elusive-autonomy-brazilian-communications-policy-in-an-age-of-globalization-and-technological-change

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CHAPTER 1 Introduction

During the last authoritarian period of Brazil's political history (1964-1985), the design, implementation and development of the country's systems of electronic mass media and telecommunications obeyed exclusively the terms of an alliance between a techno-bureaucratic regime, under military rule, and a private oligopoly of domestic capital. For the military then in power, this association made possible the unilateral establishment of a national policy of communication based on a narrow conception of "the national interest," with recognizably significant results in infrastructure development. For the private partners in this arrangement, it meant the opportunity to consolidate the Brazilian cultural industry strictly according to commercial interests.

The legacy of this alliance and its shifting course in the light of contemporary trends is my focus in this dissertation. The argument under consideration here is the following: despite a continued structural association between the Brazilian state and the domestic media oligopoly, two factors have altered its current course, possibly undermining the Brazilian government's relative autonomy to set meaningful national policies for the media.1 First, in the wake of the recent acceleration in the globalization of capitalism, with its significant link to rapid technological transformation in communications, changes in the economic and politico-legal conformation of this sector in Brazil (about which the recent breakup of the state monopoly over telecom structures and services is exemplary) have been followed by emerging joint ventures between domestic and foreign capital. I argue that this new situation has redefined the relationship between the sector's state bureaucracy and its private associates, sometimes opening fissures between "nationalist" and "laissez-faire" interests. Second, the re-democratization of Brazilian politics after the military rule, manifested most clearly in the strengthening of political representation (specifically in the National Congress), has broken the monolithic character of the old arrangement by allowing the entry of new actors - including powerful interests previously excluded, those of non-oligopolistic capital, and social and political movements - in the institutional process.

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By "meaningful," I mean policies that accomplish their stated aims (e.g., fostering domestic competition and development, securing the continued health of endogenous Brazilian media industries, creating new businesses and employment opportunities, etc.).

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The suggested connections between these two factors, and the allegedly consequent erosion of the alliance's old basis, are examined in this study through an analysis of trends in political economy of communication, related political advocacy and resulting regulation. Its central subject is the cable television law of 1995: antecedents, actors and process of negotiation, and concurrent and/or complementary legislation. I emphasize the regulatory context of the so-called "new television" - primarily cable TV - in relation to historical antecedents of broadcasting (radio and conventional television), eventually considering current developments in other pay-TV technologies (multichannel multipoint distribution service, MMDS; direct broadcast satellite, DBS/DTH). When necessary, I also approach other converging technologies (telephone and computers), to the extent they have experienced analogous developments. In so doing, I (1) document and interpret present perceptions among government officials, policy makers, business people, public-interest advocates and scholars about the feasibility of regulating new communication technologies in accordance with a coherent national policy based on an explicit conception of "the national interest," in a time of an unprecedented rate of globalization and technological change; and (2) check the validity of those perceptions against current and emerging Brazilian legislation and policies in the communications sector.

Although futuristic speculation is tempting during times of dramatic change, my aim is instead to provide a historical grounding and a contemporary understanding of the foundations and formulation of Brazilian communications policy. This goal can be attained by immersing the inquiry into the broader socioeconomic and political reality out of which this policy is emerging.

FRAME OF ANALYSIS: "THE GLOBAL"

My premise is that Brazilian state/governments2 would currently face difficulties to set articulated communications policies on behalf of the national interest (whatever defined as a distinct interest or set of interests) initially due to specific, exogenous and endogenous, structural trends. Those of a clearly exogenous derivation have basically been articulated by scholars as follows:

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Despite realizing the theoretical difficulties concerning these concepts (especially in their correlation), here I am primarily referring to the institutional embodiment of authority regarding a formally recognized community of people occupying a definite territory - a state - whose issues of common interest are under the political direction of those administrating that authority - a government.

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Technological change. The so-called "developed world" is witnessing a spread of information technologies that threatens the dominance, until recently undisputed, of traditional broadcasting. Cable, personal computers and the direct reception of broadcast satellites, among other new media, quickly became common elements of the domestic environment in the United States. Japan, Canada, and the European Community are following the same path. National and international information networks, connecting millions of computer terminals and/or systems as well as providing a large range of services - from those of an individual character to those attending to governmental and corporate demands - are already covering a considerable portion of the planet.

Nonetheless, the real technological revolution announced in the First World would come from the fusion, now imminent, of the respective spheres of communication and information, that is, between telecommunications, mass media and computer technologies. The expected advent of a "multimedia age" has touched the imagination of millions with its promises of interactive communication and "virtual reality." What has been massively advertised in America, and in other countries in the wake of this wave, is the coming of "the information society," a brave new world in which human relations will tend to increasingly depend on the configurations assumed by the new media. These developments portend significant changes in the ways in which individuals, groups and societies organize and perceive themselves.

Pundits, politicians and industry leaders argue that the new media are inherently "democratic" because of their personalized nature. A much wider range of individual choices, due to a flexible openness intrinsic in these technologies, implies cultural diversity, innovation, and the end of the producer-consumer dichotomy - typical of the "old" media - in its monolithic unilaterality. Although nowadays such an unproblematically optimistic picture is presented as a novelty that quickly becomes commonplace, similar predictions of innovative, openly interactive and inclusive communication, with progressive, emancipatory and/or democratizing effects (having the power to erode centralized, hierarchical and/or authoritarian systems) were uncritically anticipated by academic literature several years ago.3 Beyond such a hyperbolic rhetoric, the new media have in fact threatened the dominance of traditional technologies like broadcast, print and telephone communication, and their distinctly established economic and political interests. Given the centralized character of these interests and

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the challenges posed by the new media, a fierce struggle for the economic and political control of the latest technologies is well under way, with decisive implications for the means through which governments originate or renew regulation. Leading the trend, American telephone, cable, broadcast, computer and entertainment corporate giants, taking advantage of the contemporary deregulatory climate, have undertaken adaptive realignments. With mergers, acquisitions and other measures, these firms are striving for better positions in what will likely become a technologically converged global market.4 These rapid dynamics and the powerful interests involved (as well as the logic of their reproduction) tend to constrain the potential for any attempt to alter generalized rules of this globalizing reality in a specific section of it (in this case, Brazil), according to a particular end (Brazil's national interest). What possibilities and limits countries like Brazil would have - that is, might have - in this context is a crucial question which I explore in this dissertation.

Globalization and the relative erosion of national sovereignty. Some observers have said that the new communication and information technologies, in intensifying processes initiated by the traditional media (operational acceleration, massive generalization, global expansion), have contracted time and space to the point of their collapse; in other words, to the virtual extinction of instantaneity and simultaneity as distinct experiences. David Harvey defines this phenomenon using the concept of "time-space compression": I mean to signal by that term processes that so revolutionize the objective qualities of space and time that we are forced to alter, sometimes in quite radical ways, how we represent the world to ourselves. I use the word 'compression' because a strong case can be made that the history of capitalism has been characterized by speedup in the pace of life, while so overcoming spatial barriers that the world sometimes seems to collapse inwards upon us.5 Once unfolded in its political economy, the contemporary intensification of such a "technophysical" phenomenon can be seen especially in its impacts on the constitution, reproduction, 3 A well-known example of this kind of celebratory discourse about the new media is Ithiel de Sola Pool, Technologies of Freedom (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983). Preceding it, Yoneji Masuda, The Information Society as Post-Industrial Society (Bethesda, Md.: World Future Society, 1980).

4 An insider's perspective on these developments and their legal implications prior to the U.S. 1996 Telecommunications Act is provided by Andrew C. Barrett, former Commissioner of the American Federal Communications Commission (FCC), in his "Shifting Foundations: The Regulation of Telecommunications in an Era of Change," Federal Communications Law Journal 46 (December 1993): 39-62 [46 Fed. Com. L. J. 39].

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maintenance and transformation of social formations, their economies and political and cultural identities. Accordingly, the globalization of technologically converging communication and information systems can only be understood as an inseparable cause and effect of a broader and analogous trend: the consummation of capitalism as the single mode of production on a planetary scale - a process accelerated after the demise of state socialism in the former Soviet Union, and Central and Eastern Europe. This twofold globalization has put in check established conceptions regarding particular spatial-geographic realities, due to more or less dramatic debilitation of related structures and practices of socialization, power and influence. In the words of Castells and Henderson, "The new territorial dynamics ... tend to be organized around the contradictions between placeless power and powerless places, the former relying upon communication flows, the latter generating their own communication codes on the basis of an historically specific territory."6 Examples of deflated spatial concepts are "community," "city," "region," and "nation." In this sense, the articulation of communication policies could no longer be restricted to terms through which any particular place is addressed as a sovereign or autonomous entity in itself - that is, in the case of Brazil, exclusively as a nation-state. Pressures on contemporary nation-states are occurring from contradictory forces corresponding respectively to the rapid globalization of a clearly economic, technological and political nature - namely, capitalism - and to the emergence of reactional responses in the form of localisms usually of a sociocultural nature (defense of traditional values, practices and lifestyles, all with economic, political and technological implications). The stability and strength of these responses (localisms) in the light of the changing conditions of capital and communications is an underlying concern of this study, serving ultimately to orient (normatively) my historical and structural - as well as conjunctural - investigation and analysis.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT: "THE NATIONAL"

Mass communication in Brazil in this century has always reflected and reproduced some of the historically dominant aspects of Brazilian social life: predatory privatism under state favoritism, economic concentration, bureaucratic centralization, political conservatism and 5 David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1989), 240.

6 Manuel Castells and Jeffrey Henderson, "Techno-Economic Restructuring, Socio-Political Processes and Spatial Transformation: A Global Perspective," in Global Restructuring and Territorial Development, Henderson and Castells, eds. (Beverly Hills, Cal.: Sage, 1987), 7.

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clientelism, and social exclusion as the paradoxical result of a hierarchically inclusive order.

Although observers generally agree that these features characterize power relations in Brazil, they avidly dispute the nature, constitution and functions of the Brazilian state throughout history - and, consequently, of its relations with dominant socioeconomic interests in Brazilian society and abroad. This debate mostly follows two intellectual traditions well established in Brazilian contemporary thought.

In the first, of Marxist inspiration, the Brazilian state tends to be seen as epiphenomenal: the encompassing institutional expression of the legal and political superstructure of Brazilian society.

The state has been conditioned, in its existence and form, by the economic structure of society that is, by the social relations of production characteristic of the Brazilian economy which, in spite of historical changes related to the development of corresponding productive forces, have always and ultimately defined the country as a peripheral, dependent formation within the world capitalist system. In this sense, the Brazilian state, as the legal and political expression and agency of the economic interests of the domestic dominant classes and their foreign associates, has generally been described as "agrarian-oligarchic" (before 1930), "developmentist-populist" (from 1930 to 1964), and "modernizing-authoritarian" (after 1964), reflecting the successive historical arrangements between these interests. Even a non-Marxist like Bresser Pereira recognizes the basic socioeconomic nature of such arrangements, translated into state politics and policies (although referring to their native constituents only) in the following passage: Brazilian political history can be told by defining the major political coalitions or class alliances. ... until 1930 an oligarchic political pact prevailed, based on the primary-export development model. From 1930 to 1964 the national-developmentalist or populist pact prevailed, in which the industrial bourgeoisie, the bureaucratic middle class, labor, and sectors of the old oligarchy united around import substitution industrialization. The 1964 authoritarian regime corresponded to the bureaucratic-capitalist pact, which brought together the bourgeoisie, the military, and the civil service and excluded most of the workers and the democratic sectors of the middle class.7

7 Luiz Carlos Bresser Pereira, Economic Crisis & State Reform in Brazil: Toward a New Interpretation of Latin America (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1996), 210-211.

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Octavio Ianni, Rene Dreifuss and Maria Helena Moreira Alves are among the authors with important contributions regarding the role of the state according to this view.8 The second tradition is based on an understanding of the relation between politics and economics as one of interdependency between two realms with distinct logics irreducible to each other (an understanding usually related to the Weberian categorization of authority in the political sphere as corresponding to different forms of law and administration, as well as to specific mechanisms of its own legitimation). In this perspective, the Brazilian state is defined as a patrimonial state - the political extension of patriarchal powers9 - in which powerful "families" have traditionally controlled contexts, processes and outcomes of socioeconomic, political and cultural matters. If in the past these families were extended to embrace their entourages of slaves, guards, priests and judges, today their networks of favor exchanges include employees, officials, politicians and "friends" in general. Their institutional expression par excellence, through which they gain public visibility and fully exercise their power, has been a state thus understood as their patrimony: a privatized, authoritarian, omnipresent and highly hierarchical formation (although splintered at local and regional levels for the accommodation of distinct interests) which, once complexified and consolidated in its routines - that is, once bureaucratized - acquired a logic and dynamics of its own. Synthesizing the view of Raymundo Faoro, the leading proponent of this approach, Riordan Roett presents the backbone of the overall argument: [This] interpretation of Brazilian political development ... emphasizes the power of the state in Brazilian society from the colonial period into the twentieth century.

Faoro stresses the role of the central government bureaucracy in managing the interventionist policies of the patrimonial regime.

Unlimited by popular influence, the patronato politico (patronal political authority of the public sector) established the parameters within which the social and economic structures of Brazilian society

8 It is important to remember that since the first Marxist contemporary works privileging the state as a subject in its own right came out only in the late 1960s and early 1970s (Miliband, Poulantzas), the contribution of Brazilian authors in this regard is relatively recent (except Octavio Ianni). Octavio Ianni, Crisis in Brazil, trans. Phyllis B. Eveleth (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970); Rene Armand Dreifuss, 1964: A Conquista do Estado - Acao Politica, Poder e Golpe de Classe (1964: The Conquest of the State - Political Action, Power and Class Coup), 5th ed. (Petropolis, Brasil: Vozes, 1987); and Maria Helena Moreira Alves, State and Opposition in Military Brazil (Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 1985).

9 In its Weberian sense, patrimonialism refers to a system of traditional domination in which political power is structured and exercised, at the realm of the state, as an extension of patriarchal, family powers.

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evolved. State capitalism provided the major impetus for economic growth; the limited franchise and the elitist domination of public policy-making by the public functionaries, the clergy, the military, and the landowners assured a hierarchical social system that over time stratified society into two groups: upper and lower.10 Although there is a fundamental, irreconcilable difference between the cores of the two perspectives - concerning "what constitutes what," that is, whether the evolution of Brazilian society has ultimately determined the evolution of the Brazilian state (the case of the first approach) or vice versa (the case of the second one) -, here I argue that, to achieve a comprehension as satisfactory as possible of the development of Brazil's communications, it is rather more fruitful, as sociologist and today's President Fernando Henrique Cardoso once suggested - paraphrasing Simon Schwartzman - to understand both views as "reflecting 'a simultaneous process of contradictory development.'"11 This epistemological attitude implies the theoretical recognition of the frequently mere formalistic character of the state-society antinomy, and its consequent methodological supersession through empirical investigation of circumscribable situations in which one realm eventually prevailed - as "a matter of fact" - over the other.

However, with regard to the historical antecedents of this dissertation's subject, "a simultaneous process of contradictory development" seems to be the norm - a process not so contradictory at all.12 In broadcasting, the example of Roberto Marinho's Globo network illustrates this point. Before having the opportunity to build one of the world's largest media empires (starting

10 Riordan Roett, Brazil: Politics in a Patrimonial Society, 4th ed. (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1992), 33. Raymundo Faoro's Os Donos do Poder: Formacao do Patronato Politico Brasileiro (The Owners of Power: Formation of the Brazilian Patronal Political Authority), 8th ed., 2 vols. (Rio de Janeiro: Globo, 1989), first published in 1957, is the classic reference for this argument. Following it, Simon Schwartzman, Sao Paulo e o Estado Nacional (Sao Paulo and the National State) (Sao Paulo: Difel, 1975) and also As Bases do Autoritarismo Brasileiro (The Bases of Brazilian Authoritarianism), 3d ed. (Rio de Janeiro: Campus, 1988). Among the American "Brazilianists" with seminal contributions to this view, Nathaniel H. Leff, Economic Policy-Making and Development in Brazil, 1947-1964 (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1968), and Philippe C. Schmitter, Interest Conflict and Political Change in Brazil (Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press, 1971).

11 Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Autoritarismo e Democratizacao (Authoritarianism and Democratization) (Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1975), 171, quoting an expression from Schwartzman, "Representacao e Cooptacao Politica no Brasil" (Representation and Political Cooptation in Brazil), Dados (Rio de Janeiro) 7 (1970).

12 Sergio Euclides de Souza, "Concessoes de Radiodifusao no Brasil: A Lei como Instrumento de Poder (1932-1975)" (Broadcasting Licenses in Brazil: The Law as an Instrument of Power [1932-1975]) (master's thesis, Universidade de Brasilia, 1990). In this work, I proceed a historical, contextual reconstitution of broadcasting licensing procedures, covering more than four decades. It refers to an "archeology" of the relations between the state and private broadcasters, in which I suggest the double nature of the use of licenses simultaneously as (a) a currency in strictly political bargains, and (b) the legal device for the institutionalization of the double role - economic and ideological of broadcasting in Brazilian society.

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it in the 1960s, when he was already 60 years old), Marinho's major assets were the ownership of O Globo, the most influential newspaper in Rio de Janeiro, a champion of conservative political views linked to corporate interests; and Radio Globo, an AM station based in Rio with nationwide range of reception. Although his participation in the events that led to the 1964 coup d'ĂŠtat was secondary,13 Marinho soon took advantage of a post-coup combination of political complicity and legal laxity: a 1962 Globo-Time-Life agreement, whose terms came to light in 1965, became a highly polemical topic in Brazilian politics in the following years. According to critics, in its beginnings TV Globo was illegally financed and indirectly controlled by Time-Life, an American media conglomerate associated with right-wing Republicans "exclusively interested in maintaining, in countries like ours, anticommunist bases."14 This Cold-War-like agreement, in allegedly violating a constitutional prohibition of foreign capital in Brazilian communication enterprises, was investigated by a disabled National Congress, with no results despite abundant evidence of wrongdoings. In fact, the military regime settled the matter on behalf of Roberto Marinho in 1967 (the year in which a new, authoritarian Constitution came into existence) by paradoxically tightening the laws preventing foreign investment in Brazilian media excepting those cases "previously authorized"...15 By bringing approximately U$ 6 million in direct investments between 1962 and 1966, plus managerial and technical expertise, this association with Time-Life created the initial conditions from which Globo constructed and consolidated its enormous financial, administrative and technological advantage over its competitors in the following three decades.16 As a result, Marinho was able not only to centralize media control but also, through unrestrained capital accumulation, to diversify his businesses with the purpose of multiplying his

13 Dreifuss, 1964, 233.

14 Joao Calmon, O Livro Negro da Invasao Branca (The Black Book of the White Invasion) (Rio de Janeiro: O Cruzeiro, 1966), 215. What makes Calmon an "authoritative" source about this issue is the fact that - as director of Assis Chateaubriand's Diarios Associados (the first Brazilian media conglomerate, with 35 newspapers, two national magazines, 25 radio and 18 TV stations at its peak, decades ago), the founder president of the Brazilian Association of Broadcasting Stations (ABERT), representative at the National Congress, and an active supporter of the 1964 coup d'ĂŠtat - he led a public campaign against the agreement. Beyond the doubtful sincerity of his rhetoric about an "alien invasion," Calmon's concerns regarding the danger of exposing Diarios Associados to an "unfair" competition from an emerging, more agile enterprise backed by a foreign power, were later confirmed.

15 Concerning broadcasting, Law-Decree 236/1967, Articles 4, 6, 7, 8. Decreto-Lei no. 236, de 28 de fevereiro de 1967, publicado no Diario Oficial, Brasilia, 28 de fevereiro de 1967. Souza, "Concessoes de Radiodifusao no Brasil," 167-173.

16 Daniel Herz, A Historia Secreta da Rede Globo (The Secret Story of Globo Network) (Porto Alegre, Brasil: Tche, 1987).

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political power, and vice versa. In providing a comprehensive account of Globo's state of affairs by the early 1990s, Roberto Amaral and Cesar Guimaraes list a series of impressive accomplishments: The Globo [TV] network consists of at least nine wholly owned ... stations ... 74 affiliated or associated stations, and 1,500 ... rebroadcasting stations.

[It] has about 80% of the national audience [which is more than 100 million people]. It reaches 99% of homes with television (about 27 million), covering 98% of the national territory. ... [It] absorbs about 80% of advertising for television and 60% of the total amount of money spent on advertising in the seventh largest advertising market in the world.

The Globo group, active in all branches of journalism and the cultural industry in Brazil, has extended its activities to other countries in Latin America and Europe. It controls O Globo, the largest newspaper in the country, based in Rio de Janeiro; news agencies; and shortwave, medium wave, and FM broadcasting stations throughout the country. Globo also owns advertising and production agencies, and is involved with printing, publishing (comics; fashion; women's magazines; technical, economic, and scientific journals; and books), record companies, the entertainment industry, and the production and commercialization of videos.

What was once a communication concern has grown into a financial conglomerate with branches in insurance ... banking ... agriculture, the food industry, real estate, mining ... healthcare organizations, and electronics and the telecommunications industry ... .17 As illustrated above, despite constituting itself a decisive factor in defining the conditions of Brazil's structurally subordinated existence within the world economy, this kind of conspicuous identity between state and dominant domestic interests, when considered in relation to foreign

17 Roberto Amaral (Vieira) and Cesar Guimaraes, "Media Monopoly in Brazil," Journal of Communication 44, no. 4 (autumn 1994): 28-30. Roberto Marinho's uses of personal power to influence Brazilian politics is the central subject in Venicio A. de Lima's "The State, Television, and Political Power in Brazil," Critical Studies in Mass Communication 5 (1988): 108-128; and also in his "Brazilian Television in the 1989 Presidential Election: Constructing a President," in Television, Politics, and the Transition to Democracy in Latin America, Thomas F. Skidmore, ed. (Washington D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 97-117.

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powers, has historically proved to be quite flexible - and sometimes relatively autonomous, I would argue - in realizing its views of the national interest. This pragmatic flexibility, however, was perceived to be at risk in the early 1960s due to its high socioeconomic costs for those traditionally excluded of such arrangements - the dispossessed urban and rural masses and their allies, then increasingly organized.18 The imminent clash of contradictory interests finally prompted preventive action on behalf of the status quo.

The March 31, 1964 coup d'ĂŠtat marked the beginning of the political consolidation of a historical victory - the triumph of the "liberal-developmentists" of the right over the "nationaldevelopmentists" of the left. Since the end of World War II, these two comprehensive ideological camps had been fiercely fighting for the conquest of hearts and minds in favor of their respective visions and models for Brazil's development. In 1964, the clear structural advantage of liberaldevelopmentism as the banner of the already emerged local industrial bourgeoisie and its main allies (the state upper bureaucracy, civil and military; sectors of the urban middle-classes; foreign corporations; and the decision-making centers of world capitalism) was translated into the authoritarian takeover of the government. The core of this doctrine is well-known: the best path for development - then understood as basically a linear, progressive, noncontradictory transition from an agrarian-export economy to an industrialized one - was to accelerate it through the full extension of capitalist rationality to all productive activities, coupled with the full insertion of the national economy in the capitalist world system. Eventual sociocultural disruptions along this process should be perceived as unavoidable, sometimes imperative side effects; in the end, development would pay off. In order to make the adaptation of liberal principles to economies of incipient accumulation workable, liberal-developmentists curiously advocated an omnipresent, strong intervening role for the state as the fosterer of private accumulation through massive investments in infrastructure, the creator of state enterprises to realize such investments, the generous subsidizer of private companies (domestic as well as foreign), and the tight regulator and repressive controller of the workforce.19

18 Along this century, the Brazilian political left has diffusely comprehended minor opposition parties, organized urban workers and peasants, part of middle-class state and private employees, sectors of the Catholic Church, lowranking soldiers, intellectuals and artists, professors and students.

19 Guido Mantega, A Economia Politica Brasileira (The Brazilian Political Economy), 4th ed. (Sao Paulo: Polis; Petropolis: Vozes, 1987), 16-17. During the 1950s and 1960s, this quite "pragmatic" - to say the least - adaptation of neoclassical liberalism (Marshall, Jevons, Walras, Schumpeter) to Brazilian underdevelopment, in usually fitting the needs of those in power, came to acquire an "empirical" relevance: some of its advocates - Roberto Campos, and later Antonio Delfim Netto and Mario Henrique Simonsen - built up their reputations as top executives of the military regime's economic policies.

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The liberal-developmentist recipe was based on a quite distinct assessment of what its critics were seeing - unfettered accumulation without socially inclusive structural reforms in the periphery of world capitalism as dependent development of this periphery in relation to the system's center (the developed countries); that is, as chronic underdevelopment of the social majorities at the margins of the capitalist world system. National-developmentists were trying to comprehend the postwar period from the viewpoint of peripheral nations by investigating features of these national societies which would express external relations of domination,20 and therefore proposing and/or supporting developmental policies implying what Samir Amin defines as "delinking ... the submission of external relations to the logic of internal development, the opposite of structural adjustment of the peripheries to the demands of the polarizing worldwide expansion of capital."21 From this perspective, national-developmentism's most enduring contribution was the import-substitution model, a policy outcome from that theoretical reflection. Its main proponent, Celso Furtado, headed the Ministry of Economic Planning created by the later deposed President Goulart.22 Pragmatically incorporated by liberal-developmentism then and after, this strategy was a successful attempt to decrease Brazil's dependency on the world market by spurring state-led

20 As Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto later stressed in their Dependency and Development in Latin America, trans. Majory Mattingly Urquidi (Berkeley, Cal.: University of California Press, 1979): We conceive the relationship between external and internal forces as forming a complex whole whose structural links are not based on mere external forms of exploitation and coercion, but are rooted in coincidences of interests between local dominant classes and international ones, and, on the other side, are challenged by local dominant groups and classes. In some circumstances, the networks of coincident or reconciled interests might expand to include segments of the middle class, if not even of alienated parts of working classes. In other circumstances, segments of dominant classes might seek internal alliance with middle classes, working classes, and even peasants, aiming to protect themselves from foreign penetration that contradicts their interests. External domination in situations of national dependency ... implies the possibility of the "internationalization of external interests." (xvi) 21 Samir Amin, Re-Reading the Postwar Period: An Intellectual Itinerary, trans. Michael Wolfers (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1994), 166.

22 Arguably Brazil's foremost economist, Celso Monteiro Furtado was one of the leading names at the United Nations' Economic Commission for Latin America (CEPAL), created in 1948 and headquartered in Santiago, Chile. CEPAL housed the articulation of the so-called Latin American structuralist approach to peripheral (under)development, under the leadership of Raul Prebisch. According to this view, underdeveloped countries, by lacking dynamic productive structures (with primary-export commodities dependent on fluctuations in external markets, scarce or inexistent techno-industrial development, weak internal integration, low accumulation and productivity), have their trade exchanges increasingly deteriorated in favor of the more expensive industrialized goods they have to import - a result of their lack of bargaining power. Such a price imbalance detrimental to primary commodities prevent their producers from accumulate and improve their relative position, thus perpetuating underdevelopment. In order to overcome it, the adoption of import-substitution policies by peripheral nations was understood as imperative by CEPAL economists.

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import-substitution industrialization oriented to the domestic market; ultimately, it became the guideline of Brazilian industrialization.23 Articulated from such an ideological antagonism,24 an increasing political polarization took place, culminating in the 1964 coup d'ĂŠtat.25 The military regime, by advancing a liberal-developmentism explicitly based on an economic "tripod" - a comprehensive alliance of state, foreign and private domestic capitals involving a coordinated division of labor between them, aiming at accelerating industrial development in strategic sectors of Brazilian economy26 - brought the communications structures and services under national ownership and control due to "national security" reasons while leaving telecom equipment to be supplied by multinational corporations. Concerning the design for the sector's infrastructural development, in order to make possible the implementation of a reliable system covering a country of continental dimensions, according to the military's view of the

23 Its adoption by conservative policy making resulted from a generally perceived vulnerability of Brazil's export markets, first evidenced by the global depression of the 1930s, and later by the disruption of international trade during World War II. 24 I am aware that the bipolar way I introduce the terms of this antagonism - although confirmed politically by the events prior to the coup d'ĂŠtat - in fact oversimplifies a complex picture regarding the economic views debated in those years. For example, Mantega identifies two other analytical models disputing hegemony on the left side of the political spectrum at that time: the "Bourgeois-Democratic" model and the "Capitalist Underdevelopment" model. The first, espoused by the Brazilian Communist Party, was inspired by Lenin's 1905 analysis of czarist Russia, later updated by the Third International in its proposal of a bourgeois-democratic revolution for backward countries. The second, coming from the works of Andre Gunder Frank, Caio Prado Jr. and Rui Mauro Marini, based on the American New Left's diagnosis of underdevelopment (Baran, Sweezy), was influenced by the Fourth International's Trotskyist theory of "permanent revolution." A Economia Politica Brasileira, Chapters 3-5.

25 Dreifuss, 1964, is by far the best account of the civilian-military conspiracy that deposed the constitutional government of Joao Goulart. Meticulously documented, it is a Gramscian dissection of the plot in its context, motives, actors and circumstances.

According to Alves, State and Opposition, the 1964 coup d'ĂŠtat marked the beginning of a series of cycles of repression: The fist cycle, in 1964, had concentrated on purging persons politically linked to past populist governments, particularly the Goulart government. Direct physical repression was limited to workers and peasants, in a class-based strategy to eliminate resistance in those sectors. The second cycle (1965-1966) ... aimed at finishing the purges in the state bureaucracy and electoral offices: it did not include direct and widespread use of violence.

The third cycle [1968-...] was characterized by extensive purges in representative political organs, universities, information networks, and the state bureaucratic apparatus, accompanied by large-scale military maneuvres using physical violence against all classes indiscriminately. Challenges to the state from the middle-classes, particularly the student movement, had convinced the forces of repression that areas of 'pressure' existed among all classes. (103) 26 Peter Evans, Dependent Development: The Alliance of Multinational, State and Local Capital in Brazil (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979). Evans studied this triple alliance in its complexity, tensions and variations, focusing on the petrochemical, mining, pharmaceutical and textile industries.

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national interest,27 a strict division of labor between the state and domestic private broadcasters (in the spirit of the policy just mentioned) with mutual incentives was established.

By creating a monopoly over telecommunications structures and services (telephony, data transmission), and thus over the commercialization of their use, the state was able to heavily invest in the development of the system's infrastructure, aiming at national integration in geopolitical terms. A series of coordinated initiatives materialized it: in 1965, EMBRATEL (the Brazilian Telecommunications Enterprise), the state long-distance carrier, was created, and Brazil joined an international satellite system, INTELSAT; in 1967, the Ministry of Communications (MINICOM) was instituted to centralize the implementation of the governmental telecom policy, and the construction of a microwave network covering the country was initiated (its backbone was concluded in 1970); finally, the Brazilian Telecommunications Company, TELEBRAS, the state holding company of the national telecom system, came into existence in 1972.

Once this

infrastructure was set, a domestic private oligopoly (the Globo group in the lead) took control over the most promising area of electronic media not monopolized - broadcast television - and, by operating in network formation, was able to promote the integration of a national market by tightening expanding production-consumption cycles on a national scale through advertising.28 In this sense, what the military perceived as the historical opportunity for Brazil's steady development as a strong nation-state, their civilian partners in the media concretized as the executors of the country's market integration: the expansion and consolidation of the Brazilian cultural industry as implying a twofold homogenization of people's consciousness as (political) subjects and consumers (economic "agents"). Therefore, here Cardoso's argument, mentioned before, regarding Brazilian politics and economics as "reflecting a simultaneous process of

27 This view - that Brazil should emerge as a world power through short-term capital accumulation irrespective of long-term socioeconomic consequences - was formulated as the Doctrine of National Security and Development, a geopolitical set of ideas cementing liberal-developmentism (turned into state capitalism) and internal security against communism. The Doctrine, which provided the ideological justification for the regime's repressive politics and economics "on behalf of development," is presented in Chapter 3. For an understanding of its rationale according to its main theorist, Golbery do Couto e Silva, Conjuntura Politica Nacional: O Poder Executivo & Geopolitica do Brasil (National Political Conjuncture: The Executive Power & Geopolitics of Brazil), 3d ed. (Brasilia: Editora Universidade de Brasilia, 1981). For a criticism of it and congeners, Joseph Comblin, A Ideologia da Seguranca Nacional: O Poder Militar na America Latina (The Ideology of National Security: The Military Power in Latin America) (Rio de Janeiro: Civilizacao Brasileira, 1978).

28 Examples of comprehensive analyses about the military-broadcasters partnership and its impact on the development of the Brazilian cultural industry are Sergio Caparelli, Televisao e Capitalismo no Brasil (Television and Capitalism in Brazil) (Porto Alegre: L&PM, 1982); Sergio Mattos, The Impact of the 1964 Revolution on Brazilian Television (San Antonio, Tex.: Klingensmith Independent Publisher, 1982); and Renato Ortiz, A Moderna Tradicao Brasileira: Cultura Brasileira e Industria Cultural (The Modern Brazilian Tradition: Brazilian Culture and Cultural Industry) (Sao Paulo: Brasiliense, 1988).

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contradictory development" (not so contradictory, I would insist), seems to find again a convincing illustration.

In spite of success in its own terms (the development of sophisticated systems of telecommunications and electronic mass media; the advent of an advanced cultural industry), by the late 1980s the state-media industry alliance was facing considerable opposition due to the state's exhaustion as a major entrepreneur (needless to say, this called into question developmentism as a whole). A then sclerotic military regime had already died in 1985, with its national project eroded by the crises of external and internal debts inherited from an overspending development model, the state's loss of coordinating power over the economy, and the deepening of the social crisis.29 Accordingly, a series of concurring external and internal economic factors (world recession, decreasing global investment, Brazil's debt crisis, the state's bankruptcy, infrastructure decay) plus accompanying ideological and political responses to them (rising neoliberalism, First Worldsponsored monetarist policies for the Third World debt, the end of Brazil's military rule, political re-democratization) must be recognized as having decisively contributed to the state-private media alliance's structural transformation. In this study, I consider this transformation particularly in relation to (a) the already introduced trends of globalization and technological change, since they are understood here in terms of their direct implications for the establishment of national policies regarding new communication technologies, specifically cable television, and (b) Brazil's redemocratized institutional politics after 1985 - especially since the 1987-1988 Constituent Assembly, which resulted in the 1988 Constitution - in which those general trends interact with the particularities of a widened range of related domestic interests. As I try to demonstrate in my analysis of the recent passage of the country's first cable law, the old alliance is becoming unrecognizable in the light of technological change, the rapid globalization of capital, and the rearrangement of its basis in response to old and new emerging interests in a reopened political arena.

A CASE STUDY ABOUT CHANGE

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On January 6, 1995, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso signed the first law regulating cable television in Brazil. After a long, checkered and difficult process of negotiation involving government, business and professional sectors in communication, and other organized groups, a comprehensive political agreement for the regulation of cable television in the country was finalized. For the first time in Brazilian history, an important public service was disciplined as a result of the active participation of civil, labour and popular movements, instead of being merely an outcome of closed administrative arrangements between governmental agencies and privately owned utility companies. This study provides a reconstitution of this process - its antecedents, actors and outcomes - in the light of what it could anticipate in terms of analogous, more democratic developments, considering the factors already introduced.

As an example of emerging interests exercising relevant roles in Brazilian politics after the country's institutional re-democratization, the involvement of the National Forum for the Democratization of Communication (referred to here as either "the Communication Forum" or "the Forum") was decisive for defining the inclusive nature of the negotiation process, and for some of its results. A "rainbow" organization born in 1991, formed by more than two hundred national, regional and local trade unions, and various social, political, religious, cultural, ethnic and grassroots associations, the Communication Forum represents today the best hope for the establishment of transparent, democratized, more broadly public coalition for media access and control than ever has existed in Brazil.

In a historical perspective, the Forum is the contemporary organizational expression of forces that have waged a chronically adverse political struggle against the state-media industry alliance. In a related sense, it is also the result of a long process of critical reflection starting in the 1960s. Since then, among the factual milestones in which the issue "communication" gained unusual relevance and was subject to criticism and/or political action, the following must be counted: (1) the 1964 military coup d'ĂŠtat and its immediate impact (censorship) on broadcasting and press laws; (2) the discussion surrounding the already mentioned Globo-Time-Life agreement; (3) the private character of the use of a telecom infrastructure then built by a state aiming for national integration; and (4) the denouncement of "cultural imperialism." During the 1970s, that critical reflection privileged (5) the expansion and consolidation of the Brazilian cultural industry; and (6) the debate at UNESCO regarding a new world information and communication order (NWICO). In the 1980s, the critique's maturation came with (7) the articulation of the demand for

29 The literature about the 1980s as "the lost decade" in terms of economic performance is vast. A recent critical review of developmentist models and policies (and explanations for their collapse) is the already mentioned Bresser Pereira's (Brazil's present Minister of Administration and State Reform) Economic Crisis & State Reform in Brazil.

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media democratization as a topic of Brazil's general agenda for re-democratization; and later with (8) the theme "communication" in the 1987-1988 Constituent Assembly.

Throughout these decades, such a growing comprehension about the need for a substantive30 democratization of mass media systems in Brazil as condition and consequence of the country's broader democratization beyond the formalism of its institutions, when translated into practice, faced the hardships of political repression, economic exclusion and cultural marginalization. Thus, media democratization presented poor results at the political level - a frustrating reminder of the power and strength of the old alliance in communications. However, due to the reasons introduced before, recent structural changes may be indicating new opportunities for more effective intervention. The process that led to the 1995 cable television law reveals - to a considerable extent, I would argue - the advent of a new stage in the struggle for democratizing communication in Brazil.31 A particular development during the cable negotiation process directly informs the hypothesis articulated here, concerning a potentially disruptive structural shift within the old alliance between the state and the domestic media oligopoly. A tactical collaboration was achieved between the Communication Forum and TELEBRAS, the Ministry of Communications' giant holding company of the Brazilian telecom system, which resulted in a comprehensive amendment proposal to the cable bill then in discussion. What is especially revealing about this unprecedented realignment by TELEBRAS (against the private oligopoly's interests) is that by 1993 its bureaucracy was concerned with proposed changes in the Brazilian Constitution that might have ended in the breakup of the state monopoly over telecommunications structures and services - that

30 Regarding communication, its substantive democratization has been defined in Brazil as referring not only to widened access to media information and/or consumption, but also and mostly to the participation of the public(s) through mechanisms under its (their) own control - in the production of media forms and contents.

31 I decided to write this dissertation in the first person ("I") for two related reasons. First, my education in journalism/communication was defined by the democratizing struggle: I earned my bachelor's (1981) and master's (1990) degrees from the Department (later Faculty) of Communication at the University of Brasilia (UnB/FAC), which has always been a central institution in that process. I also integrated the group which launched the cable negotiation in 1991 (just before coming to the United States for the doctorate). Therefore, I am truly part - agent and product - of the subject under scrutiny.

Second and concurrently, since the ultimate goal of this research is the promotion of subjectively-oriented change by (among other factors) the researcher's active engagement in it, the question of objectivity acquires a quite distinct dimension: the observer's desires, intentions and plans are constitutive, by his own design, of the reality observed. I am a Brazilian citizen with a reasonably defined conception of the world, and with a specific purpose in this study. I speak from a determined space, time and perspective, and believe that the best way to avoid the trap of naive objectivism - that is, the kind of unaware subjectivism typical of empirical-positivist approaches - is to identify, as much as possible, the contradictory implications of my subjectivity (its virtues and deficiencies) confronting the need for objective conditions for change in Brazil.

In this sense, to write here in the first person is a much required departure point.

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is, TELEBRAS monopoly. Three years later, such fears were confirmed by further developments.

Nonetheless, the Forum-TELEBRAS association, however temporary, signaled that the good old days of an unproblematic relationship between the state and domestic exclusionary capital were nearly over, and that this trend continues. The Communication Forum-TELEBRAS partnership, and the way it illustrates my argument about its rationale, are highlighted in this study.

Although the cable law is proving to be a precarious instrument in regulating the industry according to its stated principles, due to the currently weak political economy of efforts to implement it (which I believe reflects the contemporary ambiguity of a state under pressure from endogenous and exogenous forces), I argue that this and related laws pertaining to the ongoing regulation of new communication technologies test and reflect both the limits and possibilities of the globalization of capital and technological innovation, in an environment of open political confrontation between contradictory interests.

If on one hand present tendencies in political advocacy and resulting legislative change allow and/or invite transnational capitals to become a determining factor in the redefinition of the economic basis of the Brazilian communications industry, probably intensifying old exclusory implications typical of cultural industries (oligopolization, politico-ideological manipulation, cultural commodification and marginalization), on the other hand they may give the opportunity for the democratic forces to make strategic and tactical alliances with thwarted state interests (gaining leverage within state institutions) and/or excluded private enterprises against, for example, oligopolistic corporate takeovers of state infrastructures. Such a possible redistribution of power among an increasing number of interested parties might ultimately open the way for new options in the democratizing process. Even though this potential for power distribution is now severely limited (as my analysis shows), revised conceptions of "the national interest" and "democratic communication," then conceived to contain a globalizing capital that undermines national independence and autonomy, could still be re-calibrated into consistent, effective, and more democratic national policies governing the means of public communication.

HYPOTHESIS

As noted before, the hypothesis I test in this study refers to an ongoing structural shift within the alliance between the Brazilian state and a domestic private oligopoly in the communications sector. I argue that this shift is irremediably transforming this alliance as it has constituted itself since the 1964 military coup d'ĂŠtat, and survived in its structural links after the

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1985 re-democratization. The old alliance represents an association whose power and narrow purposes made possible, during a long period, the unilateral establishment of a national policy of communication. This alliance sought national geopolitical integration on behalf of the national interest (then conceived as a combination of internal security and capitalist development) through the creation, expansion and consolidation of a national market. I propose that two specific, related factors have eroded this alliance's structural basis as it existed, and thus undermined, in principle, the country's ability to set effective national communications policies.32 The first factor is the coming of contemporary globalization - its logic and dynamics - to reorganize the communications sector in Brazil. This globalization refers to a new stage of capitalist expansion and accumulation, a technologically driven process which seems to "demand" the liberalization of productive structures and relations (de-regulation, flexibilization and privatization). In this sense, the politico-legal context surrounding the breakup of the state monopoly over telecommunications in 1995 has intensified the formation of joint ventures between foreign firms and domestic enterprises to own, control and explore the existing structures and services, as well as new technologies. Despite a common, indisputable recognition regarding both the state's growing difficulty in updating its communications systems and the urgent need of increasing investments in the sector, here I argue that its privatization - always considered a controversial matter in the light of national interest concerns - changes definitely the configuration of the old alliance's interests.

For the sake of analytical clarification, with regard only to the "old" players (the entry of newcomers is the second factor's topic), such interests may be understood as in principle divided into two primary camps according to their rhetoric. On one side, the "nationalists" - mostly segments of the state bureaucracy in telecommunications (TELEBRAS) and their class organizations - were maintaining that, in these times of globalization and technological change, the state must keep a dominant presence in areas sensitive to the national security and/or crucial for the national development (including communications) to pursue the national interest. On the other side, the "laissez-faire" advocates - segments of the state telecom bureaucracy (MINICOM), the private media oligopoly, their domestic and foreign clients and associates - contending that the new global reality has rendered regressive and/or counterproductive any attempt to set communication policies (as well as policies in general) not in accordance with contemporary neoliberal economics,

32 Needless to say, I do not see any necessary causality between authoritarianism and the power to set autonomous policies. As I already suggested concerning distinct perspectives, what the Brazilian case indicates may arguably be the contrary: a connection - although neither necessary - between authoritarianism and dependency.

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which prescribe no entrepreneurial participation of the state in the economy, and minimal state regulatory oversight.

The second factor refers to the re-democratization of Brazilian politics since the end of the military rule in 1985. This process, in reopening the institutions for political representation to an extent never observed before in the country's history, has strengthened their role and autonomy.

Once the legislative branch of government - the National Congress - fully recovered its powers, the exclusory, monolithic character of the old dominant interests (in communication as much as in other areas) was challenged by the entry of new actors and interests - especially those of social movements - in the institutional political arena.

Concerning communications, the new Constitution reinforced this process decisively. From the new Constitution, the National Congress gained unprecedented constitutional power over communication policies (which until 1988 were the exclusive domain of the executive branch of government - the Presidency and MINICOM). Since 1988, the Congress has been a privileged space for discussion and definition of these policies, and such an institutional shift not only enabled the broader negotiation that resulted in the 1995 cable law. It is my argument in this study that the Congress' new responsibilities for communication, by bringing decision making powers to a sphere of inclusive political representation and participation, have allowed the emergence of a politicoinstitutional debate about the future of Brazilian communications - particularly with regard to new technologies.

It is in this respect that the second factor is empirically related to the first one. The discussion about the future of Brazil's communications, by taking place in a widened and empowered institutional arena, at a time when crucial issues as "globalization" and "technological change" are still unsettled, has brought on new alignments involving traditional and recent political players. On the "nationalist" side, a tacit, uneasy circumstantial coincidence of positions between holders of the extinct regime (military and state bureaucratic sectors; those dependent upon patrimonial politics) and their former enemy (the once marginalized Brazilian left) seems to have occurred. On the "laissez-faire" side, on the contrary, the mood is distinct: an unproblematic marriage between domestic and transnational oligopolistic capitals is occurring naturally due to the structural identity of their interests, blessed by the Cardoso Administration and its current "cosmopolitan" supporters - the old dominant classes, their middle-strata associates, plus those of all extractions convinced of the contemporary techno-global utopia.

At this moment, the laissez-faire position has the upper hand because of its ideological dominance: automatic adherence to a global(izing) worldview, combined with an unquestioning reliance upon the liberating power of new technologies, is the call of the day. The virtual

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impossibility of this ideology be translated into a consensual conception of the national interest explicitable as such - that is, as an interest or set of interests generalizable enough to become distinguishable (in its benefits) from other interests - from which a coherent national communications policy could be established, is certainly an assumption of mine in this study.

Nevertheless, it is also my assumption here that realignments of the kind introduced above reflecting structural transformations underlying and undermining power relations as previously constituted - create new opportunities for political intervention.

METHOD, OBJECTS AND PROCEDURES

Is there in fact a structural shift within the historical alliance between the Brazilian state and the domestic media oligopoly which is changing its configuration? If so, what is the nature and extension of this shift? Considering what has been presented up to this point, to what extent does this shift in principle compromise the relative autonomy once enjoyed by the Brazilian state to set national communication policies?

In this case study of national communications policy making in an age of rapid globalization and technological transition, I face these questions challenged by the need to provide answers which ought to be not only analytically convincing, but also politically reasonable (promising, if possible). In presenting the case of cable television regulation in Brazil, I (a) reconstitute historically and contextually the formation and evolution of the old alliance (its linkage, components, relations, contradictions, processes and outcomes at legal and policy levels); and (b) identify and demonstrate both its current erosion (due to the factors already introduced) and consequent implications for national autonomy at the level in which structural, objectified realities are reflected in, recognized and faced by self-conscious agents with subjective interests, endowed with powers to make or influence policy decisions. Therefore, causal connections between globalization, technological change, re-democratization and the structural shift within the old alliance, and between these developments and Brazil's current degree of autonomy to set communication policies on behalf of the national interest, are seen through the empirical prism of the mechanisms and processes of political advocacy, and subsequently assessed in relation to resulting legislative change.

