Dilma Rousseff is a policy recognized for being the first woman to assume the presidency of the Brazil, being elected president in 2010 and re-elected in 2014. Her government went through an economic crisis, which she was unable to reverse. Dilma Rousseff suffered a process of impeachment in 2016.
The former president graduated in Economic Sciences and acted politically in administrations in the municipality of Porto Alegre and the state of Rio Grande do Sul. During part of his youth, participated in left movements, joining the armed struggle against Military dictatorship, having been arrested and tortured in 1970 and released from prison in 1972.
Check out our podcast:Main points to understand the Brazilian Military Dictatorship
Summary about Dilma Rousseff
Dilma Rousseff is the daughter of a Bulgarian immigrant who prospered in Brazil.
She joined the armed struggle during her youth, participating in VAR-Palmares.
She was arrested and tortured by agents of the dictatorship in 1970.
She entered politics in the 1980s, in Rio Grande do Sul.
Held important positions in the government Lula.
She was elected president in 2010 and re-elected in 2014, suffering impeachment in 2016.
Birth and youth of Dilma Rousseff
Dilma Vana Rousseff was born on December 14, 1947. She is natural from Belo Horizonte, capital of Minas Gerais. She is the daughter of a Bulgarian immigrant named Pedro Rousseff (his original name was Pétar Russév), who moved to Brazil in 1929, and Dilma Jane Silva. Pedro Rousseff worked in the real estate business, while Dilma Jane was a preschool teacher.
Middle daughter, Dilma Rousseff has a brother, named Igor, and had a sister, Zana. In addition, she had a half-brother born from a relationship her father had in Bulgaria before moving to Brazil. That brother was Luben Russev, whom she never met personally, although she corresponded with him by letter.
Dilma Rousseff's father managed to prosper in the real estate business in Belo Horizonte, so her family was able to finance the expenses of her daughter's studies in good schools in the capital of Minas Gerais.
Dilma Rousseff as a political activist
It was during high school that Dilma became a member of political groups that defended the socialism. She had a great influence in her own family, as her father had been a member of the Communist Party of Bulgaria. At first, Dilma approached the Marxist Revolutionary Organization - Worker Policy (Polop).
This organization rivaled the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) and had two wings: the one that defended the politics through the organization of the masses and another that defended the junction of the organization of the masses with the struggle armed. Polop ended up splitting, and a part of that organization joined the armed struggle against the Military Dictatorship.
Dilma Rousseff joined Allah dthe armed struggle, becoming a member of the National Liberation Command, known as Colina. It operated underground, although it did not take part in military actions. Later, Colina merged with the Popular Revolutionary Vanguard (VPR), forming the Revolutionary Armada Vanguard - Palmares (VAR-Palmares).
A Dilma’s performance is mentioned as “internal”, as she did not participate in military actions, coordinating actions of the organization of these revolutionary groups. She was sent to the Rio de Janeiro is for São Paulo as part of her role in the groups, and life in hiding imposed a series of restrictions on her.
On January 16, 1970, upon arriving at a bar that served as a meeting point for militants, Dilma was arrested. The meeting point had been denounced by a companion of Dilma Rousseff's armed struggle who had been arrested and tortured by the military. She was tortured for 22 days at the headquarters of Operation Bandeirante (Oban) and the Department of Political and Social Order (Dops).
dilma she was tortured using paddles, punches, electric shocks and was placed on a macaw tree. She was sentenced to six years in prison and had her political rights stripped of her for ten years. She subsequently got her sentence reduced and was released from prison in late 1972. As a result of the torture, she developed sequelae in her gland. thyroid and in the dental arch.
See too:Right and left — origin of terms and main differences
Dilma Rousseff's political career
After she got out of jail, Dilma Rousseff resumed her studies, interrupted by militancy and his arrest. She moved to Porto Alegre, where she completed a course in Economic Sciences at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), and entered politics, but without getting involved again with the struggle armed.
She completed her training in 1977 and from 1979 was able to restart his political life thanks to à Amnesty Law. This law permitted the return of exiles and granted amnesty political prisoners of the Military Dictatorship, but also exempted hundreds of agents of the dictatorship (such as torturers) of their crimes.
In any case, Dilma joined the Labor Democratic Party (PDT), a party created by Leonel Brizola, the political heir of Labor, ideology very popular policy before the Military Dictatorship. She joined the party in 1980 and, from that year until 1985, acted as an advisor to pedestrian politicians in the Legislative Assembly of Rio Grande do Sul.
Between 1986 and 1988, Dilma Rousseff was at the head of the Treasury Secretariat, under the management of Alceu Collares, mayor of the city of Porto Alegre. Between 1989 and 1990, she worked as general director of the Porto Alegre City Council. And between the years 1991 and 1993, she served as president of the Foundation for Economics and Statistics.
Finally, she was appointed by Alceu Collares, then governor of Rio Grande do Sul, to assume the Secretariat of Energy, Mines and Communications and remained in the position between 1993 and 1994. A few years later, in 1999, Dilma took over the Secretariat of Energy, Mines and Communications again, but this time in the government of Olívio Dutra, a politician from the Workers' Party (PT).
