For the past seven decades, college-educated defendants jailed in Brazil have had the right to go to a special unit, a solitary cell away from ordinary prisoners. A relief and almost a luxury in a country of notorious prisons where space and sometimes even food are scarce. The Supreme Court put an end to this privilege a few days ago, but in Brazil, home of privilege, many other anachronistic and extravagant perks remain in effect. One of the biggest annoyances are the lifetime pensions for the unmarried daughters of the armed forces and civil service elite, a payment incompatible with a husband or entering the civil service, and which 200,000 women still receive. And some of them cheat on top of that, as the Esstadão newspaper recently revealed: The Court of Auditors has found that at least 4,000 have been living on it since their father’s death, despite marriage, civil partnership or gainful employment for administration.
They are different cases, but both the incarcerated university students and the single daughters of … exemplify the kind of privileges that, along with a myriad of factors, help perpetuate the deep-rooted socioeconomic inequality and inequality of opportunity in Brazilian society. (synthesized in this photo by Tuca Vieira).
The examples are commonplace: from the existence of a freight elevator and another social elevator in many buildings, to a grossly unfair tax system for the poor, stifled by direct taxes and inflation, while dividends from shareholders are exempt from taxation. A gap that can be summed up in an impressive number: White men in the richest 1% have more income than all black and multiracial Brazilians.
The Supreme Court finds the special treatment for jailed college graduates unconstitutional because, according to one of its judges, it “does not protect vulnerable infirm people; on the contrary, it favors those who are already favored by their economic position”. University students always made up only a small proportion of prison inmates (now about 1%), and once the sentence was final, they went to the cells of ordinary prisoners, a moment that could last for years.
This right, established by Getulio Vargas in the 1940s, sprang into public debate, particularly after the Lava-Jato corruption investigation (now buried and with much of the convictions overturned), which led to the imprisonment of dozens of politicians and businessmen led untouchables. Until then. The current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who was a worker and never attended university, received special treatment as a former president. They built him a custom cell in a police station in Curitiba. (Their convictions were overturned.)
However, judges, prosecutors, soldiers, priests and pastors charged with crimes, among other things, and who deserve pre-trial detention retain the privilege university students just lost.
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They also stand out among the privileged caste, the unmarried daughters of the official elite. Some of the examples revealed by the above newspaper will leave you speechless. Ms Maria Lucia Rangel de Alckmin, 79 years old, cousin of the current Vice-President, as the single daughter of a former Supreme Court judge, receives a pension equal to the salary of the President of the Republic. In other words, like Lula, he gets 39,000 reais (7,000 euros or $7,700) for nothing.
Payments to the 60,000 unmarried daughters of civil servants (excluding the military) add nearly $600 million a year to public coffers. The descendants of the military leadership who never married are about 140,000 ladies who receive about a thousand euros a month.
Among the beneficiaries are two daughters of Vinicius de Moraes, who went down in music history as the father of bossa nova, but was previously a diplomat. Since 1980, the year the artist died, both have received this allowance created in the late 1950s by President Juscelino Kubitschek, the man who promoted the creation of Brasilia as a symbol of a modern country.
At the time, it was argued that women without a father or husband could not earn a living. As Brazilians became economically independent, the debate over these perks intensified. No new beneficiaries have been added since the 1990s, but payments to those who have been eligible since losing their fathers, some when they were girls, will be retained.
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