To make these connections and to render this assessment as reliable and valid as possible, I conducted field work in Brazil between June and August, 1994 (preliminary research), and between September, 1996, and February, 1997. Its contents can be described as follows:

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- Bibliography: I reviewed the recent Brazilian academic literature, both theoretical and conceptual, on globalization and technological change, particularly writings in which these trends are related to communications. One dimension of their relevance for this study is the extent to which they reflect (or not) a characteristically "Brazilian" - in the sense of "national" or "local" perception of such developments. In a more factual and/or conjunctural level, I also followed these developments as they were registered in the Brazilian press (main newspapers and magazines) as well as by the interests involved (house organs, newsletters, etc.), especially regarding the cable television issue. These registers not only allowed me to reconstitute factually the recent history and changes under way in Brazilian communications, but also to witness the character of public debate over these matters.33 - Interviews: twenty-one key players (or observers) in the process that led to the 1995 cable television law (state bureaucrats, representatives at the National Congress, business advocates, trade unionists, private consultants, scholars) gave me their perspectives in personal interviews I conducted on the cable case, and also on globalization, technological change, the national interest and (the possibility of) national communication policies. Typically, these were one- or two-hour interviews with open-ended questioning. Apart from their importance for constructing the basic facts, these interviews are first-hand accounts of past, current and prospective opportunities for political intervention in Brazilian communications.

- Legal and policy references: here I refer basically to legislation and policy documents that resulted from /constituted the processes which are the subject of this study (preceding and existing laws and regulations, bills and regulatory proposals, policy statements, official reports, etc.). The 1995 cable television law, and related and/or complementary legislation (the 1988 Constitution's Chapter of Social Communication; broadcasting, subscription television and telecom regulations; and cable administrative dispositions), are the legal objects privileged in this dissertation.

My approach is to use the bibliographic information to provide the contextual (theoretical/structural as well as factual/conjunctural) frame within which policy makers' subjective wills (and perceptions of their possibilities) - as revealed mainly in the interviews - are confronted with their various degrees of objective (current and prospective) realization - that is, with existing and coming legislation and policies regarding communications. Therefore, higher or lower degrees of objective realization by subjective wills endowed with power to do so, identifiable through

33 Unless indicated otherwise, I am entirely responsible for the translation of the texts originally in Portuguese presented in this dissertation.

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textual analysis,34 tend to indicate (a) the extent to which gaps and contradictions between such efforts and their outcomes point to /reflect the demise of the post-1964 exclusory "consensus" which once guided the unilateral establishment, in Brazil, of a national policy of communication based on a defined (although quite narrowly) conception of the national interest; and (b) the possibility, now in an inclusive (thus pluralized) political environment, of the achievement of a minimal consensus between contradictory interests from which both policy and conception could emerge in a coherent, feasible - at this time, hopefully more democratic - form. This would suggest the prospect of Brazilian society, organized as a nation-state and through its institutional means, coming to gain and democratically exercise an unprecedented autonomy with regard to a crucial dimension of social life. Such would also be the essential value added by this work to the existing literature about Brazilian communications, globalization and technological transition - more precisely, to the knowledge of those who refuse to think these phenomena as "natural forces" impervious to conscious, deliberate, meaningful - in one word, human - intervention.

Finally, concerning globalization and technological change as the subjects of an exogenous derivation approached in this study, a last observation is necessary. My argument is informed by historical and contemporary theoretical and empirical work which addresses the relationship between communications and political economy at the international level (as well as the ideological rhetoric about it, as already introduced). My expectation is that checking subjective perceptions in Brazil regarding the global scenario - especially those about the conditions of the country's insertion in "the new world order" - against objective tendencies in Brazilian communications legislation and policies would also point out the argument's pertinence.

Therefore, here I relate Brazil's domestic developments to globalizing forces and relations in the political economy of communication to the extent to which these globalizing factors "explain" such local developments. Eventually, I compare aims of Brazilian communications regulation to parallel and/or divergent aims dealing with similar questions in the United States (and secondarily Europe), given the developed nations' decisive influence on patterns of communication policy worldwide - more specifically, on policy making committed to the internationalization of capital in the sector. In this sense, I consider the role played by these countries and their industries in shaping the formation of a new global communications policy regime. My concerns with the latter issue also focus on the role of international bodies operating on a global stage - the

34 Here, I refer to the identification and analysis of consonant and dissonant terms from a comparison between the policy makers' manifested perceptions, intentions, explanations and justifications regarding the subject(s) in question, and the legal results of their efforts - that is, the law in its explicit character of an institutionalized deliberation with specified normative functions.

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International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the World Bank (BIRD), and the World Trade Organization (WTO). While comparative data from these sources and claims about their hegemony do not constitute a primary subject in this study, they provide a necessary grounding for understanding some of the critically important externalities that have been influential on Brazilian communications policy making in recent history.

CHAPTER STRUCTURE

Chapter 2: "Globalization in Brazil: Recent Interpretations." A literature review (of academic and non-academic materials, structural/theoretical as well as conjunctural/factual analyses) of how this now pervasive debate "arrived" and has evolved in Brazil - its form and content as unfolded by recognized Brazilian authors - in the light of current international developments, and the country's "responses" to them.

Chapter 3: "The National Interest: Communications in the Military Regime and After." A historical reconstitution of the state-media industry alliance - its origins, evolution, interests, contradictions and outcomes. The military's Doctrine of National Security and Development regarding communications, the expansion and consolidation of the Brazilian cultural industry, and the resulting increased concentration of media ownership and control in Brazil. Institutional redemocratization, the emergence of new political actors and (the promise of) democratization of communication. "Communications" in the 1987-88 Constituent Assembly, and the Constitution's Chapter of Social Communication.

Chapter 4: "Cable Television in Brazil: A Case Study About the Opportunity of Change."

The cable issue in Brazil - its antecedents in the 1970s (first attempts to regulate and implement the service) and evolution until the late 1980s. The 1991-95 cable negotiation process - context, dynamics, interests, actors and proposals.

Chapter 5: "The 1995 Cable Television Law and New Media Regulation: Prospects." Law 8,977/1995 - its form, content, philosophy, hierarchy, range and applicability. The law - its possibilities and limits - according to its makers and observers. Related and/or complementary legislation (MMDS, satellite, the cable administrative regulation) and corporate developments as

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anticipating the coming environment of subscription television (and multimedia technologies) in Brazil.

Chapter 6: "Conclusion: The National Interest and the Future of Brazilian Communications Policy." Following the breakup of the state monopoly over telecommunications, governmental initiatives to restructure the sector in accordance with transnational directives (a new general telecom law, the creation of a regulatory organ, and the privatization of TELEBRAS). A closing, critical overview of the issues presented, focusing on what the cable television case suggests about (a) the re-configuration of the state-media industry alliance in an age of globalization and technological change; and (b) Brazil's prospects concerning autonomous communication policies based on a renewed, democratic conception of "the national interest."

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CHAPTER 2 Globalization in Brazil: Recent Interpretations

"Globalization" has become a pervasive, fascinating and disturbing issue in contemporary Brazil. It came to the surface of public debate - more precisely, its lexicon started to invade the quotidians of millions of Brazilians with TV sets - in the wake of the 1989 events, especially following the fall of the Berlin Wall. The demise of state socialism in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe would have not only marked the end of the Cold War and the expansion and relative consolidation of Western geopolitical interests across the globe, but ultimately established the historical victory of a widely variable (yet essentially specific) way of organizing human life whose material basis is the capitalist mode of production. Once this dramatic news arrived in Brazil, with the facts described by observers as milestones in the history of civilization, disparate attempts to articulate their implications for the country and the world immediately took place.

Since then, the commonly perceived implication of those events - globalization - has consensually been understood (in principle correctly, I would argue) as the final, boundless expansion of a particular logic underlying human relations. Traditionally, Brazilians often referred to capitalism as a lei do vil metal ("the law of filthy lucre," the unfettered rule of money).35 In Brazil and elsewhere, globalization became a buzzword synthesizing widespread but contradictory impressions and feelings regarding a complex subject thus turned palatable to common sense. Frequently, the result of such a problematic blending is a picture ultimately justified in itself, although contradictorily optimistic.36 For example, globalization's most feared aspect, mass unemployment (with all its likely consequences such as rampant poverty, social marginalization and unrest, growing gap between the rich and the poor, etc.), is usually presented 35 In societies of Catholic heritage, the once hegemonic cultural discourse about money always stressed its ultimate evil, corruptive character (as a result of an ontological incompatibility between material and spiritual growth). This view counterpoints the positive relation between the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism according to Weber's classic argument.

36 A good illustration of this mood was provided by Veja (Brazil's main weekly magazine, similar to the Americans Time and Newsweek, with circulation above 1,250,000) cover story on April 3, 1996: "Globalization: Unemployment, anxiety, wealth and other promises of the revolution which is overthrowing barriers and bringing capitalism to a speed never seen." This cover title sums up the magazine's "do-or-die" approach to the issue: either Brazilians adapt themselves to (and thus try to take advantage of) an uncontrollable process despite all its hardships, or they will be left behind. Needless to say, such a prospective narrowness is highly instrumental to the interests of those that would benefit the most from a deeper internationalization of Brazilian economy. Veja, 3 April 1996, 80-93.

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as a structural (thus inescapable) outcome of the mutually related transnationalization of capital, productive flexibilization and technological development (automation). However, these trends also imply progress and welfare in the form of better, cheaper and widely accessible products as well as heightened opportunities for prosperity for those who are bold and imaginative. Another example involves the argument about the nation-states' vanishing powers. On one hand, Brazil's deepening inability to handle the negative impacts of such overwhelming megatrends has been repeated to the point of exhaustion (by possessing a historical dimension and objective character, those trends develop beyond the reach of governmental agencies and intentions). On the other hand, that inability has also been advertised as not particular to Brazil: in fact, it would reflect the universality of the nation-states' deepening weakness - whether they are developed or underdeveloped - when facing the current capabilities of increasingly larger transnational corporations to continuously reallocate financial and productive resources on a global scale.

In this Chapter, my aim is to provide a representative account of the primary terms of the debate about globalization in Brazil (the diagnoses, conflictive points and eventual prescriptions involved) beyond the hegemonic certainties of the kind mentioned above.37 Although the more academic discussion tends to be the realm of doubts and disagreements regarding this matter which contrasts a pseudo-debate frequently portrayed by the media - here I will privilege those intersecting contents between these two spheres of publicity: whether it is in the far closed intellectual realm that possible alternatives are conceived, it is in the far open realm of social communication (despite its oligopolization by special interests) that these alternatives may acquire material force - that is, may have the chance to become feasible political projects (as a result of being publicly discussed and legitimated).

Universally, globalization has been defined - in Brazil as everywhere - as a process of increasing mobility of large sums of capital for productive investment and/or financial speculation on an international scale. Capital's new found mobility is as a result of increasing facilities in information transmission and processing - that is, of ceaselessly improving communications and computing whose scope has contemporarily gained the magnitude of a "technological revolution."

Accordingly, this definition brings out the subject's two most obvious dimensions: (a) globalization has been understood mainly as an economic phenomenon (accelerated internationalization of capitals, more flexible (re)allocation of resources) under which its other dimensions - social,

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political, cultural, etc. - would tend to be subsumed (not necessarily reduced to38); and (b) globalization has been perceived as a technologically driven phenomenon: the centrality of the issue of technological development in analyses about globalization as well as the pervasiveness of technological elements in its popular rhetoric seem to suggest that every major trait of contemporary life could be directly related to (if not explained by) current technological trends.

In order to make this overwhelming, fast-moving reality minimally intelligible, Luciano Martins proposes a set of basic analytical operations in sequence: first, to distinguish which data about the subject are heuristically relevant; second, to articulate conceptual frames within which these data can be meaningfully organized. Still concerning the data, to identify its actors, structures and processes; regarding the conceptual frames employed to organize them, to apprehend patterns of interaction between the actors, structures and processes then identified, and between these and the central questions posed by the contemporary international agenda. Finally, in a prospective way, to inquire whether the resolution of these central questions would indicate the constitution of a new international order.39 From this schema, Martins identifies respectively the nation-states and the multilateral organisms as the actors in the contemporary international scene; the economic and political systems, as its structures; the transnationalization of capital (related to the trends of globalization and regionalization)40 and the current changes in the organization of the capitalist mode of production (the "Third Industrial Revolution"), as its main processes; and the issues of collective security, economic inequality between countries, demographic growth and preservation of ecosystems, as the international agenda's central questions. Specifically with regard to changes in the international role of the nation-states, distinct levels of problems should be considered, concerning mainly the states' economic and political hierarchy, the nature of their relations, and the 37 This account is representative in the sense of referring to those intellectuals who are in fact leading the more "serious" debate about globalization in Brazil - either by organizing events to discuss the issue and publishing their results, writing books and/or articles, or by publicizing their views in the mainstream media.

38 Here, the distinction between reduction and subsumption is crucial: while the former refers to the decharacterization of those dimensions through the dilution of their particular features by economic imperatives (following, for example, the argument of the Frankfurt School's Marxist cultural analysis concerning the end of culture under market logic), the latter refers to a transformation of such features which would not necessarily entail a loss of their particularities as such - nature, qualities, functions and dynamics - despite economic determinations (for example, the commodification of art would not necessarily imply a loss of art's specific cultural character - e.g., of its social function as the realm of aesthetic experience par excellence).

39 Luciano Martins, "Introducao" (Introduction), in A Nova Ordem Mundial em Questao (The New World Order in Question), Joao Paulo dos Reis Velloso and Luciano Martins, eds., 2d ed. (Rio de Janeiro: Jose Olympio, 1994), 4-5.

40 It seems Martins understands globalization as a major trend - not the constitutive trend - of current times.

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very idea of "sovereignty" - topics whose crucial character indicates that those changes are occurring at the heart of the existing world power structure.41 To handle such a kaleidoscope within the limits of this Chapter, I will observe Renato Baumann's suggestion. There are at least three dimensions in which the various aspects presented above (and many others whose importance depends on the viewpoint considered) can be interrelated and seen as forming a sort of "coherent" subject: the economic, the sociological and the political.42 In the following pages, "globalization" as it has been debated in Brazil will be unfolded according to these major lines.

THE ECONOMICS OF GLOBALIZATION

Even in a strictly economic sense, globalization is a multifaceted phenomenon; regarding it, Baumann speaks of several specific perspectives. Financially, globalization means simultaneously (a) an increase in the volume of resources, (b) an increase in the speed of circulation of these resources, and (c) the interaction between the effects of (a) and (b) on the various economies.

Commercially, it means an increasing similarity among the structures of supply as well as of demand, which allows larger gains of scale, uniformization of productive and administrative techniques, and reduction of product cycles. This also implies a shift from competition between products to competition between technologies of production. From the perspective of production, globalization means a converging similarity among the productive processes of the diverse economies - convergence involving the types of productive techniques, administrative strategies, organizing methods for production, etc. Institutionally, globalization means increasing similarities among distinct national arrangements - particularly in terms of the regulation of economic activities - ultimately opening the way for the emergence of transnational and multilateral organizations challenging the power of nation-states. Finally, from the perspective of economic policies, it means a general - although differentiated - decrease of the nation-states' (both developed and "developing" countries) powers to set policies on behalf of their specific interests.

41 Martins, "Introducao," 5.

42 Renato Baumann, "Apresentacao" (Introduction), in O Brasil e a Economia Global (Brazil and the Global Economy), Baumann, ed. (Rio de Janeiro: Campus and SOBEET, 1996), xii.

30

From now on, their agendas on economic policy will have to include supranational topics such as the environment, taxation, monitoring of transnational corporations, etc.43 Even though there is no consensus about the impacts of these tendencies over specific economies, most all descriptions of globalization share a common set of references. Economic internationalization, a process historically intensified by the Commercial and Industrial Revolutions beginning respectively in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, found itself, after the two devastating World Wars of this century, simultaneously regulated (Bretton Woods) and limited (state socialism; the Cold War) in its development. Since the 1970s, however, a series of structural trends (lower growth rates in advanced capitalist countries; bureaucratization and decline of socialist economies; persistent stagnation in the Third World) and factual milestones (the 1971 suspension of the dollar convertibility; the oil shocks in 1973 and 1979; the rise of neoliberal economics with Thatcher in Britain and Reagan in the U.S. respectively in 1979 and 1981; the demise of state socialism following 1989) prompted the acceleration of that internationalization mostly through widespread economic de-regulation and trade liberalization. The context in which these changes erupted was overviewed by Bresser Pereira as follows, with emphasis on nationstates and their economic policies: Neoliberalism emerged in the United States and Europe when, beginning in the 1970s, Keynesian policies proved unable to control the economy; when inflation accelerated, unemployment increased, and growth rates slowed. ... After many years of state expansion, the state had become distorted, the fiscal crisis had paralyzed governments, economies were clearly overprotected and overregulated.

The crisis was caused by the excessive and distorted growth of the state: the developmentalist state in the Third World; the communist state in the Second World; and the welfare state in the First World. The potential of the market as a resource-allocating mechanism and as a coordinator of the economy was badly overlooked. The state became too big; although it was apparently too strong, it was increasingly weak, expensive, and inefficient.

It was a victim of special interest groups and dominated by fiscal

43 Baumann, "Uma Visao Economica da Globalizacao" (An Economic View of Globalization), in O Brasil e a Economia Global, 34-37.

31

indiscipline or economic populism.

The neoliberal critique points out that the solution to this crisis is to reduce the state, aiming at the minimum state; to destroy not only the communist state but also the developmentalist and even the welfare state. The state would not perform any economic role except to guarantee property rights and the national currency.44 In order to take full advantage of this new environment - marked not only by widespread de-regulation and trade liberalization but also by fiscal adjustment and the state's resulting retraction from its traditional social functions (education and health; housing; working conditions; social security) - big business has had to rush itself into a major opportunity and a major task. The opportunity refers to corporate participation (usually through joint ventures) in processes of privatization of state enterprises. In Brazil, electric energy, transportation, petrochemicals, mining and telecommunications are among the sectors under privatization policies. The task refers to corporate restructuring through technical and technological innovation.

Corporate restructuring in these times of radical, swift changes in techniques and technologies of production and distribution of goods and services has been broadly understood as imperative for corporations to expand - in order to survive - in a steadily globalizing economy.

Accordingly, in defining globalization as an advanced stage of the historical process of internationalization, Luciano Coutinho stresses as one of its fundamental features - necessarily related to the intense diffusion of innovations in telematics - the emergence of a new organizational pattern of production and management in industry and services: the articulation of chains of supply and distribution through networks which minimize stocks and wastages and speed up production, turning these processes faster and more efficient.45 Rene Dreifuss understands the same in terms of "a new technoeconomic paradigm," referring to flexible, lean, outsourcing (externally supplied) systems of customized production and services working on demand and just-on-time.46 In

44 Luiz Carlos Bresser Pereira, Economic Crisis & State Reform in Brazil: Toward a New Interpretation of Latin America (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1996), 3.

45 Luciano Coutinho, "A Fragilidade do Brasil em Face da Globalizacao" (Brazil's Fragility in Face of Globalization), in O Brasil e a Economia Global, 220.

46 Rene Armand Dreifuss, A Epoca das Perplexidades - Mundializacao, Globalizacao e Planetarizacao: Novos Desafios (The Age of Perplexities - 'World-widelization,' Globalization and Planetarization: New Challenges) (Petropolis, Brasil: Vozes, 1996), 26.

32

Coutinho's words, "The competitive superiority of this new pattern rendered its universal adoption imperative, although adapted to national peculiarities."47 Whether all these developments are pointing to a new era of greater, unfettered competition in a globalized market, two apparently contradictory tendencies to both globalization and enhanced competitiveness have also been observed: regionalization and oligopolization. Still, according to Coutinho, since systems operating on demand and just-on-time require a certain physical proximity among suppliers, producers and clients and/or consumers, the rapid diffusion of the new organizational pattern of production and management has intensified intra-industry and intracompany (especially in the case of transnationals) trade on a regional scale. Consequently, the large oligopolistic enterprises have become active agents of regional commercial integration "to the extent their production and market strategies are primordially regional or macro-regional - while their technological and financial strategies remain eminently global."48 In this sense, he argues, the transnational corporations are not only spurring globalization but also leading the formation of trade blocs: "... there is no contradiction but complementariness between the movements of globalization and regionalization of the world economy."49 The magnitude of this double role has favored those enterprises which are effectively able to function and compete on that scale - mostly the American, Western European and Japanese transnational corporations. Economic de-regulation essentially implies deeper oligopolization: the intensification (beginning in the 1980s) of the unending concentration of capital through mergers, consolidations and acquisitions on a global scale has led capitalism to a paradoxical situation defined by Coutinho as "high concentration of the world competition."50 In several important sectors - for example, the automobile, chemical, pharmaceutical, electronic, telematic and entertainment industries - there are no more than 10 or 12 global players, with investment strategies in all relevant markets.51 Mutual recognitions among these players through the exercise of their keen sensitivity to their rivals' plans and moves, in making their markets' interdependence evident, ultimately characterize not only their oligopolistic condition (of playing a game among the

47 Coutinho, "A Fragilidade do Brasil," 220.

48

Ibid.

49 Ibid.

50 Ibid., 221.

33

mutually recognizable few) but also the regional and global scope of their activities (the extension of the playing field).52 What would be the most beneficial position for the Brazilian economy in this new reality, from the perspective of the country's "economic interests"? The usual prescriptions found in the mainstream media, promulgated by entrepreneurs, government officials, private executives and consultants, consist - quite predictably - of de-regulation and trade liberalization (in order to foster domestic companies' efficiency by exposing them directly to international competition), opening the national economy to foreign capitals (with the purpose of strengthening it by inviting direct investments and/or facilitating mergers, consolidations, acquisitions and joint ventures involving domestic and transnational corporations), and privatization of state enterprises (as a means to reduce bureaucratism, pork-barrel politics and irrationality in economic affairs by removing the state from the economy). In its alleged pertinence and justification, such a recipe is the necessary conclusion of a pervasive argument based on the following premises: 1. "A matter of fact": the phenomenon's objective existence and inevitability. "Globalization does not bear value judgments. It is neither good nor evil... . It is a new reality about which is necessary to assume an attitude." (Gustavo Franco, director of international affairs of Brazil's Central Bank).53 "There is no way to resist technological modernization and market globalization.

It is an inexorable course. ... [Those who] doubt it must prove to have an alternative." (Gilberto Dupas, consultant).54 "Globalization is the contemporary economic, industrial moment, the market regime's current logic. It determines the rules nowadays. It is impossible to deny it. It may be even judged and condemned, but only in theory, academically." (Cledorvino Belini, directorsuperintendent of Fiat55 in Brazil).56

51 The most relevant of all, the North American (United States and Canada), the Western European (European Union), and the Japanese/Eastern Asian (China and the "Tigers").

52 Coutinho, "A Fragilidade do Brasil," 221. It is important to mention that despite the overall tendency towards oligopolization, both Coutinho and Baumann agree with regard to the opportunities opened by globalization for the breakup of existing oligopolies by newly expanding, more agile companies (especially due to the emergence of the already indicated new organizational pattern of production and management related to innovations in telematics).

Baumann, "Uma Visao Economica da Globalizacao," 48.

53 Gustavo Franco, "A globalizacao chegou, ou 'abaixo a fechadura!'" (Globalization arrived - thus 'down with closure!'), O Globo (Rio de Janeiro), 5 May 1996, 51. With regard to issues of monetary policy, the Brazilian Central Bank is equivalent to the U.S. Federal Reserve Board.

54 Gilberto Dupas, "O grande desafio da globalizacao" (The great challenge of globalization), Folha de S. Paulo, 16 December 1994, 1-3.

55 The Italian automobile giant.

34

2. Another "matter of fact": the phenomenon's equally objective, (somewhat) inevitable "misfortunes." "With regard to the hot polemic about technological revolution and structural unemployment, it is evident that ... technology will continue to develop through qualitative leaps, generating more automation and rapid obsolescence." (Gilberto Dupas).57 "Contemporary capitalism cannot attend the global demand for employment." (Idem).58 "... the country ... was stunned by disturbances in the international economy: crisis in Mexico, Barings' bankruptcy, the Orange County scandal. It is necessary to get used to the idea that everything that goes on in the world affects us." (Gustavo Franco).59 "It is useless to hide from ourselves our sad reality: we are not competitive in most productive sectors; the system (government, legislation, industrial culture) works against competition. We simply cannot compete, in the international arena, with most of the industrialized

countries

...

."

(Cledorvino

Belini).60

"I

understand

that

corporate

transnationalization is unavoidable. ... But the elimination of the national entrepreneurship is avoidable once [we are] ready to play according to the new rule. What does this mean? [For the national companies, this means] to be linked to a transnational entrepreneurial system." (Jorge Hori, coordinator of the National Thought from Entrepreneurial Bases, PNBE).61 3. A third "matter of fact": the irrelevance of criticism against the phenomenon.

"Understandably, perplexity [facing globalization] has converted itself in a feeling contrary to change, feeling to which powerful, threatened interests - whose magnitude is equivalent to the transformation's magnitude - are major contributors. Legions of critics to 'what is going on' are spontaneously formed without knowing anything about it, giving expression to a diffuse resentment against innovation, mental laziness in trying to comprehend it or frustration regarding its direction." (Gustavo Franco).62

56 Cledorvino Belini, "Globalizacao sem dor" (Globalization without pain), O Estado de S. Paulo, 3 December 1996, B2.

57 Dupas, "O grande desafio da globalizacao," 1-3.

58 Gilberto Dupas, "Pais tem de enfrentar 'jogo perverso' da globalizacao" (The country has to face the 'perverse game' of globalization), interview by Fernando de Barros e Silva, Folha de S. Paulo, 20 February 1995, 1-4.

59 Franco, "A globalizacao chegou," 51.

60 Belini, "Globalizacao sem dor," B2.

61 Jorge Hori, "Ha' salvacao para o empresario nacional?" (Is there salvation for the national entrepreneur?), Folha de S. Paulo, 11 November 1996, 2-2. PNBE, headquartered in Sao Paulo, represents the interests of non-oligopolistic domestic sectors of the Brazilian economy.

35

Despite such a verbal virulence on behalf of reality as it seems to be, there are, of course, other views concerning the subject. In fact, the "legions of critics" are quite diversified in their interests. In the mainstream media, conjunctural criticism - critique not of globalization itself but of Brazil's conditions of insertion in that process - ranges from domestic businesspeople complaining about globalization's fast pace and government discrimination in the opening of national markets (which make them vulnerable to "unfair" competition from outside and/or precipitate their adjustments without prudent calculation of risks) to analysts advocating state policies to prevent denationalization of important sectors of Brazilian industry and consequent mass unemployment.

Maria Angelica Borges and Joao Ildebrando Bocchi, for example, argue that the ways the national economy has been de-regulated reflect not only foreign corporate interests but also a kind of atavistic domestic subservience underlying an excessively conciliatory attitude: "Facing the same process, other countries have resisted to it. They dance the music of globalization without succumbing so easily to its exclusory logic. They adopt safeguards and protect significant sectors of their national wealth. In our case, we do not find examples of resistance. Only capitulations."63 Among criticisms on the nationalist left, Paulo Nogueira Batista Jr.'s quite singular position - he has insisted that globalization is "a false novelty" - reinforces this point by (paradoxically) illustrating the lack of substantive discussion about the issue: ... on the contrary of what is suggested by the propaganda of "globalization," the world has had an economic system genuinely international for more than a century, based on efficient longdistance communications (intercontinental telegraphic submarine cables) and industrialized transportation (steamships and railroads).

Since the 1870s - not the 1970s - a large part of the globe has been linked by markets sharing information in "real time."64 By constantly reminding our "cosmopolitans" about the still far dominant national character of economic activity - in the world economy, the countries' internal demands consume approximately 80% of their own production and generate locally 90% of available jobs, while

62 Franco, "A globalizacao chegou," 51.

63 Maria Angelica Borges and Joao Ildebrando Bocchi, "Pobreza made in globalizacao" (Poverty made in globalization), Folha de S. Paulo, 23 October 1996, 2-2.

64 Paulo Nogueira Batista Jr., "Globalizacao como biombo" (Globalization as a screen), Folha de S. Paulo, 8 August 1996, 2-2.

36

domestic savings finance more than 95% of capital formation65 - Batista Jr. has repeatedly exposed one of our most enduring peculiarities: In Latin America, and specifically in Brazil, the attitude with regard to "globalization" oscillates between fear and fascination, panic and enchantment. It brings to mind the disposition of Montezuma's Aztecs when they met Cortez's Spaniards. A rational discussion of international issues is becoming more and more difficult.

It is not hard to perceive that what is concealed (sometimes not much) behind the rhetoric of globalization is an old and worn acquaintance of ours: entreguismo [cheap, sheepish divestiture of the national wealth], a behavior deeply rooted in the mentality of the Brazilian elites.66 In emphasizing the historical continuity of the international economic system in its structure and logic, what Batista Jr. in fact criticizes is the current expression of a historically deliberate failure of the country's ruling classes to conceive and implement a national project of development that is socioeconomically and culturally inclusive - one which could reflect the interests of a pluralistic Brazilian society. From this perspective, long before the advent of the neoliberal diagnosis (denouncing the increasing inefficiency of institutions and policies aiming at conscious control of market forces in favor of broader societal goals), the Brazilian state/governments always functioned as if the structural constraints faced by the country - whatever their nature, origin, quality and power - were enough to prevent it from addressing, in a comprehensive fashion, its structural problems.

Whether the contemporary global hegemony of laissez-faire economics is just the current ideological justification for status quo reproduction, what supporters and critics define respectively as inevitable and deliberate seems to correspond to a minimal consensus among them regarding the outcomes of the Cardoso Administration's policies: imperative/passive insertion of the national economy in the world economy (which favors the productive structure's renewal/rupture); necessary/predatory productive restructuring (due to de-regulation); challenges/difficulties to national competitiveness (on account of macroeconomic policies based on the currency's

65 Paulo Nogueira Batista Jr., "O mito da globalizacao" (The myth of globalization), Folha de S. Paulo, 30 May 1996, 2-2.

37

overvaluation and high interest rates). As a result, what supporters see as the unescapable consequences of the clash between the "new" entrepreneurial technological modernization (which demands flexible productive relations) and the "old" rigidity of labour contracts (typical of a corporatist order) - namely, unemployment and/or increasingly precarious labour conditions - are occurring in an already unequal and exclusory social structure.

The implications of such changes are still far from being adequately evaluated; nevertheless, some developments may reveal themselves disturbing even for those more optimistic.

The shifting situation of middle-class employment, by referring to the social strata which have traditionally bore the responsibility for ultimate stability in Brazilian politics, is a case in point.

Waldir Jose de Quadros registers that there was a 18.6% net reduction in the number of qualified, white-collar jobs among lower, middle and upper middle-class private workers in the industry, finance and commerce sectors in the state of Sao Paulo - Brazil's most developed region - between 1989 and 1994, corresponding to 456,308 positions eliminated (dismissals minus hirings) from a previous total of 2,453,780.67 According to Quadros, the socioeconomic impacts of significant decreases of this kind, resulting from the adoption of new forms of entrepreneurial organization and management (in one word, downsizing), have brought the middle-classes to a quite defensive if not conservative - mood: For the middle-class families which ascended along the 1970s or even before [in the years of "economic miracle"] and were able to maintain their social situation during the 1980s even if affected by [a context of] generalized impoverishment, the crucial point now in the 1990s is to keep their social status, that is, to avoid debacle and disqualification. What matters, in fact, is to stand differentiated from the popular masses - a precarious situation to which significant segments of middle and lower middle-classes have been pushed into.68 Quadros concludes that this frequently extreme need "to stand differentiated from the popular masses" may have been politically translated into an acritical middle-class support of

66 Batista Jr., "Globalizacao como biombo," 2-2.

67 Waldir Jose de Quadros, "A reestruturacao das empresas e o emprego de classe media" (Business restructuring and middle-class employment), in Crise e Trabalho no Brasil (Crisis and Labour in Brazil), Carlos Alonso B. de Oliveira and Jorge Eduardo Levi Mattoso, eds. (Sao Paulo: Scritta, 1996), 174-175.

68 Ibid., 181.

38

elitist, neoliberal ways to face the national crisis.69 Nonetheless, it would also imply a further deepening of the abyss between those closer to the top of the social pyramid and the generally dispossessed, with unpredictable long-term consequences.

Whatever roles globalization, neoliberalism and/or historical subservience have played in shaping the problems that nowadays plague Brazil, the normative horizon of their discussion and criticism should be, as Reinaldo Goncalves stresses, the search for "a new pattern of international positioning for the Brazilian economy."70 This pattern, by pragmatically recognizing and privileging the national interest over both internal corporatism and globalization, should have as its prime directive an understanding of the international economy as not an end in itself, and accordingly, of Brazil's incorporation in it as not an ultimate goal: "... the country's insertion in the world economic system [should be comprehended] as an auxiliary mechanism for its economic development. The international economic relations of a country like Brazil can be neither the check nor the engine of its development process."71 (italics added). To understand Brazil's insertion in the world economy from this perspective would imply the recognition that the country's development must fundamentally come from policies oriented towards the creation of jobs on a large scale, combined with supply expansion of goods and services for a domestic mass market. According to Goncalves, there is no incompatibility between the growth of the domestic market (through the expansion of consumption and the increase of public and private investments) and the intensification of external economic relations. "... Brazil's great availability of resources allows a considerable expansion of its internal mass market simultaneously with a similar increase in its foreign exchanges. That is, there is no dilemma between a growing internal market and growing export and import activities."72 Goncalves articulates this position from a sharp criticism of what he calls "the duality syndrome." The current economic debate in Brazil would be restricted to the false predicament of opening-or-closing the national economy - referring to what its "optimum" degree of internationalization would be - in which problems are oversimplified and the formulation of adequate policies, inhibited. He denounces the fallacy incurred by those who think that the

69

Ibid., 182-183.

70 Reinaldo Goncalves, O Abre-Alas: A Nova Insercao do Brasil na Economia Mundial (Brazil's New Insertion in the World Economy) (Rio de Janeiro: Relume-Dumara', 1994), 13.

71

Ibid.

72

Ibid., 13-14.

39

country's economy is too closed - a condition which would compromise its modernization - by comparing related data about Brazil and the United States.73 He thus argues that the crucial question concerning Brazil's insertion in the world economy is less a matter of quantity (degree) than quality - meaning how internationalization has occurred: The Brazilian economy confronts a situation of chronic external vulnerability. This vulnerability is related to advances in the country's process of conservative modernization to the extent that the ruling classes do not have a national project. In fact, external vulnerability is a structural element in the evolution of the Brazilian economy, which has coexisted with distinct patterns of international insertion: the primary-export period, the import substitution model, and the export expansion detrimental to the internal market.

It is hard to find a period in Brazilian history in which all the economic vectors (commercial, technological, financial and productive) advanced in the same direction [situation that would characterize the existence of a comprehensive project]. ... As a result, external vulnerability appears as a historical-structural element of the Brazilian economy, being a determinant factor for the eruption of crises as well as having a key role in changes of patterns of international insertion as a means to overcome such crises.74 (italics added).

It is in this sense that the crisis of the tripod development model75 in force during the 19641985 military rule, which ended aggravating the country's external vulnerability despite (contrary) goals then established within an internally exclusory national project, opened the way for the

73

Ibid., 150-158. This comparison is based on these countries' similar continental dimensions (territorial extension and population), and on the fact that the American case is considered paradigmatic of economic openness, efficiency, competitiveness, and the like. According to the numbers presented, the Brazilian economy has historically been more open - that is, internationalized - than the American economy in commercial terms (exports, imports and GDP rates), financially (foreign investments, debts and GDP rates) and in foreign participation in production (foreign companies' selling and employment rates in the industry). As a striking example, by 1990 foreign companies were responsible for 23% of the available jobs in the Brazilian industrial sector, compared to only 7% in the U.S. 74 Ibid., 159.

75 As mentioned in the Introduction, an alliance of state, foreign and private domestic capitals involving a statecoordinated division of labor between them as a means to accelerate the country's development.

40

adoption of neoliberal policies regarding which external vulnerability seems to be taken as "inevitable"... By conceptually opposing "external vulnerability" (meaning a reduced capacity to resist the influence of external unstabilizing factors or shocks) to "national sovereignty" (referring to the possibility of a national government to realize its own will in spite of positions and actions of foreign politico-economic agents), Goncalves proposes a political redefinition of Brazil's pattern of international insertion on behalf of a "sovereign insertion." To be conducted by the Brazilian state still the sphere where any idea of a national project may acquire democratic support at the national level, and thus meaning and feasibility as the national project - Brazil's participation must be based on a "comprehensive foreign policy" aiming at the reduction of the country's external vulnerability by taking advantage of its considerable human, material and technological resources plus its comparatively less polarized international economic relations (that is, relations not dependent on any of the world's power blocs (North America, Western Europe, Eastern Asia) considered separately).76

THE SOCIOLOGY OF GLOBALIZATION

Beyond its purely economic dimension, globalization as the contemporary configuration of the historical expansion of capitalism as a westernizing/modernizing/rationalizing - in one word, civilizatory - process has been sociologically understood in Brazil mostly in terms of its impacts on the constitution, reproduction, maintenance and transformation of social (national, local) formations and their cultural identities. In this sense, the current structural, disruptive pressures put by the logic and dynamics of globalization and technical/technological change on the established ways through which individuals, groups and societies perceive, organize and relate to themselves and others are considered particularly with regard to the nation-state. The nation-state is still the privileged object under investigation. It is still the empirically and/or normatively presumed bearer of people's ultimate sociocultural identity (besides the obvious political one). And it has been analyzed, under those conditions, in its origins, evolution and fate.

The advent of the modern nation-state at the end of the European Middle Ages (around the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries) is seen by scholars as dialectically related to the emergence of modern capitalism. Octavio Ianni argues that the development of this dialectical relationship

41

generated "at least three forms, ages or cycles of great magnitude in the history of capitalism."77 First, capitalism as the emerging mode of production, and the nation-state as its corresponding sociopolitical formation, came to revolutionize the old feudal order and its institutions. On one hand, this new mode of production, by dissociating labour from the original space of its (re)production (the household and its surroundings) as well as from any ownership of its product (a double shift which created abstract, mobile capital), developing technically its forces, further monetizing its relations and expanding the range of its operations to a national scale (markets), started to replace local, regional, communal, tribal, feudal - in one word, precapitalist socioeconomic structures. On the other hand, this new sociopolitical formation, by reorganizing capital/labour and property relations under rational/contractual forms (then consubstantiating a new juridical order) and expressing an increasing separation between the state/public/political and civil/private/economic realms (thus giving birth to civil society), provided the societal conditions plus institutional legitimation for the emerging mode of production.78 In a second historical moment, capitalism, once organized nationally, expanded internationally. Beginning with the Age of Discovery from the late fifteenth century through the seventeenth, and after, mercantile capitalism developed under the auspices of the ultramarine empires (first, Spain and Portugal; later, United Kingdom and France). The eighteenth-century Industrial Revolution, by adding the needs of large-scale manufacture to an international economy already concentrated in a few powerful nation-states, only intensified these nations' predatory, belligerent competition for raw materials and for precious metals and cheap or slave labour. Such a concentration was geopolitically translated into a sharp polarization between "the center" - the dominant, wealthy countries and their metropolises (Madrid, Lisbon, London, Paris) - and "the periphery" - the conquered, dependent colonies whose local elites tended to imitate the colonizers' cultures and lifestyles and reproduce their institutions, even after political independence. "This is the historical configuration of capitalism about which Hobson, Hilferding, Bukharin, Luxemburg and Lenin elaborated the category 'imperialism.' It is the same configuration considered by

76 Goncalves, O Abre-Alas, 165-175 (this discussion is taken later in this Chapter). With regard to the country's less polarized economic relations, by 1990 the United States and the European Union had equivalent participation in partnerships with Brazil (around 30% each).

77 Octavio Ianni, A Sociedade Global (The Global Society), 4th ed. (Rio de Janeiro: Civilizacao Brasileira, 1996), 3637. These forms, ages or cycles have frequently overlapped in time and space; nevertheless, although referring to trends partially simultaneous and/or cumulative, their evolutive patterns have obeyed a structural iron law - they spread from the centers of power to their peripheries, from the upper social strata to society's bottoms.

78 Ibid., 37.

42

Braudel, Wallerstein and Frank when proposing respectively the concepts of 'economy-world,' 'world-system' and 'world accumulation.'"79 Finally, in its third, contemporary historical moment, capitalism became global. The deepening of the system's internationalization (after a certain point - sometime during the Cold War period - was no longer a matter of degree but quality80) would have necessarily led it not only to its globalization but also, and consequently, to an ongoing structural divorce between the mode of production and its original, corresponding sociopolitical formation. In Ianni's words, The nation-state [the dominant as well as the dependent] is not only redefined but also loses some of its economic, political, cultural and social prerogatives, being debilitated. Gradually, some of these prerogatives appear in the decisions and activities of multinational enterprises and multilateral organizations. What used to be traditionally and recognizably localized in countries or their capitals is de-territorialized."81 This quotation introduces some of the crucial factors that constitute and/or contribute to such a structural shift: the respective roles of multi/transnationals and multilateral institutions; the process of de-territorialization. In order to synthesize the complex sociological discussion about globalization as it has been academically conducted in Brazil without being unreasonably exposed to the risks of oversimplification, I articulate these and other factors (as re-territorialization, timespace displacement, the role of the media, etc.) and their sociocultural "results" in a linear way: although through their arbitrary concatenation I certainly overlook much of their simultaneities and reciprocities, ambiguities and indeterminacies, it is my goal to identify fairly - as far as positively the core terms of the debate.

There is no disagreement concerning what is the primary, empirically observable agent of globalization - and thus, of the erosion of nation-state powers. Initially growing as national companies successfully oriented to their domestic markets, multinational corporations expanded internationally by making competitive use of several comparative advantages: exclusive access to abundant raw materials and cheap labour, proximity to sizeable consumer markets, secured

79 Ibid., 38.

80 As indicated before (for example, Batista Jr.'s understanding of globalization as "a false novelty"), this is a disputed claim.

81 Ianni, A Sociedade Global, 42.

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discriminative subsidies abroad, etc. To take full advantage of such opportunities, these corporations had frequently to count on decisive political, financial, strategic, scientific and technological support of the states/governments of their countries of origin.82 Decades ago, the growth of these corporations was based on standardized large-scale production for homogeneous mass markets. Today, continuous technological and managerial innovation, attentive to market segmentation, has set the pattern for larger-scale operations aiming at the uniformization and generalization of procedures to meet diversified demands. According to Rene Dreifuss, socioculturally this change has spurred a process of "world-widelization" of styles, uses and customs: "'World-widelization' refers to mentalities, habits and patterns; to behavioral styles; to uses and customs and ways of life, creating common denominators in consumer preferences of many propensities. [It] comprehends the generalization and uniformization of products, instruments, information and means available to important fractions of the world's population ... ."83 Politically, the resulting "global consumer" that emerges from world-widelization has had the opportunity to exercise what seems to be the rudiments of a "global citizenship." Here lies, in part, the increasingly significant role (although still secondary) of multilateral organizations, the other visible agent of globalization. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) now inform and mobilize important segments of a transnationalizing public opinion about controversial issues that could, in principle, be assimilated by the new order without compromising its logic and interests: ecology and environmentalism; unemployment, migration and criminality; the rights of women and children, refugees, indigenous peoples, etc. In this sense, they illustrate the new forms of political participation which transcend national boundaries autonomously from traditional institutional politics. Nevertheless, these multilateral organizations which have not held decisive power so far in the new globalizing reality. As Ianni ironically notes, "Merchandise obtained world citizenship long before the individual. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, BIRD), and the General Agreement on Tariffs and

82 Crucial support of private enterprises by states/governments actually does not contradict the argument exposed here regarding the relative decline of nation-states - thus, of state/governmental powers. If during the Cold War period the weight of state power in its partnership with private capital was far more evident (the American industrial-military complex being the notorious example), in the current times of "peace" under global capitalism the "war" is quite distinct: corporate battles for world markets, carried by demanding executives performing as generals, diplomats and/or politicians, would be shifting power in the state-private association - from the former partner to the latter one.

83 Dreifuss, A Epoca das Perplexidades, 136. Here I use the neologism "world-widelization" for the Portuguese mundializacao in order to explicitly add the idea of spacial expansion (implicit in the Portuguese word) to this cosmopolitanizing process.

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Trade (GATT) [which preceded the World Trade Organization (WTO)] ... are merchandise's guarantors worldwide."84 The roles of multinational corporations and multilateral organizations as agents of globalization have been directly linked by scholars to the two concomitant spacial processes of "de-territorialization" and "re-territorialization." Nonetheless, beyond the obvious example of economic players competing for markets and allocating resources on a planetary scale (by taking advantage of developments in telematics leading to productive flexibilization), de-territorialization - a process which undermines territorial, fixed formations as such - has also meant the general uprooting of individuals, groups and societies, and the consequent debasement of their sociocultural values, practices and identities.85 Besides its socioeconomic implications for the many (unemployment and more notably, precarious employment prospects due to productive reallocation), there would be equally identifiable sociocultural and psychological consequences.

Octavio Ianni: ... the process of de-territorialization accentuated and generalized the conditions of solitude. Individuals, families, groups, classes and other social segments lose themselves amidst the derangement of the world. They not only have scarce access to information, to facts in their diverse articulations, but also, at the same time, they are continuously bombarded by distant, disparate, alien messages and interpretations. ... Alienation takes place - thus, solitude. In the ambit of the global society, the individual's solitude acquires perhaps an unprecedented magnitude due to the revolution of the reference frames inherited from the history and intelligence of the national society, a revolution of the notions of space and time in which the individual was formed.86

84 Ianni, A Sociedade Global, 109. Dialectically (as well as ironically), these multilateral organizations were conceived within, and still mostly reflect, an international order - that is, a system whose basic unit is the allegedly vanishing nation-state.

85 Of course, this phenomenon is not historically new. Two centuries ago, the Industrial Revolution uprooted most of the central countries' rural populations - whose workforce was then massively demanded by the expanding steam manufacture located in urban areas - generating a migratory tide with now well-known sociocultural implications and consequences.

86 Ianni, A Sociedade Global, 100.

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Therefore, de-territorialization not only involves physical displacement - of human and material resources, to speak economically - but also cultural, psychological and cognitive displacement. The technological development of the means of communication, information and transportation, in leading to a dramatic acceleration of their operational velocity, made both their global expansion and massive, conspicuous generalization possible. This acceleration, by dramatically altering common perceptions of time and space, has equally altered common perceptions of the quantity and quality of time and space contents - the material, phenomenal reality which exists in such dimensions - and thus, among the innumerable manifestations of this reality, altered perceptions of the nation-state in its correlated institutions and identities, values and practices. Captured by the urgency, speed and dimension of such changes, individuals, groups and societies can no longer recognize themselves - and consequently "the others" (those that are distinct from them) - as sharing and/or opposing experiences, beliefs and worldviews in identifiable places with pasts, presents and futures. In this context, as Ianni suggests, individual solitude and alienation would be the rule.87 However, de-territorialization has been followed by (in fact, it has been concurrent to) "reterritorialization." Whether the uprooting of the many signals an intensification of the historically disruptive trends of sociocultural fragmentation paralleling socioeconomic exclusion and marginalization, for the comparatively few, more adaptable to the new circumstances, to reterritorialize has been a less traumatic process, to say the least. The so-called "global cities"88 (New York, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Paris, Frankfurt and Zurich, to name a few) are the places from where multinational corporations, stock markets and think thanks headquarter the rearticulation of world capitalism. They are the locales to where the new entrepreneurial and intellectual elites, formed by executives, consultants, analysts, scientists, professors, artists, technicians and technologists sharing a supranational mentality and a global perspective, converge their efforts. These organic intellectuals of cosmopolitanism, understood by Dreifuss as leading and cementing the mega-systems of scientific, technological, mediatic and economic power at the

87 Curiously, Ianni - one of the two or three main sociological interpreters of globalization in Brazil today (beside Rene Dreifuss and Renato Ortiz) - seems to not perceive how his characterization of individuals plagued by isolation in the contemporary world (a new world which would demand new explanatory categories) is somewhat similar to that of the "mass man" - the notorious outcome of the Industrial Revolution according to classic social analysis.

