. Brazilian foreign policy had always considered Latin America as its natural area of integration until Mexico “betrayed” us and joined NAFTA instead. We only started talking about South American integration in the 1990’s.

Mercosul is different because it’s a bilateral integration process with Argentina (joined during overtime by Paraguay and Uruguay).

 

[Vinization]

This will be the last part of this foreign interlude.
------------------
Foreign Snapshot: Other events, 1980-85

1980

September 22: Iraq invades Iran.

November 4: Ronald Reagan is elected president of the United States, crushing incumbent president Jimmy Carter and winning 48 states and 509 electoral votes. Carter wins only Georgia and Rhode Island (1).

Also November 4: Denis Healey narrowly defeats Michael Foot in the UK Labour Party leadership election (2).

December 22: USSR leader Leonid Brezhnev dies after suffering a stroke (3). He is succeeded by Yuri Andropov, who begins a large anti-corruption campaign soon after taking power.

1981

May 24 and July 31: Jaime Roldós, president of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos, leader of Panama, make official flights in the respective days. Their planes reported some issues, but they both landed safely (4).

October 9: Egyptian president Anwar Sadat narrowly escapes an assassination attempt, a reprisal against his peace treaty with Israel, made in 1979. Vice-president Hosni Mubarak is not as lucky, however, and dies on the spot (5).

1982

April 2--June 14: The argentine dictatorship, trying to rally its dissatisfied people around the flag, invade the Falkland Islands. They are crushingly defeated by Great Britain.

July 13--August 12: After expelling Iraqi troops from its borders, Iran launches an offensive codenamed Operation Ramadan. Contrary to what was expected, their target was not Basra itself, but rather Amarah, strategically located between Basra and Baghdad. The surprised Iraqis were forced to retreat, but not before setting the Al-Fakkah oil field on fire. These events provoke new a rise in oil prices, which were falling since the start of the decade (6).

November 2: US midterm elections: Thanks to this price raise, the Democrats win several tight races in the US Senate, chief among them California, wher governor Jerry Brown defeated San Diego mayor Pete Wilson by 49.3--48.1 (7). They also elect the country's first ever black governor, California's Tom Bradley. The overall Senate score is 51 D to 49 R.

Senator-elect Jerry Brown and Governor-elect Tom Bradley giving an interview.

1983

February 6--26: Iran lauches an offensive towards Basra, codenamed Operation Before The Dawn. They fail miserably, and the war degrades into a stalemate.

June 9: UK PM Margaret Thatcher, unpopular thanks to her economic policies, wins a general election thanks to the surge in her approval rating caused by the victory in the Falklands War. The Conservative Party wins 372 seats in Parliament, ahead of Labour, who won 242 seats (8).

September: Kurds rebel against Iraqi authority, opening a new front in the Iran-Iraq War.

October 30: Argentina's military dictatorship finally gives way to democracy, with the election of president Raúl Alfonsín, a member of the UCR. He also gains a majority in both houses of Congress (9).

1984

January 24--May 6: The very popular Jaime Roldós is succeeded by his vice-president, Osvaldo Hurtado, as President of Ecuador, after an easy election victory.

May 6: Panama democratically elects Arnulfo Arias president. A member of the opposition, he was deposed by a coup led by none other than Torrijos himself after only eleven days as president in 1968. Despite fears that the panamanian dictator would orchestrate a new coup, he was allowed to assume the presidency. He would rule the country until his death in 1988, in the middle of his term.

May 12: USSR leader Yuri Andropov dies. He is succeeded by his close ally Mikhail Gorbachev, who finds the country in a slightly better state than it was before, thanks to the high oil prices and the years of anti-corruption purges. This allows him to start reforming the ailing empire, which is losing its grip on the Warsaw Pact.

July 23: Israeli general election day. Shimon Peres, leading the Alignment alliance, faces off against Likud, led by incumbent prime minister Yitzhak Shamir. Peres wins a slim but clear majority (10).