In 2000, the PDT and PT split in Rio Grande do Sul. As a result, Dilma left the PDT, joining the PT in March 2001. She remained in the secretariat until the end of Olívio Dutra’s government, in 2003. At the end of 2002, she participated in the transition team that preceded the inauguration of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as president of the country.
On January 1, 2003, she took over the Ministry of Mines and Energy, with the mission of recovering the Brazilian energy system, in crisis due to the blackout and the rationing crisis that happened in 2001 and which was the result of the lack of investment in our country's energy system during the 1990s.
In 2005, Dilma Rousseff was invited to take over the head of the Civil House, after the resignation of José Dirceu, due to his involvement with the corruption scheme known as Mensalão. In this role, she organized and coordinated a series of actions and policies of the Lula government and paved her way to become the successor.
One of the main programs coordinated by Dilma in this capacity was the Growth Acceleration Program, the PAC. This program consisted of developing actions to invest in crucial areas such as infrastructure, housing, energy, among others. The objective was to guarantee the development of the country and the improvement of the infrastructure and services that serve Brazilian population.
Know more:List of all presidents of Brazil
Dilma Rousseff in the presidency
The nomination of Dilma Rousseff as Lula's successor is attributed by many as a result of the lack of viable names in the PT cadres to succeed the president. He ended his government with excellent results in the economy and high popularity. This set the stage for the election of her successor.
A Dilma's nomination generated distrust among the members from PT, because her name represented a more technical than political context, in addition to the fact that she joined the PT only in 2001. In the composition of its electoral slate, the PT needed to guarantee the support of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, the strongest party in the Centrão. This support was important to support Lula's second government and Dilma Rousseff's first term.
She ran for president, in particular, against the following candidates:
José Serra (PSDB);
Marina Silva (PV).
The result was a victory in second round against the PSDB candidate. In the first round, Dilma obtained 46.91% of the valid votes, while José Serra obtained 32.61% and Marina Silva obtained 19.33%. In the second round, Dilma obtained 56.05% against 43.95% of José Serra and with that became the first woman to be elected president of Brazil.
The Dilma Rousseff government maintained the focus of the Lula government, seeking to invest in social policies to combat poverty through income transfer actions. There were also investments in the field of education and in the development of actions in defense of social minorities, but there was a strong backlash from conservative groups against these policies.
His government also invested in the investigation of crimes carried out by agents of the Military Dictatorship, between 1964 and 1985. Despite this, there was no initiative for these crimes to be punished in court. The biggest initiative in this regard was the National Truth Commission (CNV).
In the field of economics, the government of Dilma Rousseff faced very adverse scenarios, caused by the crisis in the international economy, reduction in the price of commodities and drop in imports. The result was a modest economic growth, being 4% in 2011, 1.9% in 2012, 3% in 2013 and 0.5% in 2014|1|.
Dilma's downfall
As of 2013, demonstrations of dissatisfaction by a portion of the society with Dilma Rousseff's government, they began to gain strength. The failure of the economic agenda fueled this dissatisfaction, which is understood, in parts, as a reaction of conservative groups against inclusion policies of PT governments.
This scenario made the 2014 presidential campaign very fierce, and Dilma faced Aécio Neves, formergovernor of Minas Gerais and candidate for the PSDB. The result was one of the fiercest in the history of the New Republic. Dilma Rousseff won in the first round, obtaining 51.64% of the votes, against 48.36% in Aetius.
The second government of Dilma Rousseff continued to fail in conducting the economic portfolio, and the country faced a period of recession between 2015 and 2016. The increase in opposition to Dilma's government in Congress ended up preventing many government actions to circumvent the situation from being defeated in the Legislature.
A political conduction of Operation Lava Jato is also considered one of the biggest factors that explain the overthrow of Dilma Rousseff. There are historians who understand that Dilma Rousseff's downfall was also the result of her inability to deal with the political and economic crisis.
In the end, she was overthrown by impeachment proceedings on charges of committing a crime of fiscal responsibility. On August 31, 2016, the impeachment process was confirmed, and she left the presidency, but retained her political rights. Her vice-president, Michel Temer, assumed the presidency.
ODilma's impeachment is understood as a parliamentary coup which only aimed to overthrow the government to implement a more conservative economic agenda and to put an end to investigations into scandals of corruption, investigations that were encouraged by Dilma herself.
In 2018, Dilma Rousseff sought to continue her political career, running for the Senate in Minas Gerais, but failed to be elected.
Grades
|1| MOTTA, Rodrigo Patto Sa. Lulism and PT governments: rise and fall. In.: FERREIRA, Jorge and DELGADO, Lucilia de Almeida Neves (eds.). Republican Brazil: the time of the New Republic — from the democratic transition to the political crisis of 2016. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2018, p. 435.
image credits
[1] Frederic Legrand – COMEO It is Shutterstock
By Daniel Neves Silva
History teacher
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/biografia/dilma-rousseff.htm