88 Saskia Sassen's The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991), a study concerning the role and transformation of these metropolises in the process of capitalist globalization, provides the concept which informs the argument in point. It is referred in Octavio Ianni, A Era do Globalismo (The Age of Globalism) (Rio de Janeiro: Civilizacao Brasileira, 1996), 70; and Renato Ortiz, Um Outro Territorio: Ensaios sobre a Mundializacao (Another Territory: Essays about 'World-widelization') (Sao Paulo: Olho D'Agua, 1996), 51-52.

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dawn of the twenty-first century, have been able, by structuring themselves into "virtual associations" through computer networking, to bypass and deflate public and state and/or governmental accountability: The consolidation of a telematic jet-set of strategic direction, taking advantage of flexible technologies of information, elaboration, formulation, decision and implementation of political, cultural, financial, productive and technological action on a planetary scale and in real time ... makes politico-strategic secrecy viable and perpetuates it, subtracting vital questions from a public eye then reduced to debates about the untranscendent, stigmatizations of the innocuous and epidermic excitements around easy slogans and expressions. In fact, besides such organizational changes, there is an increasing politico-administrative opacity despite the apparent informational power of the media.89 (italics added).

As for the role of the media in globalization, the contradiction just quoted is apt: "increasing politico-administrative opacity" is a result of the concentration of corporate, transnational media through accelerated oligopolization, and their "apparent informational power," the consequence of a perceivable lack of qualified, relevant information among the populace regarding issues of public concern.90 Moreover, in a world torn by widespread de-territorialization and exclusory reterritorialization - which arguably have only deepened class, ethnic, cultural and occupational divisions - media conglomerates, strengthened by economic de-regulation and oligopolistic concentration plus technological development and convergence, have countervailed the disintegrating effects of those trends by essentially following, in the sphere of production of cultural goods, the structural shift observed in production-consumption cycles in general towards increasingly globalized but segmented (or vice versa) markets. As argued before with regard to the internationalization of national enterprises, until recently most media corporations operated on standardized large-scale production for homogeneous mass markets whose demand satisfaction was restricted to a few media outlets (a cycle, nevertheless, confined within national

89 Dreifuss, A Epoca das Perplexidades, 175-176.

90 Dreifuss recognizes the paradox when describing what he calls "the planetary communicators" - Time Warner, Disney, News Corp-Fox, etc. - "which potentiate their activities through the cross-ownership of movie theaters, broadcast and cable television, radio stations, magazines, newspapers, on-line services, and videos... ." Ibid., 142.

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boundaries).91 Today, however, the cultural industry has moved to larger-scale operations (reaching global audiences despite market segmentation and multiplied suppliers) characterized by the uniformization and generalization of selective procedures aiming at differentiated communication and/or entertainment forms and contents to attend diversified demands. It is in this sense that cultural world-widelization and cultural fragmentation are not antinomic but simultaneous tendencies. As Renato Ortiz stresses, "it is time to understand that globalization realizes itself through differentiation. ... The pattern of world civilization involves standardization and segmentation, global and local, manifesting a complex and comprehensive cultural process. ...

To see globalization and fragmentation as mutually exclusory phenomena is a false problem."92 Globalization through differentiation - that is, the global and segmentary expansion of capitalist production and consumption - has corresponded in the cultural realm, to follow Ortiz's argument, to the emergence of an "international-popular" culture from, around and beyond its "national-popular" congeners.93 Whether in the "national-popular" people who are uprooted and/or deprived by de-territorialization may still reconnect themselves to their vanishing worlds by, for example, receiving standardized television images which reflect somewhat their specific values and experiences (language, habits and customs, etc.), in the "international-popular" they may share with those who are better re-territorialized (at least ideologically) a promised brave new world of unfettered consumption (in fact, sharing Coca-Cola, Hollywood, Philips and Reebok rather than Don Perignon, Broadway, Apple and Mercedes-Benz). Therefore, somewhere between what seems to refer to each one in particular, and what seems to be accessible to everybody in general, anyone might in principle find his/her place - to paraphrase Ianni - "amidst the derangement of the world."

91 The classic exception here is Hollywood's movie industry, since its beginnings oriented to markets outside the United States.

92 Renato Ortiz, Mundializacao e Cultura ('World-widelization' and Culture), 2d ed. (Sao Paulo: Brasiliense, 1996), 181.

93 Ibid., 105-145. This argument, introduced by Ortiz earlier in his A Moderna Tradicao Brasileira: Cultura Brasileira e Industria Cultural (The Modern Brazilian Tradition: Brazilian Culture and Cultural Industry) (Sao Paulo: Brasiliense, 1988), 182-206, was summarized by Ianni in A Sociedade Global: The national-popular culture is defined by the interplay of social forces in the ambit of the national society, on the counterpoint of dominant and subordinated social classes. It corresponds to the presence of popular culture in the construction of hegemony [in the Gramscian sense]... . The international-popular culture, on the contrary, emerges, circulates and is consumed as merchandise in various national markets ... . ... its process of production, stylization and pasteurization aims the presentation of merchandise in palatable forms to different national publics, whose patterns, styles, languages and fashions are also equally produced, stylized and pasteurized. (49)

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Due to a consensual understanding, by scholars, that all these processes and factors which are related to globalization have led to the erosion of the nation-state not only as the basic socioeconomic and cultural formation on which modern life has been organized, but also as the basic unit under traditional sociological analysis, the authors discussed here (Ianni, Dreifuss and Ortiz) have unequivocally argued for a paradigmatic review of the social sciences as a whole.94 "At this point in history," Octavio Ianni reasons, "the social sciences are facing a new epistemological challenge. ... For the first time, they are challenged to think the world as a global society": Economic, political, demographic, geographic, historical, cultural and social relations, processes and structures developing on a global scale are acquiring preeminence over relations, processes and structures developing on a national scale. Scientific thought ... primordially based on reflection about the national society, is not sufficient to apprehend the constitution and movements of the global society.95 Although a sociology of globalization with qualitatively distinct theoretical-methodological instruments is still incomplete, there is a common impression that fundamental concepts like "state," "society," "nation" and "class," which have marked the evolution of Western social thinking in the last three centuries, are quickly becoming, to use Rene Dreifuss' illustration, as outdated and inoperative as "philosophers' stone," "comitatus," "estate," and "aristocracy."96 In order to start to fill such a paradigmatic gap between our familiar but fast-aging conceptual framework and whatever is yet to come, Renato Ortiz suggests the adoption of a "deterritorialized" approach, in which the unprecedented nature of contemporary globalization is

94 In A Sociedade Global, Ianni observes that "the social sciences' object has developed and transformed itself quantitatively and qualitatively." However, In implicit or explicit ways, controversies are referred to the individual and society, naturally seen in terms of national relations, processes and structures.

The global dimensions of social reality seem to challenge the social sciences still insufficiently. Even economics and politics, despite their emphasis on international conditions and relations, continue to be based on canons related to the national society. The pattern of market, in economics, continue to be the national market. And the pattern of sovereignty, in political science, continue to be that of the nation-state. (172) 95 Octavio Ianni, Teorias da Globalizacao (Theories of Globalization), 3d ed. (Rio de Janeiro: Civilizacao Brasileira, 1996), 189.

96 Dreifuss, A Epoca das Perplexidades, 329.

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recognized as much as acknowledged, in its subordination to "the global," the transformed reality of the old sociological objects. This epistemologically comprehensive shift is well exemplified in one of his passages concerning the advent of an international-popular culture: When I refer to an "international-popular" collective imagery, I keep myself away from national particularities and identities in order to grasp them at a different level. By doing so, I am able to consider [the "international-popular"] the result of a movement of de-territorialization, and I can apprehend it as an universe of symbols shared worldwide by individuals localized in distant places on earth (global advertising, movies, television shows, fashion, etc.). Therefore, objects-signs such as blue jeans, images of movie stars, McDonald's, supermarket products, are no longer seen as exogenous impositions; instead, they are apprehended as elements of a world collective memory.97 If globalization ultimately implies the erosion and/or demise of the existing reality and its institutions, what would be left to Brazil as a nation-state in terms of its power (or the power of its citizenry) to meaningfully control its own destiny? According to Ortiz, an adequate understanding of the current changes necessarily demands, as already indicated, a de-territorialized perspective: "The comprehension of a de-territorialized world requires a de-territorialized viewpoint. To apprehend it in its totality, the analytical perspective must be released from local and national constraints. ... Thus, it is no longer enough [to look at the world] as Brazilians, French, Americans or Germans."98 Perhaps this is the reason why a more sociologically oriented debate about globalization is almost absent from the Brazilian media - new situations asking for new approaches tend to be inherently beyond public perceptions and discourses. In this sense, among the few eulogies and criticisms of the process available to common knowledge, there is little more than passionate metaphors trying to shed light on something usually perceived as evolving beyond anyone's control.99

97 Ortiz, Um Outro Territorio, 22.

98 Ibid., 17.

99 For example, Rodolfo Konder, "Uma vitoria definitiva" (A definitive victory), O Estado de S. Paulo, 11 May 1996, A2: "The improvement of telecommunications finally materialized Marshall McLuhan's 'global village.' The lights of the media put an end to the zones of penumbra. Dictatorships and vampires took flight before the sunny offensive of democracy." Also Herbert de Souza, " Globalizacao, a nova dogmatica" (Globalization, the new dogmatics), O Estado

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A shared feeling of impotence in the face of globalization - "Nothing seems to withhold [its] path towards the great global apartheid," deplores Herbert de Souza100 - when associated with and/or legitimated by calls for paradigmatic reviews on behalf of epistemological deterritorialization, has frequently (if not inevitably) led to arguments regarding the contemporary impossibility of any articulation of a national project as such. Ianni is particularly vigorous about this; he sees the nation-state today as "anachronistic," and thinks as "chimerical" the very idea of its sovereignty: ... there is no possible delinking in terms of national, autarchic, sovereign solutions. Any attempt towards autonomy, affirmation of sovereignty, realization of capitalist, socialist or a mixed national project, is subject to global determinations. ... As a result, the antisystemic movement or delinking, whether a political, economic or social project, has become difficult or virtually impossible.101 Nevertheless, Ortiz still considers the national state as the elementary unit of politics: "Government, trade unions, political parties, social movements are its expression."102 Furthermore, he regards the nation-state as also the elementary unit of geopolitics: "Each territorial unit, to the extent of its powers, manages or not to realize its interests in the globalized scenario.

Therefore, centripetal forces remain within globalization, pointing to divergent directions."103 In this sense, he believes, although a national project is no longer possible,104 a national program de S. Paulo, 6 July 1996, A2: "Instability is our daily bread on a world scale. The wealth of a minority is corresponding more and more to the misery of huge human masses. The cold logic of modernization is generating the despair of the unemployed and marginalized in this global world."

100 Herbert de Souza, "A miseria do capitalismo global" (The misery of global capitalism), Folha de S. Paulo, 8 October 1996, 1-3.

101 Ianni, A Era do Globalismo, 114. Samir Amin's concept of "delinking" is here at the Introduction.

Ianni's fateful diagnosis concerning the nation-state is, nonetheless, far from pessimistic with regard to prospects for human emancipation. As a historical response to the currently rampant global neoliberalism, "... socialism transfigures itself into neo-socialism. Neo-socialism is born directly and immediately from the world civil society's configurations and movements. It is formed in the interplay of social relations, or on the counterpoint of social forces, that characterize the tensions and contradictions of a society which peculiarly has, from the start, its roots in globalism. [Therefore, neo-socialism] is an expression of globalism." Ibid., 293.

102 Renato Ortiz, "Anotacoes sobre a Mundializacao e a Questao Nacional" (Notes about 'World-widelization' and the National Question), Sociedade e Estado 11, no. 1 (January/June 1996): 54.

103 Ibid.

104 Ortiz, Um Outro Territorio, 125. Especially regarding Third World countries, he refers to "national project" in Sartre's (the twentieth-century French philosopher) sense: "The national project used to galvanize the force and imagination of men. ... the search for the national Being was mixed with the struggle for its authenticity. The nation

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would be,105 meaning that a country may take a position concerning its specific goals - but a position that would be realistic only if resulting from a de-territorialized approach to globalization.106

THE POLITICS OF GLOBALIZATION

In a properly political sense - more specifically, with regard to the nature, origins, constitution, functions and evolution of explicitly political institutions operating in the realm of international relations - globalization has been discussed in Brazil mostly as the contemporary historical momentum which resulted from the demise of state socialism following the 1989 collapse of the Soviet Bloc (Soviet Union and allies), and the consequent end of the Cold War as a post-1945 international order (specifically in its particular characteristics, processes and/or circumstances - systemic bipolarity, ideological antagonism, nuclear deterrence, decolonization, proliferation of international organizations, transnational economic expansion). In this perspective, scholars analyze globalization from the standpoint of the two referents that, in Luciano Martins' account, have historically defined the course of international relations: (a) the nation-state, "whose defensive attribute is sovereignty, and the offensive one, the realization of its interests in the international space"; and (b) power, "based on capacity of coercion as the condition for the imposition of a political will whatever connotations (macht, power, puissance) the term may acquire in distinct political cultures."107 Two crucial implications come from this basic formulation. In Martins' words, First, a space organized in terms of national interests, and a was hence placed in the future, it was something not completed; its idealized configuration contrasted the present, [its] underdevelopment and colonialist or imperialist impositions." Ibid.

105 Ibid. "But it is important to understand that a programmatic proposal is not a 'project,' a philosophy comprehensive enough to reach the hearts and minds of men. However good its intentions are, it does not possess utopian force. It is the fruit of deliberation and opportunities." Ibid.

106 Ibid., 17. "Let us think the world in its flux, and then ask the questions pertinent to our realities. I am sure these will be enlightened from another angle." Ibid., 17-18.

107 Luciano Martins, "Ordem international, interdependencia assimetrica e recursos de poder" (International order, asymmetric interdependence and resources of power), in A Nova Ordem Mundial em Questao, 117. Raymond Aron (La paix et la guerre, 1962) and Hans Morgenthal (Politics among nations, 1948) are the authors resorted by Martins in his characterization of the international relations' two basic parameters.

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capacity to realize them, unavoidably generates conflicts ... [which] tend to be settled through violence or threats of its use.

Second, the law at the international level has a contractual nature (between sovereign states) and does not have an imposing character (as it is the case in the internal ambit of societies). Therefore, the international space, in being integrated by units which attribute to themselves the prerogative of making decisions according to their own interests, is a space necessarily instable and mutable ... [it] has an intrinsically anarchic foundation.108 (italics added).

Although national interests and unequal powers to realize them have historically plagued the world with instability and recurrent crises, the bipolar international order that emerged from the ruins of the last Great War was established on a somewhat stable "balance of terror." The respective power capacities of the United States and Soviet Union, once reaching nuclear parity and ensuring "mutual assured destruction" (MAD), turned military deterrence and political containment between the two superpowers imperative. The advent of atomic/nuclear weaponry of limitless destructive capabilities, in introducing a new geopolitical reality in which the unrestricted use of force was no longer possible (for the first time in history, a superpower could not destroy its antagonist without being equally destroyed), redefined the very art of politics by expanding and complicating the attributes of power in international relations - and consequently, of those involved in its brinkmanship.109 International affairs were no longer the exclusive business of "diplomats" and "soldiers"; it began to include strategists, scientists, analysts and agents organized and/or located in universities, think tanks, intelligence offices, the media, political parties, public and private corporations, international organisms, etc. "The definition and realization of what the national interests would be internationally thus became a much more complex task: diplomacy,

Martins defines international order as "a formal or informal set of decisional principles, norms, institutions and procedures which, in reflecting the correlation of forces on a world scale, regulate international relations." Ibid., 116, footnote.

108 Ibid., 117. Regarding it, Martins remembers Robert Gilpin's striking statement: "International relations continue to be a recurring struggle for wealth and power among independent actors in a state of anarchy." Originally in Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 17.

109 With the advent of the Nuclear Age, brinkmanship - the ability to manipulate and take advantage of a dangerous situation by recognizing and carefully operating as closer as possible to its limits of tolerance and/or safety, with the purpose of securing the maximum circumstantial gain - in fact became the only option for substantial advancement in geopolitics.

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being no longer a 'sport of kings,' turned into a battlefield for bureaucracies, the military, 'enlightened' technocrats and interest groups."110 Given the exclusory political and military nature of the strategic tie between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. (in other words, due to the duopolization of the strategic game by the two superpowers), what remained to the other nation-states in maneuvering for the improvement of their geopolitical positions basically depended on a combination of fortuitous and deliberate factors: geographic location in terms of geopolitical relevance; relationship with the superpowers; human and material resources; and the competence of national elites to make (good) use of such comparative advantages. In this sense, the Cold War logic and dynamics displaced the maneuvering space of those countries from the properly political and military spheres to the realm of economics. As Martins observes, mainly through economics these nations "could more easily change their relative positions on the scale of power hierarchies."111 And he concludes: "This relative dissociation between politics and economics had important consequences which will appear more clearly after the end of the Cold War."112 The end of the Cold War in the late 1980s has been interpreted as a watershed in human history: the demise of state socialism would have meant the collapse of the last structural obstacle to globalization as it has evolved. The advocates of the hegemonic thesis have proclaimed "the end of history" by arguing that it implied the definitive, universal victory of a particular form of government (the so-called "liberal representative democracy" as existing in the developed nations of North America and Western Europe, Japan and Australasia) necessarily associated with a particular mode of production (the so-called "capitalist market economy" as existing in those societies) as the inherently most suitable politico-economic arrangement to organize human affairs.113 To answer whether this view would be empirically sustainable beyond the celebrated circumstances of that historical moment, any more balanced, reasonable analysis within the marks

110 Martins, "Ordem internacional," 126.

111 Ibid., 128. The classic postwar cases of economic recovery and development dissociated from geopolitical power are Germany, Japan and Italy - not coincidentally, the former leading members of the defeated Axis. More recently, among Third World countries, the most conspicuous examples are the Asian "Tigers" (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia).

112 Martins, "Ordem internacional," 128.

113 The controversial Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992) is this argument's basic reference.

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of contemporary realpolitik could not ignore its obvious shortfalls. Thus the analysis by Celso Amorim, the Brazilian Ambassador at the United Nations: ... if the expansion of democracy in many countries encompasses an unquestionable progress in materializing ideals originated in the Enlightenment, from the viewpoint of the management of resources and organization of production liberal capitalism fell short of having given answer to innumerous problems which are part of the agenda at the end of this century. From environment to extreme poverty, from the migratory question to unemployment, the neoliberal worldview has not been capable to recommend positive solutions for the problems faced by humankind.114 Moreover, it is arguable that neoliberal economics on a global scale has not only aggravated such difficulties but also prevented, in its faith in the supposedly panacean virtues of market mechanisms, the likelihood of consequential political articulations favoring the search for comprehensive solutions to those problems. The generalized socioeconomic and cultural disfranchisement and related despair probably resulting from and/or being deepened by globalization (as suggested throughout this Chapter) have certainly fueled the reemergence of ethnic, linguistic and religious nationalisms and fundamentalisms worldwide,115 whose widespreading "irrationality" would further undermine the already reduced opportunities for the kind of articulation just mentioned. It is in this sense that the current transition from one international order to another threatens to close a vicious circle. As Amorim notes, "To replace the bipolarity's old Manicheism by a new confrontation based on religious values would be the worst tragedy to happen at the threshold of the twenty-first century. To not perceive [what is] behind

114 Celso Amorim, "Os Frageis Pilares da Nova Ordem" (The Fragile Pillars of the New Order), in O Brasil e a Economia Global, 19-20. Amorim criticizes the "end-of-history" argument as "a simplistic view of History, in which narrow triumphalism and superficiality of analysis are combined to the service of an essentially conservative view of reality." Ibid., 19.

115 These are reactional responses to globalization usually categorized (if not depreciated) under the conceptual umbrella of localisms - referring to the defense of traditional forms and contents of social organization (their values, practices, meanings, etc.). In this sense, they tend to be seen - for better or worse - as romantic (unsustainable naiveties facing the inevitability of rationalization and secularization), regressive, parochial or sectionalist (against the ideals of progress, modernity and cosmopolitanism; conservative due to fear, myopia and/or pettiness), isolationist (suspicious of and/or contrary to promises of global human integration from exchanges in globalized markets), reactionary (irrationally closed to the "new") or authoritarian (advocating hierarchical traditionalisms incompatible with individual freedoms enjoyed in liberal-democratic politics and economic markets).

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fundamentalism is rather a way to nourish [and even] to justify it. And this is an infallible recipe for disaster."116 Despite the fact that rising nationalisms and fundamentalisms are undeniably major factors in this post-Cold War return to the condition of instability and mutability (which is a manifestation of its intrinsically anarchic foundation, some argue it is the growing dissociation between politics and economics (which allowed the emergence of new centers of power beside the remaining superpower) that has been the crucial process under scrutiny in the politics of globalization. In this regard, according to Martins, two important developments challenging the classic prerogatives of the nation-state have taken place. First, as a corollary of the previous observation about international affairs being no longer a strictly politico-military matter (the exclusive business of diplomats and soldiers), diplomacy is no longer restricted to disputes between nations. Nowadays, it includes issues related to ecology, demography, human rights, etc. "Topics which were inexistent, or treated before as internal questions of each country, began to integrate a sort of 'public-international' political sphere ... in some cases, under the jurisdiction of international agencies."117 Second, referring to the superstructure of globalization itself, "fundamental decisions related to investments, financial transfers, commercial ententes, etc., capable to affect the internal operation of national economies, passed to the dominion of the 'private-transnational' [sphere]."118 As a result, the contemporary global re-configuration of power has on top the countries of the so-called "trinity" - the United States (the remaining superpower), the nations of the European Union (particularly Germany, France, United Kingdom and Italy), and Japan (perhaps the greatest beneficiary of the post-1945 dissociation between politics and economics) - plus their respective transnational conglomerates, all involved in a regime of close commercial, productive and financial interdependence.119 This interdependence which, by being economic, paradoxically is in the new

116 Amorim, "Os Frageis Pilares da Nova Ordem," 21. What is ultimately behind fundamentalism, Amorim argues, is underdevelopment: "... undoubtedly, the economic and cultural backwardness to which enormous segments of the planet's population are submitted is the ideal environment for the fermentation of apocalyptic, sometimes suicidal views of politics at both national and international levels." Ibid. According to him, there will be no stable peace without generalized, sustained development.

117 Martins, "Ordem internacional," 136.

118 Ibid.

119 Ibid., 136-138. Massive trade exchanges, foreign direct investments (FDI) and financial transactions between the members of the trinity (corresponding to more than two thirds of the world's international capital flows) assure their interdependence.

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context explicitly political. With the end of the Cold War and diminishing geopolitical bipolarity, the increasing dissociation between politics and economics discussed here has actually implied a power shift from "politics" to "economics" which is, in reality, a shift from "traditional" (military, diplomatic) politics, a basic business of nation-states, to "global" (essentially but not exclusively economic) politics interplayed not only by nation-states but also by multinational corporations, multilateral organizations, etc. The replacement of the old geopolitical bipolarity in international affairs for a new situation identifiable as one of "economic multipolarity" does not point to the end of (geo)politics - but to a probable redefinition of its means in order to realize its immutable ends.

Neither does it point to the end of (political) conflicts in the global arena. Although the planetary consummation of capitalism and the contemporary pervasiveness of neoliberalism as its hegemonic discourse suggest the existence of a minimal consensus about the rules of the game especially among the members of the trinity - there would be reason to think, following Martins, that "mutual gains do not exclude distributive conflicts between their beneficiaries": ... the new pattern of international relations which seems to emerge ... is a pattern in which the actors may extend their conflicts up to a certain limit or under one condition: to not inflict serious damage to their competitors even if they are capable to do so. In short, [it refers to] a reciprocal containment that no longer obeys the rules imposed by a "balance of terror" as during the Cold War, but by the necessity of preserving relations of competitive-association between actors.120 Concerning those actors that historically have not been able to make substantial gains at all - the majority of countries in the South, the world system's periphery - the prospects are far from promising. Gelson Fonseca Jr. argues that the formal rules which discipline international economic relations have actually changed. If during the 1960s and 1970s these rules were based on the principle of non-reciprocity in the exchanges between developed and developing countries, due to the then prevailing ideology of state intervention in the economy on behalf of development with distributive justice,121 today the international economy's new stage - marked by globalization,

120 Ibid., 137-138.

121 Gelson Fonseca Jr., "Questoes de diplomacia economica em um mundo em transformacao" (Questions of economic diplomacy in a changing world), in A Nova Insercao International do Brasil (Brazil's New International Insertion), Joao Paulo dos Reis Velloso and Winston Fritsch, eds. (Rio de Janeiro: Jose Olympio, 1994), 184. Postwar decolonization and following developmentism - which aimed at leapfrogging newly independent nations to the developmental stage of their former colonizers through the adoption of state-led policies within the marks of capitalism

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technological revolution and laissez-faire ideology - would favor absolute (bilateral, eventually multilateral) reciprocity. "[Its] most immediate consequence ... is the prospect that all nations, even those at the lowest levels of development, will become equals under the law."122 Such an equality between unequals - which favors its stronger constituency by strengthening the status quo - has been advocated most by the nation-state which expected to benefit the most from the recent changes. The United States, the Cold War winner and sole remaining superpower, has witnessed the rise of new economic powers under its military umbrella to the point of arguably coming to find, in a medium to long-term perspective, its world politicoeconomic hegemony threatened. Presumably, in order to avoid this, the U.S. has been perceived as no longer willing to bear the bulk of the costs of capitalism's global dominance.123 It is now resented by other nations as having less commitment to the norms set by WTO and its predecessor, GATT, which comprise the new trade multilateral system. In Vivianne Dias' evaluation, "Notwithstanding the changes in the distribution of world economic power, the United States seeks to unilaterally define international rules; and it does so, while keeping a rhetoric of respect for the rule of law and multilateralism."124 The American position, in introducing more ambiguity and uncertainty in an already unstable and complex situation of deepening interdependence between nations, markets and their agents, would further compromise the new order's commonly desired stability: On one hand, after a procrastination of almost fifty years, - were largely sponsored by developed countries wanting to keep their areas of influence and prevent communism. "[At that time] diplomatic negotiation, which admitted to some extent the inspiration of values of distributive justice, was the international counterpart of the expectations brought by national [economic] planning." Ibid.

122 Ibid., 185.

123 The U.S. is increasingly unwilling to bear not only the more obvious political and military costs of the Cold War period, but also the economic ones particularly derived from non-reciprocal relations. These certainly played a major role in the postwar recovery and development of Western Europe and Japan, and kept large areas of the Third World away (enough) from the Soviet influence.

124 Vivianne Ventura Dias, "O Brasil entre o Poder da Forca e a Forca do Poder" (Brazil between the Power of Force and the Force of Power), in O Brasil e a Economia Global, 59-60. Although globalization's institutional trend towards deepening convergence and uniformization of regulatory structures has implied a generalization of conditions of reciprocity among the actors involved - which turns the observance of contractual obligations imperative for the consolidation of a system then constituted by such multilateral expectations - the nation-state leading this process paradoxically redirected its trade policy. According to Dias, growing concern among U.S. interest groups about American foreign trade has pushed the U.S. Congress towards active policy making on the issue, with two results: ... the adoption, by the United States, of a strategy which includes unilateral, bilateral and plurilateral initiatives regarding themes already in negotiation at the multilateral ambit; and ... the U.S. aggressive attitude forcing other governments to change domestic policies, considered prejudicial to American interests, by "leveling the playing field" [meaning trade "in equitable bases"] as a precondition for their access to the American market. (61)

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a trade international organization was created, which now needs credibility to implement norms consensually established. On the other hand, the United States privileges unilateral sanctions and negotiations for areas of free trade, with its actions contributing to undermine general confidence in the power of execution of WTO agreements. Countries like Brazil, therefore, see themselves in the difficult position of defending a Trade Multilateral System without having the necessary political power to give credibility to it.125 Thus arises, again, the question of Brazil's position in the global context - here, from a specifically politico-institutional standpoint. Dias identifies two alternative scenarios (not mutually exclusive) to be faced by the country's diplomacy, neither of them easy ones. The first, a more structural and comparatively less unfavorable picture, refers to the very fact that the advent of multilateral organizations as WTO - meaning the institutionalization of the scrutiny of national decisions by international controls - implies not only a reduction in the powers of the Brazilian state to set policies according to the nation's socioeconomic developmental needs. It also means the country's acceptance of patterns, legislation and procedures from developed countries - the most influential players in the global game - which have the power to present such patterns, legislation and procedures as resulting from international agreements (that is, as arrangements consensually obtained).126 Yet, it is better to count on the protection of such multilateral agreements and their institutions than to suffer the hardships of unilateral exposure to arbitrary powers - the second alternative (more conjunctural but less improbable in a short-term perspective, as the American case reveals): "The worst scenario would be the one in which the most powerful nations do not respect restrictions to their laws posed by multilateral institutions but do use their powers to force other countries to comply with international agreements."127 Considering both the likelihood and harshness of this reality, Fonseca Jr. summarizes the following tasks to be faced by the Brazilian economic diplomacy: "to decipher tendencies still

125 Ibid., 60. The World Trade Organization (WTO), created in 1994, is the result of a long and comprehensive process of negotiation which had the purpose of resetting the norms to settle commercial conflicts now in a context of increased global competition. It replaces the 1948 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and disciplines the international trade of goods and services, intellectual property rights and foreign investments.

126 Although the current redistribution of the world's economic power among a larger number of players has made multilateralism ultimately possible, it obviously does not preclude the dominance (as well as its legitimation in/by the new context) of those players which are more powerful.

127 Dias, "O Brasil entre o Poder da Forca e a Forca do Poder," 57.

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volatile, to define attitudes before the hegemonic centers and to seek, amidst the new realities, the ideal point for the country's [international] insertion."128 Nonetheless, in a context of reciprocity between the stronger and the weaker at best (a correlation already clearly detrimental to the latter), the realization of these tasks would be feasible only if the country's economy is able to adjust itself to the harsher current conditions of global competition - which means to dramatically improve, in a foreseeable future, the national economy's ability to produce and commercialize better and cheaper for/in international markets. It is in this fundamental sense that, according to Fonseca Jr., the politics and the economics of Brazil's "new" insertion must be articulated and understood: For the Brazilian economic diplomacy, the challenge is twofold: on one hand, to juridically sustain positions that we consider legal (in this regard, it is decisive to resort to multilateral mechanisms, striving for balanced and equitable solutions); on the other hand, beyond the properly diplomatic process, to strengthen trade positions with the purpose of economically absorbing and responding to unilateral sanctions.

The ideal situation, far yet from our present reality, would be the one in which we could produce essential goods for the economy of our commercial partners in such a way they could similarly lose [if trying sanctions against us] by possible counter-sanctions; or [a situation] in which the dimensions of our market were decisively important for the economic health of our partners.129

128 Fonseca Jr., "Questoes de diplomacia economica," 182. Nevertheless, he believes that Brazil does not have sound historical antecedents (past situations whose similarities with the contemporary moment would inform decision making by experience) to guide it in its new insertion: In reality, we are compelled to face extremely complex adaptive processes which demand a careful understanding of the new hegemonic configurations, and step-by-step evaluations of the impact of the new rules on our options for an economic project.

[We also] have to consider the alternatives for alliances open to middlepower countries. If macro-alliances proposing macro-changes - as the one on behalf of a New International Economic Order [NIEO, sponsored by the Non-Aligned Movement in the 1970s] - are no longer possible, there are still possibilities of change based on concrete interests, which must permanently be considered and reviewed. ... [as for example] the approximation between 'environmentally relevant' countries during the negotiations about the economic implications of decisions taken at the 1992 Summit in Rio de Janeiro. (183) 129 Ibid., 188. Whatever the case, he argues, "Without competitiveness there will be neither positive [global] insertion nor constant, predictable, solid contribution from international trade to the process of [domestic] development." Ibid., 179.

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When discussed and/or publicized in the Brazilian media, the dilemma between the properly politico-diplomatic hardships of globalization (still weaker multilateralism facing stronger unilateralism and/or bilateralism; laissez-faire reciprocity between unequals; increasing international controls over national policies) and the consensually recognized high sociopolitical costs of the country's economic adjustments to it (deeper social exclusion and marginalization; loss of national sovereignty related to the state's growing incapacity to set nationally oriented policies) has been treated in two distinct ways. The first one is characteristically speculative and normative, and the second, clearly justificatory. In the first case, the dilemma above has been translated into expectations about Brazil's structural conditions to overcome such difficulties in the course of its global insertion. (Its economic dimensions, regarding the country's resources and comparative (dis)advantages before the challenges of contemporary globalization, as well as alternative approaches to them aiming at the decrease of the nation's underdevelopment and dependence on external factors, have already been introduced in this Chapter.) However, with regard to the second, justificatory way, the dilemma's "resolution" by the country's subjective, initial political option in favor of regional integration through its participation in South America's Southern Cone Common Market (Mercosul, also constituted by Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay as its full members130) is the subject under debate, unfolded as follows.

As Bresser Pereira points out, the decisive argument on behalf of regional/continental free trade agreements, customs unions and/or common markets as the European Economic Community (EEC), and more recently the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and Mercosul, is essentially defensive: "a regional bloc is a system of trade discrimination for those which are out of it."131 Nevertheless, regarding Mercosul, Celso Lafer is euphemistic, to say the least: "[It] is, actually, a platform of competitive insertion in a world economy simultaneously globalized and regionalized into blocs." This platform, in operating in a global context of "liberalization of fetters upon productive factors," could not have as its goal "an enlarged market protected from the world by customs and non-customs barriers."132 Whatever the meaning given to Mercosul as a free trade

130 A partial customs union officially in force since January 1, 1995, Mercosul has also Chile and Bolivia as its associate members. Its free trade area of approximately 220 million inhabitants and GDP of U$ 1 trillion is expected to become a full customs union in the next decade.

131 Luiz Carlos Bresser Pereira, "O uso da integracao" (The use of integration), O Estado de S. Paulo, 18 October 1994, B2.

132 Celso Lafer, "Sentido estrategico do Mercosul" (Strategic significance of Mercosul), Folha de S. Paulo, 9 January 1994, 1-3. In this sense, Lafer argues that Mercosul corresponds to "a new vision of [Latin American] integration

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bloc, understood as non-discriminative towards outsiders, its most advertised advantages are the probability of larger-scale markets and operations coming to decrease costs and boost opportunities and profits for its agents; complementariness between the national economies involved, multiplying their combined prospective benefits; broader coordination, by the Argentine, Brazilian, Paraguayan and Uruguayan governments, of macroeconomic and sectorial policies aiming at sustained modernization and development; and the creation of regionally comprehensive, more adequate mechanisms to ensure fair competition and articulate and administrate the interests of state, capital and labour through permanent, democratic negotiation as a means to avoid resorting to external forums in order to settle internal differences.133 Although commerce within Mercosul grew at an impressive average of 27% per year from 1991 to 1995 (compared to a 7.5% annual trade expansion between its members and the rest of the world in the same period),134 problems and criticism concerning the nature and pace of its integration are frequently discussed in the Brazilian media. Despite an almost unanimously negative domestic reaction against U.S. attempts to undermine Mercosul, by pushing its agenda towards a Western Hemisphere Free Trade Agreement (WHFTA, obviously under American leadership),135 conflictive views come to light when the issue is, for example, the seriousness and consistency of Brazil's diplomatic policy regarding its regional partners. Ricardo Seitenfus and Deisy Ventura illustrate this point in their comments about the discussions for the establishment of

which is distinct from the one in the past derived from the import substitution model [typical of the 1950s and 1960s developmentism]." Ibid.

133 This concern with regard to the maintenance and enhancement of acceptable conditions of governability at a regional level in the face of globalization and its harsh politics is illustrated by Lafer's observation about the importance of those institutions and mechanisms: "Such is ... the lesson to be learned from the European experience, whose Community settles its controversies in its ambit, avoiding taking them to GATT [later WTO]." Ibid.

134 Stephen Fidler, "Mercosur: Trade pact sets the pace for integration," Financial Times, 4 February 1997, 12. "One fifth of the four [Mercosul] countries' foreign trade is now conducted with the other three ... members, compared with 9 per cent in 1990. Trade between Brazil and Argentina has quadrupled since 1990 to more than $15bn last year and is forecast to double again in the next six years." Ibid.

135 Luiz A. P. Souto Maior, "Um continente, duas percepcoes" (One continent, two perceptions), Folha de S. Paulo, 1 April 1994, 2-2, provides a sober analysis of Brazilian interests concerning President Bush's 1990 proposal to Latin America urging the creation of a hemispheric area of free trade "from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego" by 2005: ... [there are] two different perspectives regarding inter-American economic relations. The option for one or another largely depends on the economic conditions of each country and how it perceives its present and future positions in the international scenario. For Brazil, by having a geographically diversified international trade (with 80% of our exports going to destinations other than the United States) and an indigenous industry to preserve and develop, the eventual concretization of a WHFTA would bring obvious difficulties. Integration with economies at a stage of development close to ours is clearly the most adequate one.

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Mercosul's Common External Tariff (TEC): "Brazil defines as a priority the control of its trade deficit and the defense of its economic stability ... . Mercosul, if it comes to restrict government's economic maneuvers, will be seen as an obstacle. Then, commitments consensually assumed might [unilaterally] be reevaluated."136 Such an opportunistic economicism has been facilitated, according to Ventura, by an ongoing deliberate absence of supranational institutions which could form an independent juridical order: "... it is perceived that Mercosul is at the mercy of national executives, founded on the friendship they are able to maintain. There is no juridical security, only common trade interests, many of them still uncertain. The announced irreversibility is no more than a tendency."137 The prevalence of these "common trade interests" over any other aspect of the integration has been strongly criticized by those which have not gained anything from it - the organized workers. Jair Meneguelli, former president of Brazil's Workers' Central Union (CUT),138 complains that Mercosul's commercial liberalization, instead of being carried out within a frame of meaningful policy coordination, has in fact promoted a competitive war between its members, with overwhelming pressures for the reduction of production - thus labour - costs. Meneguelli refers to the hiring of Brazilians to work temporarily in Uruguay and Argentina, especially in the areas of civil architecture and telecommunications, earning far less than the salaries paid to local workers in similar occupations: "Brazilian companies win contracts in those countries by offering reduced labour costs. [Such a] 'social dumping' penalizes not only Brazilian workers thus living in a situation of indignity, but also Uruguayans and Argentines whose jobs are taken away."139 There was an unfoldment regarding this case which is, ultimately, quite illustrative of Brazil's dilemma concerning globalization from the perspective of its people. Again, Jair Meneguelli: We denounced this situation to the government, and up to

136 Ricardo Seitenfus and Deisy Ventura, "Quatro socios e um funeral" (Four partners and a funeral), Folha de S. Paulo, 19 April 1995, 2-2. In this article, Seitenfus and Ventura severely criticize the Cardoso Administration's "circumstantialism" towards Mercosul, as reflected in the government's advocacy of "flexible sectorial discretion [sic]." This means that Mercosul members, when facing chronic and/or emergent unstabilizing commercial imbalance, may unilaterally tax imports from their partners in order to short-cut trade deficits.

137 Deisy Ventura, "Los cuatro amigos" (The four friends), Folha de S. Paulo, 18 February 1995, 2-2. Ventura argues in favor of "The classic example of adoption of supranationality ... the European Union (EU), whose security and stability no longer depend on their members. [Its] autonomous community institutions, acting as tribunals, may sanction faulty states, their enterprises and citizens." Ibid.

138 CUT is one of the three major national labour union associations, of socialist orientation.

139 Jair Meneguelli, "O Mercosul de que nao se fala" (The Mercosul that nobody is talking about), Folha de S. Paulo, 27 April 1994, 2-2.

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now [April 1994] nothing concrete was done. On the contrary, the [then] Minister of Foreign Relations, Celso Amorim, in a written response to CUT, told us he opposes our claim with regard to the inclusion of labour rights in the mandate of the [then upcoming] World Trade Organization ... .

He alleged that [such an inclusion] is a maneuver, by OECD countries [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, formed by industrialized nations], aiming "to eliminate comparative advantages of developing countries derived from salary levels necessarily lower than those prevailing in developed countries" and "from labour differentials (sic) to apply protectionist measures."140

As I mentioned, my goal in this Chapter was to introduce a representative account of the primary terms of the debate about globalization in Brazil. Regarding communications policy, this discussion now constitutes the comprehensive conceptual frame within which the contemporary reality of the nation's media structures, values and practices has been thought. More particularly, however, the globalization debate in Brazil became - in a problematic exercise of what I called elsewhere "retrospective tautology"141 - a measuring stick for easy, essentially opportunistic evaluations of the country's past, complex experience in communications. In this sense, advocates of the hegemonic position have legitimated politico-legislative and corporate developments toward "the global," diffusing any critical assessment of such processes by alleging their "inevitability."

Consequently, the discussion has also been turned into a theoretical strait jacket, restricting the political search for democratic alternatives to the sector's future.

140 Ibid. Meneguelli ironically concludes that "The Minister recognizes the disadvantageous situation of Brazilian workers, in spite of defending the sustentation of our products' competitiveness on greater labour exploitation." Ibid.

141 Sergio Euclides de Souza, "The debate that did not happen: NWICO and the Cold War" (paper presented at the Ninth MacBride Roundtable on Communication, University of Colorado at Boulder, 1-2 October 1997), 1, footnote 2: ... I define [retrospective tautology] as the tendency to understand and evaluate subjective, normative move(ment)s that led to a conflictive moment in history from the perspective of their (objective) results. The obvious risk of this approach is to minimize or even ignore the implications of the very fact that history, as a process, is the continuous development of interplays between subjective intentions and objectified structures - thus neither positively predictable in its unfoldment nor epistemically reducible, in its complexity, to any set of consequences.

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I keep such discursive/rhetorical (mis)uses in mind while reconstituting past and present developments - along their representations and/or justifications - in the following Chapters. In the Conclusion of this dissertation, I analyze the implications and consequences of this regressive relationship between the phenomenon of globalization and its dominant explanation.

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CHAPTER 3 The National Interest: Communications During the Military Regime and After

There was a time, not long ago - before the current globalization and technological revolution, certainly before "the winds of democracy" in the East turned the world upside down - in which Brazilian state/ governments demonstrated a clear vision about what would be the best path for the country's development. They showed a clear understanding about their role in this process, and thus regarding the corresponding role of their private partners, domestic and foreign. As I note in the Introduction of this dissertation, the liberal-developmentist "tripod" model adopted by the 1964 military regime (an alliance of state, foreign and private domestic capitals), in prescribing a direct, strong state participation at the levels of coordination and investment as imperative to make the liberal logic of capitalist dynamics viable in an economy of incipient accumulation (in Marxist terms, "to release its productive forces"), aimed to accelerate development and fully insert Brazil in the system of world capitalism. It would do so by advancing an import-substitution industrialization which was also oriented to an expanding (although increasingly hierarchized and socially exclusory) domestic market. Such a paradoxically statist version of liberal capitalism, despite privileging full insertion through short-term capital accumulation senselessly irrespective of long-term socioeconomic consequences, nonetheless reflected, I would argue, an intent of international insertion "with sovereignty."

Concerning communications - then perceived, more than ever, as an strategic sector - the tripod model restricted foreign participation to equipment manufacturing and supply while the telecom system (its implementation and development; infrastructure, operations and services) went under national ownership and control due to reasons of "national security." These reasons and related rationales, once articulated by the military within the so-called "Doctrine of National Security

and

Development"

(a

child

of

Cold

War

geopolitics

blending

liberal-

developmentism/state capitalism and internal security against communism, the ideological justification of the 1964 regime's repressive character), by implying a totalizing view of the national interest here specifically realized through communications, are the main issue of this Chapter.

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In this sense, I proceed a historical reconstitution of the Brazilian state-domestic media industry alliance as perhaps the Doctrine's foremost achievement: the alliance's origins, antecedents, evolution, interests, contradictions and outcomes. With regard to its evolution and outcomes, I highlight the implementation and development of a nationwide telecom system by the state (with the help of multinationals as equipment suppliers), and the expansion and consolidation of the Brazilian cultural industry by its private partners (with the resulting increased concentration of media ownership and control in Brazil). Finally, I approach the alliance's renewal in the 1980s paralleling the demise of the military regime and its policies - as well as their underlying conception of the national interest - by introducing elements whose crucial implications are unfolded in this dissertation's subsequent Chapters: the country's institutional re-democratization, the emergence of new political actors and the consequent rearticulation of the struggle for (and the promise of) democratization of communication, culminating in the workings of the 1987-1988 Constituent Assembly around the topic "communication" and their outcome - the 1988 Constitution's Chapter of Social Communication.

STATE-PRIVATE MEDIA RELATIONS BEFORE 1964

Long before the contemporary technological convergence - in fact, long before the days of state planning hegemony - in a country where power relations have traditionally privileged shortterm concerns over long-term consequences, once distinct communication technologies had the opportunity to experience relatively independent - although frequently inconsistent - developments.

Brazil's first telegraph and telephone services were implemented by American companies, respectively, in 1854 and 1877 under the auspices of D. Pedro II, the nation's second and last Emperor, a ruler reputed as an enlightened monarch, lover of arts and sciences.142 Even by then, the country experienced perennial problems because technological development was dependent on foreign investment. The case of telephony is exemplary. Despite its early arrival in Brazil (with its expansion starting virtually at the same time as in the United States) and the systems' operation by venturous enterprises as the Western and Brazilian Telegraph Company (subsidiary to the Western 142 Gildo Magalhaes, "Telecomunicacoes" (Telecommunications), in Historia da Tecnica e da Tecnologia no Brasil (History of Technics and Technology in Brazil), Milton Vargas, ed. (Sao Paulo: UNESP and CEETEPS, 1994), 317.

The advent of telephony in Brazil was defined by an episode which exemplifies the kind of visionary voluntarism irrespective of the means, characteristic of the country's early stages of development. Graham Bell's first important demonstration of his invent, at the 1876 Philadelphia Exposition celebrating the Centennial of American Independence, was performed for D. Pedro II, then visiting the United States. The telephone demonstration immediately converted an enthusiastic D. Pedro to the new technology. Ibid.

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Union Telegraph Co.) and the Telephone Company of Brazil (a Bell Telephone company), by 1887 there were only 5,000 subscribers, mostly concentrated in the wealthiest, most profitable urban and/or business areas of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. By contrast, in that year there were 150,000 telephone subscribers in the U.S.143 Such a poor performance resulted from a combination of private expediency and governmental short-sightedness which eventually compromised the progress of Brazilian telephony for almost a century. The systems' chronic underdevelopment would be structurally addressed only after 1964.

Broadcast radio, however, evolved remarkably. After amateur and official experiments, it effectively started in 1923 as an initiative by intellectuals sponsored by the state.144 Although an enterprise born with clearly elitist, non-profit and apolitical goals,145 the proliferation of radio "societies" and "clubs" followed a context of increasing economic and political instability (the 1920s were the years that preceded twentieth-century capitalism's worst crisis in 1929 and, as its main repercussion in Brazil, the demise of the agrarian-oligarchic order in 1930146). The expansion of radio prompted the first governmental attempts to discipline a service already perceived as potentially subversive if not regulated through politically and/or ideologically oriented licensing procedures (for both broadcasting and ownership of receiving sets) and content

143 Ibid., 317-318. On the other hand, telegraphy, due to lower costs of installation and maintenance, and the needs of long-distance transportation, fared better: by 1889, there were almost 19,000 kilometers of telegraphic lines along the Brazilian coast, from Belem, at the gates of the Amazonian jungle, to the Uruguayan border in the south. Ibid., 316.