Ronald Reagan having a chat with israeli PM Shimon Peres.

November 6: US president Ronald Reagan is reelected with a comfortable margin, winning 41 states and 413 electoral votes. The Democratic candidate, Colorado senator Gary Hart, won 9 states and 125 electoral votes. Among the downballot races, African-American Roland Burris is elected senator for Illinois, defeating incumbent Charles Percy by a small margin thanks to a massive win in Cook County.

1985

Throughout the year: Iran makes small advances on Iraqi Kurdistan and around Basra. By now, Saddam's forces have begun to use chemical weapons on a large scale, ensuring that any large Iranian offensives suffer massive casualties.

April 22: Beginning of the Trial of the Juntas in Argentina. As a result of said trial, most of the high-ranking members of the argentine dictatorship, like former presidents Jorge Rafael Videla and Roberto Viola, are sentenced to prison.

------------------
Notes:

(1) ITTL, Jerry Brown doesn't run for president in 1980. This means Ted Kennedy does better in his challenge against Carter, and the party is even more split. As a result, Reagan wins Maryland, Hawaii, West Virginia and Minnesota, which were single digit wins for Carter OTL. This worse defeat ensures that Walter Mondale loses to Gary Hart in the 1984 Democratic primary.

(2) IOTL, Michael Foot defeated Healy by a close margin. The party later suffered a split between left and right, and it was butchered in the 1983 election. Here, with Healey at the helm, the split isn't so great, and they lose a little less.

(3) Brezhnev was old, and had a very unhealthy lifestyle, so it's not hard for him to die a little earlier. This gives Andropov a little more time (about two years) to rule, and purge corruption for longer than he did OTL. This ensures that he's immediatly succeeded by Gorbachev, instead of by Chernenko.

(4) The planes carrying these two leaders crashed. Ecuador lost a very young and promising leader who had ruled the country since 1979 (so he ruled for less than two years of a five year term). In Panama's case, Torrijos' untimely death created a crisis that allowed the rise of Manuel Noriega.

(5) Sadat died and Mubarak was wounded, but lived. The fates here are reversed.

(6) IOTL, Operation Ramadan was a head-on attack against Basra, which predictably failed. Here, they instead try to cut it off from the rest of Iraq, achieving better results. A godsend for the USSR.

(7) They win the Minnesota, Missouri, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Connecticut races. As for California, Brown's choice not to run in 1980 makes him a little less unpopular, which allows him to defeat Wilson. This has the effect of making Tom Bradley to win the governor's race (much closer than the Senate race IOTL).

(8) A much better result for Labour than OTL, where they won only 209 seats to the Tories' 397 seats.

(9) Alfonsín's UCR won a majority in the lower house OTL, but not in the Senate.

(10) IOTL, Peres didn't win a majority, forcing him to divide his term: two years as PM for him, two years for Shamir. His victory will have a very important consequence ITTL.

 

[Vinization]

Fresh new update! In the next one, we will take a look at president Ulysses Guimarães's honeymoon and the 1985 municipal elections.

 

[Vinization]

Also, if there's something ridiculously implausible in this update, please tell me. Foreign stuff really isn't my strength.

 

[LouisTheGreyFox]

I love the TL so far man. Keep it up!

 

[Pyni]

So, USSR alive after 1991 ?

 

[Vinization]

Wikiboxes. Wikiboxes everywhere...
------------------
Chapter 2: Growing Pains

Part 1: Honeymoon

New president Ulysses Guimarães inherited a country with a very, very bad shape. Oil prices, whose rise in the early seventies fueled the economic crisis of the dictatorship, seemed to be falling in the early eighties. However, the eruption of the Iran-Iraq War made them grow once more, creating even more difficulties for a country that imported most of its oil from foreign countries. The incentives the past government gave to alcohol production (the Proálcool program) helped, but complete independence from fossil fuels was just not possible. Still, it helped soften the economic hit that was Operation Ramadan and its burning of the Al-Fakkah oil field.

