ABSTRACT
On May 28, 1984, a major São Paulo newspaper described the repercussions of the International Monetary Fund’s recessionary economic policy prescriptions on the Brazilian population as follows:
Seventeen months after the agreement with the International Monetary Fund, Brazil enters into its fourth year of recession, marked by hunger, unemployment, increasing crime, and rising numbers of favelas (zones of urban poverty). The figures are irrefutable and frightening: one in every six wage earners is unemployed; ten million Brazilians receive up to half the legal minimum wage; hunger already figures as one of the ten most frequent causes of infant mortality in the State of São Paulo; the looting of food and gas containers in Greater São Paulo health centers is increasing; and, the infant mortality rate in the favelas of Belo Horizonte is as high as 10 percent (almost the same number as the backlands of the Northeast) (Folha de São Paulo, May 28, 1984).