144 Sergio Euclides de Souza, "Concessoes de Radiodifusao no Brasil: A Lei como Instrumento de Poder (19321975)" (Broadcasting Licenses in Brazil: The Law as an Instrument of Power [1932-1975]) (master's thesis, Universidade de Brasilia, 1990), 49-54. Brazil's first broadcast radio transmission was realized by amateurs in Recife, Pernambuco (a northeastern state), in 1919. On September 7, 1922, at the inauguration of the Rio de Janeiro Exposition celebrating the Centennial of Brazilian Independence, President Epitacio Pessoa's speech was transmitted to radio receiving sets in Niteroi and Petropolis (Rio de Janeiro state) and Sao Paulo. In 1923, with the support of the government-sponsored Brazilian Academy of Sciences, Roquette Pinto (considered the founding father of Brazilian broadcasting) led the creation of the Radio Society of Rio de Janeiro, the country's first broadcasting enterprise.

145 Oscar Piconez, "A empresa de radiodifusao no Brasil" (Broadcasting enterprise in Brazil), Revista ABERT, July 1986, 6: "[radio started as] an undertaking of intellectuals and scientists, with basically cultural, educative and altruistic (sic) purposes. In the beginning, the audience listened to operas, recitations, concerts, cultural talks, etc."

Because radio receiving sets were imported and very expensive, only a few had access to the service. Ibid.

146 Boris Fausto, "A Revolucao de 1930" (The 1930 Revolution), in Brasil em Perspectiva (Brazil in Perspective), Carlos Guilherme Mota, ed., 3d ed. (Sao Paulo: Difel, 1971) is an introductory reference to this crucial period of Brazilian history. During the First Republic (1989-1930), the most powerful sector of the agrarian-export oligarchies the "coffee bourgeoisie," the world's main producer of a commodity subject to the humors of foreign consumer markets - controlled Brazilian politics due to the country's dependence on this monoculture's economics. The 1929 world crisis, in bringing the collapse of coffee markets, weakened dramatically its suppliers - in Brazil, the political order from which they were the main beneficiaries.

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controls (censorship). This realization came soon after the 1930 Revolution,147 when the country's first comprehensive legislation for radio communication - Decree 21,111/1932 - was issued. Its emphasis on prescription, prevention and punishment was the expression of (a) the advent of a new political order whose nationalism was partially derived from totalitarian experiences then advancing in Europe (especially Italian fascism), which implied a monolithic, powerful and omniscient state with the mission of ubiquitously guiding, correcting and sanitizing society towards the accomplishment of its "destiny" (in the Brazilian case, industrialization); (b) a clear understanding, by Getulio Vargas and associates who had arrived in power, about the need to control, discipline, use and develop old and new media (press, radio) aiming, on one hand, at mass indoctrination, ideological propaganda and diffusion of governmental objectives and achievements, and on the other, at curbing opposition; and finally (c) regarding fledgling radio, the acknowledgment of an unsurmountable gap - at that time - between its already recognized enourmous possibilities and its lack of sustained economic viability if solely dependent on private initiatives This disparity opened the way for the state's direct involvement with the new technology.148 Concerning (c), I argued elsewhere that such an original power asymmetry between state and private initiatives concerning broadcast radio determined the nature and quality of the subsequent relationship between these two spheres throughout the history of Brazilian broadcasting - relationship which eventually came to constitute the post-1964 alliance which is the subject of

147 In 1930, an armed movement overthrew President Washington Luiz, the last representative of the coffee oligarchy.

It brought Getulio Dornelles Vargas to power for 15 years, in the spirit of the then globally emergent forms of authoritarian nationalism (fascism, Stalinism). The 1930 Revolution marked the political transition from a ruraloligarchic class alliance, based on a primary-export economy, to a populist coalition integrated by the state bureaucracy, domestic industrial sectors, the urban middle and working classes, and fractions of the military and the old oligarchies, all sharing an early version of the developmentist mentality which later led Brazil to importsubstitution industrialization.

148 Decreto no. 21.111, de 1 de marco de 1932, publicado no Diario Oficial, Rio de Janeiro/ Distrito Federal, 19 de marco de 1932. Souza, "Concessoes de Radiodifusao no Brasil," 55-69. Decree 21,111/1932, the country's first consolidation of telecommunication laws, regulated the sector in the following three decades. It defined radiocommunication services and their respective nature and particularities, established the competence, conditions and procedures for licensing (concession, lapse, expiration and renewal) as well as for disciplining the licensees (supervision and surveillance; imputation of administrative and criminal responsibilities), and set up the legal frame for state intervention in areas as telecom training and taxation.

Especially relevant is the fact that broadcasters' eventual "abuses" of freedom of expression were subject to a press legislation (Law 4,743/1923) inherited from the previous oligarchic regime, which was concerned about newspapers' "subversive" activities. One of its dispositions - a persuasive argument for self-censorship - was related to a "theory of subsidiary penal responsibility of successive character." It stated that when the identification of the author of an "abuse" of freedom of expression turned out impossible, the responsibility for the fault would fall on the medium's director or manager, independently of his/her knowledge of the fact.

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this dissertation.149 This asymmetry, in its continuous but irregular development, reflected and reproduced - as I note here in the Introduction - historically dominant aspects of Brazilian life (predatory privatism under state favoritism, bureaucratic centralization, political conservatism and clientelism). These features are manifestations of a state-civil society structural relation whose corresponding formation has been basically and distinctly defined as "peripheral-dependent" (the Marxist perspective) and "patrimonial" (the Weberian perspective). Whether the Brazilian state has been an expression of class interests - thus, of the interests of (later) powerful broadcasters - or has had interests of its own - thus, interests in broadcasting - since the "radio days" it has gotten the upper hand in its relationship with the country's electronic media by ultimately dictating (politically, economically and juridically) the rules of their game.150 During Getulio Vargas' dictatorship (1930-1945) and after (until the early 1960s), Brazilian broadcasting - especially radio - expanded vertiginously151 following related major trends of those decades, especially technological developments (spurred by the Second World War and its context) and the increasing presence of mass media in society, with all its controversial implications and consequences.152 However, with regard to the politics and legal framework of communications, although Vargas took full advantage of radio as a tool for mass manipulation using the authoritarian legislation and state resources at his disposal,153 his successors - who buried his

149 Ibid., Conclusion.

150 Souza, "Concessoes de Radiodifusao no Brasil," 256-259. I also argue in the Introduction of this dissertation that the state-society antinomy concerning the state-private media relationship in Brazil has frequently been merely formal, given the structural (although not always conjunctural) identity and/or complementariness of their respective interests.

The real antinomy, thus, would be between the state-private media alliance and Brazilian society (whether defined as the citizenry, the masses, the public or the audiences, referring to the vast majority not actively involved in such politico-economic arrangements) - an antinomy whose practical supersession is the ultimate goal of the movement for the democratization of communication.

151 Saint-Clair Lopes, Fundamentos Juridico-Sociais da Radiodifusao (Socio-Juridical Foundations of Broadcasting) (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Nacional de Direito, 1957), 31. In 1950, there were 300 radio stations operating in Brazil.

Four years later, their number almost doubled: 577, including four television stations. By 1954, there were also 139 authorized stations being installed, including 12 TV stations.

152 The advent and development of twentieth-century "mass culture" in its psychology, sociology and political economy, has been the core subject, until recently, of media and communication studies as an academic field.

153 Once in power, Vargas created the Official Department of Propaganda (DOP), to coordinate the government's social communication. In 1934 , it became the Department of Propaganda and Cultural Diffusion, and in 1939, the Department of Press and Propaganda (DIP). Along its institutional evolution, the Department concentrated more and more power. It came from promoting governmental policies and achievements through state broadcasting (Radio Nacional, the national radio founded in 1933, the country's hegemonic medium for three decades) to exercising previous censorship of private media, print and broadcast. At its peak, during the Second World War, it had absolute control over all means of communication in Brazil. DIP was extinguished by Vargas in 1945.

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near-fascist nationalism after Western liberalism's military victory in 1945154 - did not perform much better with broadcasting. Despite the advent of a formally democratic regime, the country's subsequent rulers kept the existing political practices and some of the corresponding legal instruments (to be used according to their conveniences), which came to essentially maintain the state-private media power asymmetry. Nevertheless, due to a rapidly growing awareness of the social power of mass media (whose assumed importance began to be translated into economic terms) that asymmetry, by incorporating these recognitions and related emerging interests, started to evolve increasingly on behalf of both its poles. The consolidated use of discretionary broadcasting licensing by the government, in exchange for political support from broadcasters (in principle) less economically dependent on the state, indicated a structural redefinition of their relationship in more equitable - although rarely equalized - conditions.155 There was an episode in that period which illustrates this point as well as the relative artificiality of the state-private media antinomy. Just after the successful coup d'ĂŠtat against Vargas, provisory President Jose Linhares signed Law-Decree 8,356/1945, by which previous censorship of radio, imposed in 1939 at the eruption of the World War,156 was eliminated (excepting for the production of works of fiction). In the same text, penalties for content violations were more clearly defined. It also established, for the first time in legislation, the requirement for public submission in broadcasting licensing, according to which the selection of those to be licensed would be based on the following preestablished preferential criteria: (a) the candidate that could present the best evidence of his/her moral aptitude; (b) the candidate that could provide the best financial advantages for the government; and (c) the candidate that was not already a broadcasting licensee. Nonetheless, due to pressures of broadcasters who earlier benefited from

154 Given the similarities between his regime and the defeated powers in the Second World War, Vargas was deposed by the military in 1945 (despite having supported the Allies to the point of sending Brazilian troops to fight the Axis in Italy). A liberal-democratic regime was then instituted, which, however, allowed the former dictator's return to Presidency by popular vote in 1951. Under increasing political pressure by his enemies, Vargas committed suicide in 1954.

155 Here, the controversial Assis Chateaubriand, Brazil's first media mogul and a dominant figure in the country's contemporary history, is a case in point. In spite of owning Diarios Associados between the 1940s and 1960s (an empire consisting of up to 80 newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations, to which only Roberto Marinho's Globo would later become comparable), and exercising unparalleled political influence, Chateaubriand compromised with governments he reluctantly supported. The reason to do so was his enterprises' chronic financial difficulties in those times of incipient consumer and advertising markets - besides "inadequate" managerial rationality. A detailed account of Chateaubriand's delicate, frequently turbulent relations with state and private sources of funding in Brazil and abroad (particularly the banking system) is offered by Fernando Morais in his biographical work Chato, o Rei do Brasil (Chateaubriand, the King of Brazil) (Sao Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1994).

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either the ambiguity or the lack of similar dispositions in licensing procedures, these criteria were revoked by President Eurico Dutra in 1946 (Law-Decree 9,364), thus bringing back to the process the old, unfettered governmental discretion to reward supporters and to keep apart real and potential, perceived or suspected opponents.157 What is especially revealing about this case - that is, about what it unequivocally exemplifies concerning the formalism of the state-private media antinomy - is the fact that, although those dispositions in licensing procedures were erased from the law, those with regard to censorship remained in force. Despite an apparent willingness by Dutra158 to play the post-1945 "democratic" game - reflected in his decision to not restore previous censorship on informational broadcast contents - he restored powers which could be used to please his friends, and only his friends, inside (granting more licenses) and outside (allowing new licensees) the broadcasting business - which meant to please just those who would not likely speak against him. Furthermore, to curb broadcasters operating beyond his power circle, the President still had a legal instrument Decree 21,111/1932 - to punish eventual, a posteriori "abuses" of their freedom of expression.

By the early 1960s, broadcasting in Brazil had developed to a stage that rendered the existing legislation economically and technologically obsolete, widening a gap between norm and reality with crucial political implications for its relationship with the state. Television, which made its debut in 1950,159 demanded substantially higher human and material investments than radio; it also required more professionalism, predictability and rationality in its administration - something that an ambiguous legislation, especially conceived for capricious authoritarian use, could not secure. Accordingly, the acceleration of the country's industrialization during the mid and late 1950s, marked by President Kubitschek's liberal-developmentism,160 intensified parallel and/or

156 Law-Decree 1,949/1939, stating that all broadcast contents were under previous censorship by DIP, depending on authorization to be transmitted.

157 Gaspar Vianna, Direito de Telecomunicacoes (Telecommunications Law) (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Rio, 1976), 126-127.

158 A former Vargas' associate who led the coup against the dictator, later elected President by popular vote.

159 Television's first transmission in Brazil was realized in Sao Paulo on September 18, 1950, with the inauguration of Assis Chateaubriand's PRF-3-TV Tupi. For a humorous description of the event, see Morais, Chato, o Rei do Brasil, 496-504.

160 Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira, President from 1956 to 1960, is considered one of the two foremost statesmen in Brazil's twentieth-century history (beside Getulio Vargas). His Presidency was characterized by a liberaldevelopmentism still advancing a coherent role for the state in economic policy making, a sensitive question (later answered by the 1964 military regime) after a tumultuous comeback of Vargas and his statism (between 1951 and 1954). Also a period of unprecedented political freedoms, Kubitschek's "golden years" were crowned by a historical

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corresponding trends - particularly urbanization and the consequent emergence of sizeable urban (mainly middle-class) markets - which turned geographically concentrated, homogenized consumption on a massive scale possible, and thus the growth of advertising. Nevertheless, the best fulfillment of such opportunities was compromised by an old infrastructural problem: the dramatically precarious state of Brazilian telecommunications, namely telephony.161 Television transmissions were made only in the VHF (very high frequency) band; their range was limited by the potency of transmitters mostly located in the largest cities. Since a substantial increase of the stations' transmission power was technologically impossible at that time, and videotape unavailable, broadcast television had to wait for the improvement and expansion of existing infrastructures primarily used for telephony and telegraphy (coaxial cables, radiophony) and later for the development of new technologies of transmission (microwave, satellite) in order to enlarge its area of coverage by operating in network, and consequently achieve a true economy of scale in the business.

Considering the Brazilian reality in its disparate, almost unbearable historical socioeconomic contradictions, this legislative inadequacy and infrastructural decay - by occurring in a sector crucial for the unity of a country of sizeable proportions then developing rapidly but whose policy, in that particular case, had clearly revealed the limitations of economic liberalism outside the state - was unfolding amidst growing political tension. As already observed, these were the years of ideological battles between distinct conceptions of development;162 they occurred in a climate of relative but unprecedented political freedoms which ended allowing the possibility of achievement: the transference of the nation's capital from Rio de Janeiro to Brasilia in 1960. Brasilia, built during his government in the Brazilian central highlands, aimed to bring development to the country's vast interiors.

161 Magalhaes, "Telecomunicacoes," 320-323. The Brazilian Telephone Company (CTB) was headquartered in Toronto, Canada. Operating in the states of Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais, responsible for 70% of the nation's telephonic traffic, it started to be nationalized in 1956. CTB finally suffered federal intervention in 1962, due to the revolting inefficiency of its services. This situation, according to CTB executives, resulted from the company's forced lack of investment since the Second World War, artificially low telephone rates, and consequent loss of profitability. Ibid.

By early 1960s, Brazil, with a population of 70 million, had only 1.2 million telephone lines and 1,000 telex terminals. Its telephonic, telegraphic and postal services were unreliable, deteriorating to the extent of compromising seriously the country's communications. In Gildo Magalhaes' account, International connections were still dependent upon the old 1874 submarine cable (for telegraphy), and interurban and international telephone calls were a matter of pure luck: waiting a connection could take hours ... . ... . Equipments were [mostly] imported ... and chronic the lack of reposition materials, turning maintenance difficult. Projects and installation were also imported since the small companies [the hundreds operating at local, municipal levels] did not have engineers. CTB ... concentrated its planning staff in Rio de Janeiro. The absence of standards and norms [of interconnectivity] resulted in a service of quite irregular quality. (321-322)

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effective oppositional organization. With the purpose of checking it, the post-1945 liberal order adopted a parliamentarian regime between 1961 and 1963, aiming at weakening Vice-President Joao Goulart (considered Vargas' political heir, a nationalist supported by the left) after President Janio Quadros' resignation.163 It was during the parliamentarian interregnum that broadcasters, alarmed by the possibility of a ressurrection of Vargas' authoritarianism through Goulart (meaning the comeback of the old days of arbitrary censorship and insecurity), conformed their ideas and efforts to those of a decisive actor in Brazilian politics - the military - which was then convinced about a perceived dangerous threat to national security: the precariousness of the country's telecommunications infrastructure. This convergence, whose first significant result was the passage of the Brazilian Code of Telecommunications, CBT (Law 4,117/1962), a new legal framework to direct the sector's future development,164 would have, however, its advantages understood differently depending on the perspective of the interests involved. The absence in the new law, reproduced from the old, of any preestablished preferential criteria for broadcasting licensing was, again, an exemplary case of distinct purposes being attended at once. Gaspar Vianna comments on why the National Congress ignored what could have been one of these criteria - regarding broadcast ethics, to be reflected in program contents - in the making of the 1962 Code: Such an "oblivion" is easy to explain: numbers of congresspeople owned radio stations or were, in some way, associated with 162 At the Introduction.

163 Francisco Iglesias, "Momentos Democraticos na Trajetoria Brasileira" (Democratic Moments in Brazilian History), in Brasil, Sociedade Democratica (Brazil, Democratic Society), Helio Jaguaribe et al. (Rio de Janeiro: Jose Olympio, 1985), 193-203. The unexpected resignation of President Quadros in August 1961, after only seven months in power, precipitated the nation into an institutional crisis. Military leaders - followed by the conservative and liberal majority at the National Congress - refused to give full presidential powers to Vice-President Goulart. From September 1961 to January 1963, Brazil had three prime ministers. The first of them, Tancredo Neves, would lead the political transition from military to civilian rule in the 1980s.

A plebiscite in January 1963 ended the parliamentarian experiment. Goulart then governed with the powers of presidentialism until being overthrown, by the same forces that had sponsored parliamentarianism, 14 months later.

164 Lei no. 4.117, de 27 de agosto de 1962, publicada e retificada no Diario Oficial, Brasilia, respectivamente em 5 de outubro e 17 de dezembro de 1962. Souza, "Concessoes de Radiodifusao no Brasil," 92-125. The 1962 Code, the country's second consolidation of telecom laws, has been - despite several amendments and further legislation - the basic document disciplining the sector. It was the outcome of a political process in which the National Congress, strengthened by the powers of parliamentarianism and advised by broadcasters (many of them congresspeople) and the military, imposed on a weakened President Goulart: (a) a new correlation of rights and duties between the state/government and broadcasters, formally based on the liberal values of political independence and freedom of enterprise against arbitrary powers (expressed in the legal guarantee of "a due process" in the courts, in case of litigation, instead of going through governmental agencies, as before); and (b) a new model for telecom development, which would later be advanced and consolidated by the 1964 military regime.

As I argue in this Chapter's next section, a contradiction between (a) and (b), which revealed itself after the coup d'ĂŠtat, then appeared to be mostly paradoxical - thus, quite exemplary of liberal-developmentism. If private broadcasting as an economic enterprise was destined to prosper due to state investment in telecommunication infrastructure, what would remain - of real political relevance - to be criticized, from the broadcasters' perspective?

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licensees. These associations could be family ties (in many cases, the station actually belonged to the congressperson, but it was registered in the name of his/her children, siblings, spouse or other relatives) or political ones (party "caciques" and "leaders" managed to get stations to their allies and electioneerers). Therefore, nothing [in that regard], or almost nothing new was added [to the law].165 While family and political "criteria" did not actually escape the Congress' attention, the military leadership had other reasons to agree with their inherent subjectivity. According to colonel Josemar Vallim, himself an active participant of the civilian-military articulation that led to the new Code, at that time the Brazilian Armed Forces' Joint Chiefs of Staff (Estado-Maior das Forcas Armadas, EMFA), ... concerned about the impropriety of services and concepts in the sector of telecommunications, studied the problem, concluding that the national security, due to its pronounced socioeconomic connotation, required better civilian means of communication since the Armed Forces [already] had means of their own for operations of clearly military character. Therefore, services of civil nature could be executed, directly or by delegation, in accordance with the political orientation of constitutional texts (including the [liberal] Constitution [then] in force) because the national security did not depend on and/or demand the estatizacao [to turn private enterprises into state ownership] of communications but the possibility of always employing and controlling them where, when and how necessary.166 (italics added).

NATIONAL SECURITY AND COMMUNICATIONS AFTER 1964

165 Vianna, Direito de Telecomunicacoes, 142-143. There was nothing in the legislation preventing congresspeople from owning radio and/or television stations - but broadcasting directors and managers had to be legally imputable.

These could not be in position to enjoy exemptions and immunities eventually granted to elected officials.

The terms of broadcasting licenses in Brazil have traditionally been 10 years (for radio) and 15 years (for television), renewable successively.

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Regarding infrastructural development, the 1962 Code of Telecommunications anticipated the military's general orientation for the sector that came to be thoroughly implemented in the years following the March 31, 1964 coup d'ĂŠtat: (1) the creation of the National System of Telecommunications, formed by federal and state networks, guiding the integration and standardization of all telecom services; (2) transference of telegraphic, radiocommunication and interstate telephonic services to federal jurisdiction; (3) attribution to the Union (the federal state/government) of authority to explore directly and industrially the trunks of the National System of Telecommunications by constituting a public enterprise for it (the Brazilian Telecommunications Enterprise, EMBRATEL, the state long-distance carrier created in 1965); (4) institution of CONTEL (the National Council of Telecommunications, which became the Ministry of Communications, MINICOM, in 1967) and DENTEL (the National Department of Telecommunications) as its executive secretary to centralize regulatory and supervisory powers, and with competence to define specifications for telecom networks as well as criteria for the services' charges; and (5) institution of the National Fund of Telecommunications (FNT), from a tax (up to 30%) over telecom rates, to accelerate the implementation of the National System and finance its operation by EMBRATEL. Besides their hardly deniable imperativeness, these dispositions, whose leitmotif was essentially geopolitical and strategic, nonetheless referred to manifestly technical and administrative procedures. In according to realities in which political debates are replaced by technical discussions about policies - as it was after the technobureaucratic regime inaugurated in 1964 - they remained untouched in form and content throughout the legislative rearrangements that followed the abrupt change from a civil, politically liberal order to a military dictatorship.

Nevertheless, such was not the case of those dispositions to which the new rulers' civilian partners might be, in principle, more sensitive. Despite their unconditional support to the movement that deposed President Goulart,167 the broadcasters' newborn rights to freedom of

166 Josemar Vallim, "Editorial," Telebrasil Noticiario, May/June 1972, 5-6; quoted by Vianna, Direito de Telecomunicacoes, 136-137.

167 Rene Armand Dreifuss, 1964: A Conquista do Estado - Acao Politica, Poder e Golpe de Classe (1964: The Conquest of the State - Political Action, Power and Class Coup), 5th ed. (Petropolis, Brasil: Vozes, 1987), 244-250.

During the months prior to the coup d'ĂŠtat, there was a massive, articulated use of radio and television against Goulart.

According to Dreifuss, the political right campaigned in the media around the following theses: (a) all the difficulties faced by the nation could be solved "democratically"; (b) the radicalization of the political process interested only "irresponsible," "antidemocratic" individuals serving "ideologies alien to the Christian feelings of our people"; and (c) the maintenance of a regimen of free enterprise was sine qua non for the solution of the problems affecting the country.

Ibid., 246

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expression and safe enterprise and to due legal process against violations of them, consecrated in the 1962 Code, were severely cut three years later. Through Law-Decree 236/1967, a military regime then consolidating its powers abolished the legislation's liberal propensities by reemphasizing, in the old spirit of Vargas' Decree 21,111/1932, prescription, prevention and punishment.168 However, contrary to past positions, the new authoritarianism was not developmentist in a national-populist sense. In its fully matured liberal-developmentism - as already noted, a combination of state-sponsored repressive politics, technocratic policies and liberal economics to accelerate domestic accumulation aiming at Brazil's full insertion ("sovereign" or "dependent," depending on the perspective) in the capitalist world system - it came to again redefine the state-private media relationship now in terms of an alliance from which the latter pole would benefit on an unprecedented scale.

For the best comprehension of the nature and evolution, implications and consequences of the cooperation between these partners, it is necessary to address the new arrangement's normative terms - then (predictably) set by the stronger partner - by bringing forward its ideological foundation. Originally an American formulation concerning the defense of the Occident in response to a perceived Soviet expansionism after the Second World War, the so-called "Doctrine of National Security" later corresponded to several related authoritarian, anticommunist conceptions regarding the organization of the state and guidance of society during the Cold War period.169 It had a strong impact on existent or emerging military regimes in Latin America in the

Quite ironically, Gaspar Vianna observes that the freedom of expression enjoyed by broadcasters since the passage of the 1962 Code was fundamental for the success of the 1964 coup d'ĂŠtat: "Without [the] right that guaranteed the free democratic preaching (sic), we certainly would not have had ... the Revolution's fulminant victory without sacrificing human lives." Direito de Telecomunicacoes, 143.

168 Decreto-Lei no. 236, de 28 de fevereiro de 1967, publicado no Diario Oficial, Brasilia, 28 de fevereiro de 1967.

Souza, "Concessoes de Radiodifusao no Brasil," 162-177. Law-Decree 236/1967, signed by President marshal Humberto Castello Branco, struck particularly upon the 1962 Code's dispositions about infractions and penalties, by increasing the level of conceptual imprecision regarding "abuses" of freedom of expression, and the lack of correspondence between infractions and penalties (on behalf of the latter's severity). By eliminating the broadcasters' right to resort to the Judiciary when litigated, it transferred back to the Executive (the Presidency, CONTEL/MINICOM) powers likely to be used discretionarily. Not coincidentally, this legislation was promulgated when a new press law of identical inspiration (Law 5,250/1967) entered in force. Both were followed in the same year by the military's new Constitution.

As I wrote in the Introduction, Law-Decree 236 also came to formally prohibit foreign investment and/or participation in Brazilian media - but only after Roberto Marinho (who became the regime's foremost media partner) benefited from the flagrantly illegal Globo-Time-Life 1962 agreement. And finally, in another bizarre disposition - in which the legislator's declared intention to prevent ownership concentration in broadcasting had to coexist with the regime's policy to encourage network operations aiming for national integration - each corporation could own up to 30 radio and television stations. Nevertheless, no limit for the ownership of retransmitter stations was established.

169 Joseph Comblin, A Ideologia da Seguranca Nacional: O Poder Militar na America Latina (The Ideology of National Security: The Military Power in Latin America) (Rio de Janeiro: Civilizacao Brasileira, 1978), 14. The

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1960s and 1970s (Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, Ecuador), with its local versions incorporating sociocultural traits historically prevalent in the continent, whose sources, in Maria Helena Moreira Alves' recounting of Margaret Crahan's account, could be traced "as far back as the nineteenth century in Brazil and the beginning of the twentieth century in Argentina and Chile ... [linked] to theories of geopolitics, to anti-Marxism, and to conservative Catholic social thought as expressed in such organizations as the Opus Dei in Spain and the Action Francaise in France."170 The Brazilian Doctrine of National Security and Development was considered, by far, the most sophisticated among its Latin American congeners.171 Its most influential theoretician general Golbery do Couto e Silva - stressed the fundamental importance of geopolitics for a correct assessment of Brazil's ultimate prospects considering its territorial dimension, geographic position, population and resources: the country's transformation into a world power.172 Doctrine's principles were first formulated by civilians at the U.S. government, and then conveyed to the military at the National War College in Washington, D.C. 170 Maria Helena Moreira Alves, State and Opposition in Military Brazil (Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 1985), 13; Margaret E. Crahan, "National Security Ideology and Human Rights" (paper presented at the Tenth Interamerican Congress of Philosophy of the Interamerican Society of Philosophy and the American Philosophical Association, Florida State University, Tallahassee, 18-23 October 1981). Alves, State and Opposition, understands such incorporations in the light of the Doctrine's major variations: With the advent of the Cold War, elements of the theory of total war and inevitable confrontation between the two superpowers were incorporated into national security ideology in Latin America. The specific form it took in Latin America emphasized internal security in the face of the threat of "indirect action" by communism. Thus while American national security theoreticians stressed total war and nuclear weapons strategy, and the French, well into the Algerian War, focused on limited warfare in response to the Communist threat, Latin Americans, concerned with the growth of working-class social movements, emphasized the threat of internal subversion and revolutionary warfare.

In addition, Latin American national security ideology, particularly as it developed in Brazil, was specifically concerned with the link between economic development and internal and external security. (13) 171 Comblin, A Ideologia da Seguranca Nacional, 154. The Brazilian Doctrine was developed at the Superior War College (ESG), founded in Rio de Janeiro in 1949, and subordinated to EMFA. Contributions came from the Institute of Research and Social Studies (IPES) and the Brazilian Institute of Democratic Action (IBAD). These organizations articulated the civilian-military movement that overthrew President Goulart in 1964.

172 Golbery do Couto e Silva, Conjuntura Politica Nacional: o Poder Executivo & Geopolitica do Brasil (National Political Conjuncture: The Executive Power & Geopolitics of Brazil), 3d ed. (Brasilia: Editora Universidade de Brasilia, 1981). Couto e Silva coordinated the intelligence effort behind the 1964 coup d'ĂŠtat, and later, the implementation of the intelligence structure which sustained the National Security state. One of the military regime's top officials, his reputation as the regime's mastermind was actually enhanced during the decline of the military rule general Golbery is considered the father of the abertura policy (shown ahead in this Chapter).

In the section "Geopolitica do Brasil" (a collection of essays written between 1952 and 1960), Golbery seems to subscribe the understanding of geopolitics proposed by the German organicist tradition from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Kjellen, Ratzel, Haushofer), embodied in the Institute of Munich - despite recognizing and deploring its further instrumentation by Nazism. According to the organicist definition,

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The Doctrine's essential elements173 can be articulated as follows: 1. The Doctrine of National Security is based on four fundamental concepts: national objectives, security, power and strategy.

2. National objectives reflect "the aspirations and interests of all the national group." The permanent national objectives express ... aspirations and interests perduring throughout a determinate, relatively long stage of the evolution of the national group: as integrating its constant and universal nucleus, and taking forms either more aggressive and positive or more defensive and negative, there are the motive ideas of national integration, selfdetermination or sovereignty, welfare and progress; The conjunctural, contemporary national objectives represent ... the crystallization of those aspirations and interests in the light of limitations imposed by the possibilities and circumstances of the moment, particularly the existing and presumable internal and external antagonisms.174 According to Golbery do Couto e Silva, also a national objective is the preservation and development of what constitutes "the essence of the Occident": science, democracy, Christianity.175

Geopolitics is the science of the relations of the land with political processes. It is based on the broad foundations of geography, especially political geography - which is the science of the political organism in space and, simultaneously, of its structure. Moreover, Geopolitics provides the arms for political action, and directions for political life as a whole.

Therefore, Geopolitics turns itself into an art, the art of guiding political practice. Geopolitics is the geographic (self)consciousness of the State. (29) (italics added).

173 The Doctrine's textbook is the Manual Basico da Escola Superior de Guerra (ESG Basic Manual) (EMFA/ESG, Departamento de Estudos, several editions), employed in professional and ideological training for top-ranked military personnel, and also high-level civilian technocrats and executives in the state's administration and private corporations.

However, due to their analytical relevance, I draw the Doctrine's essentials from its main apologist, Golbery do Couto e Silva, followed by comments in footnote synthesizing the positions of one of its finest critics, Joseph Comblin.

174 Silva, Conjuntura Politica Nacional, 155 (of "Geopolitica do Brasil").

175 Ibid., 226 (of "Geopolitica do Brasil"). General Golbery understands science ("as an instrument of action"), democracy ("as a formula for political organization") and Christianity ("as the supreme ethical standard for life in society") as containing "liberty, equality and fraternity; the broad recognition of Man's dignity; the full expansion of the individual personality; the maximum physical and spiritual welfare for all; social justice and peace."

Comblin, A Ideologia da Seguranca Nacional, 50-64, argues that what confers unity to such disparate objectives is the presumed fact that they were threatened by communism.

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3. National security refers to "the relative degree of guarantee the State gives to the national collectivity for the realization and safeguard of its objectives, despite existing or presumable internal and external antagonisms."176 4. National power consists of the political, economic, military and psycho-social powers respectively. It is "the integrated expression of means of every kind ... effectively available to the Nation, in a certain moment, to promote internally and internationally the realization and safeguard of the National Objectives, despite existing or presumable internal and external antagonisms."177 As a division of the national power, the psycho-social power includes the subject-area of this dissertation. Its specific foundations are population, the social environment and institutions; its manifestations are education, demography, health, labour and social welfare; ethics, religion, ideology, housing, participation in the national wealth... Among the components of psycho-social power (syndical power, religious power, power of the national morals...), there are the powers of social communication and public opinion.

5. Finally, national strategy consists in "the orientation and direction of the national resources' development and reinforcement as well as their utilization, aiming at promoting effectively the realization and safeguard of the conjunctural, contemporary National Objectives, despite existing or presumable internal and external antagonisms." As national politics refers to the issue of the state's governance towards the realization and safeguard of the national objectives (which reflect "the aspirations and interests of all the national group"), national strategy is the art of preparing and utilizing the national power for the fulfillment and maintenance of those national objectives thus defined by national politics - that is, at the realm of the state as the guarantor of the national collectivity's security against "existing or presumable internal and external antagonisms."

Therefore, strategy is the politics of national security.178

176 Silva, Conjuntura Politica Nacional, 155 (of "Geopolitica do Brasil").

According to Comblin, the practical consequences of national security's conceptual fluidity are (a) the elimination of the distinction between violent and non-violent means, available to the state to realize the highest mentioned "degree of guarantee"; (b) the elimination of the distinction between foreign and domestic policies, given the quality of the mentioned "antagonisms"; and (c) the resulting elimination of the distinction between preventive and repressive state actions. A Ideologia da Seguranca Nacional, 50-64.

177 Silva, Conjuntura Politica Nacional, 156 (of "Geopolitica do Brasil").

In Comblin's interpretation, the national power refers to everything the state may use to impose its will - ends justify whatever means employed. If, as the Doctrine sustains, communism attacks everywhere, in every way, it is necessarily inferred that communism could only be fought back by bringing all the available resources (human, material, coercive, ideological) articulated to form an unified, indivisible capacity for action. A Ideologia da Seguranca Nacional, 50-64.

178 Silva, Conjuntura Politica Nacional, 155 (of "Geopolitica do Brasil"). General Golbery explains:

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The unescapable tautological circularity and identity of these concepts as they were articulated to substantiate the Doctrine's philosophical substratum did not escape Joseph Comblin's attention: Politics consists in defining objectives. However, we know they are defined according to the situation of the moment - an issue of National Security. Once the objectives are defined, everything else comes to depend upon strategy: every action must be strategically integrated aiming the National Security.

The National Strategy is a broad concept ... which involves all civilian and military activities - both what is usually called politics and what is traditionally understood as war or strategy in the right sense. [Here] the basic idea is that there is no difference of nature between the civil and the military. Total war [against communism] turns everything into military matters, everything becomes subject to strategy.179 Once the ideological battle of developmentisms came to an end in 1964, such a substratum set the theoretical basis for a political justification of the state's then renewed role in capitalist accumulation. Since national-developmentism and related structuralist and dependency analyses were (rightfully or not) identified with statisms distrustful and/or hostile to free enterprise - being either the "domestic" populist, near-fascist Varguism or the "foreign" totalitarian, atheistic Soviet communism - the Doctrine of National Security and Development, in recognizing Brazil's both ... Politics includes Strategy, which is restricted to the sector of Politics under direct or indirect influence of existing or presumable internal and external antagonisms.

According to circumstances - more dynamic international relations, greater international dependency of the State, presence of more dangerous and pressing antagonisms, greater national vulnerability - the ambit of Strategy may amplify considerably, almost coinciding entirely with that of Politics. (155-156) (italics added).

179 Comblin, A Ideologia da Seguranca Nacional, 62. This analysis is unequivocally confirmed by Golbery do Couto e Silva, Conjuntura Politica Nacional, in the following, quite mantric passage (of "Geopolitica do Brasil"): ... war is no longer only war, it is also economic war, political war, psychological war, ideological war; civil war as well as revolution are also wars; war can be cold war and, as such, permanent, insidious, multiform - what is made, thus, of peace? ... Strategy is no longer only the art of generals, it is also economic strategy, political strategy, psycho-social strategy; there is still a strategy corresponding to the tactics of subversive action, both about which Lenin was the undisputed master; economists in their planning strive to distinguish, for each step, strategic variables from non-strategic ones; strategic games are opening a revolutionary chapter in mathematical analysis; and strategy can be strategy of peace as much

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backwardness and potential, resolutely embraced a liberal-developmentism then translated into the tripod model and related policies. Complementing its direct economic participation as the fosterer of private accumulation (by foreign and domestic capitals) through massive investments in infrastructure (by which it became a primary accumulator itself),180 the post-1964 state implemented a security policy aiming at removing any obstacles to the acceleration of the accumulation process. Maria Helena Moreira Alves summarizes the resulting policy orientation from the Doctrine's articulation of such economics and politics: Security, as an element in the "development with security" concept, implies the need to control the social and political environment so as to provide an attractive climate for multinational investment.

Social peace is also necessary for the achievement of maximum rates of capital accumulation in order that rapid economic growth reach a "takeoff" stage of development. ... Economic development is not geared to basic needs, and development policy is not particularly concerned with the establishment of priorities for a rapid amelioration of the living standards of the majority of the population. Education programs ... should be concerned mainly with training technicians to participate in the process of economic growth and industrialization. Other basic-needs programs, such as low-cost housing, community health, and basic primary education, are low priorities. Ultimately, the economic model is designed to augment Brazil's potential as a world power. For such primordial and all-important goals ... the sacrifice of successive generations may be necessary.181 (italics added).

For the accomplishment of this truly comprehensive (as much as exclusory) national project, the means of social communication had three crucial, interrelated functions:

as strategy of war - what is left, thus, to Politics? (144-145) 180 Introduction, at 16. The then created or reformed state companies, by incorporating patterns of managerial rationality typical of private corporations, soon became able to make profits and reinvest them successively, quickly expanding their infrastructures as well as the services thus commercialized.

181 Alves, State and Opposition, 27-28. The author registers a passage from the ESG Basic Manual's 1976 edition, at page 339: "Nations that have achieved a rapid rate of development accumulated in the whole of their history considerable savings and an immense general effort. This effort may imply different degrees of sacrifice for successive generations, for it is clear that all enforced savings must correspond to an enforced reduction in consumption." Ibid., 304 , note 39.

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(a) an ideological function - the control of the social and political environment for the achievement and preservation of "social peace," with the purpose of attracting investment, could not be carried out only by coercive means (although physical repression was widely used, especially from 1968 onward, as indicated ahead). Therefore, as invaluable instruments for the execution of the psycho-social strategy,182 the media (print and broadcast) were summoned to realize the regime's cultural hegemony through massive indoctrination and propaganda; (b) a geopolitical function - national territorial integration required populating the Brazilian central highlands, interior plains and Amazonian region in order to secure frontier defense, and thus block paths of penetration that could be vulnerable to an alien (communist) aggression.183 To assure permanent settlement of these areas, it was imperative to establish a communication network (telecom and broadcast) throughout the national territory; and (c) an economic function - both "social peace" and territorial integration were understood as having a relation of dynamic reciprocity with the process of "development with security." As much as development would depend on "social peace," and on the prospect of vast spacial integration to reach its largest scale, there would be neither lasting peace nor consolidated integration without development - thus, neither national security, as then conceived, nor a grand national destiny fulfilled. Therefore, the establishment of an extensive telecom network would render not only timely information exchange among economic agents possible on a national scale but also, by allowing broadcasting to operate on the same scale, to spur businesses through advertising on the same national scale.

Accordingly, the post-1964 Brazilian state took the initiative by implementing the already mentioned measures towards the National System of Telecommunications anticipated in the 1962 Code. The process of nationalization and/or estatizacao of private telephone companies was concluded with the creation of the Brazilian Telecommunications Company, TELEBRAS, the state holding company of the National System (EMBRATEL and the local carriers), in 1972.184 By that

182 Silva, Conjuntura Politica Nacional, 157 (of "Geopolitica do Brasil"). General Golbery defines the psycho-social strategy as a particular one for the potentiation of the psycho-social power "aiming at strengthening the morale of the Nation and its allies [as well as] breaking that of its antagonists."

183 Ibid., 131-134 (of "Geopolitica do Brasil"). Couto e Silva argues that Brazil's territorial integration must be pursued in terms of the respective geopolitics of "spacial integration and valuation," "expansionism toward the interior," and "containment" (along the boundary lines). Ibid., 137 (of "Geopolitica do Brasil").

184 Raul Antonio Del Fiol and Jose Eugenio Guisard Ferraz, "National telecommunications planning in Brazil," Telecommunications Policy (September 1985): 229-239. Besides having the state as its main stockholder, TELEBRAS counted on telephone subscribers as minor shareholders - to get telephonic service, those interested had to buy shares

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time, the Ministry of Communications was coordinating an ambitious plan to increase by a factor of five times the nation's low telephone density of two lines per 100 people within ten years (which would lead to the installation of 10 million terminals). As part of this effort, MINICOM also sought the urgent installation of one million lines in the states of Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais and Espirito Santo within four years. The purpose was not only ameliorating telephony's chronic precariousness in the short term but also, by stimulating immediate production of telephone equipment in Brazil by multinational corporations, bringing these enterprises' technological know-how to the military regime's long-term endeavor to improve the country's telecommunications.185 In this regard, the unusually subordinate but strategic role to be played by multinationals was the unavoidable result of the national industry's lack of capacity to attend the demands of a system designed to incorporate advanced technology as well as to expand rapidly. Since the mid 1950s, Standard Electric (subsidiary to the American ITT) and Ericsson (Sweden), and later Philips (Netherlands), NEC (Japan), Siemens (Germany) and Plessey (United Kingdom) were running manufacturing plants in Brazil, but mostly to assemble imported equipment. In the 1970s, however, TELEBRAS started to require autonomy of these corporations' subsidiaries (in relation to their headquarters) to develop native technology employing local human and material resources in order to progressively nationalize equipment production. As a counterpart to this policy, the subsidiaries would sell equipment to TELEBRAS holdings based on the country's division in regionally monopolized markets, with preestablished quotas, and thus adjust their production lines on a high degree of predictability.186 in the existing local telephone companies. In addition to the resources from FNT, the subscribers' financial participation in TELEBRAS was decisive for the expansion of the National System of Telecommunications.

Magalhaes, "Telecomunicacoes," 326-327. By 1972, CTB and more than 800 small telephone companies had been consolidated into 25 TELEBRAS holdings (one company per state, excepting Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais). Four providers kept their former status: beside the Telecommunications Company of Rio Grande do Sul state (CRT, controlled by the state government), and the municipal operators of Ribeirao Preto (Sao Paulo) and Londrina (Parana), only one privately owned enterprise remained - the Central Brazil Telephone Company (CTBC), of national capital, operating in areas of Minas Gerais, Sao Paulo, Goias and Mato Grosso.

185 Magalhaes, "Telecomunicacoes," 326-327. Those states constituted the former area of operation by CTB, then emerging from a chaotic situation.

186 Ibid., 328-329. Magalhaes highlights the considerable impact of this TELEBRAS policy on professional education and training: National engineering was then privileged because the manufacturers were forced to comply with [TELEBRAS] directions, without which they could not obtain the "Certificates of Quality and Homologation," expression of the so-called "TELEBRAS Standard.". Schools of Electronic Engineering and Telecommunications grew rapidly in number, providing qualified personnel for new factories installed outside the Rio-Sao Paulo axis, as a Philips plant in Recife [Brazilian northeast] and a Siemens plant in Curitiba [in the south].

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Nevertheless, the military regime soon understood that such initiatives were not sufficient to substantially decrease the nation's technological dependency in telecommunications. Gildo Magalhaes observes that with the beginning of general Ernesto Geisel's Presidency (1974), the governmental policy was articulated around three major actions: ... (i) foreign corporations operating in Brazil were compelled to joint Brazilian financial groups which, by law, had to keep the majority of these joint enterprises' voting capital; (ii) equipment purchases were centralized by TELEBRAS [the holding company], which came to exercise this monopsony in order to impose the nationalization of components and the development of local technology; (iii) creation of a research and development center in Campinas [Sao Paulo state], concurrent with the adoption of incentives for emerging small and medium companies to absorb the technology generated by this center.187 The first major action led Siemens, Ericsson and NEC to join forces respectively with (a) Hering, (b) Monteiro Aranha, Atlantica Boavista and Bradesco, and (c) Brasilinvest, to form respectively Equitel, Matel and NEC do Brasil (the other multinationals left the country and/or had their subsidiaries absorbed by national enterprises). The second action allowed TELEBRAS to reduce dramatically its imports by nationalizing up to 90% of the purchase costs of raw materials and components of its equipment. The third action eliminated Brazil's technological dependence concerning telephony (commutation, transmission, networking and peripherals), providing the country with native technology comparable to those of developed nations.188 Magalhaes summarizes the contribution of the second, foreign leg of the military regime's tripod model to Brazilian telecommunications as follows: Besides these professionals' absorption by the industry, TELEBRAS holdings also benefited from them to augment their planning and operational staffs. (329) 187 Ibid., 330. Between 1976 and 1983, TELEBRAS invested approximately U$ 10 billion, and the nation's telephone density reached eight lines per 100 people. The number of telex terminals grew from 1,000 in 1968 to 43,000 in 1983.

Ibid., 329-330.

According to Del Fiol and Ferraz, TELEBRAS research and development center (CPqD) was instituted in 1976 "to generate technology based on the intrinsic interests of the country; to absorb foreign technologies according to the country's needs and convenience; and to transfer technology to the Brazilian telecommunications industry." By 1985, CPqD was mastering and transferring to the industry "state-of-the-art technology such as digital switching, optical communications, digital transmission, data communications, satellite communications and semiconductors."

"National telecommunications planning," 237.

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By the end of the 1970s, the three remaining multinationals [Siemens, Ericsson and NEC] were already developing precisely the technology preconized by TELEBRAS; one of them, Siemens, even developed a series of complementary products independently from its [German] headquarters. Brazilian engineering was then able to project, build, install and operate complex systems of digital technology. Its success led it to export know-how to other Third World nations, as Nigeria, where hundreds of Brazilian engineers worked for Promon and Hidroservice [Brazilian companies].189

The national territory was then covered by a microwave network in SHF (the basic system, with high-channel capacity) and UHF (the complementary system, with medium and low-channel capacity). To integrate the Amazonian region, a tropodiffusion system (the world's largest) was implemented utilizing national technology. Satellites (INTELSAT) and a shortwave radio system were employed for coastal communication. And international communication was ensured by satellites and new coaxial submarine cables.190 It was through this infrastructure that the domestic broadcast media - meaning network television - came to fulfill its part in the post-1964 national project regarding communications.

The importance of this third leg for the sector's development model can be fully recognized only when some features and dynamics of their political and economic contexts are remembered.

Politically, from the late 1960s onward, the military regime intensified its repressive actions against an opposition which was until then openly and increasingly critical of the socioeconomic sacrifices imposed by the "development with security" policies.191 All political activity was thus 188 Magalhaes, "Telecomunicacoes," 331-332.