One couldn't forget the massive socioeconomic inequality, that restricted Brazil's consumer market, strangling economic growth. A large inflation rate, one that reached 215% a year in 1984, and that reached 12% a month in March, when Ulysses took office. This inflation increased the cost of living at the same time that it devalued wages, deepening the already mentioned inequality. The worst economic scar by far was the massive, 100 billion dollar foreign debt, created by the dictatorship's policy of building huge, insanely expensive and often useless public works, like the Transamazonian Highway, that linked nothing to nowhere.

An unpaved segment of the Transamazonian Highway. It will probably never be finished.

Even then, despite the extremely fragil position Brazil was in, in 1985, most ordinary people were very confident and optimistic about the country and their own future. This year was different: after 21 years, Brazil was finally a democracy, and the new president wasn't just some random technocrat, but a man who fought as hard as he could to restore it. Indeed, Ulysses Guimarães' inauguration was watched by millions of people all over the country, and in Brasília itself, he was cheered by the crowd that gathered there to watch the ceremony. He was Brazil's great hope.

The situation in Congress, despite his huge victory in the Electoral College just a few months ago, was not as favorable as it seemed. There were two main power blocs in it: the first, larger one was the Centrão ("big center") which, despite its name, was actually a conservative group composed of of PDS, PFL and a large number of PMDB congresspeople. The second, smaller and left-wing group was the progressive bloc, composed of PTB, PT and the other half of PMDB members. While there was a certain balance of power between the two groups in the Chamber of Deputies, where they had similar numbers, the Senate was mostly dominated by the Centrão. This was bad news for president Ulysses, since, despite being personally closer to the progressives, he still had to negotiate with the right-wingers. At the same time, if he got too close to them, he risked turning the Brazilian left into an enemy.

Senators Saturnino Braga (PTB-RJ) and José Sarney (PDS-MA), important members of the progressive bloc and Centrão, respectively.

But for now, everyone was still euphoric and optimistic. And it was then, within this honeymoon period that was the year of 1985, that the people who lived in the state capitals would finally elect their mayors. Before then, they were appointed by the governors. These elections also proved to be the first truly free ones in a very long time, since all parties, including the socialist party and the two communist parties (PCB and PC do B) were allowed to exist and run candidates for mayor.

No one expected anything less than an almost clean sweep of crushing PMDB victories all over the country. These expectations were duly met on November 15, where more than half of all the capitals elected PMDB mayors to govern them.

Their greatest victory, without a doubt, was São Paulo, where senator Fernando Henrique Cardoso was elected mayor. This victory was achieved thanks to an unexpected alliance between PMDB and PT in the city (1). At first, there was a third candidate, petista state assemblyman Eduardo Suplicy. Initial polling in the city suggested a tight race, one wher Jânio could win, thanks to vote splitting between FHC and Suplicy.

Since neither party wanted such a scenario to become reality, they struck a deal after long negotiations. Suplicy would drop out of the race, and become FHC's running mate. Meanwhile, Fernando Henrique would have to push a few left-wing policies, and appoint some petistas to his cabinet, like legendary educator Paulo Freire, who would become his Education Secretary. This was helped by the fact that FHC was one of the most outspoken progressives in PMDB, and a personal friend of Lula.

Once this alliance was sealed, Jânio had no chance of winning, and was easily trounced.

Still, large a sweep as it was, it wasn't all flowers and cheers for PMDB. The party was defeated by PDS in Florianópolis, Fortaleza, Natal, Salvador and Teresina (2). In Natal and Salvador (3), there were strong suspicions that the state governments there illegally supported their preferred candidates by using the public machine and buying votes in their favor. This was especially apparent in Salvador, where PMDB candidate and former mayor Mário Kértesz was defeated by PDS candidate Edvaldo Brito, also a former mayor, despite the former leading the polls by a large margin throughout the whole election.

