A cidadania no Brasil

Histórias, Limites e Desafios

Abstract

Since the late 1980s, after the low and gradual political opening of the dictatorial regime, a series of democratic institutions were created as a result of popular struggle towards a citizenship which had been denied during the twenty-one years of military dictatorship. The construction of Brazilian democratic institutions coexisted with the antagonistic determinations of neoliberalism. These neoliberal determinations were carried out by international capitalism as an attempt to maintain the conditions of capital accumulation in its successive historical crisis. This process of building democracy was strongly based on the concept of citizenship that characterized the development of the Federal Constitution of 1988, which was originated by the struggle against dictatorship. This paper intend, through a historical analysis, to discuss the social contradictions that transcend national borders and mark the thirty years of struggle for democracy in Brazil. We still propose, from the theoretical framework of historical materialism, a reflection about the limits of citizenship as the confrontation of the consequences generated by capitalism, I mean, its consequences and not the system itself.