189 Ibid., 332.

190 Ibid., 330.

191 Alves, State and Opposition, 80-100. Through the Institutional Act no. 5 (AI-5) decreed in December 1968 - the peak of the regime's repressive disposition - the Executive acquired the following extraordinary powers: ... (1) the power to close the federal Congress and state and municipal assemblies; (2) the right to cancel the electoral mandates of members of the legislative or executive branches at federal, state, and municipal levels; (3) the right to suspend political rights of citizens for ten years and the reinstitution of the "statute of the cassados [those suspended]"; (4) the right to dismiss, remove from office, transfer, or retire employees of the federal, state, and municipal bureaucracies; (5) the right to fire, dismiss, or transfer judges, and the removal of all guarantees to the judiciary with regard to job tenure, non-transferability,

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controlled: the National Congress was closed from December 1968 to October 1969, and reopened after a series of severe purges in civil and state institutions, including itself; the media were censored; universities, parties, grass-roots and labour organizations were dismantled. With the emergence in 1969 of urban and rural armed resistance against the dictatorship, the use of searchand-arrest campaigns, violence and torture by military and police apparatuses spread and intensified.192 Economically, as Maria Helena Moreira Alves notes, "The period of congressional recess was used to the fullest to enact decree-laws regulating the economy and to provide a complete system of fiscal incentives, which facilitated the implementation of the economic development model. By the end of 1969, the legal framework for the economic miracle years was firmly in place."193 The so-called "Brazilian economic miracle" refers to the period between 1968 (the regime's closing) and 1973 (the first price shock levied by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC) in which a combination of sharp authoritarianism, the adopted economic policy and favorable international conditions led the country to experience double-digit GDP growth rates (up to 14%, then the world's highest) while stabilizing inflation rates around 20%. A dramatic increase in foreign investments - from U$ 11.4 million in 1968 to U$ 4.5 billion in 1973 - spurred industrialization at an unprecedented pace; its immediate side effect was a substantial rise in the nation's foreign debt, from U$ 3.9 billion to U$ 12.5 billion within the same period.194

and the maintenance of salary levels; (6) the power to declare a state of siege without any of the impediments that had been written into the 1967 Constitution; (7) the right to confiscate private property for state use as punishment for subversion or corruption; (8) the suspension of habeas corpus in all cases of political crimes against national security; (9) trial of political crimes by military courts with no other judicial recourse: (10) the right to legislate by decree and issue any other institutional or complementary act; and finally, (11) the prohibition of any consideration by the judiciary of appeals from those charged under any provision of AI-5. All stipulations of the act were to remain in force until the president signed a decree specifically revoking it. (95-96) 192 Ibid., 103-105. In Maria Helena Moreira Alves' account, the alternative of an armed rebellion was considered by opposition sectors since 1967, but it came to be advocated by some groups only after the repressive wave that followed the enactment of AI-5. "Armed struggle was most concentrated in urban areas and primarily involved organizations whose militants were drawn from the student movement. The main rural guerrilla warfare, organized by the Communist Party of Brazil (PC do B), a split-off from the Brazilian Communist Party [PCB], took place in the Araguaia region [in the Amazonian south]." Ibid., 104.

The Araguaia guerrilla was annihilated only in 1975. It seems to have confirmed general Golbery do Couto e Silva's concerns about the geopolitical need to block paths of penetration in the country's remote interiors "vulnerable to a communist aggression."

193 Ibid., 104.

194 Ibid., 106-116. A series of economic measures turned the massive attraction of foreign capitals vital for the miracle. Alves:

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Nevertheless - as the Doctrine of National Security and Development itself admitted - the social "sacrifice" of the majorities on behalf of such a spectacular capital accumulation had to be (as it actually was) high. In 16 years, income inequality in Brazil aggravated strikingly. Among the economically active population, the poorest 50% had a GNP share of 17.71% in 1960; in 1976, this figure had fallen to 11.6%; meanwhile, the richest 5% concentrated GNP shares from 27.69% in 1960 to 39% in 1976. Regarding the intermediary strata, the next-poorest 30% lost participation from 27.92% (1960) to 21.2% (1976), while the middle 15% gained it from 26.6% to 28% in the same period.195 Despite a general increase in the actual productivity of Brazilian workers, in March 1976 the real monthly minimum wage was 31% of its value in January 1959.196 This number looks even more brutal when confronted with the fact, noted by Alves, that in 1970 - in the midst of the economic "miracle" - "50.2 percent of the total economically active population earned less than the minimum wage each month and another 28.6 percent earned between one and two times the minimum wage. Thus, 78.8 percent of the population earned less than twice the minimum wage per month ... ."197 (italics added).

The remaining 20% that could claim variable benefits from the post-1964 developmentism with security (coincidentally, the top one-fifth of the economically active population that improved The increase in the growth rate was due both to an increase in total foreign investment and to extensive state investment that applied funds from international lending institutions. ............................................................

Foreign investment was deemed of fundamental importance for Brazil's development objectives, because the greater efficiency attributed to multinational corporations was expected to fuel rapid growth. ... Tax deductions and even tax exemptions were established for investment in areas that the government considered crucial to the overall development plan, particularly the Amazon, the Northeast, and the central plains. Domestic interest rates were kept higher than interest rates offered by international lending institutions to encourage investors to seek outside financing. Tax subsidies were provided for export goods.

Perhaps most important, tax deductions were established for capital gains, thereby spurring investment in the stock market. (106) 195 Ibid., 111. The quantitative data presented here were gathered by Alves from several official sources - as the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) - as well as non-official ones - e.g., the Interunion Department of Statistics and Socioeconomic Studies (DIEESE).

196 Ibid., 83.

197 Ibid., 111-112. In Brazil - a country with costs of living traditionally higher than those in the United States - the monthly minimum wage in 1970 corresponded to U$ 58.75.

In the miracle years, the involution of government's investment in health and education clearly reflected its priorities. In 1974, the Ministry of Health received 0.99% of the total national budget, a ridiculous figure compared to the already low 4.29% participation it had in 1966. Also in 1974, the Ministry of Education received 4.95% of the national budget, less than half of its percentage in 1965 (11.07%). "In comparison, the Ministry of Transport, which was building the access routes for reaching the mineral deposits in the Amazon basin, got 12.54 percent [in 1973], and the military ministries together received 17.96 percent [in the same year]." Ibid., 114.

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its GDP shares throughout the miracle years) came to constitute the nucleus of a nonetheless expanding (although unequally among different strata) domestic market for consumer goods as well as cultural goods. Here lies the knot tied by network television as perhaps the major artificer of Brazil's geopolitically integrating, hierarchically inclusive and socioeconomically exclusory capitalist development. In Renato Ortiz's words, "... paralleling the growth of industry in general and the internal market for material goods, also strengthened are the industry of cultural production and the market for cultural goods."198 Characteristic of an alliance whose pragmatic nature subordinated the less important component of its interests - politics as such - the military's censorship did not compromise the media's performance in their triple (ideological, geopolitical and economic) role as inferred from the Doctrine of National Security and Development. Concerning the workings of censorship, Ortiz provides a fine analysis of how politics did not interfere with the economics of cultural production: ... it is necessary to understand that censorship is double-faced: one is repressive, the other disciplinary. The former says "no," it is purely negative; the other is more complex, affirms and encourages a determinate kind of orientation. During the 1964-1980 period, censorship does not define itself exclusively by vetoing every cultural product; it operates as selective repression which makes impossible the emergence of a determinate thought or artistic work. Plays, movies, books are censored, but not the theater, the cinema or the publishing industry. The censorial act affects the work's particularity, but not the generality of its production. The post-1964 cultural movement is characterized by two tendencies which are not mutually exclusory: on one hand, it is defined by political and ideological repression; on the other hand, it is a moment in Brazilian history in which cultural goods are produced and disseminated on an unprecedented scale. This is due to the fact that the authoritarian state itself is the sponsor of capitalist development in its most advanced form.199 (italics added).

198 Renato Ortiz, A Moderna Tradicao Brasileira: Cultura Brasileira e Industria Cultural (The Modern Brazilian Tradition: Brazilian Culture and Cultural Industry) (Sao Paulo: Brasiliense, 1988), 114.

199 Ibid., 114-115.

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It was under such conditions that the state-media industry alliance could consolidate itself and evolve undisturbed until the mid 1980s. Its main outcome, the country's robust cultural industry, presented development numbers as impressive as those of the economic miracle. Between 1966 and 1976 the annual production of books in Brazil increased from 43.6 million copies to 112.5 million; in 1980, this figure was 245.4 million. Total magazine circulation grew from 104 million copies in 1960 to 202 million in 1975 and 500 million in 1985. The number of movie theaters rose from 800 in 1967 to nearly 3,500 in 1975. Between 1970 and 1976, the phonographic industry's revenues increased 1,375%; from 1967 to 1980, the sale of record players grew 813%.200 Indisputably leading this trend, television experienced technological advancements. Besides networking, the advent of videotape and colorcast (the latter starting in 1973) - enabled by the socioeconomic changes discussed before, spurred a boom in the television business. In 1965, there were 2,202,000 TV sets in use in Brazil; in 1970, with network transmission already in place, this figure rose to 4,931,000, and in 1975, to 10,185,000 (including color TV sets); by 1980, there were near 20 million TV receivers. In 1970, 56% of the population - 4,259,000 households - had receivers; in 1982, 15,855,000 homes were served by television, corresponding to 73% of the population.201 Finally, at the core of the fast-growing cultural industry as its driving force, there was the relationship between television and advertising. Between 1964 and 1976, the participation of advertising in the nation's GNP increased from 0.8% to 1.28%; in 1974, Brazil was the world's seventh largest advertising market. In 1962, television had 24.7% of the total advertising expenditures on print and broadcast media; in 1982, it had burgeoned to 61.2%.202 Nothing illustrates better the centripetal character of this influx than Globo network's participation in it: between 1977 and 1980, Roberto Marinho's enterprise realized 85% of all advertising disbursements on television.203

200 Ibid., 122-132. Ortiz obtained these data from several sources, mostly industry reports.

201 Ibid., 130.

202 Ibid., 130-132. In the meantime, the share of broadcast radio declined from 23.6% to 8%. Ibid., 132.

203 Daniel Herz, A Historia Secreta da Rede Globo (The Secret Story of Globo Network) (Porto Alegre, Brasil: Tche, 1987), 215.

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RE-DEMOCRATIZATION AND COMMUNICATIONS AFTER 1985

Throughout the 1980s, the Brazilian state's virtual collapse as the major investor in the country's infrastructural development led the tripod model to its demise. By then, acute crises of external and internal debts indicated that the extraordinarily accelerated capital accumulation observed in the previous years had been spurred by a philosophy of overspending, with a too externally dependent economic approach. The state's bankruptcy and its resulting loss of power to coordinate the economy not only transformed the (once understood as) inevitable but coercively imposable "sacrifice of successive generations" into a profound, generalized and lastly uncontrollable socioeconomic crisis. It also and consequently gave the political opposition - as much as the establishment's opportunistic fractions - the necessary leverage to ultimately end the military regime and its geopolitical megalomania. The imperatives and solutions respectively faced and found by the National Security state and its associates to politically "socialize" their growing troubles - that is, to share with society the responsibility for their failures - were synthesized by Maria Helena Moreira Alves: By the end of the Geisel period [1979] the state had suffered a sharp decline in political, moral, and legal legitimacy, as evidenced in the open and increasingly vigorous opposition of Congress, the church, the press, and the legal profession. In addition, growing difficulties in implementing the economic model, rising inflation, and skyrocketing foreign debt brought substantial sections of the national bourgeoisie into the fray, demanding greater participation in economic decision-making. The abertura ["opening"] policy, according to Golbery [do Couto e Silva], was necessary to avoid the "black hole" of overcentralized power. The state was isolated; it was in trouble economically; it was concerned about the parallel power of the security forces and the inefficiency of the overcentralized bureaucratic apparatus. For its own survival, it needed to decentralize and become more flexible. For its own legitimacy, it had to liberalize enough to recover some base of support.204

204 Alves, State and Opposition, 254-255. Since its implementation in the 1960s, the regime's liberal-developmentism had, as shown before, imposed extremely heavy burdens on the majority of population. But it was in fact the increasing extension of these burdens to the middle-classes in the 1980s (the middle 15% earlier benefited by, and supportive of the economic model), due to the state's fiscal crisis and inflationary upset, which quickly eroded the regime's political

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Started actually by President general Ernesto Geisel and deepened during the Presidency of general Joao Figueiredo (1979-1985), the abertura policy corresponded to a series of carefully controlled concessions by the regime, aiming at a slow, gradual and secure liberalization of the political order. The purpose was to contain a then incoercible opposition by resorting to a wide range of procedures (usually through legal and administrative mechanisms), from limited acceptance of oppositional demands and (electoral) participation to selective accommodation and/or co-optation of oppositional interests.205 The military regime could best implement this policy by relying on its private partners at the tripod model's (arguably) most successful accomplishment - communications - especially with broadcast television performing, in the absence of a climate for direct coercion, its ideological function to the furthest extent.

And no one did it better than the media's greatest beneficiary from the post-1964 politicoeconomic order: Roberto Marinho and his Globo network. By the early 1980s, Globo was already the world's fourth largest private TV network (only behind the three American giants NBC, ABC and CBS).206 With its benefactor increasingly surrounded by old and new problems and enemies, Globo decided to turn its quasi-monopoly in favor of the government (but it did so only up to a certain point, as was soon demonstrated). Venicio Artur de Lima registers three episodes in which TV Globo "deliberately suppressed, distorted, or promoted information in its newscasts with a specific political purpose": (1) False information was promoted as part of a boycott of Leonel Brizola. Brizola, a prominent figure in the years that preceded the 1964 coup d'etat, was given amnesty in 1979 and ran for governor

stability. Meanwhile, "the richest 1 percent [had] seen its share [of the national income] rise by 179 percent." Ibid., 260. With regard to the foreign debt and concurring inflation, In 1980 the debt service absorbed as much as 61 percent of total export earnings.

In addition, two thirds of the debt was contracted with floating interest rates, meaning that rising interest rates in other countries seriously affect Brazil's debt position. By December 1982 the Brazilian foreign debt had officially reached $91 billion. Inflation also continued to plague the country, reaching 110.2 percent in 1980 and maintaining a rate of over 95 percent for the next two years. In 1983 it reached over 200 percent. (260) 205 The revocation of AI-5 in 1978, political amnesty and party reform in 1979, and popular elections for state governors in 1982 (the first ones since 1965) were among important concessions credited to the policy of abertura by the early 1980s.

206 Venicio A. de Lima, "The State, Television, and Political Power in Brazil," Comunicacao & politica 1, no. 9 (1989): 172-173 [originally published in Critical Studies in Mass Communication 5 (1988): 108-128]. In 1980, Jornal Nacional, Globo's prime-time newscast, was watched daily "by an average audience of more than 60 million people [in a country with a population of 120 million], which represents almost three times the number of viewers mobilized by similar newscasts in Japan, and more than four times the number of viewers who [watched] the BBC nightly news."

Ibid.

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of Rio de Janeiro in 1982 when the boycott took place. (2) Distorted coverage was given to the first oil refinery workers' strike in Brazilian history in July of 1983. (3) Information was suppressed in relation to the national campaign for direct presidential elections in the first semester of 1984. Each of these instances occurred during the process of liberalizing the authoritarian military regime (1982/1984) when direct state censorship had already been totally lifted from the media.207 In the first case, overwhelming evidence showed that Marinho and Globo in fact participated of an attempt to defraud the 1982 election results for governor in Rio de Janeiro state as a means to prevent the victory of Leonel Brizola (a politician in the tradition of Vargas, formerly linked to the deposed President Joao Goulart). The plot was uncovered and publicly denounced, and Brizola had his election confirmed.208 In the second case, since the workers' strike at Paulinia petroleum refinery complex (in Sao Paulo) occurred in a sector understood by the military as concerning national security, Globo's coverage - which clearly minimized the strikers' demands while highlighting the positions of PETROBRAS officials and state executives - complemented

207 Ibid., 161.

208 Ibid., 162-164. Lima's account of a striking testimony by Homero Sanchez (former head of TV Globo's research division) about the fraudulent attempt in a Playboy interview in May 1983 (the Brazilian edition) deserves full quotation here: [It] consisted of initiating the reporting of returns from the rural interior, where the government's party [the Social Democratic Party, PDS] was in the majority, to create the illusion of an imminent defeat of Brizola. Central to this scheme was the computer firm Proconsult, hired by Rio de Janeiro's TRE ... (Regional Electoral Court), to count the votes. Proconsult, whose main programmer was a former army officer, had developed a fraudulent program capable of subtracting votes from Brizola and adding them to Moreira Franco [the PDS candidate]. By airing only these partial results, TV Globo, with its large audience, was vital to the success of the electoral fraud by lending its immense credibility to the results that were slowly being fabricated. It happened that the newspaper Jornal do Brasil, along with its prestigious AM and FM radio stations that were the main competitors of the Globo Organization in Rio de Janeiro and represented conflicting commercial and political interests, developed their own vote tallying system. They used the bulletins issued by the local TRE ballot sections that revealed results different from those aired by Globo, that is, results showing Brizola as the leading candidate. Warned about the possibility of fraud, Brizola authorized PDT [the Democratic Labour Party, under his leadership] to develop a parallel computerized tallying system. This measure contributed to the uncovering of the fraudulent scheme, which was later denounced by other media organizations. By the fourth day of ballot counting the evidence of fraud was so great that Proconsult had to admit publicly that it had an "error" in its programming. Despite that, TV Globo continued to show results that listed Brizola behind Franco until finally admitting that it also had an "error" in tallying the ballots. (163)

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intimidatory actions by the Ministry of Communications' DENTEL over other broadcasters regarding the issue.209 In the third case, the national campaign for direct presidential elections led by the opposition parties between January and April 1984 - considered the largest mass movement in Brazilian history, with rallies in several state capitals attracting multitudes of supporters counted in five, sometimes six-digit numbers - was ignored or misrepresented by Globo until its culminanting moment: the April 10 rally at Candelaria square, downtown Rio de Janeiro, where an estimated one million people gathered to protest.210 Such abuses of power by Marinho's network, coupled with a dramatic intensification of the use of broadcasting licenses in political bargains by a regime striving to keep control over ever faster

developments,211

convinced

segments

of

the

opposition

that

the

eventual

209 Ibid., 164-165. Brazil's biggest oil plant and a PETROBRAS (the state oil firm) refinery, Paulinia was refining almost one-fourth of all petroleum consumed in the country. When the five-day strike began, radio and television stations in Sao Paulo covered "that unprecedented political, economic, and social event" accordingly. This news coverage, however, "is supposed to have led DENTEL ... to arbitrarily seal the transmitters of Radio Bandeirantes of Sao Paulo on July 8. That same day, DENTEL's head, Army Colonel Fernandes Neiva, in a meeting with radio and television executives, asked for moderation (sic) in the strike's coverage." Ibid., 165.

210 Ibid., 166-169. The campaign, initially aiming to uphold a proposed constitutional amendment reestablishing direct elections for the nation's Presidency in 1985 (for the succession of President general Figueiredo), ended as a historical indictment of the military regime. Although the proposed amendment, presented by representative Dante de Oliveira, was defeated in the National Congress, and Figueiredo's successor was still voted by an electoral college of senators, representatives and delegates from state assemblies, the movement sealed the political death of the post-1964 rule.

With regard to Globo's coverage of the campaign, Lima illustrates its spirit by observing the following developments: ... the network ignored in its main newscast the rally of Curitiba [Parana state, the movement's first event on January 12, 1984], where about 50,000 people gathered in a political event that had no precedent in that southern capital. ... the next great event of the campaign took place in the city of Sao Paulo on January 25. On that day, a holiday since it was also the city's anniversary, about 300,000 people rallied to Praca da Se', in downtown Sao Paulo. TV Globo registered the rally in the Jornal Nacional, but [presenting it] as if it were only another commemoration of the city's anniversary ... . ..................................................................................

[In Belo Horizonte, capital of Minas Gerais state] more than 300,000 people overran the downtown area ... to hear the speeches. Once again, TV Globo minimized the event on Jornal Nacional [by showing] only quick flashes of the crowd and of the speakers ... .

On April 10, 1984, two weeks before the actual voting by Congress on the proposed constitutional amendment ... a final rally was held in Rio de Janeiro by all the opposition forces. TV Globo, then, suddenly changed its behavior and, for the first time since the national campaign had begun in Curitiba, provided its national audience with day-long coverage of the event. (167) 211 Along its six-year term (1979-1985) the Figueiredo Administration distributed 634 radio and television licenses in exchange for (then vanishing) political support. The relevance of this figure can be fully grasped when confronted with the fact that a total of 1,483 licenses had been granted in Brazil between 1934 and 1979.

The Ministry of Communications (MINICOM) is the primary source of all data about licensing, eventually reproduced by the references used in this dissertation.

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(re)democratization of the country's institutional politics as a departure point for the progressive democratization of its socioeconomic and cultural structures and practices was inseparable from an equivalent democratization of its mass communication system. As a result, when it became clear that general Figueiredo would be the last military president, and also that his successor would be the last president elected indirectly,212 a series of proposals concerning media democratization emerged and were debated in oppositional circles.

These proposals diagnosed the problematic situation of the means of social communication in Brazil along the following consensual points: (1) the system is politically authoritarian, preventing broader and/or active social and professional participation regarding its policies; (2) it is socioculturally exclusory, characterized by unbalanced information flows detrimental to the majority of the population; (3) it is increasingly concentrated both economically (in terms of its control and/or ownership) and geographically (with most of its production centralized in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo); (4) it is too commercially oriented and still dependent on foreign technology, equipment, and (arguably to a lesser extent) cultural forms and contents; and (5) the state/public instruments for its regulation (at legal, political, administrative levels) are inadequate, inefficient and/or obsolete. Their suggestions for change were also consensual with regard to the proposed (a) adoption of the normative concepts of media's "social responsibility" and people's "right to communicate" as underlying principles for communication legislation and policies; (b) transference of the competence to set communication policies (including broadcast licensing) from the Executive branch of the government to a National Communication Council to be integrated by state/government delegates and representatives of institutions and organized sectors of civil society; (c) establishment of clearly defined preferential criteria for broadcast licensing based not only on technical and economic conditions, but also on social and cultural considerations plus standard limits to the number of licenses given to a licensee; (d) regulation of broadcasting forms and contents aiming to stimulate local and regional programming, and independent production; and (e) conversion and expansion of the state broadcasting system (RADIOBRAS)213 into a

212 These presumptions were actually part of a general agreement between government and opposition (following the defeat of a proposed constitutional amendment restoring direct elections for the Presidency) to close the status quo's 1964 "corrective intervention" in Brazilian life.

213 The Brazilian Broadcasting Enterprise, RADIOBRAS, once comprised more than 30 radio and television stations located in Brasilia, Rio de Janeiro and throughout the Amazonian region (where it has had a considerable sociocultural impact, by integrating otherwise isolated communities).

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decentralized public system with cultural and educative purposes, under direct control of civil associations.214 Nevertheless, the essentially conservative character of the political transition to civilian rule215 caused Tancredo Neves - a moderate, centrist oppositional leader assimilable by the fading regime, who quickly became the favorite candidate to succeed general Figueiredo - to compromise with, and have the support of Roberto Marinho. After being elected president on January 15, 1985, Neves "went for lunch ... in Brasilia along with Roberto Marinho and Antonio Carlos Magalhaes [a controversial "dissident" from the government]. A few days later, [Neves] announced that his press secretary would be Antonio Britto, a top Globo political reporter, and that ... Magalhaes would be the new minister of communications."216 The transition's frustrating conservatism was finally consummated after the tragic illness and death of Tancredo Neves in April. The Vice-Presidentelect, Jose Sarney (another "dissident," who previously led the regime's party, PDS, at the National Congress) had already taken office in March due to Neves' impairment, and his government (19851990) came to be marked by a renewal and advance of the state-private media alliance which would finally bring the expectations about communication reform to a halt.

Because of the unexpected death of President-elect Tancredo Neves, considered the transition's "architect" (and, despite having been chosen indirectly, a recipient of enormous popular support since the 1984 campaign for direct presidential elections) and the prior allegiance of its unexpected incumbent (a former president of PDS), the Presidency of Jose Sarney was permanently marked by provisionality and illegitimacy. Although implementing major items of the 1984 general agreement, which defined the conditions for Brazil's institutional re-democratization (as the Constituent Assembly's convocation and the reestablishment of direct suffrage for his successor), Sarney did so by preventing substantial reforms or slowing their pace in order to

214 Roberto Amaral (Vieira), coordinator, "Proposta de uma Politica Nacional de Comunicacao para o Brasil" (Proposal of a National Communication Policy for Brazil) (Centre de Recherches pour le Developpement International, CRDI; Centro Brasileiro de Estudos Latino-Americanos, CEBELA), Comunicacao & politica 1, no. 9 (1989): 5-145.

This proposal is a 1986 comprehensive account of similar contributions articulated during the so-called "transition period" from military to civilian rule (1983-1985), by organizations as the National Federation of Journalists (FENAJ) and EMBRATEL Employees Association, and by scholars, artists and other professionals linked to the Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (PMDB), then the main oppositional party.

215 The transition's driving force was the "Democratic Alliance," originally the oppositional front formed during the 1984 campaign for direct presidential elections. It later incorporated "dissidents" from the military regime toward the establishment of a civilian, so-called "New Republic."

216 Lima, "The State, Television, and Political Power," 168. A detailed depiction of the compromise involving Neves, Marinho and Magalhaes, its implications and consequences, is provided by Daniel Herz in A Historia Secreta da Rede Globo, 13-72.

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accomplish the conservatives' ultimate objective in the transition to civilian rule. This goal was to decompress socioeconomic tensions with the purpose of keeping their structures intact by sacrificing their last, formally authoritarian political framework (the military rule's juridicalinstitutional heritage).

To conduct satisfactorily such a project amidst chronic difficulties was the President's critical source of political power. The installation of a freely elected assembly invested with the responsibility to write a new, democratic constitution was a solemn commitment between the forces involved in the 1980s political transition. The Constituent Assembly was thus convened on November 27, 1985, elected on November 15, 1986, and installed on February 1, 1987,217 concurring with a deepening socioeconomic crisis which threatened the stability of the whole process. The demise of Brazilian liberal-developmentism (in its peculiar state-capitalist version), followed by successive failures of technocratic and/or populist plans for economic stabilization,218 plus a perceived lack of structural alternatives on the left in a time of rising neoliberalism, prompted a rapacious reemergence of the old practices of clientelism219 by a government that

217 The Constituent Assembly was actually a "Constituent Congress," to the extent that it was the National Congress invested with constituent powers. It did not have the exclusive function of elaborating the new constitution, and thus became subject to pressures and restraints of a legislature still recovering from usurpation by the Executive, whose incumbent had not yet been directly elected. This confinement of the constituent process within the boundaries of the Legislative (its parties, politics and policies), an institution also marked by the vices of curtailed and disproportional representation (as well as the mechanisms of its reproduction), was the result of a course deliberately taken by the Sarney Administration, on behalf of the status quo.

218 With regard to the failures of several government attempts to reduce and stabilize inflation - then the most destructive and resented symptom of the crisis plaguing the Brazilian economy - their critique by Luiz Carlos Bresser Pereira (one of the country's economic executives in the 1980s) in his Economic Crisis & State Reform in Brazil: Toward a New Interpretation of Latin America (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1996), is quite elucidative: ... most, if not all, stabilization plans in Brazil [between 1979 and 1992] have been inefficient. All of the purely orthodox programs - the two IMF-sponsored stabilization plans (the Delfim Plan III in 1983 and the Marcilio Plan, 19911992), the Beans and Rice Plan (1988), and the Eris Plan (1990) - were inefficient because they did not take into consideration inertial inflation and tried to stabilize gradually. All of the predominantly populist plans, such as the Delfim Plan I (1979) and the Cruzado Plan (1986), were inefficient for obvious reasons.

They were also the outcome of a lack of political support for the necessary fiscal adjustment. Some plans were simply flawed, such as the Delfim Plan II (1981), the Dornelles Plan (1985), and the Summer Plan (1989).

The stabilization program I was responsible for, which came to be known as the Bresser Plan (1987), was an emergency plan left unfinished when I resigned from the Finance Ministry seven and a half months after taking office, because of lack of political support for the fiscal adjustment plan I had formally proposed to the president [Sarney]. (182) By the end of Sarney's Presidency, inflation rates had reached monthly 56%, 73% and 84% respectively in January, February and March 1990. Ibid., 101.

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revealed itself as little more than paradoxically a civilian extension of the military's technocratic ethos and the contemporary expression of a supposedly outdated patrimonialism (the military regime claimed to have suppressed clientelism in favor of "practical rationality" and "technical efficiency"). In this regard, the communications sector - that is, the country's First-World-standard broadcasting under Sarney's licensing "policy" during the 1987-1988 Constituent Assembly220 became the unsurpassed illustration of this paradox.

The 1987-1988 process of elaboration of a new constitutional text - in spite of its structural and conjunctural limitations, undeniably the most open, comprehensive and participative politicoinstitutional event in Brazilian history - was understood by those struggling for the democratization of communication as a golden opportunity to change the rules that had allowed the sector's reality of exclusory concentration, as much as it was perceived by the state-private media alliance as a major threat to its constitution and interests. On one side the newly institutionally recognized players came to the constituent game articulated as never before - with delegates on the left embracing the propositions of the National Front for Democratic Communication Policies.221 On the other side, the old alliance was no longer an association of distinct partners.

In fact, at the very moment of being seriously challenged for the first time in its history which coincided (not so coincidentally) with a broad, also never observed democratic challenge to Brazil's perennial qualities and inequalities222 - the old alliance in communications, as a crucial

219 In Brazilian politics, cIientelism means the systematic discretionary distribution, by the ruler, of state concessions among existing and prospective associates, with the purpose of building up and/or strengthen loyalties and alliances in exchange for political support. In a strict sense, it is the political practice par excellence of a patrimonial order.

220 Paulino Motter's exhaustively researched "A Batalha Invisivel da Constituinte: Interesses Privados versus Carater Publico da Radiodifusao no Brasil" (The Constituent Assembly's Invisible Battle: Private Interests vs. Public Character of Broadcasting in Brazil) (master's thesis, Universidade de Brasilia, 1994) is the main reference about the issue. Here, I resort to it in its double quality as data and information source, and historical reconstitution and analysis.

221 Ibid., 139-141. Created in July 1984, the Front was initially formed by FENAJ, the Brazilian Press Association (ABI), the Federation of Neighborhood Associations of Rio de Janeiro, the Brazilian Association for Teaching and Research in Communication (ABEPEC), the Center of Studies in Communication and Culture (CEC), and the Communication Department of the Federal University of Santa Catarina state (UFSC). By 1985, the Front was comprising 45 organizations and 27 representatives at the National Congress. Ibid., 140.

Concerning the politico-ideological orientation of the 559 constituent delegates' (senators and representatives), a survey indicated that 69 among them (12.3% of their total number) were on the right, 131 (23.4%) on the centerright, 181 (32.4%) on the center, 126 (22.5%) on the center-left, and 52 (9.3%) on the left. "Os Eleitos: Quem e' Quem na Constituinte" (The Elected: Who is Who in the Constituent Assembly), Folha de S. Paulo, 19 January 1987, Special Supplement; reproduced by Motter, "A Batalha Invisivel," 79. Although probably biased against the right (still identified with the military regime), this classification suggests more the delegates' ideological inclinations than their party affiliations (parties in general are acknowledgedly "weak" in Brazilian politics). However, it certainly does not show the nature and character of the constituents' personal connections and related interests - the crucial criterion for an accurate assessment of their orientation in a political culture susceptible to clientelism.

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element of the old order and due to these unprecedented threats to the status quo, had to go beyond its previous functions and boundaries. During the workings of the Constituent Assembly, it became the state itself. Such a consolidation occurred at two fundamental levels: 1. At the level of its agents. The three key figures in broadcast licensing (at that time, still regulated by the old rules until the promulgation of the new Constitution) not only were deeply involved in the broadcasting business but also were organically bonded to Roberto Marinho and Globo. President Jose Sarney and his family had direct and indirect ownership of several radio and television stations (and a newspaper) in the northern state of Maranhao, his electoral home base.

Sarney's family owned TV Mirante, Maranhao's main television station, licensed in 1982 by Figueiredo and inaugurated in 1986 in the state capital Sao Luiz. By later becoming a Globo affiliate, TV Mirante joined other stations (four in 1995) retransmitting the network's signal in the state - all of them allegedly controlled by relatives of the President.223 Antonio Carlos Magalhaes, Minister of Communications, had his family owning TV Bahia (also licensed by Figueiredo in 1984) in Salvador, the capital of the northeastern state of Bahia, plus allegedly controlling other five stations in the state - all Globo affiliates. The 1987 controversial transference of Globo's local retransmission rights to Magalhaes' TV Bahia, supposedly in exchange for Marinho's control of NEC do Brasil (one of the major TELEBRAS equipment suppliers), only reinforced their relationship, despite being a scandal investigated by the National Congress.224 And Romulo Villar 222 The magnitude of this challenge can be measured by the range of the issues debated in the Constituent Assembly's eight Thematic Commissions, then subdivided into 24 Subcommissions: national sovereignty, collective and individual rights and guarantees; organization of the state (the Union, the Federal District, states, territories and municipalities); organization of the government (legislative, executive and judicial branches); electoral system and political parties; defense and security of the state and society; taxation, budgets and finance; the economic order (state intervention, private property, urban and agrarian reforms); the social order (labour rights, social security, environment, minorities); family, education, culture, science and technology, communication.

223 Motter, "A Batalha Invisivel," 190-192; Elvira Lobato, "Sarney constroi imperio na midia" (Sarney builds media empire), Folha de S. Paulo, 28 November 1993, 1-13; and again Lobato, "Sarney cria imperio de comunicacao no MA" (Sarney creates communication empire in Maranhao), Folha de S. Paulo, 4 September 1995, 1-9. During President Sarney's term (1985-1990), 30 broadcasting licenses were distributed in Maranhao state, among which 16 would have come to his family and associates. In 1993, it was estimated that from the 57 radio and TV stations operating in Maranhao, at least 20 were directly and indirectly owned and/or controlled by Sarney's relatives, friends and allies - including his son Jose Sarney Filho, constituent representative, and daughter Roseana Sarney, later representative at the National Congress, and Maranhao's governor.

It is difficult to precisely identify actual ownership of broadcasting companies in Brazil because of the generalized use of figureheads to bypass licensing restrictions. In addition to it, the Ministry of Communications has traditionally lacked political will to prevent expedients such as this.

224 Herz, A Historia Secreta, 40-50; Motter, "A Batalha Invisivel," 192-195. The so-called "NEC scandal" referred to the transference of NEC do Brasil's stock control from Brasilinvest to Comar (later Globopar, holding of the Globo conglomerate). Magalhaes was accused, as Minister of Communications, of stifling NEC by manipulating TELEBRAS monopsony (withholding equipment acquisitions and payments) in order to force Brasilinvest, already in financial difficulties, to relinquish control over its joint venture with the Japanese multinational on behalf of Roberto Marinho.

In return, Marinho would have not renewed Globo's retransmission contract in Salvador with TV Aratu, in favor of TV

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Furtado, MINICOM secretary-general for three administrations (Geisel, Figueiredo and Sarney, from 1974 to 1990) - long identified as Roberto Marinho's right hand in the state bureaucracy of communications - procured a license in 1988 to retransmit Globo in Cabo Frio, Rio de Janeiro state (TV Lagos). Along with his wife Rita Furtado, a constituent representative, Romulo Furtado also reportedly owned (through figureheads) the Rondovisao group in the northern state of Rondonia, created in 1984 and encompassing at least 12 radio and television stations by 1995.225 Besides holding these key positions in the Executive, the state-private media alliance also had a decisive presence in the Legislature. By the end of the Constituent Assembly's work (October 1988), it could count on at least 146 senators and representatives - 26.1% of all 559 constituent delegates - with direct interests in the broadcasting business, both old and new licensees.226 2. At the level of its practices. During the process of drafting a new constitution, such a formidable coalition defended and preserved the Establishment: the existing structural reality and its corporate interests. It did so both generally and in particular instances - from avoiding any significant changes in state and government, society and economy, to satisfying and/or rewarding its agents and beneficiaries. While most media (especially Globo's) coverage of the Constituent Assembly predictably went from embodying the perspective of the status quo to pure censorship,227 the Sarney-Magalhaes-Furtado triad worked diligently to assure a conservative Bahia. TV Aratu had been a Globo affiliate for 18 years, owned by the family of PDS senator Luiz Viana Filho, Magalhaes' former ally (turned his adversary during the political transition). TV Bahia is owned by Magalhaes' sons Antonio Carlos Magalhaes Jr. and Luiz Eduardo Magalhaes (the latter then constituent representative, later president of the House of Representatives). This change of retransmitter opened a legal and political war between the parts involved, finally won by Globo and TV Bahia.

By 1994, due to its participation in NEC do Brasil, Globo controlled 57% of equipment supply for cellular telephony in Brazil (a service then provided exclusively by TELEBRAS), holding monopolies in the states of Sao Paulo, Parana, Bahia and Rio de Janeiro, "the cream of the Brazilian market." Roberto Amaral and Cesar Guimaraes, "Media Monopoly in Brazil," Journal of Communication 44, no. 4 (autumn 1994): 29.

Along Sarney's Presidency, 102 broadcasting licenses (96 for radio and 6 for television) were granted in Bahia state - Magalhaes' electoral home base - to relatives, friends and allies of the Minister. Motter, "A Batalha Invisivel," 194-195.

225 Motter, "A Batalha Invisivel," 195-198; Elvira Lobato, "Ex-burocrata acumula oito radios and cinco TVs" (Exbureaucrat accumulates eight radio and five TV stations), Folha de S. Paulo, 4 September 1995, 1-7. Rondovisao's four TV stations are in fact SBT affiliates (SBT is Brazil's second TV network, far behind Globo). By 1990, Romulo and Rita Furtado, their friends and allies, were in control of at least 31 radio and television stations in Rondonia (from a total of 44 in the state).

226 Motter, "A Batalha Invisivel," 177.

227 In 1988, in a highly debated case, TV Globo's top management censored one of its own productions, the miniseries O Pagador de Promessas (The Promise Keeper), by Dias Gomes - a classic of Brazilian dramaturgy, whose version in motion picture had won the Cannes Film Festival's Golden Palm in the 1960s. Because the story was considered "too political" - a portrait of the harsh reality of land conflicts in the country's interiors - it would displease the still influential remnants of rural oligarchies, then fighting for their latifundia against the agrarian reform at the Constituent Assembly. Ibid., 290-293.

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outcome for constituent matters by resorting, in an unparalleled, scandalous way, to discretionary, clientelist broadcast licensing. Licenses, being the most effective persuasive tools available, were transformed into political currency.

Sarney sought to keep his hold on power untouched. In exchange for the Assembly's approval of an exceptional five-year term for his Presidency (the constituents ended voting a constitutional four-year term for subsequent administrations), and presidentialism as the nation's system of government (parliamentarianism was also under consideration), he reportedly distributed at least 165 licenses among 91 "undecided" delegates, many of them without prior experience with broadcasting.228 In general, to serve distinct dominant socioeconomic interests in moments of critical voting - such as those concerning the agrarian reform, state monopolies and private oligopolies, and the concept of "national enterprise"229 - 539 licenses were granted between January and October 5, 1988, when the Constitution was promulgated. Of these, 257 were released in September, the Constituent Assembly's last "full" month, and 25 in the first five days of October. The licenses were bestowed not only upon senators and representatives, but also on ministers and state governors who successfully pressured "their" constituents; on their wives, children, relatives, friends, associates in the state and private sectors, etc. From March 15, 1985 (the inauguration of his administration) to October 5, 1988 (when the Executive lost its exclusive licensing prerogatives), 1,028 broadcasting licenses were distributed by Jose Sarney, assisted by Antonio Carlos Magalhaes and Romulo Furtado. Within a period of three years and almost seven months, were released almost one-third (30.9%) of all 3,330 authorizations for radio and television stations to operate in Brazil between 1934 and June 1991.230

228 Ibid., 172-179. Brazil's system of government was decided by the Constituent Assembly on March 22, 1988 (344 votes in favor of presidentialism against 212, with three abstentions), and the duration of Sarney's Presidency, determined on June 2, 1988 (328 votes in favor of a five-year term against 222, with three abstentions). Motter observes that "from the 91 constituents who received each at least one radio or television license, 84 (92.3%) voted in favor of presidentialism and 82 (90.1%), for a five-year term [for Sarney]." Ibid., 173. He also notes that from the 165 licenses granted to those delegates, "70 were released after the voting which defined the duration of [Sarney's] term, that is, between June 3 and October 5. This was the period in which the government benefited the largest number of constituents - which reinforces the suspicion that the stations were given in payment for the five-year term approval."

Ibid., 178.

229 Not coincidentally, these were themes either reflecting an archaic structure still strong enough to refuse to face historical demands (the case of agrarian reform), or related to life after the collapse of a historically recent attempt - the post-1964 development model - to fit "the old" into "the new" (the discussion about the economic order).

230 Motter, "A Batalha Invisivel," 163-167. The total of licenses granted between 1934 and 1991 includes 65 authorized by the Congress after October 5, 1988, as well as the controversial 120 licenses for pay-TV later released by President Fernando Collor (an issue in the next Chapter).

The outrageous distribution of broadcasting licenses during the 1987-1988 Constituent Assembly ended creating a black market where many recipients, without interest or condition to install stations, could sell their licenses

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Regarding the issue "communication" at the Constituent Assembly, the opposition was not only remarkable in its fight against the odds, but also relatively effective in spite of the overwhelmingly venal power exercised by the state-private media alliance. Complementing the government's crass clientelism, the mainstream media covered the communication debate in Manicheistic terms - with any proposals (whatever modest and/or compromising) on behalf of the system's democratization being invariably qualified as authoritarian, statist and/or restrictive of the freedoms of expression and enterprise. Or they did not cover it at all, thus giving full substance to Paulino Motter's definition for the discussion's course - the invisible battle: In fact, although revealing itself as one of the most polemic questions in the Constituent Assembly, the dispute around Communication was not submitted to public debate. Therefore, it had no repercussion on public opinion. It occurred ... what I call the Assembly's "invisible battle," since the means of mass communication - above all, radio and television - did not publicize the proposals discussed ... . These were covered only by the printed press, where the bosses' viewpoint prevailed.231 However, led by representatives Cristina Tavares and Artur da Tavola throughout the workings of the Subcommission of Science and Technology and Communication, the Commission of Family, Education, Culture and Sports, Science and Technology and Communication, and the Commission of Systematization (responsible for the Constitution's comprehensive drafts), the democratizing group - backed mainly by the National Federation of Journalists (FENAJ)232 - was able first to neutralize the conservatives' superior force and number - supported mostly by the Brazilian Association of Broadcasting Stations (ABERT) and MINICOM233 - by obstructing the

(or transfer their shares) in a high-priced context - such commodities quickly became scarce, and virtually disappeared in the most profitable areas (large and medium cities). In order to attend all his "commitments," Sarney had to privatize part of the RADIOBRAS network: 15 stations were sold. Ibid., 183-186.

231 Ibid., 221.

232 FENAJ, seconded by the National Association of University Professors (ANDES) and the Worker's Central Union (CUT), presented a popular amendment "concerning the Democratization of the Means of Communication," with 34,420 signatures. Numbered 91, it was submitted to the Commission of Systematization. Ibid., 274-276. The Constituent Assembly's rules allowed the submission of popular amendment proposals, respectively sponsored and subscribed by at least three associations (legally constituted) and 30,000 electors. The Assembly considered 122 popular amendments, with a total of 12,265,854 signatures. Ibid., 92-96.

233 The Ministry of Communications and ABERT were the respective institutional expressions of the state-private media alliance at the fore of "the invisible battle." In the Subcommission of Science and Technology and Communication, for example, they functioned closely articulated with the eight constituents (from the

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presentation of a project, coming from the two prior instances, before the Commission of Systematization.234 After that, the progressists finally managed to force a previously unthinkable compromise by the conservative majority at the Commission of Systematization.235 The conditions of this ultimate "draw" between such irreducible antagonists manifested itself in specific dispositions of the Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil, promulgated on October 5, 1988, Title VIII ("The Social Order"), Chapter V ("Social Communication").236 Beyond a consensus' favoring freedom of expression and opposing censorship (Article 220, caption and paragraphs 1 and 2), and even historically innocuous provisions such as those against media monopoly or oligopoly (Art. 220, par. 5) and stating preference to "educational, artistic, cultural and informative" contents (Art. 221, I), agreements were reached on potentially significant topics for the promotion of the national and regional culture(s), the encouragement of independent production of media forms and contents (Art. 221, II), and the regionalization of production "according to percentages established in law" (Art. 221, III). Although these dispositions were defended by the left as guiding principles toward media decentralization and deconcentration, they were accepted on the right only because of the conservatives' skepticism with regard to their practical application.237

Subcommission's 21 effective members) who had direct stakes in the broadcasting business - among them, the already mentioned representative Rita Furtado, wife of Romulo Furtado, MINICOM secretary-general; and representative Angelo Magalhaes, brother of Antonio Carlos, the Minister of Communications. The Subcommission's president, representative Arolde de Oliveira, soon became Romulo Furtado's partner at TV Lagos (Globo's affiliate in Cabo Frio, Rio de Janeiro). One of the Subcommission's substitutive delegates was representative Luiz Eduardo Magalhaes, the already mentioned son of the Minister of Communications, and co-owner of TV Bahia (Globo's retransmitter in Salvador, Bahia). Ibid., 201-205.

234 The confrontation between the right and the left on communication was so polarized that the resulting impasse followed by statutory maneuvers and delays breaking deadlines - prevented the emergence of a voted proposal at the Commission of Family, Education, Culture and Sports, Science and Technology and Communication. This was the only Commission (among the Constituent Assembly's eight Thematic Commissions) which did not send its project to the Commission of Systematization. Ibid., 232-265.

235 Ibid., 282-287. The democratizing minority resorted to "guerrilla tactics," using every procedural disposition of the Constituent Assembly's internal rules as a means to continuously procrastinate an otherwise far conservative outcome regarding communication. By doing so, it seems to have counterbalanced (at least partially) the effects of the stateprivate media alliance's corruptive practices.

236 Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil 1988 (Brasilia: Senado Federal, 1990), 123-125.

237 In a public hearing before the Subcommission of Science and Technology and Communication, ABERT vicepresident Fernando Correa argued that the regionalization of media production through legally fixed quotas would end up unviable due to the reality of concentration of advertising expenditures - according to ABERT, around 90% - in five urban markets (Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, Curitiba and Porto Alegre). Motter, "A Batalha Invisivel," 214. By 1994, the regionalization of production and related dispositions had not yet been regulated (through complementary legislation). Ibid., 300.

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Nevertheless, the Constituent Assembly's "invisible battle" was truly fought around the issues subject of Articles 223 and 224: Article 223. The Executive Power has the authority to grant and renew concession, permission and authorization for radio broadcasting and sound and image broadcasting services with due regard to the principle of the complementary roles of private, public and state systems.

Paragraph 1 - The National Congress shall consider such act in the period of time set forth in article 64, paragraphs 2 and 4, counted from the date of receipt of the message.

Paragraph 2 - The non-renewal of the concession or permission shall depend on approval by at least two-fifths of the National Congress, in nominal voting.

Paragraph 3 - The act of granting or renewal shall only produce legal effects after approval by the National Congress, as set forth in the preceding paragraphs.

Paragraph 4 - Cancellation of a concession or permission prior to its expiring date shall depend on a court decision.

Paragraph 5 - The term for a concession or permission shall be ten years for radio stations and fifteen years for television channels.

Article 224. For the purposes of the provisions of this chapter, the National Congress shall institute, as an auxiliary agency, the Social Communication Council, in the manner prescribed by law.