PTB also achieved impressive results, winning not only the Rio de Janeiro and Porto Alegre mayoralties (which was expected, since party leader Leonel Brizola was very popular in these places) but also achieved upsets in the Northeast capitals of Recife and São Luís, where the party almost didn't exist.

The first was achieved by the fact that leading candidates Jarbas Vasconcelos (PSB) and Sérgio Murilo (PMDB) engaged in brutal attacks against each other. Murilo, at one point, was accused of murder, and later suffered an assassination attempt (4). This negative atmosphere allowed 29 year old PTB city councillor João Coelho to win the race with 35% of the vote. His campaign, despite having very little money, was more optimistic and policy-driven, striking a great contrast with the smearing wars waged by the two leading candidates, who didn't notice the young challenger advancing right below them.

In São Luís, the race was initially dominated by conservatives Jaime Santana (PFL) and Gardênia Gonçalves (PDS), who were in a tight race, within the margin of error of each other. State assemblyman Jackson Lago allied himself with every available party, creating a wide left-wing alliance that included the communists, PT and PMDB (5). While not as surprising as the Recife race, since Lago already had a long career that started in the seventies, it was still an upset.

PT also did surprisingly well. In Fortaleza, PMDB candidate Paes de Andrade was projected to win the race with 50% of the vote, ahead of PDS candidate Lúcio Alcântara. Alcântara won the race, but the biggest surprise of all was that the second place, instead of belonging to Andrade, but instead fell to petista assemblywoman Maria Luíza Fontenele. Predicted to win only 10% of the vote, she was instead only five thousand votes behind Alcântara, an impressive result for someone who didn't even have a plan to properly administrate the city, due to the sheer unlikeliness that she would achieve such a result (6).

However, if petistas were left amazed and somewhat frustrated about Fortaleza, in Goiânia, they celebrated. Federal deputy Darci Accorsi, PT's highest ranking member in Goiás, where the party had a token presence except for the captital, won a very close race against PMDB candidate Daniel Antônio. Antônio was seen as the overwhleming favorite, scoring 60% of the vote in one poll, while Accorsi scored only 10%. In the end, the PT candidate won by a tight 49.6%--45.4 margin (7).

Goiânia mayor-elect Darci Accorsi on the barber's chair.

Goiás PMDB governor Iris Rezende was so sure that his candidate would win that he did not even campaign for him. PT took advantage of that, with Lula and even Santo André mayor Celso Daniel campaigning for Accorsi and appearing on his TV ads. Accorsi, with Daniel at his side, promised the people of Goiânia that he would administrate the city much like Santo André was run by PT: an efficient, transparent and honest government (8). There was something that didn't appear in the ads, the fact that Celso Daniel had a large number of loyal city councillors, thanks to the now defunct bound vote. Darci had only a few allies (the 1985 election in the capitals didn't change councillors, only mayors), and had a hostile governor to boot. He would have some tough years ahead of him (9).

Soon, 1985 came to a close, and the fateful year of 1986 arrived. As it began, the honeymoon began to die. It was time for president Ulysses to make some tough choices.

Elected mayors:

Aracaju: Jackson Barreto (PMDB) Belém: Coutinho Jorge (PMDB) Belo Horizonte: Sérgio Ferrara (PMDB)

Boa Vista: Sílvio Leite (PMDB) Campo Grande: Juvêncio Fonseca (PMDB) Cuiabá: Dante de Oliveira (PMDB)

Curitiba: Roberto Requião (PMDB) Florianópolis: Esperidião Amin (PDS) Fortaleza : Lúcio Alcântara (PDS)

Goiânia: Darci Accorsi (PT) João Pessoa: Marcus Odilon (PMDB) Macapá: Raimundo Costa (PMDB)

