Brazil is amongst the most unequal countries in the world, as the nation’s social-economic inequality in particular has reached extreme levels.[1] Despite country-wide campaigns to eradicate poverty there are still roughly 24 million Brazilians who live on less than $2 per day, and 56% of the population earns less than the minimum wage.[2] Although inequality is one of Brazil’s most pressing matters, as a source for violence and instability, it has never been truly securitised. In contrast, Brazil did consider the issue of drug trafficking at its borders to be an existential threat that required the mobilisation of scarce resources and extraordinary measures. This security issue recently reached the phase of de-securitisation, not as a result of its success, but because of financial and political pressures. It was simply too costly and not feasible to protect the roughly 17,000 kilometres of remote land, water, and air that separate the country from Bolivia, Peru and Colombia, South America’s coca sources, and Paraguay, the continent’s main producer of marijuana. In this brief article, I will demonstrate that Securitisation Theory, as defined by the Copenhagen School, offers the analytical framework to display the process behind Brazil’s adoption of security threats, and that, in turn, allows us to critically assess these political decisions.
The Theory of Securitisation provides a systematic attempt to answer possibly the most fundamental and contemplated question in the field of Security Studies: What is security? According to its theorists, ‘‘security’ is what actors make it’.[3] Securitisation is about existential threats to security, those whose severity would allow disregard for all ordinary matters and tolerate extreme measures.[4] The aim is to portray the process in which an issue of security evolves out of the realm of normal politics and becomes hierarchised. In a nutshell, the securitisation theory functions as follows: A referent actor designates a security issue as an existential threat, and convinces a relevant audience (through a speech act) of the utter emergency to act and to justify extraordinary measures. Ultimately, the theory is intended to critically assess the outcome of the securitisation process: why do certain issues get securitised, and why other perhaps far more pressing matters are not.
Similar questions could, and perhaps should be asked about security practices in Brazil. In 2016, Caroline Cordeiro Viana e Silva and Alexsandro Eugenio Pereira, scholars connected to the Federal University of Parana (Universidade Federal do Paraná - UFPR), conducted thought-provoking empirical research on the securitisation process of drug trafficking at Brazilian borders.[5] In Brazil, drug trafficking became a politicised matter during the mid-1970s, as the issue entered the political debate in which public policies and the allocation of resources were first discussed. Accordingly, the Brazilian government adopted the 1976 Law n° 6368, which provided the first authorised definition of drug trafficking. Subsequently, in 1990, the act of illicit drug trafficking was placed under Law n° 8072 ― the so-called Heinous Crimes Law. The actual process of securitisation emerged under the presidential administrations of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2010) and Dilma Vana Rousseff (2011-2016), with the adoption of a new range of anti-drug trafficking laws.[6] Moreover, these legal initiatives were substantiated by speech acts from both referent actors, which brought the issue from politicised to securitised. They proclaimed drug trafficking as the utmost threat to the Brazilian people that had to be dealt with urgently. Cordeiro Viana e Silva and Pereira illustrate this with the terminology used during public appearances and speeches of both Lula and Rousseff. The terms ‘drugs’ (drogas), ‘trafficking’ (tráfico) and ‘security’ (segurança), were persistently connected to strong rhetoric such as: ‘this is the most important matter’ (essa e coisa mais importante), ‘especially at our borders’ (especialmente nas fronteiras), ‘we pledge to fight’ (comprometemos a lutar contra) and ‘end the war’ (acabar com a guerra), inter alia.[7]
The securitisation of this issue reached its peak in 2011 with the adoption of the Strategic Border Plan (SBP), a multi-billion dollar project that aimed to intensify border control and improve measures to deter and combat cross-border crime, and resulted in the deployment of many thousands of federal, state and municipal police officers as well as military forces. The SBP consisted of two separate pillars, ‘Sentinel’ and ‘Ágata’. The former, led by the Ministry of Justice, aimed to gather permanent intelligence, while the latter was under the control of the Ministry of Defence and had a temporary, impact focused character.[8] Single Ágata operations were region specific and utilised up to 33,000 army, navy and air force personnel, together with 12 ministries and 20 government agencies.[9] Although the drug seizures had significantly increased, the extraordinary measures under the SBP were halted in 2016. After severe criticism from The Federal Court of Audit, especially in relation to issues around corruption and the exorbitant amount of money invested in the plan, the government of Michel Miguel Elias Temer Lulia (2016-2018) was compelled to revoke the SBP. Consequently, the security issue entered the stage of de-securitisation, as the extraordinary measures were replaced by less significant routine border security and the security issue was politically deprived of the emergency label.