The terms and immediate context of the settlement above can be synthesized as follows: 1. Although it has not affected the existing interests in broadcasting, thus justifying its acceptance by the right, the principle of complementariness between private, public and state systems actually formalized a democratizing perspective. Because public and state are explicitly distinguished in this precept, it created the possibility for the constitution of a public media system under direct control of groups, associations and communities, without necessary mediation by the state/government. This would thus open the way for an (in principle conceptual) alternative to the

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state-private dichotomy which has historically dominated the inception and development of structures and practices of social communication.238 2. At a more empirical level, the unprecedented division of responsibilities between the Executive and Congress concerning broadcast licensing marked a historical change, which was possible (arguably) due to a fissure in the conservative bloc. While the Ministry of Communications worked diligently to keep the Executive's traditional prerogatives, for obvious reasons, ABERT - in representing the interests of existing broadcasters - had already expressed their concerns about a problematic side effect of governmental clientelism: superposition, the alleged excessive concentration of stations in the most profitable markets, reducing advertising revenues sometimes to the point of compromising economic viability. As a result, with the twofold purpose of (a) gaining decisive leverage within the state-private media alliance (which, as I argued throughout this Chapter, historically leaned toward its first pole) and (b) consolidating their status, broadcasters were able to tactically "coincide" their interests with those on the left regarding the end of the Executive's licensing exclusivity. Paradoxically as a result, they were also able to overcome these democratizing interests by constitutionally securing a virtual ownership of the electromagnetic spectrum (through Article 223, paragraphs 2, 3, 4, 5).239 3. Finally, the invisible battle's most disputed item - the Social Communication Council ended in a tie. The Council was long conceived by the forces then organized around the National Front for Democratic Communication Policies as an organ with deliberative powers, to function independently from both the Executive and the Legislature (somewhat as the American FCC), and to be integrated by delegates of representative institutions of the state and civil society - in short, to become a major instrument for the democratization of communication. The proposed Council went under intense fire from the right, with its very creation being insidiously characterized as "an

238 Along the discussions, representative Artur da Tavola, the main advocate of a public media system, took the European philosophy of "public service" (e.g., the British BBC) as the normative reference for his position. However, as Motter points out, Tavola's idea of public system "does not exactly correspond to the 'public service' television model developed in Europe. It is still an embryonic concept, without a precise formulation, which calls for a double form of [direct] public control over the medium's both ownership and programming." Ibid., 244.

239 Concerning the period of time set forth for license grant and renewal (Art. 223, par. 1), in Art. 64, par. 2, is stated that if the National Congress "[fails] to act ... on the proposition, within up to forty-five days [it] shall be included in the order of the day and the deliberation upon other subjects shall be suspended, in order that the voting may be concluded."

The very fact that transferring licensing powers to the Congress - where more than a hundred senators and representatives are also broadcasters - would likely freeze the status quo, did not escape the analyses of the day. As an illustration, Motter reproduces a passage from an editorial by Folha de S. Paulo, "Restos do Banquete" (The Feast's Leftovers), 15 October 1988, 1-2: "It is certain that, in determining supervision by the Legislature over radio and TV licensing, the Constituent Assembly may either contribute for the moralization of what, today, is nothing more than a

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institutional attempt to censor the media."240 The resulting arrangement for one of the Constituent Assembly's most bitter confrontations was the provision of a consultative body auxiliary to the National Congress, which, while weakened in its outcome and later regulated, has not been installed until this day.241

free market of physiologism [clientelism] and personal arbitrariness, or simply undertake its reproduction at the parliamentary ambit." Ibid., 297.

240 In public hearings before the Subcommission of Science and Technology and Communication, corporate bosses harped upon the same string. Roberto Civita, from the Abril group (Brazil's largest magazine publisher, which became a major pay-TV licensee, as shown ahead in this dissertation), then president of the National Association of Magazine Publishers (ANER), reproached the Council as an authoritarian attempt to resurrect Getulio Vargas' DIP. In his words, it would mean "the funeral ... of the freedom of expression and all other freedoms ... by affecting the freedom of the press, it [would] also affect the freedom of enterprise and capitalism itself. [Thus] ... all democratic institutions." Ibid., 208. Luiz Eduardo Borgerth, ABERT vice-president and Globo's executive, disparaged the proposal as "absurd and insane, because the Executive and the Legislature are the people's only legitimate representatives." Ibid., 220.

241 Law 8,389/1991, concerning the institution of the Social Communication Council, and its continuously deferred installation are major issues in Chapter 5.

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CHAPTER 4 Cable Television in Brazil: A Case Study About the Opportunity of Change

Although the 1964 military regime and its national project were subdued by the events of the 1980s, its private partners in the media were able to consolidate their interests despite undergoing the first historically serious challenge to their privileges - a consequence of the entry of new actors in institutional politics. The 1987-1988 Constituent Assembly and its communication debate corresponded to distinct but organically articulated instances of the same process in its culminating stage. The "invisible battle" over communication, by concluding in an arduously negotiated - and far from mutually satisfactory - compromise between conservatives and progressists, came nevertheless to contradictorily (1) crystallize crucial aspects of the past in the present, as much as (2) open new possibilities for subsequent democratizing intervention. To relate (1) and (2) in a way in which the former represents the necessary context from which the latter could eventually emerge is critical to my ultimate purpose in the second half of this dissertation: an adequate - and accurate - perception of the current and prospective limitations and perspectives for the establishment of democratic communication policies in Brazil, reflecting the self-consciously identified consensual interests of those who live there - a consensus that might, perhaps, still be conceived, despite globalization and technological change, in terms of "the national interest." In this regard, the process which resulted in the 1995 cable television law - the subject of this Chapter - is clearly exemplary of both the limits presented by (1) and the prospects offered by (2).

1. Concerning the crystallization of crucial aspects of the past in the present, the constituent process ultimately legitimated the reality of antidemocratic concentration of media ownership and/or control in Brazil. This concentration is an enduring state which some observers have called "electronic colonelism" (coronelismo eletronico): the unprecedented intensification of practices of patrimonial clientelism in broadcasting by the transitional governments from military to civilian rule (Figueiredo and Sarney) reproduced and/or consolidated a power structure in the electronic

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media similar to that of traditional coronelismo.242 Such a dual structure materializes the paradox experienced mainly by the Sarney Administration (as mentioned before and illustrated by Sarney's broadcast licensing) as both a civilian extension of the military's technocratic - rationalistic, efficiency-driven, "modern" - ethos and the contemporary expression of a supposedly outdated clientelist, pork-barrel-driven, "archaic" - patrimonialism.

In this sense, the paradox's "modern" dimension refers to the few national broadcast networks,243 headquartered in the most profitable markets (the cosmopolitan Rio - Sao Paulo axis), producing and/or scheduling programs for the rest of the country, seizing the bulk of advertising revenues. These are enterprises operating in large scale and under capitalist logic, continuously incorporating (even innovating) the most advanced organizational systems and managerial practices in the business. Here, Globo is the paradigmatic (if not actually the sole) example.244 In a complementary fashion, the paradox's "archaic" dimension corresponds to the

242 Coronelismo is a Brazilian politico-historical phenomenon comparable to the Hispanic American caciquismo (political bosses' leadership on a local level). Victor Nunes Leal's 1949 classic study Coronelismo, Enxada e Voto (Colonelism, Hoe and Vote), published in English as Coronelismo: the Municipality and Representative Government in Brazil, trans. June Henfrey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), provides the conceptual reference for the subsequent understanding of "electronic colonelism."

Basilio de Magalhaes, in his introductory note to Leal's work, observes that the term coronelismo came from the colonels of the National Guard created in 1831, and extinct almost a century later: "It was usually the wealthiest landowners or the richest members of the ... community, who exercised, in each municipality, the high command of the National Guard, and at the same time the patriarchal - all but dictatorial - political control invested in them by the provincial government." Ibid., xvi. However, coronelismo as a particular power structure emerged from the gradual decline of the agrarian oligarchies. In Victor Leal's definition, ... coronelismo is above all a compromise, a trading of interests between the public authority, itself continually being strengthened [centralized], and the declining social influence of the local bosses - notably the big landowners. It is therefore not possible to understand this phenomenon without reference to our agrarian structure, the basis on which are maintained those manifestations of private power still so much in evidence [then in the 1940s, but remaining today] in rural Brazil.

Yet, paradoxically, these remnants of private power are sustained by the public authority. This can be explained precisely in terms of a representative regime based on a wide franchise: the government cannot proscribe the rural electorate [thus controlled by the coroneis through "block voting" and the rigging of ballots], which nevertheless ... exists in a situation of absolute dependence. (1) (italics added).

Therefore, coronelismo is the power structure which makes possible the politics of patrimonial clientelism at, and from, the local level. Notwithstanding significant contemporary changes (an electorate now mostly urban, the undeniable modernization of Brazilian social life), the remarkable reemergence of coronelismo's old logic in broadcast licensing along the 1980s suggests the concept's continuing - albeit adapted - pertinence.

243 In their "Media Monopoly in Brazil," Journal of Communication 44, no. 4 (autumn 1994): 26, Roberto Amaral and Cesar Guimaraes argue that the meaning of "network system" goes beyond a mere technological process of coordinated transmission. "It refers to the continuous, complete, and permanent transmission via satellite, microwaves, and cable of one broadcasting station - the flagship station of a network [e.g., Globo network] - to wholly owned stations, affiliated stations, and a large number of repeater stations [ERTs, parabolic antennas installed in small towns for reception and retransmission of satellite signals] covering the country."

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many regional and local broadcast stations located in the far less remunerative state capitals and (mainly) the interior, frequently owned by professional politicians and/or their associates, mostly existing in the chronically unprofitable fringes of the entrepreneurial system. These regional and local stations are not only dependent on this system through networking, but also on their owners' political connections and favor exchanges. Accordingly, they not only retransmit contents from the networks' matrices, or flagships, as their characteristically "commercial" operation. They also function as tools for the consecration of their bosses' local hegemony through patronage and paternalism (for example, taking governmental advertising as "subsidy"; making popular talk-show programs that "listen to the community" and "attend to their needs"). And in times of local, regional and/or national elections, these stations become powerful propaganda machines, on behalf of the candidates of patrimonial politics.245 The articulation between these paradoxically distinct dimensions of Brazil's dual broadcasting structure is understood by Paulino Motter as forming "a 'modern' system of vassalage, where political chiefs in the states behave as vassals before the electronic media's 'feudal lords.'"246 The very fact that during the 1987-1988 Constituent Assembly the state-private media alliance became the state itself - through clientelist broadcast licensing plus either insidious or noncoverage of the Assembly's workings - only stressed the extraordinary parallel between the respective power structures of the old coronelismo (strengthening state/government, weakening "colonels") and the new electronic colonelism (stronger networks, weaker affiliates) as well as between their practices. As in the past coronelismo undermined the institutions of representative democracy, so electronic colonelism does today. Paulino Motter: This phenomenon invokes a paradox which is inextricably linked to the dilemma of the country's democratic consolidation. In fact, increasingly challenging for the democratic process is the existence of the large media conglomerates, which contemporarily present 244 Ibid., 28. According to Amaral and Guimaraes, there are in fact two national (Globo and the Brazilian Television System, SBT) and three seminational (Bandeirantes, Manchete and Record) TV networks operating in Brazil. By the early 1990s, Globo network consisted of at least nine wholly owned broadcast stations and 74 affiliated or associated stations; SBT had eight owned stations and 62 affiliates; Bandeirantes, nine owned stations and 55 affiliates; Manchete, five owned stations and 33 affiliates; and Record, two owned stations and seven affiliates. Nonetheless, "of the five networks, only three [were] of real importance in terms of earnings, audience size, and territorial reach: Globo, SBT, and Bandeirantes ... ." Ibid.

245 Not only these two types of broadcasting may share features (especially the political ones), as there are "hybrid" versions of them - the Sarney family's media in Maranhao being a case in point.

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themselves as a power that superimposes the classic institutions of representative democracy as political parties, unions and interest groups. The Globo network alone, which personifies most completely this phenomenon in Brazilian reality, exercises such a power that it ends up rivaling the Republic's institutional powers.

At the same time these media promote the disqualification of [institutional] politics and politicians, they organize [locally] the interests of the dominant elites. That is why regional political groups, usually bound to conservative parties, engage in bitter disputes for the right to retransmit Globo and, to a [far] lesser degree, the other networks.247

2. Concerning the opening of new possibilities for subsequent democratizing intervention, the "invisible battle" in the 1987-1988 Constituent Assembly not only gave the historically marginalized progressist forces the opportunity to formally confront the status quo - that is, to play the politico-institutional game, learn its rules, and improve their skills. The battle also, and consequently, resulted in constitutional dispositions which, although not really endangering the media Establishment in its already constituted interests, create the clear perspective, from the standpoint of these interests, of unpredictable - thus undesirable - prospective developments in the sector. This is the case, for example, in the realm of new communication technologies.

Regarding this realm, both the constituent process and its outcome came to inform, in the 1990s, the regulation of cable television in Brazil against the reproduction of the electronic media's old interests in the new service. From the democratizing forces, the constituent process required political organization for inclusive participation. Its outcome was a Chapter of Social Communication with unprecedented dispositions (promotion of the national and regional cultures, independent production for the media, and regionalization of media production; distinction between "public" and "state"; division of responsibilities between Executive and Legislature on broadcast licensing; stipulation of a consultative but potentially representative Council linked to Congress). The extent to which these novelties created the environment for a distinct, more democratic way of policy making in communications is at the heart of what I unfold in this 246 Paulino Motter, "A Batalha Invisivel da Constituinte: Interesses Privados versus Carater Publico da Radiodifusao no Brasil" (The Constituent Assembly's Invisible Battle: Private Interests vs. Public Character of Broadcasting in Brazil) (master's thesis, Universidade de Brasilia, 1994), 198.

247 Ibid.

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Chapter: the cable television case in its development until the 1995 cable law, preceded by its historical antecedents.

THE CABLE CASE: HISTORICAL ANTECEDENTS

During two decades, the Ministry of Communications strove to regulate the implementation of cable television in Brazil by resorting to the same objectionable practices that have determined the country's broadcasting history. Since the early 1970s, with the purpose of guaranteeing the reproduction of the media's old interests, from the inception of the new service, the MINICOM bureaucracy was surreptitiously working on regulatory proposals, while trying to avoid any public discussion about the matter.248 By 1974, MINICOM - with Romulo Villar Furtado just beginning his long tenure as its secretary-general - had already identified cable television as "a service in demand." In 1971, Globo created a subsidiary, TVC - Televisao por Cabos ("Television by Cables"), to install and operate community antenna television (CATV) systems in Rio de Janeiro; in 1973, six private companies expressed to the Ministry their interest in providing the service commercially. In order to discuss its regulation, however, exclusive meetings involving MINICOM bureaucrats and such prospective candidates were being held since 1971; a first regulatory proposal was drafted by mid 1973, and a copy of it sent to the Ministry of Education and Culture in December of the same year.249 Also at that time, other sectors started to display their interests concerning the issue. In December 1973, during the Fifth Brazilian Seminar on Teleducation realized in Garanhuns, Pernambuco state - an event sponsored by the Brazilian Association on Teleducation (ABT) and the State Secretary of Education and Culture of Pernambuco - representatives of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul state (UFRGS) and the Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul

248 Daniel Herz's "A Introducao de Novas Tecnologias de Comunicacao no Brasil: Tentativas de Implantacao do Servico de Cabodifusao, Um Estudo de Caso" (The Introduction of New Communication Technologies in Brazil: Attempts to Implement the Cable Service, A Case Study) (master's thesis, Universidade de Brasilia, 1983) is the reference concerning the subject in its origins. As I do in Chapter 3 with Motter's "A Batalha Invisivel," regarding "communication" at the 1987-1988 Constituent Assembly, here I resort to Herz's study in its double quality as data and information source, and historical reconstitution and analysis.

Daniel Herz has been politically involved with the cable issue since its beginnings, and is certainly one of the most prominent figures in the struggle for the democratization of communication in Brazil. The part of his thesis (a massive work of 751 pages) related to Globo was published as A Historia Secreta da Rede Globo (The Secret Story of Globo Network) (Porto Alegre, Brasil: Tche, 1987) mainly to inform the democratizing forces in the communication debate at the Constituent Assembly.

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(PUCRS) argued in favor of an open debate regarding the use of cable television for educational purposes. Nonetheless, although this proposition was accepted among the participants on that occasion, it was excluded from the Seminar's final report.250 In 1974, the Ministry of Communications reportedly submitted a cable regulatory proposal to the Presidency of the Republic, to be analyzed and eventually approved by decree. In July of that year, professor Homero Simon, representing UFRGS at the Third Brazilian Congress on Telecommunications in Brasilia, insisted that MINICOM should discuss its initiatives to regulate telecom services with the academic community. His request (of access to proposals being drafted) was then disregarded by a representative of the Telecommunications Company of Rio Grande do Sul state (CRT) on the assumption that the public was being "generally informed" by the press about the Ministry's activities, and that giving specific information to universities about these actions would constitute "an undue privilege."251 Such a systematic refusal, by state institutions, to allow participation of other interested parties in the sector's policy making soon prompted the organization of those interests. The Association for Promotion of Culture (APC) had been already founded in May 1974, following a seminar on educational television realized in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul. In July, the UFRGS Department of Electric Engineering, headed by professor Simon, elaborated "a project of technical 249 Herz, "A Introducao de Novas Tecnologias," 269-271.

250 Ibid., 271-272. It is important to remember that these were the military regime's most repressive years, and that universities were a major focus of resistance against the dictatorship. At that time, predictably, they could not easily find good opportunities to voice their concerns.

In the Teleducation Seminar, the UFRGS and PUCRS representatives presented a document whose following passages were quoted by Herz: ... the relevance of the cable law that is being elaborated must be emphasized.

Several educational institutions (Universities, Technical Schools, etc.) are increasingly employing closed-circuit television. The technical possibility of [immediate] feedback through cable makes this system even more interesting for Teleducation. ... [This] is a possibility that cannot be disregarded in any pertinent legislation for cable. ............................................... ... [we recommend] PRONTEL (the National Program for Teleducation) to request from the Ministry of Communications a copy of its proposal of cable law, considering the Universities' special interest in being heard about it and, eventually, offering suggestions. (272) 251 Ibid., 273-276. On that occasion, Jefferson Machado, the CRT representative, also argued that MINICOM was "working around the clock" to conclude its proposal for a new comprehensive legislation to replace the 1962 Code of Telecommunications - thus "not having time to discuss," at that point, any related matter. However, as Herz observes, since 1969 the Ministry was studying "a profound revision" of the 1962 Code, with at least 14 proposals being produced until 1983. "And neither before 1974, nor after, the Universities had access to the debate." Ibid., 275.

Professor Homero Carlos Simon, then head of the Department of Electric Engineering and coordinator of the Teleducation Group at UFRGS, pioneered the struggle for democratic participation in the regulation of new

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and economic viability of a cable system for a typical countryside community."252 In Herz's account, this project "aimed to develop national technology and study economic and social aspects related to the new service. In its development, it would involve the University's areas of human and social sciences. The project also aimed to inform law making efforts concerning the subject, as illustrated by similar experiences in several other countries."253 UFRGS, then, formally submitted to MINICOM a request of authorization for the project's experimental implementation. The Ministry's denial, signed by secretary-general Romulo Furtado, is particularly revealing in its laconic tone: The Minister assigned me to inform that this matter, at present, is being definitively regulated in the ambit of this General Secretary.

Considering that there have already been requests from interested private companies, and that the implementation of this new service must be effected in an orderly manner, the Ministry is urging all the interested to await the final regulation, as well as the publication of the minimal technical standards indispensable to the service.254 (italics added).

To face a governmental organization willing to unilaterally discipline a service of potentially enormous sociocultural implications and consequences on behalf of a few economic interests, the Association for Promotion of Culture - which had UFRGS professors and students as members - started to investigate the other parties interested in the cable issue. After having informal knowledge that Globo and Diarios Associados - both supported by MINICOM bureaucrats - had advanced plans to offer cable television in cities as Rio de Janeiro and Porto

communication technologies in Brazil. He was the UFRGS representative at the 1973 Teleducation Seminar in Garanhuns, Pernambuco.

252 Ibid., 277. The UFRGS Departments of Physics and Electrotechnics, plus the University's Data Processing Center, were also involved in the project, designed to be implemented in Venancio Aires, a small town in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, with problems of signal reception of conventional television.

253 Ibid., 278.

254 Ibid., 279, quoting MINICOM correspondence (oficio 324/74-SG) to the UFRGS rector, dated from August 12, 1974. Regarding this episode, Herz ironically notes that years later the Ministry authorized the Telecommunications Company of Sao Paulo state (TELESP, a TELEBRAS subsidiary), and private enterprises like Globo, to experimentally implement new communication systems (teletext, videotext) as a means to inform the elaboration of new legislation. Ibid., 280.

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Alegre,255 and inviting unsuccessfully the Minister of Communications, commander Euclides Quandt de Oliveira, to discuss matters of common interest,256 APC elaborated a dossier in which the facts surrounding the implementation of cable in Brazil were interpreted as indicating "the existence of obscure factors and influences contrary to national security." Entitled "For the Development of Brazilian Culture," this document - an exhortation to public debate - was sent to military and civil authorities and the press in May 1975.257 This effort paid off immediately. Besides denouncements of such MINICOM practices by oppositional politicians at federal and state levels, Jornal do Brasil - one of the country's four main newspapers, the rival of Roberto Marinho's O Globo in Rio de Janeiro - covered the APC dossier in May. And, when perceiving its interests threatened by the MINICOM-Globo connection through the specifics of the cable case, it decided to launch a comprehensive attack on its powerful competitor and eventual associates in a striking editorial on June 9, 1975: Mysteriously ... the Government's acknowledged purpose of reforming the National Code of Telecommunications to create ... a real System of Television in Brazil is facing obstacles inadmissible in the 1964 regime, [a regime] under the rule of rationality. ... the discussion of the Code, instead of happening openly, continues to be contested by a strange alliance of economic power of associative influence, under control of a monopoly, not representative of real

255 Ibid., 281-286. In February 1975, APC members (Herz among them) interviewed Altair Camera, a prospective candidate to provide cable TV in Campinas, Sao Paulo state, and Nelson Vacari, superintendent of TV Piratini in Porto Alegre (belonging to Diarios Associados). Camera revealed that Globo had a project to initially attend 50,000 cable subscribers in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro's famous district, to be managed by colonel Jorge Marsiaj Leal, former MINICOM secretary-general; and that Diarios Associados had a similar project for Porto Alegre, to be conducted by Nelson Vacari. Vacari confirmed an articulation of media entrepreneurs, multinationals in the electronic industry (the German Bosch and the Italian Pirelli, among others) and authorities of the Ministry of Communications - mentioning major Jorge Pequeno Vieira, MINICOM broadcasting secretary - to implement cable television in Brazil. The cable regulation, "elaborated by Vieira with our help [Leal, Vacari and others]," was then almost ready to be released.

256 Ibid., 287. On March 12, 1975, APC, UFRGS, PUCRS and University of Vale do Rio dos Sinos, Rio Grande do Sul (UNISINOS), invited the Minister for a meeting in Porto Alegre. However, MINICOM refused "to even acknowledge having received the invitation." Ibid.

257 Ibid., 287-289. "For the first time, a civil association without economic interests confronted the Ministry of Communications, questioned its policies and procedures, and presented itself as an interlocutor [before MINICOM]."

Ibid., 288.

At that opportunity, APC members received anonymous threats for trying (unsuccessfully) to deliver a copy of the dossier to President general Ernesto Geisel, then visiting Porto Alegre. Because of such threats, copies were released to the State Secretary of Public Security of Rio Grande do Sul, the Federal Police, the Information National Service (SNI, equivalent to the American CIA), and the leaderships of the National Renewing Alliance (ARENA, then the military regime's political party, later PDS) and the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB, the allowed opposition party, later PMDB) at the State Assembly of Rio Grande do Sul. Ibid., 288-289.

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and viable competitors.

A regimen of any monopoly is rational only in totalitarian regimes, [regimes] of state capitalism or socialism. ... market economies recur to adequate legislation as a means to prevent that situations of rational and limited competition, of oligopolistic kind, degenerate into monopolies. Democratic governments act against monopolies just to preserve the market system's concept and idoneity. Thus, when such a degeneration occurs in the sector of Services, of a Service [touching] the people's soul, on a scale of millions, it is unacceptable that a de facto monopoly freezes a status quo favorable to itself, and paralyzes modernization.258 (italics added).

Such an admirable piece - combining at once historical lucidity, cynical opportunism and actual desperation, by a power excluded from power arrangements259 - fissured the media Establishment. The Brazilian Association of Broadcasting Stations (ABERT), then presided over by a former Minister of the Navy, admiral Adalberto Nunes, publicly reacted against Jornal do Brasil not only in denying the existence of Globo's monopoly (thus ABERT subordination to it) but also by charging the newspaper with attempting to turn the government against the broadcasters.260 This exchange opened a war of words between Jornal do Brasil on one side, and ABERT, Globo and (not surprisingly) Diarios Associados261 on the other, which resulted successively in a public admission by Minister Quandt de Oliveira that MINICOM was going to

258 Ibid., 291-292, quoting "TV Congelada" (Frozen TV), Jornal do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro), 9 June 1975, editorial page.

259 Although recognizing the existence of a purposive media "alliance," Jornal do Brasil artfully omitted the state's constitutive role in it, in order to appeal to state powers in an ultimately pathetic defense of an oligopolistic order as being "rational" and "modern" (an order in which the newspaper could be, of course, included), to replace Globo's virtual, exclusory monopoly.

Additionally, as Herz points out, there were quite more pragmatic needs then spurring Jornal do Brasil's analytical exercise: "[it] was in economic difficulties, with the period for the mandatory installation of a TV station - to which it was licensed - approaching expiration... ." Ibid., 291. (italics added).

260 Ibid., 292-294. An ABERT letter retorting to Jornal do Brasil, signed by admiral Adalberto Nunes and dated from June 10, 1975, was read by Globo's newscasts on June 11.

261 Ibid., 295. Despite having fought Roberto Marinho since TV Globo's inception from an illegal association with Time-Life in the 1960s (see the Introduction of this dissertation), Diarios Associados' prospects concerning cable television led it (a declining empire after Assis Chateaubriand's death in 1968) to align with its former enemy, against Jornal do Brasil.

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announce the regulation of cable television in Brazil,262 Jornal do Brasil's disaffiliation from ABERT,263 and a testimony about the cable controversy by the APC president, UFRGS professor Homero Simon, in the House of Representatives' Communication Commission at the National Congress.264 The boisterous publicity reflecting thwarted interests within the media status quo, the undesirable disclosure of state bureaucrats' particularistic activities, their disruptive repercussions in the Legislature and back in the media - such spiraling developments forced the Ministry of Communications to respond to an increasingly uncomfortable situation. First, MINICOM finally recognized the existence of the Association for Promotion of Culture through an official letter, signed by secretary-general Romulo Furtado and sent to APC, "explaining its procedures with regard to the regulation of the cable service."265 Second, it found its scapegoat: in order to not compromise his secretary-general, Minister Quandt de Oliveira dismissed his broadcasting secretary, major Jorge Pequeno Vieira, the supposed author of the cable regulatory proposal.266

262 Ibid., 295-296, quoting an interview by Quandt de Oliveira to O Estado de S. Paulo on June 18, 1975, during a visit to Japan.

263 Ibid., 296. The newspaper owns a radio station in Rio de Janeiro, whose disassociation from ABERT was made public on June 20, 1975.

264 Ibid., 296-307. Congress' invitation of the APC president (by initiative of oppositional representatives) and his crowded testimony in Brasilia on June 25, 1975, were covered by Jornal do Brasil, and followed by mobilization and intense criticism from ABERT affiliates. On the same day, MINICOM broadcasting secretary, major Pequeno Vieira the Ministry's bureaucrat reported as responsible for drafting the cable regulation - spoke publicly about the matter in Porto Alegre, and broadcasters gathered in Rio de Janeiro to show "cohesion and support" to ABERT positions. Ibid.

According to Herz, in his testimony professor Simon argued that the coming cable service ... should be explored by communities, and implemented technically by a public corporation as a means to guarantee that its cultural and educational potentialities would be managed independently from commercial interests ... if cable comes to beexplored commercially, it will bring economic losses to conventional television because it constitutes a natural monopoly in the area of service, and is technically superior to broadcast television. (304) Herz registers that although Simon approached the interests of broadcasting in a judicious way, he and APC were severely attacked by the mainstream media (excepting Jornal do Brasil). For example, an article by the Association of Broadcasters of Rio Grande do Sul state (AGERT) was published in O Globo's editorial page on June 28, 1975: "What is this Association for Promotion of Culture? Who are those denouncing favors against the cable national system? ... Are we going back to the times before 1964, when agitation was the formula for everything? ... We deplore the fact that political connotations are given to a situation exclusively technical." Ibid., 306-307, quoting "Cabodifusao ainda nao esta' regulamentada mas muitos ainda nao sabem" (Cable is not regulated yet, but many still do not know), O Globo (Rio de Janeiro), 28 June 1975, editorial page. (italics added).

265 Ibid., 307-308, regarding MINICOM correspondence (oficio 399/75-SG) from June 30, 1975. This official letter, nonetheless, added nothing to the information already provided by the Ministry (e.g., in its correspondence to UFRGS, mentioned before).

In replying to Romulo Furtado, APC requested copies of the respective proposals for a new telecom code and cable regulation. It was not attended. Ibid., 308.

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Nevertheless, despite MINICOM persistent intent to settle the matter by decree in favor of particular interests - to the point of having a final proposal vetoed by President general Ernesto Geisel, allegedly due to economic reasons267 - the disruption originated from timely actions by university professors and students organized in a civil association in southern Brazil, kept the issue at bay in the following years.

In June 1979, the Minister of Communications Haroldo Correa de Mattos discreetly sent to President general Joao Figueiredo a new version of the cable regulatory proposal - the one rejected

by President Geisel during the tenure of Quandt de Oliveira at MINICOM - again to be sanctioned by decree. In his official message, submitted to President Figueiredo, Correa de Mattos not only mentioned President Geisel's motive in vetoing the proposal's earlier version (to avoid equipment imports in a time of growing trade deficits) but also stressed two related reasons why the outcome should now be otherwise: (a) the private sector considered that there were already economic conditions for the implementation of cable in the country; and (b) decreased equipment purchases by the TELEBRAS system (anticipating the investment reduction in the 1980s) had put the manufacturing sector in need of a new market.268 However, a copy of Correa de Mattos' message to Figueiredo was "intercepted," followed by the mobilization of a group of professors and students of the Master's Program in Communication at the University of Brasilia (UnB), supported by National Congress representatives.269 On August 12, 1979, Jornal de Brasilia - one of the two leading newspapers in the country's capital - published an article by Daniel Herz about the subject. And on August 17, representative Walmor de Luca (from MDB, the oppositional party) delivered a speech in the Congress exhorting the government to not regulate the matter by decree, but to proceed in the way it was then proceeding concerning the new telecommunications code: to open the proposal to 266 Ibid., 309-311. Pequeno Vieira was discharged on July 8, 1975, then reportedly transferred to TELEBRAS. 267 Ibid., 320. According to the 1979 official message (Envio de Mensagem 92/79-GM, dated from June 5) by Quandt de Oliveira's successor, Minister Haroldo Correa de Mattos, submitting a new version of the MINICOM proposal to the recently installed President general Joao Figueiredo, President Geisel had rejected the 1975 proposal on the assumption that the implementation of cable in Brazil would increase equipment imports at a time of growing trade deficits (in the wake of the 1973 oil shock, the end of the economic miracle).

In spite of this circumstantial justification, Herz defines the presidential veto as "the final act of the first great political defeat by the Ministry of Communications and economic groups struggling on behalf of a private-commercial model for the cable service in Brazil." Ibid.

268 Herz, "A Introducao de Novas Tecnologias," 321-322, referring again to the official message 92/79, from June 5, 1979.

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debate at the Legislature. These two actions started a second round of the cable fight against the media Establishment.270 Again, the same correlation of forces that had come into play in 1975 was back in 1979, but presenting one significant difference in its dynamics: with the advance of the abertura ("opening") policy by the military regime in the late 1970s,271 a strengthening opposition was giving a distinct political advantage to the National Congress - something which compelled the Executive to pay increasing attention to it. As a result, successive discussions at both the Senate and House of Representatives brought (again) the Ministry of Communications to the fore,272 forcing its Minister to publicly defend indefensible positions, in the light of the conflicting interests involved.

Such a position also implied a high risk of political mistakes. Correa de Mattos' first one came soon, in a disregardful reply to severe criticism by representative Cristina Tavares (MDB) concerning his Ministry's habitual lack of inclination to debate telecom issues.273 The Minister then qualified the understanding of cable technicalities by the House of Representatives' Communication Commission as "distant from reality." Since the technology was "long dominated," 269 Ibid., 335. Although graciously minimizing his participation in these events, Daniel Herz, a master student in Brasilia at that time, brought his experience as an APC former member (the Association was then extinct) and led the mobilization.

270 Ibid., 335-336. Herz's article, "Em debate, a televisao por cabos" (Cable television in debate), Jornal de Brasilia, 12 August 1979, 29, was the first publicized analysis of a MINICOM proposal regarding the issue for a quite simple reason: the mentioned "interception" of the Minister of Communications' official message to the President, then exposing - for the first time - its annexed content. This material also informed Walmor de Luca's address.

The proposed legislation, if ratified, would clearly open the way for the reproduction of broadcasting's dominant interests in the new service, given the nature of their historical association with the state telecom bureaucracy. Cable licensing would be an exclusive attribution of the Minister of Communications. A license, initially valid for 15 years, would be renewable each 10 years, successively. Service policies (technical conditions, rates, etc.) would also be defined by MINICOM. The Ministry reacted to representative Walmor de Luca's speech on the same day, by revealing that Brazilian companies could manufacture 80% of the equipment to be used in the cable service. Ibid., 336.

271 See Chapter 3.

272 Herz, "A Introducao de Novas Tecnologias," 337-338. On August 21, 1979, senator Jaison Barreto (MDB) denounced the governmental intention to regulate cable by decree as "hasty," attributing it to pressures over MINICOM by private domestic groups associated with foreign corporations. Two days later, Minister Correa de Mattos received in his office a group of Congress representatives from both ARENA and MDB - among them, Walmor de Luca and Israel Novaes (MDB), president of the House of Representatives' Communication Commission. The Minister then assured his visitors that the proposal under consideration would not benefit multinationals because cable operation would be restricted to Brazilians; and that public submission for licensing would be required, eliminating political favoritism. Correa de Mattos argued that the service would come on behalf of the national industry, denied having submitted (yet) the proposal to the President, and promised that any decision was postponed until he could discuss the regulation with representatives at the Communication Commission. Ibid.

273 Ibid., 338, quoting Cristina Tavares' House address on August 29, 1979: "... in democratic countries [such issues] are object of broad discussion. Here, things happen differently. Behind the closed doors of techno-bureaucracy, [only] the interests of the intelligence community and the big monopolistic capital are listened."

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it would not introduce "any problem" - "it is necessary only to install the cables, and there is no technological mystery about it, contrary to what the representatives think."274 Nonetheless, not only congresspersons were grasping cable as a subject irreducible to its operational dimension. Correa de Mattos was immediately rejoindered by the Engineers Union of Rio Grande do Sul state, which argued that complex themes such as technological dependency and job opportunities could not be ignored in policy making regarding new technologies.275 It was followed by dossiers prepared and sent by UnB master students to communication and engineering schools and associations, congresspersons, the military and other public figures,276 and by public manifestations of organizations as the Brazilian Christian Union of Communication (UCBC) and the National Federation of Journalists (FENAJ) demanding a comprehensive, openly participatory debate concerning the issue.277 Under mounting pressure, MINICOM began to show a willingness to compromise. On October 14, 1979, Daniel Herz, in another article published by Jornal de Brasilia, reported exclusively the Ministry's alleged reasons to quickly regulate and implement cable by decree. Herz and other UnB master students had been invited and informally met with Lourenco Chehab,

274 Ibid., 339, quoting Correa de Mattos in an official ceremony on September 3, 1979, at EMBRATEL headquarters in Rio de Janeiro.

275 Ibid., 339-341. In a letter to the press on October 5, 1979, the Engineers Union stated the following (quoted by Herz): The fact that cable is a well-dominated technology should not be the single reason for its immediate implementation. Other aspects ... must be considered. This technology could open an employment market for engineers and technicians. ... conventional TV, a well-known technology, has not created a structure of equipment production by Brazilian firms. The so-called "imported technological packages" have systematically absorbed the incipient market of equipment for television, killing any initiative toward development, by national companies, of a technology adapted to our reality. (340) 276 Ibid., 341-342. Among those who received such materials, Guilherme Figueiredo should be mentioned. Writer and President Figueiredo's brother, he sent copies of the dossiers to Ministers Correa de Mattos, Said Farhat (Social Communication) and Eduardo Portella (Education). "In notes annexed to the dossiers ... Guilherme Figueiredo asked for special attention to the documents and their claims. [He] also promised to take the issue to his brother, the President." Ibid., 342.

277 Ibid., 342-343. UCBC president, friar Clarencio Neotti, cautioned the National Congress against a strictly technolegal discussion of the cable proposal: "[it] must broadly evaluate the possible social consequences the new system will bring to Brazilian society." Ibid., 342. And the Twelfth National Conference of Journalists realized in Florianopolis, Santa Catarina state, released its final report on October 13, 1979, deploring the commercial perspective for the cable service (according to the "intercepted" proposal) as "limited, arbitrary and formulated aside from any significant public debate." The journalists required "the immediate de-acceleration" of its implementation, which must be preceded by "a truly public discussion, preserving the social interest involved." Ibid., 343. Both quoted by Herz.

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MINICOM broadcasting secretary, days earlier.278 In his article, Herz presented the Ministry's rationale as follows: After the message's [the proposal] return by the Presidency to Minister Haroldo Correa de Mattos, the Ministry altered radically its procedure. Last week, it approached the Universities, having kept preliminary contacts seeking the beginning of a dialogue. During these contacts, in justifying the immediate implementation of cable TV, the Ministry alleged the existence of an unattended demand for the service (which already started clandestinely in some places); the convenience of giving an adequate social use to the videocassette equipment soon to be produced by a multinational already installed in Parana state (Japanese Sony); the electronic industry's current capacity to produce in Brazil more than 85% of the equipment for the service; and finally the pressures of powerful economic groups which could impose their interests on the National Congress if the matter were not legislated by Decree.279 (italics added).

Oscillating between preposterousness (to give unequivocal priority to the interests of a multinational in such a delicate issue; to argue about the industry's capacity when there was not technological autonomy even regarding conventional television) and ludicrous arrogance (ignoring MINICOM pork-barrel broadcast licensing, to believe that its technocrats were impervious to corruption and should replace elected representatives concerning matters of public interest), those motives in fact reflected the Ministry's pessimism with regard to its prospects of success before wider audiences. This mood led its Minister to try divisive maneuvers involving the usually,

278 Ibid., 343-344. According to Herz, Chehab wanted to hear personally the students' objections to the Ministry's regulatory proposal, with the purpose of eventually "negotiate" some of its dispositions. The students refused this approach, arguing that an informal meeting could not replace a much needed public debate about the subject. The secretary finally agreed to meet the students and their professors two weeks later, in the Communication Department at UnB. Ibid.

279 Ibid., 344-345, quoting "TV por cabos, uma inovacao a ser debatida" (Cable TV, an innovation to be debated), Jornal de Brasilia, 14 October 1979, 26.

With regard to "clandestine" service, Globo's TVC (created in 1971), formally owned by colonel Wilson Britto (the MINICOM proposal would prohibit conventional TV licensees to offer cable in their area of coverage), had just installed a cable mini-system involving 80 residential buildings in Barra da Tijuca, a Rio de Janeiro district, with 1,194 subscribers. Ibid., 373-375, from "TV por cabo chega ao Brasil (mas quando?)" (Cable TV arrives in Brazil [but when?]), Jornal do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro), 28 October 1979, B-8; and "Publico seleto: o Brasil ingressa na era da TV por cabo" (Select public: Brazil enters the age of cable TV), Veja, 7 November 1979, 65-66.

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mutually receptive Congress and private sector.280 Meanwhile, students and professors of communication and engineering kept their pressure on MINICOM.281 Driven hard by the circumstances, the Ministry's first signs of political despair came on October 22, 1979: what was to be an informal visit by its broadcasting secretary, Lourenco Chehab, to professors and master students at UnB Communication Department, surprisingly drew no less than ten top MINICOM bureaucrats - among them (besides Chehab), the heads of secretaries and/or coordinations of broadcasting, planning and technology, social communication and juridical affairs, escorted by attorneys specialized in telecom law - to discuss their cable regulatory proposal. Proceeding carefully to avoid legitimating the Ministry's initiative as "a formal dialogue with the University," professors and students focused their criticism on MINICOM exclusory procedures to regulate cable instead of suggesting changes of content in the proposal.282 On the following day, October 23, the Ministry tried again to legitimate its actions before a broader constituency by reactivating its National Council of Communications for a session to debate the proposed regulation. Again, timely intervention from the Council members representing the Universities buried MINICOM pretensions.283

280 As an illustration of this pessimism, Herz quotes a comment by Correa de Mattos about his approaching visit to the House of Representative's Communication Commission, registered by Jornal do Brasil on October 17, 1979: "If there is a polarization or predisposition among congresspersons to not accept my arguments, they will never be convinced of the service's viability." Ibid., 347. On October 19, O Estado de S. Paulo published a couple of intriguing comments by the Minister. In the first, he attributed to some representatives a position of defense of a state-owned cable system, criticizing their viewpoint by saying that the system is "elitist" and MINICOM "has other priorities." In the second, in responding to criticism of the cable proposal as supportive of multinational corporations, he repeated that the industry can produce 90% of the equipment - "but the participation of foreign enterprises ... is natural because the cables [the bulk of the system's cost], for example, are fabricated by Pirelli." Ibid., 348 (quoted by Herz). (italics added).

281 Ibid., 348-350. The Third National Meeting of Communication Students (ENECOM), realized in Brasilia, released an open letter to MINICOM on October 21, 1979. On the day before, UFRGS and PUCRS Engineering Schools sent telegrams to Vice-President Aureliano Chaves, Ministers Correa de Mattos and Eduardo Portella (Education), and representative Dias Novaes, president of the House of Representatives' Communication Commission.

282 Ibid., 350-352. As a participant in that meeting, Herz clarifies the position of the UnB Communication Department: "The regulatory proposal ... was defined as illegitimate and unacceptable ... because of the procedural method (elaboration and conduction) adopted by the Ministry of Communications. The Universities could only consider themselves as consulted if they had had the opportunity to respond by using their language - the language of science - reaching a position through specialized research and study." Ibid., 351.

283 Ibid., 352-353. This rarely convened Council, presided by the Ministry's secretary-general, has the attribution to assist the Minister in policy making, and is integrated by representatives of several state and government institutions, plus private and civil associations related to the sector - including a representative of the Brazilian Universities, nominated by the Minister of Education and Culture.

However, MINICOM "bad luck" persisted on that occasion. Daniel Herz: What happened was that "the [Council] representative of the Brazilian Universities" was professor and journalist Walder de Goes, and his substitute,

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On October 24, 1979, Minister Correa de Mattos finally took a step demanded by his critics - to involve the Legislative in his Ministry's regulatory initiatives - by attending a much anticipated, crowded session about the cable proposal at the House of Representatives' Communication Commission.284 According to Daniel Herz, Correa de Mattos then defended MINICOM procedures towards the establishment of a minimal legal framework, accelerating the implementation of cable television in Brazil by articulating five major - and highly controversial points: 1. Cable is a service "analogous to conventional broadcasting," but "an elitist service": by being limited to those who can pay for it, cable "does not deserve (sic) such a degree of attention [from policy makers, the public in general]";285 2. In being "a trivial, long dominated technology," there is "no reason for the Universities to do research about its application";286 3. Since cable is an elitist service, it "should not receive any investments from the Ministry of Communications"; therefore, "its implementation and exploration must be realized by private enterprises";287 4. Although "the future will inevitably bring the possibility of telematic [multimedia] services through cable structures" - something with potentially enormous implications - "its

professor and journalist Luiz Gonzaga Motta, both from the Communication Department at the University of Brasilia ... . It became evident that the session's goal was to legitimate the Ministry's proposal, and support politically Minister Correa de Mattos in his testimony at the House of Representatives' Communication Commission, scheduled for the following day. [Nevertheless,] a firm intervention by the UnB professors prevented the Council from reaching a conclusive position about the matter. (353) (italics added).

284 Ibid., 354-368. Herz reproduces passages of the Minister's testimony as registered by the Congress' Department of Tachygraphy, Revision and Writing (Coordination of Tachygraphic Register).

285 Ibid., 354-355, quoting Correa de Mattos as saying also the following: "I am perplexed about the fact that such a trivial (sic) matter is provoking so much outcry." Ibid., 354.

286 Ibid., 355-357. Correa de Mattos: "The system is decades old, there is nothing, absolutely nothing of innovative. It is a coaxial cable and some retransmitters, an ordinary technique in telecommunications. It is a mere application of systems already disseminated and widely experimented ... ." Ibid., 355-356. "Technologically, there is nothing to research on cable; to research it would mean to try to reinvent the wheel." Ibid., 355.

287 Ibid., 357-358. Correa de Mattos: "Because it attends restricted segments of the population, and has much less coverage potential than conventional TV, cable does not justify investments from TELEBRAS, which is engaged in supplying still unattended [basic] needs of our public telecommunications." Ibid., 357. "Since Law 4,117/1962 [the telecom Code] established that broadcasting should be explored by private enterprises, I see no reason why cable [an analogous service] should become a state monopoly." Ibid., 358.

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simpler application [television] must be regulated immediately," leaving telematics to be addressed "later";288 and 5. The procedures adopted by MINICOM towards the regulation of cable by presidential decree are "juridically unquestionable"; the legislation (then) in force - the 1962 Code of Telecommunications and especially its General Regulation - actually "requires" that regulation by decree.289 Here, the relevance of the main aspects of Minister Correa de Mattos' testimony lays in the fact that it fully anticipated an outrageously marginalizing argument. This view would return a decade later, reflecting, with rare expressiveness, some of the ultimate tenets of an order not only restricted to communications: elitism as a natural (thus unaccountable) phenomenon, technocratic disdain, legal opportunism, plus bureaucratic centralization as the inescapable condition for selective privatism through state favoritism. In particular, the Minister grossly underestimated his interlocutors' ability to understand that (a) cable was "an elitist service" only circumstantially; as happened with broadcasting, it would spread out and become less expensive once an economy of scale was established; (b) given its socioeconomic and cultural consequences in other countries, cable should never be reduced to its technological dimension - thus justifying research interests regarding those dimensions in relation to the new technology; (c) such consequences and the service's unprecedented possibilities - channel plurality, multidirectional communication, additional services - mean it should not be reduced to a strictly commercial function; (d) once those licensed to implement and explore cable television were in place, they would become unduly favored candidates to later offer multimedia services - a situation thus demanding a comprehensive (instead of specific) regulatory effort as a means to assure upcoming opportunities for new service providers; and (e) it was imperative to reform the whole legislation with the purpose of democratically introducing a techno-juridical framework capable of dealing with all the new prospects instead of solely reproducing an old reality - authoritarian, mediocre, and unfair.

288 Ibid., 358-359. Correa de Mattos: "It is important to observe that the present proposal essentially refers to cable television. Other [related] services will be disciplined in the future. We have to start from where everybody else started: acquiring experience from the simplest system, which is the unidirectional distribution of signals ... ." Ibid., 358.

289 Ibid., 359-363. Decreto no. 52.026, de 20 de maio de 1963, publicado no Diario Oficial, Brasilia, 27 de maio de 1963. The General Regulation of the 1962 Code (Decree 52,026/1963), Article 1, stated that all telecom services would obey specific or special regulations, in conformity with the Code and its General Regulation. In Paragraph 3 of the same article, the following was written: "The Specific and Special Regulations will be sanctioned by decree of the President of the Republic." (italics added).