Maceió: Renan Calheiros (PMDB) Manaus: Manoel Ribeiro Natal: Wilma Maia (PDS)

Porto Alegre: Alceu Collares (PTB) Porto Velho: Jerônimo Santana (PMDB) Recife: João Ramos Coelho (PTB)

Rio Branco: Adalberto Aragão (PMDB) Rio de Janeiro: César Maia (PTB) Salvador: Edvaldo Brito (PDS)

São Luís: Jackson Lago (PTB) São Paulo: Fernando Henrique Cardoso (PMDB) Teresina: Átila Lira (PDS)

Vitória: Hermes Laranja (PMDB)

------------------
Notes:

(1) IOTL, there was no alliance between the two parties, and Jânio was elected with 37% of the vote, ahead of FHC, who scored 34% of the vote. Suplicy won 20% of the vote.

(2) IOTL, PDS (controlled by Maluf, and much smaller thanks to the exodus of coronéis who founded PFL) won only the São Luís mayoralty. Here, since they're stronger, they win more races (some of them with OTL PFL members, like Teresina's Átila Lira)

(3) In the OTL Natal race, it was discovered that governor Agripino Maia intended to buy votes for candidate Wilma Maia. Here, that scheme isn't discovered.

(4) The OTL Recife mayoral race was very, very dirty: Murilo accused Jarbas of beating his father, while Jarbas accused Murilo of murder. Here, the whole thing gets even worse and Murilo suffers an assassination attempt. This allows OTL third place finisher Coelho to win the election with a narrow margin. IOTL, the score was: Jarbas 35%, Murilo 29,5%, and Coelho with an impressive 23%.

(5) IOTL, the race was won by Gardênia Gonçalves, with 37% of the vote. Jackson Lago finished in third with 18%, ahead of PMDB candidate Carlos Guterres' 12%. The alliance between Lago and PMDB allows him to unite these votes, run a better campaign, and win the election. IOTL, he would later win the mayoralty in 1988.

(6) Fontenele may not know it, but she just dodged a bullet. IOTL, she won the election with ten thousand votes ahead of Paes de Andrade. The following administration didn't have a plan of government, had to deal with a hostile city council and a hostile state and federal government. She even got expelled from PT during her mayoralty, and ruined her young political career.

(7) IOTL, Antônio won the election with 48% of the vote, just ahead of Accorsi's 43% score. A better campaign and stronger PT overall change the result.

(8) That's a bit excessive. Still, I did say that Celso Daniel would become a PT star (pun intended).

(9) Mayor Accorsi will have to face the same difficulties that Fortaleza's Fontenele did OTL. However, he does have a plan of government to follow, with more fellow PT mayors around.

 

[markus meecham]

I am very curious to see what ulysses will try to do to take the country out of the shitter. Not expecting any miracles but at least something better than the sarney era would be good.

 

[Vinization]

I am very curious to see what ulysses will try to do to take the country out of the shitter. Not expecting any miracles but at least something better than the sarney era would be good.

All I'll say is that ITTL' s Plano Cruzado won't be a bunch of price caps everywhere.

 

[Dan1988]

I am very curious to see what ulysses will try to do to take the country out of the shitter. Not expecting any miracles but at least something better than the sarney era would be good.