It can be stated that the focus on closing borders does not address the country’s fundamental domestic security issues. Therefore, the following question remains: Why does Brazil prioritise illicit drug trafficking over the threat of ever-growing inequality and corresponding poverty concerns? After all, Brazil has long acknowledged the latter as one of the nation’s most pressing matters.[10] The answer could lie in the fact that any approach to address this matter would inevitably require various unpopular fiscal and economic reform policies. Brazil has experienced a long-lasting public debate on the reform of its highly unequal tax system and intricate network of bureaucracy and regulations, which are, arguably, highly attributable to the country’s inequality levels. Brazil’s indirect taxes (ICMS and IPI) are high and it has a mildly progressive income tax. Moreover, there is virtually no tax levy on wealth, inheritances and dividends. Furthermore, the public sector benefits from extraordinary salaries along with abundant privileges, such as early retirements,[11] and public officials are often appointed for life. According to Carlos Kawall, chief economist at Banco Safra and former Treasury Secretary, pension and tax reforms are essential for the country’s future economy.[12]
As the Copenhagen School asserts, security is all about politics. Brazil’s (de-)securitisation process of illicit drug trafficking clearly evidences this. In terms of Brazilian domestic security, it is unclear what the future will bring. Noteworthy in this context, however, is that current President Jair Messias Bolsonaro seems to have won the administrative and pension-reform battle and has proclaimed to have similar ambitions for the country’s tax and judicial systems.[13] Although partly pressured by the magnitude of the after-effects of the financial crisis that struck Brazil in 2014, Bolsonaro’s reforming politics appear, at least to some extent, to be a welcome turn of events. Nonetheless, Brazil’s future success seems to necessitate a more fundamental transformation of attitude, concentrating on the country’s inequality in the broadest sense of the word together with the structural revision of its institutions and governance.
* I am grateful to Caroline Cordeiro Viana e Silva and her colleagues for their extensive help in the maze of the Brazilian systems and translations of the Portuguese language.
Sources
[1] Pedro Henrique Soares Leivas an Anderson Moreira Aristides dos Santos, “Horizontal Inequality and Ethnic Diversity in Brazil: Patterns, Trends, and their Impacts on Institutions.” Oxford Development Studies 46, no. 3 (2018): 348-362.
[2] OECD Economic Surveys, Brazil 2018 (Paris: OECD Publishers, 2018): 25-26.
[3] Barry G. Buzan, Ole Waever, Regions and powers: the structure of international security (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 48-49.
[4] Barry G. Buzan, Ole Wæver, and Jaap De Wilde. Security: A new framework for analysis. (London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998), 21.
[5] Caroline Cordeiro Viana e Silva and Alexsandro Eugenio Pereira, International Security and New Threats: Securitisation and Desecuritisation of Drug Trafficking at the Brazilian Borders. Contexto Internacional, 41, no.1 (2016): 209-234.
[6] The in 2004 adopted Decree n° 5514 (shoot-down law) which allowed Brazil to shoot-down of smuggling-suspected aircraft and the 2006 Law n° 11343 which established new anti-drug legislation are examples hereof.
[7] Cordeiro Viana e Silva and Pereira, International Security and New Threats, 217-219.
[8] Ibid., 224.
[9] Ibid., 226.
[10] Defense White Paper: Livro Branco de Defesa Nacional 2012, 16.
[11] Indiana Tomazelli, “55% dos militares se aposentam com menos de 50 anos.” economia.estadao.com.br. https://economia.estadao.com.br/noticias/geral,55-dos-militares-se-aposentam-com-menos-de-50-anos,70001827530(accessed June 6, 2017)
[12] Rachel Gamarski, “Brazil’s Lost Fiscal Decade Is Timebomb Awaiting Next President.” bnnbloomberg.ca https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/brazil-s-lost-fiscal-decade-is-timebomb-awaiting-next-president-1.1068867 (accessed April 30, 2018)
[13] Globo, “Reforma administrativa: Bolsonaro diz que ainda precisa dar 'polimento' à proposta.” g1.globo.com https://g1.globo.com/politica/noticia/2020/01/03/reforma-administrativa-bolsonaro-diz-que-ainda-precisa-dar-polimento-na-proposta.ghtml (accessed January 3, 2020)