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Considering the political moment, the Minister of Communications seemed to have also miscalculated the impact of his views. Their publication resulted in an intensification of the criticism against MINICOM,290 and finally caused what probably sealed its second historical defeat concerning the subject: a violent speech by general Andrada Serpa accusing Correa de Mattos of being "unpatriotic, the servant of alien interests."291 On November 8, 1979, the Minister reportedly informed the postponement of the cable regulation. He would have advised President Figueiredo to not sanction the matter by decree, in order to allow it to be included in a comprehensive proposal to replace the 1962 telecom Code, which was then expected to be submitted to the National Congress in the following year.292

290 Ibid., 368-369. Herz observes that on the day after - October 25, 1979 - the Minister's polemic testimony at the National Congress made headlines around the country: O Estado de S. Paulo, "TV a cabo 'trivial' segundo Ministro" (Cable TV is "trivial" according to Minister); Jornal do Brasil, "Ministro acha que o certo e' comprar e nao pesquisar a tecnica da TV por cabo" (Minister thinks the right thing to do is to buy, not to research cable TV technology); Jornal de Brasilia, "Cabodifusao sera implantada sem debate" (Cable will be implemented without debate); Jornal do Comercio (Porto Alegre), "Cabodifusao: Ministro nao acredita em tecnologia nacional" (Cable: Minister does not believe in national technology); O Liberal (Belem, Para state), "Mattos defende cabodifusao na Camara sob protesto" (Mattos defends cable in the House under protest). Ibid.

On the same day, Herz notes, newspaper editors and correspondents in Brasilia were invited for a lunch by Luiz Carlos Mancini, MINICOM coordinator of social communication, in which he spoke about "distortions" of Correa de Mattos' testimony by the press. As a result, many newspapers minimized their prior coverage in their October 26 editions, as for example Jornal do Brasil, "TV por cabo abre empregos e preserva culturas regionais" (Cable TV creates jobs and preserves regional cultures). Ibid., 369.

291 Ibid., 369-372, quoting "Serpa defende pais contra multis" (Serpa defends the country against multinationals), Jornal de Brasilia, 27 October 1979, 3. On October 26, during a military ceremony, general Serpa, then chief of the Army's General Department of Personnel, reacted to the media coverage of Correa de Mattos' performance at Congress by delivering a politically charged message before a thousand officers and soldiers: ... It is our duty ... to defend the creation of an indigenous technology for our country. This is not an utopian aspiration. After 25 years of absolute dominance by the interests of large multinational corporations ... I must reiterate that they continue to be welcomed, bringing their technology, capital and managerial expertise.

Nevertheless, technology must not be reduced to obsolete assembly lines imported from other nations. There are cases in which [new technology] has been generated here in Brazil, and transferred [by multinational subsidiaries] to [their] headquarters in virtue of our inventiveness.

There is already a critical mass of Brazilians understanding these problems.

It is neither the case of reinventing the wheel, nor of inventing the gunpowder - as unpatriotic Brazilians ironically repeat, servants of alien interests.

It is just a case of lacking the National Will to accomplish [technological autonomy].

(370-371) (italics added).

292 Ibid., 377, from "Minicom" (MINICOM), Revista Brasileira de Telecomunicacoes 1 (January/February 1980): 71.

Neither cable nor telecommunications in general were object of legislative process at Congress in 1980 and/or the following years.

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THE CABLE CASE: NEGOTIATION PROCESS

Along the 1980s, some major factors prevented the Ministry of Communications from earnestly renewing its attempts to regulate cable unilaterally, on behalf of a handful of interests.

More generally, the deepening socioeconomic crisis and the consequent erosion of the military regime spurred the political opposition to a level which turned far more rash any particularistic initiative that could be seen (by the Establishment) as "lacking priority" - thus not justifying additional risks of further political strain. As a result, the processes and events that defined Brazil's institutional re-democratization - the abertura policy, amnesty, popular mobilization and elections, the transition from military to civilian rule, Constituent Assembly and the new Constitution restrained those in power as well as their beneficiaries from opening new battlefronts in their struggle to preserve the status quo.

Moreover, in its effort to extend its dominance to the realm of new communication technologies during most of the 1980s, the state-private media alliance also faced a specific - and potentially more conflictive - context. Following a commonly envisioned technological convergence between communications and informatics293 (made possible by the former's paradigmatic transition from electromechanics to microelectronics), ensued a contradictory convergence of their distinct interests in policy making. Since the early 1970s, segments of the military, state economists and entrepreneurial scientists and technicians were working together to create a native informatics industry capable of developing indigenous technology.294 Their policy initiatives - far more "nationalistically oriented" than those observed in telecommunications295 -

293 "Informatics" (informatica) - from the French informatique - is the standard term used in Brazil comprehending the areas of microelectronics, computing and automation.

294 A comprehensive account of the country's efforts in the field is provided by Hubert Schmitz and Jose Cassiolato, eds., Hi-tech for Industrial Development: Lessons from the Brazilian experience in electronics and automation (London: Routledge, 1992).

Brazil's informatics policy was first formulated and carried out by the Coordinating Commission of Electronic Processing Activities (CAPRE), created in 1972 and linked to the general secretary of the Ministry of Planning. In 1979, CAPRE became the Special Secretary for Informatics (SEI), first under the National Security Council (CSN), and later, the Ministry of Science and Technology.

295 Here, the concept of "national enterprise" is a case for comparison. During the 1970s, in the manufacturing sector, foreign telecom corporations in Brazil were compelled to joint Brazilian groups, which - to have these joint ventures legally recognized as "national companies" - had to keep the majority of their voting capital (see Chapter 3).

Meanwhile, the national ownership of computer firms had to comply with a far more strict definition. They were "corporations established in Brazil, under permanent, exclusive and unconditional direct and indirect control (over managerial decision-making power, technological development and stock ownership) of individuals resident in Brazil or of domestic public entities." Hubert Schmitz and Tom Hewitt, "An assessment of the market reserve for the Brazilian computer industry," in Hi-tech for Industrial Development, 46 (note 4) (referring to C. Frischtak, "The

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culminated in the 1977 establishment of a market reserve for national companies to produce mini and microcomputers and peripherals, later extended to stimulate the production of superminicomputers, automation equipment, microelectronic components and digital instruments.296 The technological convergence would be consummated sooner or later through cable infrastructures. As already mentioned, in 1979 Minister Correa de Mattos tried to avoid a direct confrontation with the nationalists in informatics (then entrenched in both the state and the scientific community)297 by declaring his Ministry's unwillingness to immediately regulate telematics. However, MINICOM support of joint ventures of domestic and foreign capitals in telecom manufacturing, plus prospective cable TV providers' (meaning Globo) eagerness to access informatics sector in Brazil: policies, institutions and the performance of the computer industry," unpublished paper [the World Bank, Industrial Strategy and Policy Division, March 1986], 8).

296 In "An Assessment of the market reserve," 24, Schmitz and Hewitt note that the policy's main instruments were quantitative import restrictions, and the concession of manufacturing licenses to national enterprises. Foreign companies were not excluded from the Brazilian computer market, but confined to certain market segments. "Foreign firms [were] limited to the production of mainframe computers. They [were] also controlled by SEI to the extent that the granting and withholding of import licenses [could] force these firms to have increasing indices of nationally produced inputs in their final products and also to show positive export balances." Ibid.

In less than a decade, this policy dramatically changed the country's computer industry. In Schmitz's and Hewitt's words, Until the late 1970s, [it] was in the hands of foreign firms which either imported finished products or carried out the final assembly of goods locally. ...

By 1986, the number of firms operating in the nationally-owned computer and peripherals market increased to 310 from four in 1977 ... . Employment in these firms grew from just 4,000 in 1979 to over 50,000 in 1988. Total sales of national firms in 1988 were [around] US$ 3,000 million, accounting for 66 per cent of the computer market ... . (24-25) (citing data from C. Piragibe, "Policies towards the electronics complex in Brazil" [Brasilia: CNPq, Textos em Politica Cientifica e Tecnologica, no. 28 (1987)]; and SEI, Panorama do Setor de Informatica [Panorama of the Informatics Sector] [Brasilia: Secretaria Especial de Informatica, Series Estatisticas 2, no. 1 (1989)]).

297 Ibid., 25. Schmitz and Hewitt describe the beginnings of such "a particular breed of nationalism" as follows: In this developmental coalition there was, first, a small caucus of highly skilled engineers trained in technology institutes and universities in the U.S. and in Brazil whom Evans ... called 'frustrated nationalist technicians'. They were neither satisfied with working as salespeople for foreign computer manufacturers nor did they want to remain in universities. Their ambition was to find a commercial outlet (and, therefore, real test) for their prototype computer designs.

These engineers found political and financial support from three groups in the state apparatus. In the national development bank (BNDE[S]) there was a group of economists who were keen to promote a national capital goods industry.

The Federal data-processing agency, SERPRO, had been doing their own hardware and software development to suit their particular needs and supported the creation of a national industry which could supply equipment to their specifications. Finally, the navy was keen to see the development of a national computer technology to supply its frigates and thus avoid technological dependency in what was considered to be a strategic and sensitive military area. (25) (quoting P. Evans, "State, capital and the transformation of dependence: the Brazilian computer case," World Development

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the latest technologies (mainly for additional services),298 were keenly perceived as a serious threat to any project towards autonomous development for informatics in Brazil.299 In this sense, general Andrada Serpa's poignant response to Correa de Mattos' testimony at Congress, voicing these concerns and thus revealing a power struggle between sectors of the military regime, would have signaled the beginning of a decade-long halt of the state-private media alliance's pretensions with regard to new communication technologies.

This arrest, however, was suspended amidst imperatives that could hardly be ignored by an opportunistic status quo restoring its ways in a quite different political context. As a distant, secondary component of his broadcast licensing "policy" fueling the conservatives throughout the works of the 1987-1988 Constituent Assembly, President Jose Sarney - assisted by his Minister of Communications Antonio Carlos Magalhaes and the resilient MINICOM general secretary Romulo Furtado - signed Decree 95,744/1988 (on February 23) regulating the "Special Service of Subscription Television" (TVA). It was then defined as a "telecommunications service for distributing sounds and images to subscribers, by codified signals, through the utilization of channels of the radioelectric spectrum ... ." (Article 2).300 Despite being a prerogative of the Executive, TVA licensing - authorized by decree for 15 years, renewable for equal periods successively - would not require any previous study by MINICOM (Art. 8, paragraph 1). Either the Ministry or eventual candidates - state institutions; 14, no. 7 [1986]: 792-793).

298 Herz, "A Introducao de Novas Tecnologias," 437-452. In the early 1980s, Sao Paulo's TELESP started studies for implementation of videotext and teletext services. Videotext initially involved private enterprises as Brasilinvest (then controlling NEC do Brasil) and the French Matra. Teletext involved the Brazil South Network (RBS, Globo's broadcast affiliate), Jornal do Brasil, Bandeirantes network and Globo.

These TELESP initiatives seem to imply a "change of attitude," by the Ministry of Communications, regarding experimentation with new technologies. As already mentioned, years before MINICOM had denied a request by the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) to realize a cable experiment.

299 The 1977-1992 informatics policy and its main instrument - the market reserve - drew formidable external and internal opposition, consisting of multinational corporations (especially the American IBM) backed by their governments (the U.S. kept Brazil under threat of retaliatory trade measures between 1985 and 1989), and domestic user companies demanding immediate access to the latest (cheaper and more competitive) foreign technology. For an understanding of the forces in conflict, related arguments and outcomes, Maria Ines Bastos, "State policies and private interests: the struggle over information technology policy in Brazil," in Hi-tech for Industrial Development, 239-272.

The 1977 market reserve - consolidated by Law 7,232/1984, "the Informatics Law" - was finally replaced by an import tariff policy in 1992.

300 Decreto no. 95.744, de 23 de fevereiro de 1988, publicado no Diario Oficial, Brasilia, 24 de fevereiro de 1988.

This definition excluded the transmission, by conventional broadcasting television, of codified signals to repeater or retransmitter stations.

Curiously, the regulatory power did not identify which band(s) of the spectrum - VHF and/or UHF - would be allocated for TVA, "despite the notorious saturation of the VHF frequency." Andre Mendes de Almeida, Midia

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non-governmental organizations constituted and maintained by Brazilians; private enterprises managed by, and with nominal shares belonging exclusively to Brazilians - could start the licensing process, the latter by demonstrating the technical and economic viability of their projects plus the geographic area to be covered (Art. 8, II, par. 2). Then, MINICOM would publicly invite all those interested to also submit their projects (Art. 9). Finally, the Ministry would verify the candidates' observance of technical, legal and administrative requirements (Arts. 10, 11 and 12) and, after considering the convenience of recommending the licensing of more than one proponent to operate at the same area, submit the selected projects to the President for decision (Arts. 13 and 14).301 In principle, Decree 95,744 legalized small enterprises already offering community antenna TV in areas of difficult reception of conventional television.302 But its real and ultimate purpose was revealed just before the promulgation of the new Constitution: in September 1988, Roberto Marinho's Globo and Roberto Civita's Abril (Brazil's biggest magazine publisher, which would become a major force in pay-TV, beside Globo) were licensed to operate one channel each in Sao Paulo city, the nation's largest market.303 One year later, in December 1989, Marinho would get another TVA channel in Rio de Janeiro city, the country's second market.304 Nevertheless, if the opportunity to regulate subscription television could be seen as attending secondary demands of Sarney's clientelism, the regulation itself represented more than just an appendage to a timeworn legal apparatus. The definition of TVA as a special telecom service - thus juridically distinct from broadcasting - in fact anticipated a regulatory philosophy

Eletronica: Seu Controle nos EUA e no Brasil (Electronic Media: Their Control in the U.S. and in Brazil) (Rio de Janeiro: Forense, 1993), 155.

301 The process is similar to what was the formal procedure in broadcasting until 1988, particularly concerning the observance, by candidates, of minimal requirements, giving enough room for the Minister of Communications and the President to make their discretionary choices.

302 Othon Jambeiro, "Sobre a Lei da TV a Cabo: Uma Avaliacao Critica Inicial" (About the Cable Law: An Initial Critical Evaluation), Textos de Cultura e Comunicacao, no. 34 (December 1995): 57.

303 Roberto Lopes, "Sarney concede canal de TV por assinatura a Globo em Sao Paulo" (Sarney concedes subscription TV channel to Globo in Sao Paulo), Folha de S. Paulo, 3 September 1988, 4. Mathias Machline's Sharp/SID (an electronic manufacturer) and Walter Fontoura, director of O Globo in Sao Paulo and owner of Pirasom Imagens (created to explore the service), were next to get TVA licenses in Brazil's largest city. Ibid.

304 "Sarney distribui antenas para amigos" (Sarney distributes antennas among friends), O Estado de S. Paulo, 22 December 1989, 29. On that occasion, nine TVA licenses were granted - four in Rio de Janeiro, two in Rio Grande do Sul state, and the other three respectively in the states of Ceara and Espirito Santo, and in Brasilia. "The channels in Rio will be operated by four friends of the President. From 40 candidates, Sarney opted for Roberto Marinho ...

Mathias Machline ... Alvaro Pacheco, senator substitute for Piaui [a northeastern state] and owner of Editora Artenova [a publisher company], and Paulo Cesar Ferreira, entrepreneur in communications." Ibid.

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that would marginalize the National Congress from decision making regarding new communication technologies, in favor of the old order.305 When the new Constitution entered in force in October 1988 - breaking up the Executive's monopoly concerning broadcast licensing - the Establishment's legal mind had to corroborate Decree 95,744 as a by-passing mechanism to avoid the Legislature's injunctions on TVA licensing. Once the situation required - that is, congresspersons started to question the constitutionality of TVA licensing procedures - that validation came in June 1989 in the form of a bizarre opinion, issued by Saulo Ramos, the Republic's General Consultant, in which an unprecedented distinction between "television" and "broadcasting of sounds and images" was conceptualized, thus supporting a corresponding distinction between subscription television and broadcasting television.306

305 Murilo Cesar Ramos and Marcus Martins, "A TV por Assinatura no Brasil: conceito, origens, analise e perspectivas" (Subscription TV in Brazil: concept, origins, analysis and prospects), discussion paper (Universidade de Brasilia, Faculdade de Comunicacao: Grupo Multidisciplinar de Pesquisa sobre Politicas de Comunicacoes e Novas Tecnologias, GCOM): 13-14. A version of it was published in Tendencias (Portugal), no. 21 (1996): 105-123.

As Ramos and Martins observe, according to the 1962 Telecommunications Code, Article 6, f, "special service" referred to "certain services of general interest, not open to public correspondence [public submission] and not included in the definitions of the previous letters ... ." Among these definitions, there was "broadcasting service" (Art. 6, d), "... to be directly and freely received by the public in general, comprehending radiobroadcasting and television." (italics added). Therefore, as these authors ironically conclude, "since subscription television was authorized to codify its signal to be able to charge and collect for the service, it was, unlike conventional television, neither 'open to public correspondence' nor 'aimed to be directly and freely received' by the public." Ibid., 13.

306 Consultoria Geral da Republica, Parecer no. SR-93, de 21 de junho de 1989, publicado no Diario Oficial, Brasilia, 23 de junho de 1989. In this opinion, signed by Raymundo de Noronha, consultant of the Republic, the following was written: It is necessary to clarify that, notwithstanding the synonymy established by the vulgar (sic) between "broadcasting of sounds and images" and "television," these are distinct objects. With technical propriety (sic), we must consider that: - television is a telecommunication form ... which is characterized [in the law] "by transmission of transient, animated or fixed images, reproducible in optoelectronic screen in proportion to their reception"; - broadcasting service is [in the law] a kind of telecommunications service "with regard to its purpose" ... which is "transmission of sounds and images (broadcasting of sounds and images, radiotelevision, or television broadcasting), by radioelectric waves, to be directly and freely received by the public in general."

Here, a distinction between television as a technology (of transmission) and as a service (its purpose) is farcically set to support the argument indicated by Ramos and Martins in the previous footnote, and clearly confirmed from Noronha's juridical sapience in what follows: "... while the service of broadcasting of sounds and images is to be freely received by the public in general, the special service of TVA is elitist (sic) because it is only accessible to those who can pay for it ... ." Ibid. (italics added). As a result, two services that share the same fundamental characteristics and functions - technology, communicative forms and contents, socioeconomic, cultural and psychological purposes and/or effects - would be distinct solely due to the mechanism of service payment by consumers. As if broadcasting receivers would not have to pay for their expensive television sets (monthly installments, maintenance, etc.), or could have the service without consuming the products announced in TV advertisements...

In its properly legal dimension, such a travesty is suggested in the TVA legislation itself (Decree 95,744/1988), Article 1, sole paragraph: "It is applicable, whatever is suitable, to the Special Service of Subscription Television (TVA), the dispositions of the Regulation of Broadcasting Services [Decree 52,795/1963], and its alterations." (italics added).

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By that time, nonetheless, the long perceived possibilities offered by the new technologies, plus the circumstance of a government administrating supports and opportunities in its last days (meaning respectively to experiment as much as possible with new services in order to direct corporate investments, and (thus) to find new veins for clientelist licensing given the spectrum's saturation of conventional broadcasting) spurred Sarney's subordinates to a final act on behalf of their associates' prospects. Since TVA presented a serious limitation - one-channel licensing at odds with an envisioned multichannel environment - the MINICOM bureaucracy moved a step further, and quite deeper: on December 13, 1989, Minister Antonio Carlos Magalhaes signed Portaria 250, disciplining the "Distribution of Television Signals (DISTV) by physical means" (italics added) - an euphemism for cable television.307 Such was the piece of regulation that effectively created the context from which emerged the case study of this dissertation.

Portaria 250 was the culmination of the Ministry of Communications' historical arbitrariness with regard to telecom issues of public interest. A mere administrative act precluding presidential ratification, the caprice it reflected went beyond MINICOM attempts to implement cable during the military regime, all of them not daring enough to take advantage of even more exclusory rules governing the regulation of new services. In fact, Magalhaes' initiative neither originated a "new" service (thus not intending a regulation as such)308 nor defined a typical licensing process (not even fixing the license term);309 it neither placed DISTV within the enacted

307 Ministerio das Comunicacoes, Portaria no. 250, de 13 de dezembro de 1989, publicada no Diario Oficial, Brasilia, 15 de dezembro de 1989. In his justification for introducing DISTV, Magalhaes eliminated any doubts regarding its euphemistic character: ... the technology used in community antennas allows to exceed the quantity of eight or twelve channels ... of current television sets, expanding their reception capacity on behalf of the users; ... the distribution by physical means of the received signals does not utilize the radioelectric spectrum, therefore not being able to produce interference prejudicial to any other telecommunication service ... .

308 A MINICOM previous Portaria - no. 143, from June 21, 1988 - had already authorized the installation of collective antennas for reception of satellite signals and their distribution by cable to homes.

As a matter of fact, the first "clandestine" pay-TV cable system in Brazil was installed in Presidente Prudente, Sao Paulo state, in 1987, with technology from the Argentine Huller and Pirelli coaxial cables. The pioneer company, TVCabo do Brasil, formally owned by Neuza Simoes - wife of Raul Melo, an Argentine citizen (the actual owner) faced trouble in its beginnings: because of her illegal entrepreneurship, Simoes was arrested twice by the Federal Police. Luiz Carlos Lopes and Jose Roberto Oliva, "TV comunitaria e' novidade no Interior" (Community TV is novelty in the countryside), O Estado de S. Paulo, 26 July 1988, 18; Elvira Lobato, "Faroeste marcou o inicio da TV a cabo no Brasil" (Adventure marked the beginning of cable TV in Brazil), Folha de S. Paulo, 10 September 1995, 1-10.

Concerning DISTV (lack of) regulatory status, it is important to remember that according to the General Regulation of the 1962 Code, all telecom services were subject to specific or special regulations, which had to be sanctioned by presidential decree.

309 Organizations entitled to provide DISTV (basically the same listed in Decree 95,744) were not submitted to any meaningful checking or selective process. In principle, they had only to fulfill minimal administrative (the candidate's

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telecommunications legislation nor showed the connections between DISTV and existing telecom services. A poorly articulated and conceptualized set of dispositions,310 it was actually a surreptitious move towards the creation of a de facto situation preceding any legislative settlement, by a politician devoid of legal concerns, known for his brazen Machiavellism and absolute scorn for democratic representation.311 In December 1989, Brazilians directly elected their President (the first time in almost three decades). In a very disputed and controversial race which that year overshadowed anything else in Brazil, Fernando Collor de Mello (the candidate on the right) received, in a second-round election, 43% of the votes, against 38% for Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (on the left), from an electorate totaling more than 80 million. The 1989 presidential election, the nation's most important event in recent history, occurred in a context which, by many accounts, would have brought about another moment of triumph by the status quo - this being a crucial one, in a time in which the socioeconomic crisis seemed to reach its peak312 - through its state-private alliance in communications.313 As Venicio Artur de Lima argues, social contract or statute) and technical (its service project) requirements to be licensed by the Minister of Communications.

310 Perhaps the main conceptual imprecisions of Portaria 250 were related to the definition of "closed community" as a receiver of the service, whose DISTV providers would not have to request licensing from MINICOM: "group of users located in areas of restrict access, as vertical and horizontal condominiums, commercial centers, hotels, restaurants, buildings, hospitals, schools and the like." Adding to such an all-comprehensive range of potentially unaccountable operators, there was a disposition opening the door for a complete subversion of the service's alleged purpose - only distribution of TV signals from others. Contrary to an open-community provider - which had to be licensed and could not offer programming of its own - a closed-community operator "... could resort to other options of programming to fill up available channels in its system."

311 With a prolific career as indirectly and directly elected representative at state and federal levels, mayor of Salvador, governor of Bahia and Congress senator, Antonio Carlos Magalhaes, Minister of Communications (19851990), considered the country's most controversial political boss, has had his "deeds" celebrated in prose and verse as part of Brazilian political folklore. A key figure in the conservative transition from military to civilian rule, Magalhaes shifted sides when keenly perceiving the transition's inevitability as well as its compromising character. The Minister's organic connection with Roberto Marinho and Globo, and his remarkable performance as the manager of the stateprivate media alliance throughout the turbulent Sarney Administration, are highlighted in Chapter 3.

312 As I note in Chapter 3, by the end of Sarney's Presidency the country was experiencing monthly inflation rates above 50%.

313 According to Venicio A. de Lima, "Brazilian Television in the 1989 Presidential Election: Constructing a President" (the best critical analysis on the subject), in Television, Politics, and the Transition to Democracy in Latin America, ed. Thomas F. Skidmore (Washington D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 98, the 1989 election presented the following "special features": 1. No other election for the executive or legislative branch of government, at either the regional or local levels, took place at the same time.

2. For the first time, illiterates were allowed to vote. (Illiterates and semiliterates account for more than two-thirds of the voting population.)

Also newly enfranchised were persons between the ages of 16 and 18 (close

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... in Brazil, where traditional political institutions such as politicians, political parties, unions, and Congress have historically been weak, the reasons for Fernando Collor's success ... can be found in the political scenario of representation that was constructed in and by the media, especially television through novelas (popular Brazilian soap operas), newscasts, polls, and marketing. ... Collor's greatest ability was to identify himself, by means of an efficient marketing strategy, with the political scenario. Adjusting his public image to the media's "ideal profile" of a candidate, he gradually integrated himself into the modern establishment (national and/or associated), becoming the only candidate able to embody and represent its interests. It was in this way that he gained establishment support and acquired the votes to guarantee his victory.314

to 3.3 million people or a little more than 4 percent of voters).

3. It was the first Brazilian election to take place in two rounds. When none of the candidates received an absolute majority in the first round of voting on November 15, the two candidates receiving the most votes participated in a runoff on December 17.

4. It was also the first to take place in a country "integrated" by a modern cultural industry. In this industry, television stands out. And among television networks, the "virtual monopoly" - an expression first used to refer to Globo by [the Figueiredo Administration's] former Communication Secretary Said Farhat in 1980 - of TV Globo dominates, with an audience fluctuating between 60 percent and 84 percent on any given day and at any given time.

314 Ibid., 98-99. Lima founds this argument theoretically on Gramsci's concept of "hegemony" (updated by authors as Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall). Analytically, he demonstrates how TV Globo's novelas (lasting between six and nine months, occupying a daily minimum of four hours in the network's programming, and averaging above 70% of prime-time audience) played a crucial role in constructing the 1989 political scenario: Three particular novelas , aired sequentially or simultaneously during 1988 and 1989 [Vale Tudo ("Anything Goes"); O Salvador da Patria ("Savior of the Country"); and Que Rei Sou Eu ("What King Am I?")], had [such] a central role ... .

In their basic narrative themes, all three novelas either directly or indirectly portrayed Brazil as a kingdom of political corruption run by professional politicians and politics as a contaminated social space. The solution for the country's problems could come, not from "traditional" politicians and politics in these novelas, but only from outside since traditional politicians were irremediably lost. .....................................

The disqualification of politicians and politics by the media did not restrict itself to television or to the novelas. It was in fact a long-term process, already identified by political scientists in Brazil. It helped construct the scenario for the national launching of an "outsider," a young, unknown, modern "hero," "savior of the country," who would in the end win the 1989 presidential election: Fernando Collor de Mello. (105-106)

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Only 39 years old at the time, handsome and athletic, married to a 23-year-old woman, Collor de Mello built his image as an "outsider," regarding traditional politics, by taking advantage of his until then obscure political career. An offspring of a patriarchal family long aligned with the country's dominant elites, he had been a member of ARENA/PDS (the military regime's successive political parties) appointed mayor of Maceio, capital of Alagoas (a small northeastern state) in 1978, and elected representative at the National Congress in 1982. After shifting sides during the political transition, he was also elected governor of Alagoas by PMDB (former MDB; earlier the main opposition party, then formally in power315) in 1986.316 But furthermore and essentially, Collor had had strong links with Globo since 1978 when he became president of his father's regional media empire - the Arnon de Mello Organization - which is the biggest multimedia group in Alagoas, controlling the major state newspaper ... thirteen radio stations, and TV Gazeta, an affiliate of TV Globo. Collor's brother was for several years regional director of TV Globo in Recife and Sao Paulo. Marinho himself was a partner of Collor's father, with whom he bought the property on which the first TV Globo building was built in Rio de Janeiro. Collor was therefore ... a communication industry executive who had both commercial and personal (family) ties to the Globo empire. It came as no surprise, then, when the campaign revealed that Globo's support for Collor was not only editorial but was also reflected in the actions of the Globo empire and its economic and political allies.317 (italics added).

Collor de Mello's antagonistic, disturbed and short Presidency (March 1990 - December 1992) was chiefly and contradictorily characterized by (a) the arrival and adoption of the globalizing neoliberal agenda for reform in Brazil (state downsizing and privatization; economic de-regulation and liberalization; market-determined hegemonic sociocultural rearticulation); and (b) this agenda's blockade due to strong reactions by beneficiaries from liberal developmentism (from the state bureaucracy to sectors of oligopolistic capital) then exploiting governmental

315 Thanks to Sarney, a former ARENA/PDS leader (as noted in Chapter 3).

316 Lima, "Brazilian Television in the 1989 Presidential Election," 103.

317 Ibid., 103-104. Arnon de Mello, Collor's father and a former Getulio Vargas' minister, had also been a Congress senator.

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wrongdoings. Concerning (a), President Collor is generally credited with having started mid and long-term market-oriented reforms with the purpose of replacing an insolvent state as the engine of the national economy, preceded by short-term monetary policies towards unprecedented fiscal adjustments and (thus) immediate elimination of (hyper)inflation.318 With regard to (b), however, the harshness and ultimate failure of these short-term policies fueled his opponents - beginning with business groups and organized labour against laissez-faire economics - which ultimately received wide support from the political class, and from society in general, when charges of corruption against his Administration were proved.319 In September 1992, the National Congress legally removed the President from office (he would have accepted millions of dollars in "undue benefits" from his 1989 campaign treasurer, extorted from businessmen in return for government favors and contracts), giving provisorily the Presidency to Itamar Franco, the Vice-President. In December of that year, Collor avoided impeachment by resigning before the Senate's decision to remove him permanently, with Franco completing his term (until January 1, 1995).

Once in power, Collor de Mello implemented an administrative reform in which a politically exhausted Ministry of Communications was formally extinct, being substituted by the National Secretary of Communications (SNC), subordinated to the Ministry of Infrastructure (which also comprehended the former Ministries of Transportation, and Mining and Energy).

Although under a new designation and with diminished bureaucratic status, created by a government in principle committed to "professionalize" its practices according to the tenets of global neoliberalism, the Secretary of Communications embodied and pushed to the extreme the paradox - observed in the end of Sarney's term - between clientelism and experimentation regarding the new services. By June 1991, a total of 120 licenses (25 for TVA and 95 for DISTV)

318 For an exposition and analysis of such policies, Luiz Carlos Bresser Pereira, Economic Crisis & State Reform in Brazil: Toward a New Interpretation of Latin America (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1996), Chapter 10.

Bresser Pereira, nevertheless, does not characterize the Collor Administration as "neoliberal," because of its economic interventionism. Curiously though, he recognizes that neoliberalism, as a doctrine, has barely (if ever) been actually implemented. "[It] is what Margaret Thatcher tried unsuccessfully to implement in Britain for eleven years. [It] is what the Reagan administration preached rather than practiced." Ibid., 135.

319 Contrary to his predecessors - who had to articulate intricate bases of political and parliamentary support to be "elected" and govern - Collor attained power by direct vote from the disorganized, dispossessed poor. He was also supported by segments of the elites and middle-classes afraid of a possible election of the socialist, former metalworker Lula da Silva (of the Workers' Party, PT). Inexperienced and self-sufficient, the populist President was mounted on an irrelevant political party (PRN, the Party of National Renewal, created by him when PMDB denied his candidacy) and playing for the media. He underestimated the consequences of his rhetorical (and practical, to an extent) "contempt" for institutional politics - as reflected, for example, in his troubled relations with the National Congress.

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had reportedly been distributed not only among friends and associates of the last two Presidents, but also to "adventurers" lobbying at SNC.320 This time, nevertheless, the past was repeating itself amidst growing trouble. Resented by Collor's marginalizing populism, and aware of an increasing hostility towards him from both sides of the political spectrum, the National Congress decided to test the limits of its new constitutional prerogatives regarding communication. Given the legal incongruities of Portaria 250 plus the denounced "unfitness" of many DISTV licensees, it pressed the Executive to stop the service's licensing. On March 21, 1991, SNC Secretary Joel Rauber signed Portaria 36, suspending the reception of requests for DISTV operation "until the [definitive] regulation of the cable television service." By then, 101 DISTV licenses had been released or were under consideration.321 Even though this concession did not imply any recognition, by the Secretary of Communications, of the Legislature's rightfulness concerning new media policy making, it suggested the Executive's lack of disposition to confront the Congress in matters of minor interest, considering the poor quality of their relationship at that moment. Moreover, it gave SNC an opportunity to display a new (self)legitimating mechanism. The definitive regulation of cable TV should obey a set of administrative procedures now including public audiences open to participation by all the interested in discussing the Secretary's eventual proposals. However, by keeping the Legislature formally apart from the regulatory process, the state telecom bureaucracy was actually renewing its historical technocratic "aversion" to politics (an unmistakably

320 Ricardo Amaral, "Recomeca a disputa por concessoes de TV" (Dispute for TV licensing is resumed), O Estado de S. Paulo, 30 June 1991, 4; "TV, belo negocio" (TV, a fine bargain), Isto E' Senhor, 31 July 1991, 16-22. Sarney and Collor practically halved the release of DISTV licenses. Among the benefited, newcomers as Joao Carlos Di Genio (education entrepreneur and Collor's friend), Wigberto Tartuce (developer, another friend of the President) and Bayard Umbuzeiro (PRN politician, friend of Egberto Baptista, Collor's Secretary of Regional Development). Jose Sarney (elected senator after leaving the Presidency), Antonio Carlos Magalhaes (then governor of Bahia), Nelson Sirotsky (Brazil South Network, RBS) and Roberto Marinho were also licensed. Nonetheless, as revealed in the Isto E' Senhor article, at least half of the 95 licensees would be unable to fulfill regulatory requirements: In Fortaleza [capital of Ceara, a northeastern state], the address of a cable TV licensee does not exist and another one ... does not have a telephone number. In Vitoria [capital of the southeastern Espirito Santo], there is a real estate office where the headquarters of a cable provider should be located. In [the countryside city of] Rio Brilhante, Mato Grosso do Sul state [in the west], the licensee is a trader of satellite antennas who attends the phone in a nearby bakery (sic) because, without money, he had to sell his line. In Uruguaiana [Rio Grande do Sul state, at the Argentine border], the mail to Teleservi enterprise was returned several times because its address is fictitious. And so on. (22) 321 Those requests under consideration were allowed to follow their "normal" procedural course. Perhaps because of this, eventual discrepancies concerning DISTV licensing numbers (ranging from 95 to 106, according to different reports) illustrate not only the service's "semi-clandestinity" under the terms of Portaria 250, but also the secrecy of its licensing procedures. The number I adopt here is provided in recent publications by the (later reborn) Ministry of Communications.

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contradictory one - to say the least - as shown throughout this dissertation) in favor of its existing and potential, politically articulated associates.322 As a result, on July 2, 1991, the Secretary of Communications put its new strategy to test: it conducted a public hearing in Brasilia, to receive suggestions regarding a cable regulatory proposal. For SNC technocrats' surprise, nonetheless, besides the Secretary's expected clientele on that occasion, existing (DISTV) and prospective cable licensees - a group of professors and students from the UnB Communication Department, unionists representing print and broadcast employees, journalists and artists disrupted the meeting by attacking it as one more bureaucratic attempt to discipline cable by decree. The dissenters demanded its regulation through legislation at the National Congress. To support this claim, they criticized the Secretary's insistence in treating cable television as a "special service" - as if it were of strict purpose, limited reach or restricted reception as, for example, radio direction finder - while stressing its similarity with broadcasting something which would necessarily require its regulation by law. As Murilo Ramos (an organizer of the protest) and Marcus Martins later explained, to characterize cable TV as a service distinct from conventional television in order to justify the attribution of a different legal status to it reveals "a conceptual anomaly." At that opportunity, ... [such a] characterization [by SNC] did not take into account the enormous economic, political and cultural impacts that cable television was generating around the world, openly competing with

322 Patricia Aufderheide, in her "In Search of the Civic Sector: Cable Television Policy Making in Brazil, 1989-1996," Communication Law and Policy 2, no. 4 (autumn 1997): 575-576 [2 Comm. L. & Pol'y 563], introduces the good intentions of SNC bureaucrats by presenting the viewpoint of Savio Pinheiro, the Secretary's general coordinator for broadcasting and correlated services at that time. Pinheiro pioneered the institution of public hearing in telecom regulation and policy in Brazil as a means to legitimate the implementation of new services, then seen as "opportunities for entrepreneurship": None was more idealistic than ... Savio Pinheiro, a committed freemarketer, and a dedicated student of United States regulatory debates. He saw cable television as a vehicle to set a precedent for deregulating communications in Brazil, attracting new capital and jump-starting new telecommunications services on an open, competitive basis. When the retransmission [DISTV] licenses began to generate a market, his office proposed to formalize the rules of play.

Pinheiro froze further licensing, and suggested licensing real, programmed cable television as a "special service," akin to ship-to-shore communication or emergency broadcast signals, arguing that it was a mere extension of the known world of television. He hoped ... that such an approach would be politically feasible, a kind of bureaucratic coup, and that cable television would become an experiment in real entrepreneurial freedom.

In "A TV a Cabo e sua Regulamentacao" (Cable TV and its Regulation), RNT, November 1992, 74-77, Savio Pinheiro and Roberto Blois give a new twist to the already mentioned sloppy rationale differing broadcasting from subscription television, now to support cable's regulation as also a "special service." Besides having a physical means of transmission distinct from broadcasting, the fact that cable allows countless channels (and providers) would demand its legal status to be similar to that of print media. With regard to licensing, this would mean minimal (virtually none) licensing requirements...

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conventional broadcasting and, therefore, clearly sharing the same quality of public reception as a telecommunications service. The fact that [cable signals] could be codified was a neither necessary nor sufficient reason to characterize the service as a special service ... since its codification was solely a political and market imposition, not a technological imperative.323 As to its agents and motives, its rationales and outcomes, the Secretary of Communications' 1991 public hearing on cable paralleled the events of 1974 and 1979 in crucial ways. Again, the telecom state bureaucracy took a regulatory initiative on behalf of an identifiable set of questionable interests, resorting to a still exclusory set of administrative practices, based on the same opportunistic argumentation about allegedly defining "particularities" of cable television.

Again, a group of activists - led (again) by a restless Daniel Herz - noisily reacted to a such a wellworn pretension by reminding all the involved of the service's public dimension, and thus the Legislature's role in its regulation. And again, the telecom bureaucracy ultimately stepped back to better evaluate the political implications of another timely intervention by its critics.324 Nevertheless, contrary to its possibilities in the prevailing climate of 1974 and 1979 (quite restrictive of independent political action), in 1991 public advocacy in communications took full advantage of the entirely re-democratized politico-institutional environment (being also "helped"

by President Collor's difficulties). The SNC public hearing - itself a sign of different times marked the beginning of a radically new approach to the subject by the activists. It shifted their usual politics from a reactive to an active intervention in the cable regulatory process. First, their renewed success in containing the state bureaucracy plus a perception of more generous prospects for the democratizing struggle resurrected the National Front for Democratic Communication Policies (which embodied the movement in the 1980s) in the form of the National Forum for the

323 Ramos and Martins, "A TV por Assinatura no Brasil," 16.

324 As Herz did in 1979, Ramos published an article in a major Brasilia newspaper, calling attention to another bureaucratic scheme to unilaterally discipline cable in Brazil. Murilo Cesar Ramos, "A regulamentacao da teve por cabo" (The regulation of cable TV), Correio Braziliense, 2 July 1991, 7. At the public hearing, the activists charged the Secretary with maneuvering to legitimate a de facto situation by (a) trying to automatically convert DISTV licensees into cable licensees independent of any (additional) specific regulation; and (b) dismissing any discussion about cable's multimedia prospects as "premature," thus denying the issue's relevance in favor of those already in the business. The impact of these charges was immediate. Herz and Ramos were invited by Savio Pinheiro for a meeting on the following day, July 3.

I personally participated of the articulation that resulted in our intervention at the SNC public hearing meetings in the UnB Communication Department (where I was teaching at the time) and at the Journalists' Union in Brasilia. I was also present at the hearing, which was recorded in video by Perci Coelho de Souza, then a grass-roots activist doing his master's at UnB, who later joined the University's faculty.

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Democratization of Communication.325 Second and consequently - before a far from paralyzed Secretary of Communications326 - the Communication Forum virtually transferred the cable issue to the National Congress.

But taking the upper hand in the process would not be enough; the Forum had to keep its momentum, to articulate a diagnosis of the situation immediately relevant to a feasible normative horizon. Technologically, the democratizing movement's background had already indicated cable's multimedia prospects - digital networking for integrated, interactive communication of audio, video and data - as the bridge linking the service's present and its future. Politically, however, an unprecedented pragmatic attitude remained to be conceptually grounded. In Ramos' and Martins' words, The key objective ... was to formulate the basic principles which, within the limits of a pragmatic negotiation, could assure the implementation of [cable] technology as much democratic as possible. In this sense, in the very first policy document produced by the Forum to set the parameters of that negotiation, three concepts were advanced: public control, 'de-statization' and reprivatization. These concepts' pragmatic foundation was the recognition that cable TV would certainly be implemented - as it was already happening - by private enterprises following patterns similar to those of developed countries, especially the United States.

The private property of the new service, therefore, was not being called into question. Nonetheless, it was necessary to establish political processes and normative procedures which, contrary to what had occurred with broadcasting, could define the public

325 As I mention in the Introduction, the Forum, a "rainbow" organization, quickly came to encompass more than two hundred national, regional and local trade unions, and various social, political, religious, cultural, ethnic and grassroots associations. It consisted of a national Executive Secretary, and approximately 50 regional and local Committees for the Democratization of Communication. Examples only at the national level of participant organizations are the National Articulation of Popular ("pirate") Radio Stations, the Brazilian Press Association (ABI), the National Association of Artists and Entertainment Technicians (ANEATE), the National Association of University Professors (ANDES), the Women's Movement of the Democratic Labour Party (PDT), the Brazilian Association for Agrarian Reform, the Unified Negro Movement (MNU), the National Movement in Defense of Human Rights, the National Student Union (UNE), the Brazilian Association of Popular Video (ABVP), the Brazilian Union of Writers (UBE), and the Brazilian Christian Union of Communication (UCBC).

326 Concomitant with cable, SNC was actively working on regulating two other modalities of subscription television: the multichannel multipoint distribution service (MMDS, the so-called "wireless cable") and direct broadcast satellite (DBS/DTH). I approach these developments in Chapter 5.

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interest as the departure point for the introduction of the new technology.327 In the mentioned document, "public control" was distinguished from both state administration (the functional routines of governmental bureaucracies as SNC) and private operation of public services through licensing (the case of broadcasting in Brazil), referring to "the form of orientation that ultimately ought to prevail along the development and operation of public systems of mass communication ... ."328 To realize it, the creation of a cable federal council was proposed - a consultative, explicitly political body independent from, but related to, the constituted powers, expressing "a real and balanced representation of the interests in conflict in the organized society ... open to questioning by any social sector or citizen."329 The purpose of this council was to overcome the state's technocratism and legalism, as well as private particularisms, by "formalizing" a public sphere where the continuous, dynamic interplay of such contradictory forces to influence policy making would, in principle, prevent its bureaucratization.330 This council would thus be able to "preside and hierarchize" the concurring processes of "'de-statization'" and "re-privatization." 'De-statization,' a neologism for the Portuguese desestatizacao, was defined as the process of reduction or elimination of inappropriate governmental intervention in areas where society could directly develop mechanisms of selfregulation. As a result, "[with regard to] mass media systems, including broadcasting and cable, it is an attribution of the state to establish minimal regulation for the coexistence of the diverse interests in dispute. However, governmental organisms must not interfere with communication contents. Such is a responsibility of society, to be exercised through its democratically organized

327 Ramos and Martins, "A TV por Assinatura no Brasil," 18.

328 Secretaria Executiva do Forum Nacional pela Democratizacao da Comunicacao, "Proposta de bases para a regulamentacao do Servico de Cabodifusao (TV a Cabo)" (Proposed bases for the regulation of the Cable Service [Cable TV]) (Brasilia, September 1991), 3.

329 Ibid. This would imply the definitive institutionalization of public hearings as a consultation routine.

330 Ibid., 3-5. As the Forum's Executive Secretary stated, [We] are looking for an institution to be [not only] constituted by the public sphere, but also to be constitutive of it. The conceived institution is constituted by the public sphere because it locates the space and moment in which all the organized social forces can intervene to express their interests and search for consensus. But [this institution] is also constitutive of the public sphere because the extent to which it realizes itself ... it strengthens the public sphere's bases of organization and expression, integrating it as a valid and representative institution. (3)

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instruments."331 "Re-privatization" - a quite interesting formulation considering the normative horizon of this dissertation ("the national interest" as a democratically obtainable consensus among the nation's distinct constituencies without - perhaps - great prejudice of their reciprocal distinctness) - deserves full quotation here: Re-privatization expresses the necessity of surmounting the usurpation of the social whole by some "particularities" which might dispense (through governmental licensing) mass communication through discriminatory favors, not from a process of political consensus. We aspire to a kind of privatization in which all the Nation's "particularities" may find expression, at least regarding the services of "public nature." This implies a conceptual redefinition of the private operation of public systems of mass communication. Re-privatization must be understood as the legitimate process of affirmation and expression by all the particularities integrating the Nation through their private use of the means integrating the public services of mass communication. It is through this use that freedom of expression will be realized, without prejudice of the social role consensually attributable to these means of public nature. The diverse "parts" of the Nation ought to find their [respective] interests represented in the control and operation of the public means of mass communication.332 "Public control" and its instrumentation - the cable federal council - "'de-statization'" and "re-privatization" then became the cornerstones of Bill 2,120, a cable regulatory proposal elaborated by the Communication Forum's Executive Secretary333 and submitted by representative Tilden Santiago (of the Workers' Party, PT) to the National Congress on October 30, 1991.

According to this bill - and contrary to the state bureaucracy's conventional wisdom about the

331 Ibid., 5.

332 Ibid. I come back to this formulation (its possibilities and limits) in the Conclusion of this dissertation.

333 The Forum was under the leadership of Herz (director of institutional relations of the National Federation of Journalists, FENAJ), Ramos (professor at the UnB Communication Department) and Carlos Eduardo Zanatta, adviser in science, technology and communication for the Workers' Party (PT) at the National Congress' House of Representatives.

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matter - cable was a telecommunications service similar to broadcasting in its socioeconomic and cultural implications despite anticipating multimedia capabilities of unprecedented consequences.

Therefore, it would be licensed observing the procedural division of responsibilities between Executive and Legislature established in the 1988 Constitution,334 but assisted by a cable federal council as already described. The licensees would have to retransmit gratuitously broadcast television signals, reserve channels for state, public and community users, and buy at least 30% of their commercial programming from producers not associated with them. The DISTV service would be eliminated without automatic conversion of DISTV licensees into cable.335 Nonetheless, for a minimal chance to advance this proposal and its novelties throughout a shamelessly clientelist Congress, the Forum had to count on an "almost fortuitous circumstance."336 Perhaps because 1992 was a year of political turbulence and administrative hindrance (in which the corruption scandal that led Collor's Presidency to its demise put everything else aside) the Workers' Party had no difficulty in gaining the one-year-term presidency of the House of Representatives' Science, Technology, Communication and Informatics Commission in March 1992. Once in command, representative Irma Passoni (PT) invited - besides the Forum and a state telecom bureaucracy regaining its ministerial status337 - several related enterprises, organizations and institutions as Globo (through its DISTV network arm, Globosat), TVA Brasil (the pay-TV branch of Abril, the giant magazine publisher), ABC-Algar (a fiber optic manufacturer), the Brazilian Association of Broadcasting Stations (ABERT), the Brazilian Association of Constructors of Telecommunication Networks (ABECORTEL), the DISTV licensees association (ABRACOM), the National Association of TV Engineers, the Faculty of Communication (former Communication Department) at the University of Brasilia (UnB/FAC) and TELEBRAS, to integrate an informal group to advise the House Commission on its assessment of

334 See Chapter 3.

335 Camara dos Deputados, Projeto de Lei no. 2.120, de 1991 (do sr. Tilden Santiago). The presentation of the bill was followed by a letter to Collor de Mello sent by FENAJ on November 6. In this correspondence, the President was warned about "a judicial and political battle which would fatally result from a regulation by decree." He was urged "to sponsor a consensus among the main sectors in the area of communication" regarding the matter, through the Legislature.