Well, for a start - in order to keep the MDB's right wing on his side - maybe something like how the Chilean peso was handled under Hernán Büchi when the peso suffered from massive inflation due to a financial crisis. The first thing that needs to be done before anything else is to target the inflation. One can learn to live with exclusive high-denomination coins and banknotes, but not when there's concurrent galloping inflation. (So a big butterfly here will be nothing akin to the failed disappointment that was the cruzado. Instead, put the cruzeiro onto a regime of crawling bands tracking the real exchange rate/PPP adjustment (with a temporary crawling peg to start, combined with some of the policies used in Bolivia) based on the IMF Special Drawing Rights as well as supplemental mechanisms like a variant of the encaje. Once the Brazilian economy improves, then the bands can gradually get widened to the point where it can float without a problem. The Chilean monetary policy of the 1980s and 1990s would require a lot of research, but it can be done to help reduce, if not nearly eliminate, the inflation in a better fashion than OTL. That and, just for old-time cosmetic sake, a resurrection of the old cruzeiro sign <₢> to make it more than just a random symbol on your computer keyboards, if available.) The assumption here is that if one takes the Brazilian military dictatorship as one long early attempt to implement in Brazil what Pinochet implemented in Chile, then to handle this mess one needs to adopt pragmatic solutions similar to what happened to resolve the Crisis of 1982.

 

[The God-Emperor]

Ahh yes, the inflation bomb is right in Ulysses's lap. Eager to see how that gets resolved.

 

[Dan1988]

Ahh yes, the inflation bomb is right in Ulysses's lap. Eager to see how that gets resolved.

However Ulysses does it, it can't be anything like what Sarney did. That, as I'd think you'd all agree on, was a total disaster that could have been easily prevented. Even more so if the printing presses stopped printing entirely. Now, if I were in Ulysses' place - trading my comparatively very comfortable position in the 21st century Global North for a place in the Global South - then considering the limited options available to Brazil I'd address the inflation bomb as turning over a leaf from the era of the dictatorship. Even stuff that would sound horrendous now (such as cutting government spending, the monetary policy I pointed out upthread, and even repudiating the debt) would be excused as addressing the dictatorship's legacy. I'd become an easy target for assassination for saying such stuff, and my base would be disappointed that I would not be pursuing more progressive policies and that it's just a deepening of the austerity policy minus the crushing debt, but ultimately I would see no other choice but to do that, at least initially. Only once the inflation bomb is diffused would I then become something, for OTL comparison purposes only, more like Patricio Aylwin in Chile (with his "growth with equity" policy) or even (dare I say it) even something akin to Lula's first term and/or FHC, in order to address some of the gaps left behind from the era of the dictatorship. I'd be pressed by the international community to do all sorts of privatization, but in that case I would much rather pursue the gradualist policy that only several years later would be attempted by India. Bringing economic stability to and taming inflation in Brazil would be an important part of my legacy along with the new Constitution, and would provide a good base for other progressives to build upon. That's just my personal opinion - others could think of something different, but given the context of Latin America at that time and the need to avoid the Lost Decade ITTL by defusing the inflation bomb, that's the only way I can see it.

 

[Vinization]

... Oh my God.
I just deleted my entire update.

Fuck.

Does anybody know if I can un-delete It?

 

[Dan1988]

OK - which one is it? And I'd ask a mod and/or Ian and see what they can do.

 

[Vinization]

OK - which one is it? And I'd ask a mod and/or Ian and see what they can do.

Honestly, scratch that. I think I was wasting too much time with it (it was about the Plano Cruzado) and writing unnecessary stuff. I'll start over.

 

[Dan1988]

Honestly, scratch that. I think I was wasting too much time with it (it was about the Plano Cruzado) and writing unnecessary stuff. I'll start over.

So it was one you were drafting?

 

[Vinization]

So it was one you were drafting?

Yeah.

 

[markus meecham]

... Oh my God.
I just deleted my entire update.

Fuck.

Does anybody know if I can un-delete It?

You better write those updates in your pc and save them in a pen drive or email folder too, for safety reasons.
Seen lots of writers succumbing to that same mistake here

 

[Vinization]

So, I literally deleted my first draft of this thing. Hopefully, this one will be better.
------------------
Part 2: Tough Choices
February 23, 1986
Planalto Palace, Brasília, Federative Republic of Brazil

Today was an incredibly busy and important day in the capital of the Republic. President Ulysses was scheduled to unveil the plan that would tackle the economic crisis that the country was in. Naturally, many ordinary people were especially anxious about what would be done, and how it would improve their lives. Other, more powerful people who had contacts in Brasília, weren't all so happy or optimistic about it. Among them was Goiás governor Iris Rezende, who talked with the presidente no less than three times yesterday, almost begging the president to change some parts of the plan or even scrap it entirely. He argued that it would cause serious damage to PMDB in the short term, which mattered since there would be general elections in November 15.

