The motion picture "A second mother" (Que horas ela volta? - What time will she return?), of Anna Muylaert, shows with talent and sensibility the dilemmas faced by a society open to the instauration of an economic-social model that generates equality of opportunities to a significant fraction of the inhabitants of that country. The film tells the story of Val, a live-in "domestic" employee, who has spent a good part of her life separated from her daughter Jessica who lives in Pernambuco. Val is a person who is docile and subservient, who has a clear notion of her "place" within the structure of a well-to-do family of São Paulo. She works in a beautiful and spacious house but nevertheless occupies a tiny room of 3 by 3 metres, practically without ventilation and with a minuscule window from which she can see a service area. The situation of Val is characteristic of thousands of live-in domestic workers who spend an important part of their lives anonymously serving more privileged families.

This scenario of subordination and self-subjection is broken when Val’s daughter comes to take the placement tests for entrance to the Faculty of Architecture of the University of São Paulo. The contrast between Jessica and her mother is striking. While Jessica moves through the house as an equal with the rest of its inhabitants, Val insists on occupying the space that corresponds to her, as a person of second place. She never eats at the same table with her bosses, never uses the swimming pool where Fabinho, the spoiled son of Doña Bárbara, bathes, never eats the special ice cream that is reserved for Fabinho and a long etcétera that the director lays out in sequential planes for the spectators to view.

Jessica, in the eyes of her mother, is too strange, "she thinks that she is the Queen of England with her proud look", refusing to stay in her place and treating the bosses as if they were her equals. What does Jessica represent in the movie? She represents the changes that have taken place in this country in recent years, thanks to the package of programmes of income transfer and the incorporation of the rights of citizenship, so that people, especially the young, feel themselves integrated into a project in which they can put their lives together in better conditions, with better opportunities than those that existed a few decades ago. The Family Package, My House-My Life, the University for All (ProUni), Student Finance Fund (FIES), the Programme of Access to Technical Teaching and Employment (Pronatec), Popular Pharmacy, are among others, the instruments that made increased life expectancy of the population possible and allowed millions of Brazilians to emerge from poverty. Through programmes of municipal aid, thousands of citizens were able to obtain their birth certificates or identity documents. Despite their insufficiencies and their assistentialist character, this is without doubt the most important legacy of the PT governments.

The present interim government of Michel Temer has already announced on repeated occasions a significant reduction in social expenses, especially for education, health and welfare. Analysts of the Bolsa Familiar programme -- an emblematic initiative of the PT administrations -- consider that the policies applied by the Temer government demonstrate a tendency toward a substantial reduction of families assisted. Considering that the latest statistics on poverty show that, in, Brazil 14.3 million families are in this situation and that the programme will benefit only 3.4 million, we can conclude that the families not assisted will amount to 10.9 million. That is to say, from the present level of 97.3 per cent of poor people assisted by the programme this will be reduced to cover barely 23.7 per cent of potential beneficiaries. That means that in terms of family members, approximately 39.3 million people must lose the help that is fundamental to maintain the minimal conditions of daily survival.

The reduction of social policies is not only at the federal level, but is also expressed at the state and municipal levels. For example, the government of the State of Río de Janeiro has not authorized disbursement of funds to help the 211,000 families who live below the poverty line. These are groups who live with less than 100 Reals per month (approximately 30 US dollars). According to the Treasury Secretary of the State, these funds were not deposited due to lack of cash.  Less than 13 million Reals, it is a ridiculous sum considering the huge expenses undertaken by the same State in the package of works destined to prepare the city for the coming Olympic games that will begin in August of this year.

Even the present Secretary of Social Assistance and Human Rights has indicated his total disappointment with this resolution and has threatened to leave office if they do not reverse such an offensive measure that leaves in abandon families that "are extremely poor and depend on this money to ensure daily food on their table".  The tragic irony of this situation is that the State of Río de Janeiro has enormous resources from the extraction of petroleum from the Campos basin, which are not shared with the most vulnerable groups of the population, but instead are destined to finance pharaonic works that have enriched the big contracting companies that win millionaire contracts in exchange for fat tips.

When sociologist Max Weber exposes the fundamentals of the legitimacy of domination, he contemplates three pure forms or ideals of legitimation which are sustained on tradition, charisma or rational legal institution. None of these three modalities confers legitimacy to the present government of Temer. His project is based on a spurious alliance among business conglomerates, a great part of the press, a Supreme Court that doesn't work and a physiological parliament. Both its legality and its legitimacy are questioned by an ever widening part of the citizens of Brazil and the rest of the world. Their mandate after just two weeks is coming unraveled in the face of new denunciations of corruption and leaks that demonstrate its conspiratorial and putschist character. This means the mobilizations will continue to multiply and will surely increase their level of calling and vehemence. The regression that the Temer government pretends to impose goes against the grain of the most transcendental social advances that the Brazilian people have enjoyed in recent decades. The conservative offensive fails to see that determined progressive measures obtained by societies cannot simply be turned backwards. The coming days will be fundamental to know if the reversion towards the past that the present administration aims to introduce will be successful, or will be remembered as a lamentable nightmare in the subjectivity of Brazilians.

(Translated for ALAI by Jordan Bishop)

- Fernando de la Cuadra is a Doctor in Social Sciences. Editor of the Blog Socialismo y Democracia.

URL de este artículo: http://www.alainet.org/es/articulo/177687