As in other semicolonial countries, millions of workers and peasants in Brazil lack access to electricity needed for lighting, refrigeration, cooking, and other basic needs. Electrification is also necessary for developing modern industry and cultural life. Nearly 40 percent of Brazil’s rural areas are not electrified. A drought three years ago wreaked havoc with the country’s electricity grid, which is largely supplied by hydroelectric power, causing rolling blackouts across the nation.

An editorial in the July 2 Miami Herald, titled “A nuclear standoff in the Americas,” called on Brazil’s government to submit to unannounced inspections. “The Brazilians say the enriched uranium is intended only to fire its two nuclear-power stations,” the editorial said. “The reluctance to admit inspectors is based on a claim of superior technology that must be shielded from the prying eyes of rivals in the nuclear-energy industry…. In a globalized world, Brazil’s refusal to allow full inspections is sending the wrong message. It could undermine U.S.-led efforts to persuade countries such as Iran and North Korea to submit to full scrutiny of their own nuclear programs.”

The government of Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has refused IAEA entry into the Resende facility until a procedure can be developed to protect technological innovations. IAEA director-general Mohamed El-Baradei claimed, according to the June 30 issue of the Brazilian daily O Globo, that “we have inspected uranium enriching centers in many countries without revealing any industrial secret. Brazil will not be the exception.”

The Herald editors said the “best outcome” would be for the Brazilian government to open up its nuclear facilities to surprise inspections.

Brazil is a signer of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, but has not signed the so-called additional protocols, which authorize spot inspections without prior notification.

Decades of government neglect of the countryside has devastated rural toilers and produced a mass exodus to the cities, where industrialization has created more jobs. The portion of the population living in the cities has grown from 55 percent in 1970 to 77 percent in 1990 to 82 percent today. Successive governments have promised to bring electrical power to rural areas, but in practice they concentrated energy development in urban industrial centers, mainly in the southeast of the country.

Today the wealthiest 1 percent of Brazilians own 40 percent of the land. In addition to facing one of the most unequal land distributions in the world, working people in Brazil have felt the consequences of a 0.2 percent contraction in the economy last year, its worst performance in 11 years. Unemployment exceeded 13 percent in April, according to official figures, while household consumption dropped by a record 3 percent, fueled by a 6 percent decline in the buying power of the average wage.

In the north and northeast of the country less than half of rural households have access to electricity. For some areas officially considered electrified, power is only available about six hours per day.

It was on the basis of his promises to improve the living and working conditions of workers and farmers—including solving the electrification problem—that Lula won a landslide victory in the October 2002 presidential elections.

Shortly after coming into office, Lula announced a “Zero Hunger” program. His government allocated $1.6 billion to provide food stamp-like vouchers for the 50 million people—nearly one-third the population—who live in poverty in Brazil. Da Silva has increased the minimum wage for government workers, though this standard is largely ignored by private companies.

At the same time, the government has continued to make interest payments on the country’s foreign debt and has shown “determination to stick to agreements with the International Monetary Fund,” according to an editorial in the June 1 Financial Times.

Under the burden of debt slavery to international finance capital and domestic capitalist exploitation, poverty has remained rampant and joblessness has increased. During a series of mid-March public appearances of Brazil’s president, placards could be seen among the largely welcoming crowds saying, “Lula, give us jobs!” and “We are still hungry,” according to an article in the June 27 New York Times magazine.

In November 2003 the government launched an “Electricity for All” program, aimed at providing power to 2 million rural households that lack access to electrical power. The $2.5 billion plan under the direction of the Ministry of Mines and Energy projects complete rural electrification by 2008.

The 2001 drought showed the vulnerability of the nation’s energy system. The hydroelectric power plants that had generated 90 percent of Brazil’s electricity supply were left with dry reservoirs, provoking blackouts across the country.

There are two nuclear power plants in Brazil, and the government is considering construction of a third. Brazil has the world’s sixth-largest uranium reserves. The Resende enrichment plant will play an important part in the country’s energy development when it comes on line in October. It will supply centrifuge units for the nuclear plants. Brazilian officials project that by 2010 it will produce 60 percent of the plants’ needs, saving them $12 to $14 million per month.

In February, the White House presented a program for “Strengthening International Efforts against Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation,” in which it charged the Iranian government, in particular, with using a claim of needing uranium enrichment for energy needs as a cover for producing nuclear weapons. Washington, which possesses more nuclear weapons than any other country, is now calling on Brasilia to open up the Resende plant to increasingly intrusive IAEA inspections. Three months earlier a State Department spokesperson said, in reference to Brazil, that the U.S. government “urges all states, particularly with sensitive nuclear activities such as uranium enrichment, to adopt the highest nonproliferation standards including the Additional Protocol.”

The Brazilian government has rejected Washington’s demands. On May 14 Brazil’s ambassador to the United States, Roberto Abdenur, said his government would not bow “under pressure, sometimes intense pressure, as if we have evil intentions.” He said Brazil’s nuclear program was for solely peaceful purposes, and pointed to the hypocrisy of Washington to demand that countries such as Brazil renounce the development of nuclear weapons, while it maintains a vast arsenal. “We are worried at the fact that, more recently, the U.S. has come out with a defense strategy which gives more, and not less, value to the use of nuclear weapons, even against non-nuclear weapons states,” Abdenur said.
 
 
Related article:
Stance on nuclear power is a political, not technical, matter
How imperialists use UN atomic agency to target power-poor oppressed nations  
 
 
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