Introduction: Brazil at a Crossroads

Abstract

Brazil has a long history of successively winning plaudits and taking flack. The country’s new economic standing is increasingly being noticed, but many still doubt its ability to take the next step and fulfill its potential as a global leader on the international stage. In the 1960s and 1970s, while the country was still under military dictatorship,¹ Brazil’s economic miracle caught the world’s attention, before slowly vanishing with the debt crisis and finally giving way to the “lost decade” of the 1980s.