For president Ulysses Guimarães, this was a very stressful occasion. Not only because of Iris' nagging, in which he clearly implied that he cared more about maintaining his coronel-like power in Goiás than the future of the country (1), but because of all the work that was put into the plan. The result of months and months of discussions with finance minister Francisco Dornelles would all be put to practice after today. He was convinced that watering it down as Iris suggested would little more than an attempt to buy the votes of the people while kicking the can down the road.

Still, the Goiás governor's warnings increased his stress. At first, he thought PMDB would tank in the short term, but would later rise again after the crisis was put under control and they were proven right. But what if the economy didn't recover? What if PMDB simply suffered too much of a hit in the elections to return as a major force? And the internal division between leftist and right-wing factions, would it become too great and split the party in two? What about PT, who could off progressive voters who would otherwise vote for PMDB, especially in São Paulo?

Speaking of leftists, one couldn't forget about RJ governor Leonel Brizola, who wouldn't waste any chance to grow PTB and improve his position for an inevitable campaign for the presidency. In the end, it was much better for Ulysses to think about what was about to happen, rather than a bunch of what ifs. Or else he would probably get a migraine, something he couldn't afford to suffer in the middle of his address to the nation.

Finally, the time had come for him to speak to the people. Sitting before a table, with two national flags behind him and with tens of TV and radio stations ready to record him, the president announced what was in the plan that was given the name Plano Cruzado.

Far, far away, in an apartment in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro...

A gray haired, balding man who, with his wife Neusa at his side, watched the television like a hawk, ready to listen to the president's words. At first, those words were what he expected to hear. Ulysses denounced the dictatorship's legacy of endless spending, unfinished projects, and inflation, citing how they harmed the people of Brazil, especially the poor and powerless. So far, nothing bad yet.

All of that quickly changed once these platitudes and attacks against the old order gave their way. With a heavy heart, president Ulysses Guimarães said that the government was forced to enact the following measures to save Brazil from an imminent economic collapse.

Some of the most important of these measures were:

• The national currency was changed, from the old cruzeiro to the new cruzado, with Cz$ 1,00 (one cruzado) being worth Cr$ 1000 (one thousand cruzeiros);
• Massive spending cuts, including infrastructure and education spending;
• The privatization of some state-owned companies;
• And, at last, the slow, gradual opening of national markets to foreign competition (2).

Anyone, including our character, could see the president cringing, almost crying while he announced the plan. Indeed, in the middle of his speech, Ulysses asked for a cup of water before going on. A few minutes after said speech ended and the TV channels returned to their usual programming, and after he wasn't as upset, the man went for the house telephone, and called for a very close friend of his. They talked about the Plano Cruzado, and what would be its immediate effects, for a few minutes. They finally concluded that Ulysses had no other choice, since he was held hostage by the Centrão. He ended the conversation with a quip:

"-- Well, you better get used to being called 'Rio de Janeiro governor-elect Darcy Ribeiro'."

------------------
Yeah, that man is none other than Leonel Brizola.

Notes:

(1) IOTL, Iris Rezende ruled Goiás like a king from 1982 to 1998, when he was defeated by the state's current monarch, Marconi Perillo (PSDB).


(2) Here, the difference to OTL is clear: Plano Cruzado, instead of consisting of a bunch of unsustainable wage and price freezes, is an austerity program, which won't be as disastrous, but far more unpopular initially.

 

[Dan1988]

So Ulysses is taking the Raúl Alfonsin route? Not surprised one bit given the times.