Desenvolvimentismo na Amazônia: a farsa fascinante, a tragédia facínora

Abstract

When proposing the challenge of understanding the “current Brazilian development model”, Reinaldo Gonçalves1 takes as a methodological clue an orientation of Braudel. Analyzing the role of the market in the development of capitalism, Braudel states that “there is a part of truth, a part of bad faith, but also of illusion” around this theme. For Gonçalves, at the beginning of this century, “the views and analyzes of the economy and society in Brazil are, for the most part, incapable of distinguishing between little truth, a lot of bad faith and, above all, a lot of illusion”. The same can be said of a considerable part of the views and analyses, from inside and outside the academy, on developmentalism in the Amazon. Few are aware of the mixture of farce and tragedy there is in this.