Without Fear of Being Happy

by Ken Silverstein and Emir Sader

Book Overview

The Brazilian Workers Party is the most important political formation to emerge in Latin America for many years. Under the charismatic leadership of an ex-metalworker and union official, Luis Inácio da Silva, known simply as "Lula" by the Brazilian masses, the Workers Party won 31 million votes to come within three per cent of winning the 1989 presidential election on a bold anti-capitalist platform. Taking its title from the Workers Party's slogan...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0860915239
• ISBN13: 9780860915232
• Release Date: October 1991
• Publisher: Verso
• Length: 178 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Latin American contemporary politics

The Worker's Party of Brazil(the partidos dos trabalhadores -PT) is one of the political organisations that has demonstrated the capacity for the Left to renovate its politics. The very success of the party created a opposition to the thought that the Left had entered in retreat since the fall of the Soviet Union or due to the crisis of the welfare state. The key event that attention to the party was the presidential election of 1989, when its main leader _ Luis Inacio Da Silv(` Lula') almost won election with 47 percent of the vote. The slogan of the 1989 presidential election is the title of the book - `Without Fear of Being Happy' (Sem medo de ser feliz). The authors go into the formation of the party and how it brought together distinct social movements activists and leftist tendencies within the party. Sader and Silverstein take back to the metal workers' strike in 1978-79, where discussion initiated about the need for a political party of the workers. From there, the party went on struggling with the institutional road and trying to accommodate its radical aim with the limits of the state institutional structures. The author devotes a chapter to the rural link of the party, which it is important to demonstrate how the party is not a party of urban workers. The authors also go into the problems that the party faced with its municipal administrations, especially in face of the internal diversity. The book also includes an interview with Lula. This is a good introductory book on the Latin American left that any student or person interested on the area would enjoy reading.