By Last Days Watchman (Reporter)
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By Julio Severo

Former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva is, with his socialist Workers’ Party, facing a multitude of scandals of corruption.

The acts of corruption were measures to get certain results, especially financial, in spite of the laws. This is the heart of the “jeitinho brasileiro,” which is a process used to reach something desired in spite of contrary determinations (laws, orders, rules etc.).

Brazilians face a confusing and inefficient bureaucracy, which affects everybody: rich and poor. The rich use their huge power and influence to bypass difficulties while other people have their own way to practice their “jeitinho brasileiro”: traveling with more luggage than it is allowed, parking in spots for disabled people, forging documents of a businessperson to get a U.S. visa when he is not a businessperson, etc.

In legal and political matters, if a Brazilian wants something that is not permitted, he will try to figure out a loophole until he finds an alternative way.

Since the colonial period, everything in Brazil has been done through a nasty bureaucracy. So people have always to find “alternate ways” in order to survive and get things, whether good or not, done. Both left-wingers and right-wingers suffer this malady in Brazil, but only the former present its ugliest form.

These “alternate ways” are the “jeitinho brasileiro.” In other nations, this is called trickery or corruption. In Brazil, it is called “jeitinho brasileiro,” which can be translated to “the Brazilian way of doing things.”

In a smaller scale, these “alternate ways” produce small corruptions and trickeries. In a greater scale, they produce a Lula, who is being prosecuted for big trickeries and corruption.

The Brazilian people protest and slam the massive use of the “jeitinho brasileiro” by politicians and businesspersons, but they do not give up their own “Brazilian way of doing things.” They do not like it in others, but they tolerate it in themselves. It is a national vice as popular as samba, football and Carnival. It is an ugly face, not only of a former Brazilian president, but also of a people.

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