Brazil and the revolution of rising expectations

The term “revolution of rising expectations” was coined during the 1950s to describe the possibility of a revolution in L.A. in the period. This term can help us understand the crisis that made Bolsonaro possible in Brazil. The rising expectations were said to embody the ‘real’ revolution of the 20th century. In the early 1960s, the Kennedy administration believed that such a revolution was imminent in L. A. and should be avoided at all costs. But where did this idea come from? In 1962, James C. Davies published an article in which he tried to explain what led revolutions to erupt at certain times. Those were times of intense civil rights protests in the United States and, in this context, the article caught the attention of many. According to davies, when Marx exhorted the proletarians to rebel because they had nothing to lose but their shackles, he was actually defending the thesis that the progressive degradation of living conditions led to revolutions.But Davies also states that Tocqueville, in his classic study of the French Revolution, suggests a somewhat different line. Revolutions are not caused by the progressive degradation of material conditions. Then, what causes revolutions?According to him they occur when the improvement of living conditions occurs more slowly than desired. That is, revolutions happened not when things were too bad, but when they weren’t as good as they could be. There was great social inclusion in Brazil between 2003 and 2016. Yet, in 2016, this was not enough. It was necessary to address the structural issues of inequality, which was not done. Inclusion by consumption is good, but not enough. Lula will most likely be elected to a third term in Brazil. this time he needs to address the serious problems of education. Oxfam Brazil has already demonstrated how difficult access to education generates inequalities in the country. The pandemic has made what was bad, worse. Education has to be the priority.