The Government sent Congress a project by which, from next year, the taxpayers who from the payment of. The measure benefits 10 million people. To compensate for the loss of revenue, it wants to tax with a 10% floor the gains of those, which gives a monthly income of $ 50,000. The bite takes 141,000 taxpayers.
Brazil is among the world champions of social inequality and the approval of the exemption is almost certain. Already the taxation of the upstairs opened a healthy debate. It is argued that it should first think about spending less, or even that taxation inhibits investments and will stimulate capital escape.
All of these arguments have their value and the debates will shed light on the issue. Brazil did not become an unequal country the day before yesterday. The ruin comes from afar and it is worth looking back.
Some time ago, a curious one asked the historian Manolo Florentino (1958-2021) to find a statement of illustrious politician in defense of slavery in the 1970s and he replied:
– You won’t find it. In those years, no one else defended slavery. Everyone was in favor, since … since that, from that, to slow the liberation of slaves.
In the 21st century, everyone is in favor of the exemption from the bottom floor. The nut twists the tail. There is nothing again under the heaven of Anil.
Upstairs held slavery until 1888
By law, all Africans who landed to Brazil after 1831 were free. The future Marquis of Paraná pondered that it was not the case to free the blacks, but to force those who would “take them again to the coast of Africa.” As? I didn’t say.
His colleague Marquis of Inhambupe was more specific. Africans could be released who resorted “with the intelligence necessary to regulate.” Already the “so-called bilies, who have no intelligence, in order to seek the means of subsistence; so it seems to give them freedom, is to make them even more unfortunate.”
In short, the black was captured in Africa, brought to Pindorama and sold as a commodity, but to release it would be to disgrace it. After all, as the Marquis of Paraná said, “the abolition of slavery in Brazil is a matter of the future, not of the present.”
In 1831 the Africans brought to Brazil were about 50 thousand. Until 1850, when England forced the Empire to ban the smuggling, at least 800,000 Africans were bought. Only 8,000 were rescued, but could only be released after providing services to the nation. She privatized them, passing them to the upstairs elite, about 600 people. The Marquis of Paraná received 21 and at least two great journalists from the period entered this mouth.
In the second half of the 19th century, with winds that came from outside, the debate of slavery gradually gained body. In 1871 it was conditionally formed the births. Okay, but the first project in this direction was 1831.
In the debate of this law, Paulino Soares de Souza warned:
“No one holds here the perpetuity of slavery.” (…) The duty of all of us is not to unreleptly expose the country to a violent crisis (…) without paying attention against property, without disturbing existing relationships, without damaging the great interests that are unfortunately linked and for a long time there is in this institution.
In 1881, attacking Joaquim Nabuco’s abolitionism, writer Silvio Romero stated his “since”. For him, the best way to end slavery would be to invest in “more fruitful, and then easier, cheaper” work. Things continued to do well for the upstairs. Historian Angela Alonso showed that after 11 years, only 11,000 Brazilians had been released, 0.7% of the enslaved blacks.
In 1884 came the law that freed the Sexagenaries. It was attacked because it meant an abandonment of the elderly. Providence would be commendable as long as there were nursing homes.
In 1887, the tide grew and projects appeared abolishing slavery, since the masters earned a breath until 1890. These days, in the Americas, only Brazil enslaved blacks.
A year later, with abolitionism on the streets and blacks running away from farms, on May 8, 1888, an immediate and unconditional abolition project was presented. A problem swept under the carpet for more than 50 years has been processed in just five days and ,.
A bad business even for the elite
In the 19th century, the brothers José and Joaquim de Souza Breves prospered in the southern century. They had dozens of coffee farms and, perhaps, up to 10,000 black blacks. After 1850, they continued in the African smuggling business and kept a trapiche to shelter them at Restinga da Marambaia. (This is where the Presidents of the Republic will rest on some holidays.)
When the smuggling was forbidden, Joaquim Breves prophesied, “If this continues, the life and fortune of numerous citizens, as well as the peace and tranquility of the Empire, run imminent danger.”
The brief continued to invest in the slavery while other farmers migrated to public debt securities, paid by Selic of the time. The Empire ended in 1889 and, in the 1950s, Vitor, the patriarch of the family, was very life. It had a bananal, a modest banana factory and a small thermal power. Shadow of what they had been, he and all the brief worked to live, paying for the work of others. Who walked back was Brazil.
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