The Workers' Party is the main leftist political party in Brazil (and currently in Latin America). Lula da Silva, the most prestigious figure of PT, was (again) the second most voted candidate in the 1994 presidential election.

336 Ramos and Martins, "A TV por Assinatura no Brasil," 19.

337 Along 1992, Collor de Mello's fight for political survival led him to backlash his neoliberal state reform, as a means to openly resort to clientelist nomination for governmental positions, and mitigate bureaucratic opposition to his

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representative Santiago's bill.338 Although by the end of 1992 there was a prospect of an imminent consensual amendatory proposal to Bill 2,120 - commonly agreed to be presented by representative Koyu Iha (of the Party of Brazilian Social Democracy, PSDB)339 - the negotiation froze when representative Maluly Neto (of the Liberal Front Party, PFL, a Sao Paulo broadcasting licensee from Sarney's term) assumed the Commission's presidency in March 1993.340 Despite this setback, the workings of representative Passoni's informal group registered the beginning of a tactical collaboration between the Communication Forum and TELEBRAS, the holding company of Brazil's telecom system. As I suggest in the Introduction of this dissertation, this cooperation would support my hypothesis with regard to a potentially disruptive structural shift within the historical alliance between the Brazilian state and the country's domestic media oligopoly. The TELEBRAS bureaucracy - also represented within the Forum by the Interstate Federation of Telecommunication Workers (FITTEL), the national union of TELEBRAS employees - was concerned about the revision of the Constitution, scheduled to start in October 1993, which could end in the breakup of the state (TELEBRAS) monopoly over the country's telecommunications system, or even its privatization.341 Already before its participation in

Administration. In the process, the National Secretary of Communications was briefly absorbed into a Ministry of Transportation and Communications, and later recovered its identity as (again) the Ministry of Communications.

338 Irma Passoni, TV a Cabo e MMDS Todos Queremos: Informacao e' Poder (We All Want Cable and MMDS: Information is Power) (Brasilia: Camara dos Deputados, 1994), 6-7.

339 Ramos and Martins, "A TV por Assinatura no Brasil," 20; Franklin Martins, "Aberto o caminho para um consenso no Congresso Nacional" (Opened the way for a consensus at the National Congress), Pay-TV, a supplement of Tela Viva magazine, January 1993, 4-6. Along 1992, this expectation was patiently built throughout sessions at the House's Communication Commission, and two comprehensive technical meetings in Sao Paulo and Brasilia, sponsored respectively by TVA Brasil and UnB/FAC. In January 1993, Franklin Martins reported that a cable law was expected to be in force six months later.

The Party of Brazilian Social Democracy was formed from a center-leftist dissidence of PMDB (ex-MBD), the liberal "umbrella" that fought the military rule. PSDB is the political party of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

340 Ramos and Martins, "A TV por Assinatura no Brasil," 20. With the proximity of the revision of the Constitution and the renewal process of Globo's prime broadcasting licenses, the Commission came back to the control of its conservative majority. Concerning cable, although Maluly Neto declared himself "committed" to the goals of Passoni's advising group, he created a subcommission "to study the question," from which not only his PT predecessor was excluded, but also to which representative Angelo Magalhaes (of PFL, brother of the former MINICOM Minister Antonio Carlos Magalhaes) was appointed head. Not surprisingly, this subcommission never had a single session.

Ibid., 21.

The Liberal Front Party was formed from a dissidence of PDS (ex-ARENA), the supporting party of the military regime. PFL is today Brazil's main conservative political party.

341 Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil 1988 (Brasilia: Senado Federal, 1990). The Constitution's Article 21 was written as follows: "The Union shall have the power to: ... XI- operate, directly or through concession to companies with the majority of voting shares under state control, the telephone, telegraph and data transmission services as well as other public telecommunications services, provided that information services may be rendered by

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Passoni's advising group, TELEBRAS was conducting studies independent of the Ministry of Communications (thus apart from the state-private media alliance's "core") to guide its entry in the emerging cable market as carrier of cable television signals through its (still) monopolized network, in order to ensure public access to production and reception of TV forms and contents.342 The Forum-TELEBRAS collaboration resulted in a comprehensive draft for an amendatory proposal to Bill 2,120, in which a conceptual shift purportedly took place. Ramos and Martins: Starting with the Forum/TELEBRAS amendatory proposal, the concepts of single network, public network and participation of society were developed as the pillars of the new policy to be implemented, complementing the initial concepts of 'de-statization,' re-privatization and public control, [then] partially abandoned.

Although the basic idea of securing the new service's private character remained - submitted to maximum public control, including the imposition of limits to state action - now the focus of discussion was on the central strategic question: the network infrastructure, the "information highways" themselves.343 Actually, here the principle of "public control" introduced before, and incorporated in representative Santiago's bill, was translated into three functional concepts that would respectively inform the constitution, character and direction/uses of the cable infrastructure. "Single network" referred (initially) to the need to maximize the resources available in a country like Brazil by

private legal entities through the public telecommunications network operated by the Union." Ibid., 20-21. And the Act of the Temporary Constitutional Provisions, Article 3, read: "The revision of the Constitution shall be effected after five years as of its promulgation by vote of the absolute majority of the members of the National Congress in a unicameral session." Ibid., 139.

342 The position of TELEBRAS was later synthesized in a document submitted to representative Maluly Neto's cable subcommission. "O Servico de Teledifusao de Sinais de Televisao por Cabos como Parte da Estrategia de Dotar o Pais de uma Infra-estrutura para Informatizacao da Sociedade atraves das Telecomunicacoes" (The Telediffusion Service of Cable Television as Part of the Strategy of Endowing the Country with an Infrastructure for Society's 'Informatization' through Telecommunications), Contribuicao do Sistema TELEBRAS `a Comissao de Estudos sobre a Regulamentacao da Cabodifusao da Comissao de Ciencia, Tecnologia, Comunicacao e Informatica da Camara dos Deputados, Brasilia, April 1993.

Ramos and Martins, "A TV por Assinatura no Brasil," 20. During and after the activities of the informal advising group, MINICOM and Globo were actually working on complete drafts of cable regulation entirely distinct (due to their "laissez-faire" orientation) from what would come to be the result of the Forum-TELEBRAS collaboration. Their reserved character is suggested by the fact that the copies I have of those drafts (typewritten, some with handwritten comments) cannot be formally identified as such (in their authors, sources and/or dates).

343 Ramos and Martins, "A TV por Assinatura no Brasil," 21-22. The draft was elaborated by a Forum designated group integrated by Herz, Ramos, Zanatta and Jose Guimaraes Palacio, a TELEBRAS engineer and FITTEL unionist.

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coordinating both state/public and private investments toward the implementation of one advanced broadband, fiber-optic infrastructure for multimedia services, thus accelerating the establishment of its economy of scale by avoiding unnecessary, wasteful network duplication.344 "Public network" defined the fundamental quality and purpose of this infrastructure, to be under the joint responsibility of - and openly accessible to - the state, the private sector and society's organized segments within a comprehensive, strategic national project aiming toward the advent of a Brazilian democratic "information society." And the "participation of society" would occur through both its presence in institutional instances related to the matter (particularly in a temporary, threeyear cable TV national commission, to be created to formulate the service's basic policy) and direct involvement with production of programming for specially allocated public and community channels (as suggested earlier). Nevertheless, as a probable consequence of TELEBRAS collaboration on this proposal, since a permanent cable council (the main instrumental agency of "public control" according to Bill 2,120) was replaced by a temporary commission, the participation of society concerning the subject would ultimately depend more on MINICOM and TELEBRAS - that is, on the state bureaucracy for communications (for example, through their convocation of public hearings). And finally, as a means to ease eventual objections to this draft among DISTV licensees, they would be converted into cable providers once accepting (to be) determined conditions of partnership (investments and operation) with TELEBRAS.345 In the meantime - certainly anticipating not only the cable market's coming explosion, but especially the opportunity to take advantage of an eventual breakup of the state's telecom monopoly - Globo (Globosat), Brazil South Network (RBS) and Multicanal (linked to a mining corporation) - the three corporations owning NET Brasil, a joint enterprise - plus their competitor Abril (TVA Brasil), took over the DISTV licensees association (ABRACOM, then turned into the Brazilian Association of Subscription Television, ABTA) in August 1993, following their "consolidation" of DISTV existing and prospective operations.346 On the other hand, given the

344 Forum Nacional pela Democratizacao da Comunicacao, "Substitutivo Integral para o Projeto 5.323/91 [2.120/91] do Deputado Tilden Santiago (PT-MG)" (Amendatory Proposal to Bill 2,120), version of July 5, 1993, for internal discussion; also the Forum's "Apresentacao do Substitutivo ao Projeto 2.120 do Deputado Tilden Santiago" (Introduction) to the amendatory proposal's version of August 11, 1993; and this version itself. In order to observe the state's constitutional monopoly over the telecom system, private investments in network development would be either refunded by TELEBRAS subsidiaries from their participation in cable revenues (as carriers) or remunerated with preference shares of these holdings.

As indicated ahead and shown in detail in Chapter 5, a later, bitter dispute with regard to the ultimate meaning of "single network" ended abruptly the Forum-TELEBRAS partnership.

345 Ibid.

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lack of receptivity by representative Maluly Neto's presidency of the House's Communication Commission regarding the continuity of the negotiation process initiated by representative Irma Passoni (at that point, an attitude backed by the interests reorganized at ABTA due to the imminent constitutional revision's privatizing possibilities) the Communication Forum and TELEBRAS decided to retaliate. After Passoni charged Globo, Abril and Multicanal with sabotage of the cable negotiation in a speech delivered at Congress on September 30, TELEBRAS began to play upon the DISTV licensees' dependency on the state infrastructure by regulating service conditions in the language of the Forum-TELEBRAS amendatory proposal. Meanwhile, the Forum launched a series of legal actions questioning the constitutionality of existing DISTV.347 Such procedures proved to be quite persuasive: in November, ABTA, arguing the necessity of a definitive regulation to "liberate the market" and "attract new investments," went back to negotiate.348 On December 13 and 14, 1993, the relevance of that moment was recognized when the parts involved gathered for a seminar at the Presidency of the Republic's Center of Strategic Studies (CEE) in Brasilia, promoted by CEE and UnB Faculty of Communication.349

346 Globo, RBS, Multicanal and Abril quickly bought the licenses of DISTV "amateurs," pressuring the remaining small and medium enterprises to sell major parts of their shares - or they would be moved out of business. According to a Forum survey, by that time only Globo and Abril already had at least 54 of the 106 licenses (101 as stated by MINICOM, allegedly covering 71 urban markets) which followed Portaria 250/1989. Forum Nacional pela Democratizacao da Comunicacao, Fax*Forum 15 (the Forum's newsletter), 16 November 1993, 1.

Among the members of the first executive board of ABTA, I interviewed president Walter Longo (then from Abril's TVA), vice-president Flavio Lopes (owner of Video Cabo Campinas, Sao Paulo state, a medium provider) and director Antonio Carlos Menezes (NET Brasil), for the discussion set forth in Chapter 5.

347 In a resolution (RE-D 558) signed on October 5, 1993, TELEBRAS president Adyr da Silva (an Air Force general), in considering "the convenience of the utilization of a single and public means of transmission, with undeniable economy and democratization of access as preconized in the [cable] regulatory proposal ... whose amendatory proposal is now at the National Congress," authorized the holdings "to offer carrier service" to DISTV providers in a non-discriminatory basis. This included "all licensed and potential clients located in the same service area." (italics added). To "persuade" DISTV licensees refusing to comply with TELEBRAS monopoly, one of its subsidiaries, the Telecommunications Company of Minas Gerais state (TELEMIG), took the extreme measure of cutting cables installed by TTC/TVC of Belo Horizonte, a DISTV operator in the state capital. In response, TTC/TVC established a partnership with TELEMIG in January 1994.

Concerning the Forum, three kinds of "paralyzing" legal actions were launched in different circumstances: action of unconstitutionality submitted to the Republic's Attorney General; direct action of unconstitutionality at the Supreme Federal Tribunal; and legislative decree at the National Congress. Federacao Nacional dos Jornalistas, "Dossie Negociacao da Regulamentacao da TV a Cabo" (The Cable Regulatory Negotiation Dossier) (Brasilia: FENAJ, 1994), 4-14, 18.

348 Ramos and Martins, "A TV por Assinatura no Brasil," 23. In a meeting with Irma Passoni and Koyu Iha at the House of Representatives, the Forum, TELEBRAS and ABTA "agreed to reinstate a tripartite negotiation, seeking a consensual amendatory proposal under sponsorship of representative Iha." Ibid.

349 Murilo Cesar Ramos, "O Brasil e as Estradas Eletronicas" (Brazil and the Electronic Highways), Centro de Estudos Estrategicos da Secretaria de Assuntos Estrategicos da Presidencia da Republica, Documento de Trabalho no.

13 (Brasilia: CEE, 1994), is a summary report of the event.

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Uncertainty with regard to the outcome of the constitutional revision - and even the prospect of an eventual victory by Lula da Silva (PT) in the October 1994 presidential election probably also played a role in the DISTV licensees' change of disposition. By January 1994, they had reportedly assimilated the concepts of "single network," "public network" and "participation of society" as guiding principles of the cable legislation, allegedly in exchange for the Forum's (more precisely, TELEBRAS) acceptance of a "coexistence" between state and private networks.350 Although by mid March the negotiation was believed to be well-advanced, an increasing divergence within the Communication Forum (whose development and interests I present and discuss thoroughly in the next Chapter) was delaying its conclusion. While the negotiators linked to the National Federation of Journalists (FENAJ) were understanding "single network" in terms of total interconnectivity between state and private networks, the representative of the Interstate Federation of Telecommunication Workers (FITTEL), echoing TELEBRAS original position, was interpreting the concept as referring to one state network fully operating on a common carrier basis.351 Such a polarizing difference precipitated a series of events comprising the final round of a two-decade struggle. In April 1994, TELEBRAS and FITTEL (supposedly) left the negotiation.

Subsequently, the Forum's remaining delegates reaching an agreement with ABTA in May.352 In June, an unexpected attempt by the powerful Brazilian Association of Broadcasting Stations (ABERT) to unilaterally change aspects of the cable agreement was neutralized by ABTA.353 On

350 Fax*Forum 16, 28 January 1994, 1. After technical visits by the parts involved to DISTV operations in Rio de Janeiro (Globo/NET) and Belo Horizonte (TTC/TVC) - aiming particularly at verifying the conditions of these licensees' ongoing partnerships with TELEBRAS subsidiaries (respectively the Telecommunications Company of Rio de Janeiro state, TELERJ, and TELEMIG) - Daniel Herz (Forum) and Antonio Carlos Menezes (ABTA) were assigned to write the first draft of a consensual amendatory proposal to Bill 2,120. It would serve as the basis for a definitive agreement, to be reached until March 15 in order to allow the National Congress to vote the legislation in April - that is, before the actual beginning of the 1994 presidential campaign. Ibid., 1-2.

351 By that time, it was clear that the revision of the Constitution started in October 1993 would fail, therefore keeping (only temporarily, as shown in the Conclusion) the state monopoly over the telecom infrastructure. Formally over in May 1994, the revision was a delayed, last failure of its main advocate, former President Fernando Collor de Mello.

352 Fax*Forum 17, 16 May 1994, 2. On May 9, a meeting at ABTA headquarters in Sao Paulo - also with the presence of representatives Irma Passoni and Koyu Iha - sealed the agreement. Nonetheless, while Herz, Ramos and Zanatta declared having reached a successful consensus with ABTA negotiators, Jose Palacio (FITTEL), supported by TELEBRAS, denied the agreement as not consensually sponsored by the Forum.

353 FENAJ, "Dossie Negociacao da Regulamentacao da TV a Cabo," 30. In fact, what happened seems to have been an episode of power struggle within the Globo conglomerate. Luiz Eduardo Borgerth, ABERT vice-president and Globo executive, would have had his objections to the cable agreement defeated in a June 21 meeting in Rio de Janeiro with Joao Roberto Marinho (one of Roberto Marinho's sons and Globo director); Antonio Athayde (president of NET Brasil and ABTA councilor); and Antonio Dias Leite (president of the ABTA deliberative council and owner of

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June 23, representative Koyu Iha presented the resulting amendatory proposal to Bill 2,120 at the House of Representatives' Communication Commission, to be immediately voted (on June 29) by the House before a congressional recess in July. However, representative Humberto Souto (PFL), then the Commission's president, decided to postpone the vote by submitting the proposal to debate at the Commission, supposedly attending a FITTEL request and possibly under double, contradictory pressure by the "statist" TELEBRAS and the "privatist" MINICOM.354 The deepening conflict involving FENAJ and FITTEL was scheduled to be settled at the Forum's Fifth Plenary Assembly in Salvador, Bahia, on July 29-31. In its outcome, the Assembly recognized both "the historical importance of the progress made throughout the negotiation process" and "the Forum's [continuing] internal divergences"; to resolve these, the Assembly recommended to its delegates in the negotiation a "recomposition" of the agreement with ABTA.355 Although in principle DISTV licensees found the conditions of such a rearrangement acceptable, difficult talks followed. On August 30, a new agreement was finally reached.

Concerning the carrying and distribution of cable television signals, there would be a division of labor between TELEBRAS companies (exclusively responsible for carrying the signals in their networks, and eventually for distributing them through local networks) and cable operators (entitled only to distribute the signals through their local networks). For cable TV licensing, there would be no exclusivity in providing the service (that is, no monopoly) to any particular geographic area.356 On October 19, 1994 - that is, after a first-round victory by Fernando Henrique Cardoso (PSDB) in the October 3 presidential election357 - the House of Representatives passed Koyu Iha's Multicanal, Globo's partner at NET Brasil). Later that day, Joao Roberto Marinho contacted representative Irma Passoni to confirm Globo's (thus ABERT) support of the agreement. Ibid.

354 Ibid., 30-31; correspondence from Jose Guimaraes Palacio to Aristoteles dos Santos, FITTEL director coordinator, Brasilia, 7 July 1994; correspondence (CT. 198/94) from Hercilio Queiroga Maciel, FITTEL secretary-general, to FENAJ, Brasilia, 27 July 1994. On June 29, TELEBRAS president Adyr da Silva visited representative Koyu Iha to express minor objections to the amendatory proposal, despite ultimately guaranteeing his support of it. Later, Silva met the Minister of Communications Djalma Morais. On the same day, Morais also met Antonio Dias Leite of Multicanal, and Antonio Carlos Menezes (Multicanal) and Marco Antonio Campos (RBS), the last two actively involved in drafting the proposal. The Minister then warned ABTA that if a cable law was not approved by the end of August 1994, MINICOM would regulate the matter by decree. Morais finally showed "surprise" when informed by Leite, Menezes and Campos that there was already a proposal in the National Congress. Still concerning this meeting, "when the Minister was not in the room," MINICOM bureaucrats tried to persuade the ABTA directors to abandon the amendatory proposal, by promising a regulation "less demanding" on cable licensees. FENAJ, "Dossie Negociacao da Regulamentacao da TV a Cabo," 30-31.

355 Fax*Forum 22, 22 September 1994, 3.

356 Ibid., 4.

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(rewritten) amendatory proposal, with unanimous vote by the 18 party leaders; on December 15, it was approved by the Senate without amendments.358 Before being signed into law on January 6, 1995, by the newly inaugurated President as the first legislation of his Administration, it suffered a last, unsuccessful attack by MINICOM questioning the constitutionality of the Social Communication Council's (established in the 1988 Constitution but not yet installed) involvement in cable policy and decision making.359 Nonetheless, a telephone call reportedly made from Roberto Irineu Marinho, Roberto Marinho's son, to Cardoso on the evening of January 5 would have closed the matter - this time, definitely.360

357 Cardoso got 36% of the votes (near 54% of the valid ones) from an electorate totaling almost 95 million (the other candidates together had less than 31% of the total voting). He was elected due to his role as Itamar Franco's Finance Minister in leading the team that drawn up the Real Plan, which finally ended years of high inflation by stabilizing prices on July 1, 1994. Predictably, this feat was overemphasized along the presidential campaign by mainstream media. According to Bresser Pereira, Economic Crisis & State Reform in Brazil, the Real Plan was based on a theory focused on inflation's inertial component: It was clear to the neostructuralist economists who developed the theory that the stabilization of high and inertial inflation should be divided into four phases: (1) preparation, consisting essentially of fiscal adjustment; (2) coordination of expectations through the correction of relative prices to neutralize inertia; (3) a price shock ... accompanied by a monetary reform [which created a new currency, the real, linked to the dollar] and the adoption of a nominal anchor (the exchange rate), thereby dramatically reducing prices; and (4) consolidation through additional fiscal adjustment plus a tight monetary policy. (197) 358 Jambeiro, "Sobre a Lei da TV a Cabo," 66.

359 I treat this issue in the next Chapter.

360 Jambeiro, "Sobre a Lei da TV a Cabo," 66.

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CHAPTER 5 The 1995 Cable Television Law and New Media Regulation: Prospects

It is my argument in this dissertation that the cable television law signed by President Fernando Henrique Cardoso on January 6, 1995,361 can be seen as a milestone in the history of Brazilian communications policy. This is so not only because of the demise of a particular configuration of the state-media industry alliance, its implications and consequences (especially as the promoter of a conception of "national interest" long gone); but also, to a considerable degree, because of its structural renewal in times of globalization, technological transition and institutionally democratic politics. Somewhat contradictorily, the cable law is also a milestone due to the rearticulation and relative success of the forces that have fought the alliance and its exclusory character. The extent to which the cable case may reflect Brazil's current conditions and perspectives for "autonomous" policy making in communication - to be eventually (hopefully, I should say) informed by a consensual view of the country's interests - is this Chapter's descriptive focus.

Therefore, here I map critically the contradictions above by presenting Law 8,977/1995 (its form and content, institutions and applicability; and its related, derived and/or complementary legislation) in connection with its agents' interests, perceptions and actions. I also discuss the cable case as paralleling and anticipating the regulation of new communication technologies in Brazil, and its possibilities and limits from the viewpoint of the distinct interests involved. To illustrate such possibilities and limits, I finally conclude by describing current corporate developments in Brazilian media directly associated (if not subordinated) to the contemporary trends of accelerated economic globalization and technological change. This starts to lay the empirical ground for the resumption, in the Conclusion, of the debate introduced in Chapter 2, which is the conceptual framework within which communications policy has been conceived in Brazil. In order to articulate these dimensions, here I rely especially on the interviews I conducted there, specifically as already observed - at the level in which structural, objectified realities are reflected in,

361 Lei no. 8.977, de 6 de janeiro de 1995, publicada no Diario Oficial, Brasilia, 9 de janeiro de 1995.

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recognized and faced by self-conscious agents with subjective interests, endowed with powers to make or influence policy decisions.362

THE CABLE LEGISLATION AND ITS INTERESTS

Law 8,977/1995 regulates the "Service of Cable TV," then defined as "the telecommunications service which consists in the distribution of video and/or audio signals to subscribers, carried through physical means" (Article 2). With the goals of promoting the national and universal cultures, the diversity of information sources, leisure and entertainment, and the country's political plurality and socioeconomic development (Art. 3), cable television ought to be guided by a policy of integrated expansion of the National System of Telecommunications. This policy must reflect a new kind of relationship between the state, the private sector and civil society, within a regimen of cooperation and complementariness (Art. 4). Such a relationship must take place on the basis of the following principles, concepts and/or assumptions: 1. Single network is the characteristic to be attributed to (the network of) networks, through which TV signals are transmitted, seeking their maximum integration, connectivity, rationalization and inclusiveness (Art. 5, XV).

2. Public network is the characteristic to be attributed to the networks through which TV signals are transmitted, utilized by the cable TV operator, private or state owned, to which the access of anyone interested is guaranteed by means of a previous contract (Art. 5, XVI).

3. The main instrument for participation of society in decision making processes concerning the matter - over, for example, further regulation, whose initiative would (still) belong to the Executive - will be the Social Communication Council, established in the 1988 Constitution as an auxiliary agency of the National Congress. Regulated in 1991 but not yet installed, the Council

362 See Introduction. I interviewed the following 21 people between September and December 1996: Daniel Herz (National Forum for the Democratization of Communication, the Forum; National Federation of Journalists, FENAJ); Murilo Cesar Ramos (the Forum; Faculty of Communication at the University of Brasilia, UnB/FAC); Carlos Eduardo Zanatta (the Forum; staff of the Workers' Party, PT, at the National Congress, House of Representatives); Jose Guimaraes Palacio (the Forum; Interstate Federation of Telecommunication Workers, FITTEL); Walter Longo (Brazilian Association of Subscription Television, ABTA; Abril/ TVA Brasil); Antonio Carlos Menezes (ABTA; Multicanal/ NET Brasil); Flavio Lopes (ABTA; Video Cabo Campinas); Andre Mendes de Almeida (Globo/ NET Brasil); Luiz Edgar Tostes (Abril/ TVA Brasil); Irma Passoni (PT representative at Congress); Tilden Santiago (PT representative at Congress); Koyu Iha (representative of the Party of Brazilian Social Democracy, PSDB, at Congress); Luiz Moreira (representative of the Liberal Front Party, PFL, at Congress); Americo Antunes (FENAJ); Carlos Alberto Almeida (FENAJ); Joao Mello (Brazilian Telecommunications Company, TELEBRAS); Luiz Claudio Herig (TELEBRAS); Luiz Paulo Veiga (TELEBRAS); Savio Pinheiro (Ministry of Communications, MINICOM); Tereza Mondino (MINICOM); and Venicio Artur de Lima (Department of Political Science at UnB).

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should consist of three representatives of private enterprises in both print and broadcast; one telecommunications engineer; four representatives of print, broadcast, motion pictures and video professional associations respectively; and five representatives of civil society. Its duties would include the preparation of studies, reports, opinions, recommendations and other solicitations by the Congress regarding issues of the Constitution's Chapter of Social Communication.363 Cable normative and/or administrative acts proposed by the Executive shall be submitted to the Council (which will have 30 days to express its opinion) before being enforced (Art. 4, par. 2).

According to the law, the cable TV operator is the artificial/juristic person of private law licensed by the Executive for a period of 15 years as a public utility to transmit television programming of its own production - in this case, employing up to 70% of its permanent service channels (Art. 5, X; Art. 23, par. 6, II) - or not, through networks of its ownership or not, to subscribers localized within a determined area (Art. 5, V; Art. 6). The license is renewable successively for equal periods when the provision of the service has fulfilled all established requirements, and following public consultation (Art. 36, I, II, III; Art. 37). The cable TV operator is actually an artificial/juristic person distinct from the programmer, which produces and/or supplies audiovisual programs or programming (Art. 5, VI). Candidates to operate the service must be headquartered in Brazil, with at least 51% of their joint stock belonging to Brazilians (Art. 7, I, II); their directors cannot be under parliamentary immunity or special exemption - essentially meaning that they cannot be in public and/or elected official positions (Art. 9). It is responsibility of the Executive - eventually assisted by the Social Communication Council - to define, in addition to the service's regular technical conditions (standards of quality and performance for its provision, and their supervision), the requisites for its integration into the national telecom system (interconnectivity), stimuli for its development in a regimen of competition as well as legal criteria to restrain licensees' abuses of economic power, and incentives towards its instrumentation as a market for the national industry of media production - film, video and multimedia (Art. 10, I, II, III, V, VI, VII). The Executive is also responsible for the resolution, in the first instance, of doubts and conflicts regarding the interpretation of the law and/or its regulation (Art. 10, IV).

Cable licensing initially obeys formal procedures similar to those characteristic of broadcast and TVA licensing: either the Executive or a prospective candidate may start the process (Art. 11), with the former inviting publicly all the interested to (also) submit their projects (Art. 12).

Nevertheless, licensing decision making shall be under an unprecedented set of preestablished conditions, proposed by the Executive and approved by the Communication Council, in which

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deadlines, evaluations and selection will be based on judicious and equitable standards, considering the candidates' technical qualification, economic viability and compatibility with the public interest (Art. 13, I, II, III, IV). Cable licenses do not grant exclusive (monopolistic) service provision in any particular geographic area (Art. 14) and cannot be transferred before the beginning of service operation (Art. 27). Both direct and indirect (through conveyance of stock control to new holders) transferences depend on the Executive's previous authorization (Art. 28); any other transaction involving the licensed company's shares must be communicated to the licensing power within 60 days (Art. 29). The so-called "telecommunications concessionaires" (at that time, all TELEBRAS state subsidiaries, except Rio Grande do Sul's CRT364) can provide cable service only in case of manifest disinterest by private enterprises, then characterized by absence of response to public invitation to submit proposals (Art. 15).

The coexistence between state and private networks presupposes the existence of two distinct types of networks, whose implementation and relationship shall be regulated by the licensing power (Art. 17, sole paragraph; Art. 18, I, c, d, par. 3; Art. 19, par. 2): - telecommunications carrier network, whose ownership and control are prerogatives of the telecom concessionaire. However, if the telecom concessionaire cannot comply with the cable TV operator's licensed project requirements concerning this network (about which the concessionaire has 30 days to answer the licensee's consultation), it can, by exception, be installed and utilized by the cable provider only to execute cable television (Art. 16; Art. 18, I, a, b, c, d); and - local distribution network, whose installation and consequent ownership is decided by the cable TV operator - whether installed and owned by it or the telecom concessionaire (about which the latter, if consulted by the former, has 30 days to respond). Wherever ownership lies, the concessionaire may eventually provide other telecommunications services through this network in case of identified, idle capacity, by means of a previous agreement (Art. 17, caption; Art. 18, II, a, b, par. 2).

In order to avoid duplication of carrier and/or local networks, telecom concessionaires and cable operators are encouraged to work in partnership on both network construction and use (Art. 18, par. 1; Art. 21). Cable licensees have 18 months (counting from the license's publication date) to start the service's provision, a period extendable, by exception, up to an additional 12 months

363 Lei no. 8.389, de 30 de dezembro de 1991, publicada no Diario Oficial, Brasilia, 31 de dezembro de 1991.

364 Also except the municipal telephone companies of Ribeirao Preto (Sao Paulo) and Londrina (Parana) respectively CETERP and SERCOMTEL - and the Central Brazil Telephone Company (CTBC), then the country's only privately owned telecom concessionaire.

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(Art. 19). Failure to observe such deadlines may lead to the license's abrogation after judicial process (Art. 41, VI, sole paragraph).

With regard to service operation, besides the commercial channel packages cable providers offer regularly to subscribers - respectively the fixed service (the already mentioned permanent service channels) and the additional/expanded one (free programmed channels, Art. 5, XI) providers ought to make available two other kinds of channels: - basic channels, allotted for the retransmission of broadcasting television signals from local stations, and also consisting respectively of

up to three legislative channels (covering

activities of the Legislative Power at federal, state and local levels); the university channel (consigned to the universities located in the service area); the cultural-educational channel (reserved for cultural and educational institutions of the national, state and municipal governments); and the community channel (to be openly used by non-governmental, non-profit organizations). These channels are not codified - therefore, they are accessible to subscribers free of charge (Art. 5, VIII; Art. 23, I, a, b, c, d, e, f, g); and - eventual service channels, consisting of two channels allocated for the eventual transmission and distribution of programs as speeches, conversations, roundtables, conferences and similar events, whose use is facilitated to any artificial/juristic person by means of contract and payment (Art. 5, IX; Art. 23, par. 6, I).

Regarding infractions by cable providers, three penalties are applicable: warning, fine and license abrogation (Art. 39, I, II, III) - the latter when the operator reveals technical, economic/financial and/or legal incapacity to offer the service adequately and/or continuously; in any case, a license is abrogated only after judicial process (Art. 41, I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, sole paragraph). Among the legislation's temporary provisions, one deserves attention: those licensed until December 31, 1993 to provide the service of "Distribution of Television Signals by physical means" (DISTV), according to the Ministry of Communications' Portaria 250/1989, had 90 days, counted from January 9, 1995 (the cable law's date of publication) to manifest before MINICOM their disposition to adapt their operations to fulfill cable service requirements, in order to be formally recognized as cable TV licensees (for the 15-year regular period, beginning on the conversion date) (Art. 42, caption and paragraphs 1, 2). In response, MINICOM should release the newly converted licenses within 30 days.365 Former DISTV licensees still not in operation would

365 This deadline was not observed by the Executive. According to a MINICOM publication, only by the end of 1996 - almost two years after the promulgation of the law - Minister Sergio Motta (appointed by President Cardoso) had converted 74 DISTV authorizations into cable licenses. "Among the 101 existing DISTV licensees, two did not show interest in the conversion, one did not fulfill the requirements demanded by the Ministry, and nine asked for revocation

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have 12 months to start offering the cable service, a period without further extension; failure to do so would result in their licenses' voidance (Art. 42, par. 3). Finally, to fully enforce this law, the Executive had six months to produce all the needed complementary acts, regulations and norms, assisted by the Social Communication Council (Art. 44).366

As to the democratizing possibilities opened by the 1995 cable television law, what in principle suggested the opportunity for the constitution of a public space in the new service was the likelihood of what I call "two partial discontinuities." These could divorce control from ownership of the new structures, and thus create the perspective of a coexistence between mutually distinct private, state and public uses. The first potential discontinuity refers to the networks' ownership (in the case of telecommunications carrier networks, TELEBRAS;367 in the case of local distribution networks, TELEBRAS or the cable TV provider) and their operation

(regarding the carrier

networks, TELEBRAS or, exceptionally, the cable TV provider; concerning the distribution networks, the cable TV provider or, exceptionally, TELEBRAS). Here, each arrangement - which basically depends on these agents' availability of resources at the time of its implementation would have to observe the public interest as identified by the Executive Power (the Ministry of Communications) in collaboration with a socially representative Communication Council linked to the National Congress.

The second potential discontinuity refers to the networks' operation and their use. What would in principle characterize the networks' public dimension is the fact that the cable TV provider has to keep up to six channels reserved for the transmission of national, state and local parliamentary activities, plus governmental and non-governmental, non-profit cultural, educational and community programming; and two other channels may eventually transmit public-service programs, depending on the demand. Regarding the commercial channels, any social, political, economic and/or cultural group or individual has the right to produce and transmit programming without content discrimination by the cable TV provider, as long as market prices for access are observed (Art. 23, paragraphs 7, 8; Art. 25, caption and paragraphs 2, 3, 4). In this case, as well as in the case of those eight integral and partial public-service channels, the cable TV providers

of their DISTV authorizations. There are 15 conversion requests still under consideration (sic)." Ministerio das Comunicacoes, "As Transformacoes no Setor de Comunicacoes" (Transformations in the Communications Sector) (Brasilia: MINICOM, 1996), 6.

366 Another deadline not observed, as discussed ahead.

367 At that time, and with the exceptions already mentioned.

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virtually function as common carriers, without responsibility over the provision of infrastructure for program production or the contents transmitted.

These two discontinuities, once realized, could generate a situation of relative, dynamic equilibrium between "the state" (whose interests would be represented by MINICOM and TELEBRAS), "the private" (the cable TV operators) and "the public" (as represented at the Social Communication Council, involved in program production for the public-service channels, and in the form of cable TV subscribers). The institution to which these three sets of interests were expected to converge (instead of the Ministry of Communications, as in the past) was the National Congress.

However, in its prospects of realization/enforcement the cable law has faced limitations already anticipated throughout its own making, related to particular correlations of forces which, although evolving and changing as the political game unfolded, were structurally and conjuncturally defined (as indicated in Chapter 4 in their origins and development). In this sense, considering the double character of any legal text - as (a) a registered settlement of a contextual process involving distinct, eventually opposite interests in a given moment, regarding a given subject; and (b) a mechanism through which subsequent situations concerning this subject are disciplined - what follows is a comprehensive picture of the cable legislation as the contradictory, problematic, necessarily limited regulatory objectification of different (subjective) intentions, as well as a picture of the legislation's prospects as thus perceived.

With regard to the process of its elaboration, Law 8,977/1995 has been initially - if not usually - evaluated as the result of an open, broad political negotiation and agreement involving diverse sectors then democratically represented, something obtained for the first time in an environment historically punctuated by closed administrative arrangements between governmental bodies and private groups. Such is the general understanding among most of those directly involved with the negotiation, a point emphasized by Daniel Herz when characterizing the process as "integrally conceived and elaborated by society. There is nothing in the law that could not be justified, there was no bargain despite the negotiation hardships - all the interests were made explicit and turned compatible in accordance with the public interest."368 The congresspersons responsible for the process' institutionalization - representatives Tilden Santiago, Irma Passoni and Koyu Iha - are also strong about the negotiation's essentially democratic nature. While Passoni

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speaks of its pedagogic/learning dimension - "it forced a shift from personal interests to the common interest (meaning the replacement of lobbying by ethics) and qualified the exchanged information by incorporating differentiated perspectives"369 - Iha suggests the end of a preconception - "sectors that had never talked worked together and reached a consensus."370 And Santiago, the representative most identified with the Communication Forum, agrees with Murilo Ramos and Carlos Eduardo Zanatta in attributing to this organization the negotiation's democratic spirit and inclusiveness (as much as it could be at that moment), original motivation and strategic perception.371 Nonetheless, even among its sturdy supporters, the cable process, by having supposedly occurred in a context and period too specifically favorable - thus taking advantage of quite peculiar circumstances - is unlikely to have set a political pattern or model for further, similar negotiations.

Although some advocates recognize the process' inherent qualities as its best chance for repetition,372 two related factors foster their relative (at best) pessimism. First, as Ramos reasons, the uniquely combined possibilities in 1994 of a constitutional breakup of the state monopoly over telecommunications structures and services and a victory by the leftist Lula da Silva in the presidential election were what, respectively, brought TELEBRAS and DISTV licensees to the negotiation table.373 Second, as Zanatta testifies, the democratizing movement is now dismantled.374 To whatever extent the democratizing movement's currently poor condition could be related to the Forum's internal divergence between FENAJ and FITTEL delegates during the cable process 368 Daniel Herz, interview by author, 29 November 1996, Campinas (Sao Paulo state), tape recording. As a major factor for the negotiation's success, Herz stresses the role of Antonio Carlos Menezes (ABTA; Multicanal/ NET Brasil) as the guarantor of the private sector's disposition and commitment towards an agreement. Ibid.

369 Irma Passoni, phone interview by author, 10 December 1996, Campinas (Sao Paulo state), tape recording.

370 Koyu Iha, interview by author, 23 October 1996, Brasilia, tape recording.

371 Tilden Santiago, interview by author, 11 December 1996, Brasilia, tape recording (this interview had the participation of Joao Tavares, journalist, Santiago's advisor for communication issues); Murilo Cesar Ramos, interview by author, 5 November 1996, Brasilia, tape recording; Carlos Eduardo Zanatta, interview by author, 1 November 1996, Brasilia, tape recording.

372 For example, Passoni argues that although the current context is no longer favorable, "we have the experience, capability, and the legal instruments (to make it happen again)." Passoni, interview by author.

373 Ramos, interview by author: "the circumstances which made the negotiation possible at that time are definitely the ones that cannot be reproduced."

374 Zanatta, interview by author.

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(a topic examined just ahead), the critics of the negotiation's presumedly democratic character are unequivocally aligned on the divergence's other side - starting with Jose Guimaraes Palacio, the Forum/FITTEL negotiator who opposed the agreement attained by Herz, Ramos and Zanatta with ABTA. "We were defeated in the process ... it was not truly representative because the Forum's negotiation commission enjoyed too much autonomy from its constituents, to the point of 'surprising' us (to say the least) with regard to the negotiation's outcome" (Palacio).375 By the same token, Luiz Claudio Herig and Luis Paulo Veiga (both from TELEBRAS) criticize the process as having lost its democratic ground during its development, coming in the end to "lack representativeness" (Herig) because it would have been turned into "politics of representatives, not of the represented" (Veiga).376 Regarding those from the private sector - former DISTV licensees organized at ABTA, and especially the negotiators linked to Globo and Abril - evaluations of the cable process can be summarized as a generalized eulogy of the negotiation, tempered by a shared pragmatic certainty that it will not happen again (at least as it actually occurred). Luiz Edgar Tostes (Abril) illustrates the argument: "the process was healthy, interesting ... but it was quickly surpassed by current (technological) developments, which demand more agile regulatory mechanisms."377 Walter Longo (ABTA; Abril/TVA) saw the cable debate as "honest, serious and participative," but doubts its consequences at a more empirical level: "one thing is to participate; another is to effectively influence (beyond the legislation) the result of this participation."378 Among the entrepreneurs, a dissonant note comes - perhaps not surprisingly - from Flavio Lopes, a medium-size cable TV

375 Jose Guimaraes Palacio, interview by author, 25 October 1996, Brasilia, tape recording.

Concerning the divergence of form and content involving FENAJ, FITTEL and TELEBRAS delegates during the cable negotiation process, here I have decided to leave out of my description and analysis the more personal - and bitter - implications of their disagreements. Although I acknowledge the relevance of the frequently indeterminate, often ignored weight of moral and ethic considerations of individual character on developments of collective nature (especially when the persons involved are in positions of leadership), I still believe that focus on the properly sociopolitical dimension of the roles performed by such individuals is, by far, epistemically more consequential and productive than digging into their idiosyncrasies.

376 Luiz Claudio Herig, interview by author, 1 November 1996, Brasilia, tape recording; Luis Paulo Veiga, interview by author, 22 October 1996, Brasilia, tape recording.

Another TELEBRAS interviewee, Joao Mello, cautiously reminded me of the company's position at the negotiation - a delicate one, considering the telecom holding's formal subordination to the Ministry of Communications. "In the cable process our participation, oriented by our directors, aimed to inform technically the discussion with political impartiality (sic). In this sense, at times we diverged from Palacio as much as from Daniel [Herz]." Joao Mello, interview by author, 14 November 1996, Brasilia, tape recording.

377 Luiz Edgar Tostes, interview by author, 25 October 1996, Brasilia, tape recording.

378 Walter Longo, interview by author, 20 November 1996, Brasilia, tape recording.

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operator at ABTA directory board. Even though praising the institution of public hearing by MINICOM as the departure point for "a gratifying process which allowed the democratic exercise of citizenship," he observes that "the negotiation was, in all instances, monitored by the big interests. From now on, this is a big-dog business."379 At this point, it is highly improbable that the cable licensees' views of the negotiation process could be divorced from their perception of the events and circumstances which followed Law 8,977/1995, all of them surrounding the breakup of the state monopoly in telecommunications (an issue approached in the Conclusion). In this sense, their appraisals of the law's content - even when disparate - are still more revealing. For example, whereas Tostes finds the legislation's central concepts compromised by the system's coming privatization - thus being "already obsolescent"380 - Longo indicates what it anticipates from the likely future: "it brings the fundamental disposition of preventing monopolization of service areas, following the new tendency towards service plurality."381 There is nevertheless a common perception that the law reflects the policy makers' wisdom in protecting the investments realized in DISTV, as well as in allowing foreign participation in the capital invested (up to 49% of the voting stock, but with higher limit regarding the total invested) - something crucial for the not-so-big operators as Lopes in their survival struggle against the domestic oligopoly.382 Finally, concerning the relationship between telecom concessionaires and cable TV providers, while Andre Mendes de Almeida (Globo/NET) casts doubts on the prospective conditions of their complementariness - "let us see how it practically works, since NET ... was already installing truly carrier (fiber-optic) networks in Rio and Sao Paulo"383 - Antonio Carlos Menezes (ABTA; Multicanal/NET) had a definitive

379 Flavio Lopes, phone interview by author, 11 November 1996, Campinas (Sao Paulo state), tape recording.

380 Tostes, interview by author.

381 Longo, interview by author. However, Longo and Tostes agree with regard to a significant, twofold negative consequence of "an excessively detailed," "demanding" regulation of a fast-changing technological environment: it tends to favor the consolidation of both de facto and de jure situations - in this case, of the dominant interests respectively by omission (concerning new developments by existing players) and paralysis (regarding the entry of new players). Longo and Tostes, interviews by author.

382 Lopes, interview by author. In order to face aggressive competition from Globo/Multicanal/RBS and Abril - and particularly to resist a takeover attempt by Globo, which threatened to not sell its highly demanded programming to him - Lopes' enterprise, Video Cabo Campinas (Sao Paulo) became associated with the Argentine Clarin, a powerful media conglomerate, before opening its stock to (a minor) participation by Globo. Ibid.

383 Andre Mendes de Almeida, phone interview by author, 6 December 1996, Rio de Janeiro, tape recording.

Nevertheless, he concedes that many cable licensees will ask the concessionaires to implement local distribution networks, given the high cost of their installation: "building infrastructure is for the big guys." Ibid.

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opinion about the TELEBRAS concessionaires' competence to perform their part: "they do not have any notion of market rules, no respect for consumers."384

Such a harsh comment - by the private sector's leading negotiator in the cable process serves here to introduce the conflict that marked the negotiation's last stage. The Communication Forum's internal divergence involving FENAJ and FITTEL delegates not only ended an unprecedented collaboration between the Forum and TELEBRAS (which was itself a reflection of a structural shift within the state-private media alliance discussed throughout this dissertation) but also brought in its evolution a quite circumstantial - but equally unprecedented - realignment placing on the same side the core of the democratizing movement and the interests of the private media oligopoly. Now it is time for a closer look to this intriguing episode.

As introduced in Chapter 4, by March 1994 a growing dissension between the Forum's negotiators linked to FENAJ (Herz, Ramos and Zanatta) and the FITTEL delegate (Palacio) regarding the basic definition of "single network" - was registered, whose origin and development received distinct factual accounts.385 The argument defended by FITTEL with the support of TELEBRAS - that a democratized access to cable and the coming multimedia services could only be guaranteed by the state's ownership of the new networks and their consequent operation on a

384 Antonio Carlos Menezes, interview by author, 6 November 1996, Brasilia, tape recording.

385 According to Palacio, at a certain stage of the Forum/ABTA meetings a convergence of positions between Daniel Herz and DISTV licensees began to occur, contrary to what was being agreed in the Forum's reserved meetings. After denouncing the situation as "leaning towards the Brazilian society's submission to private communication monopolies," Palacio was surprised by the publication in May of material critical of the TELEBRAS position, signed

by Herz, Ramos and Zanatta. Later, despite a common understanding deferring the settlement of their differences until the Forum's Fifth Plenary Assembly in July, Palacio was surprised again by the formal presentation, without his knowledge, of an amendatory proposal to Bill 2,120 (the Forum's 1991 proposal by representative Santiago) by representative Iha at the end of June, then advertised as the Forum-ABTA consensual proposal. After preventing the vote of this controversial agreement in regimen of urgency at the Congress' House of Representatives - called by Iha with the support of Herz, Ramos, Zanatta and ABTA - Palacio was able to reopen and negotiate the divergence at the Forum's Assembly in Salvador. Correspondence from Jose Guimaraes Palacio to Aristoteles dos Santos, FITTEL director coordinator, Brasilia, 7 July 1994; Palacio, interview by author.

According to Herz, Ramos and Zanatta, however, when the DISTV licensees went back to negotiate in November 1993 (in response to the Forum/TELEBRAS retaliatory initiatives described in Chapter 4), it was commonly agreed that the negotiation would make sense "only if in principle the coexistence between state and private networks were admitted." On March 18, 1994, a Forum-ABTA preliminary agreement was reached with the participation of FITTEL and TELEBRAS. Nonetheless, three days later both FITTEL and TELEBRAS retreated from it, insisting since on the unconstitutionality of carrying TV signals through private networks. Federacao Nacional dos Jornalistas, "Dossie Negociacao da Regulamentacao da TV a Cabo" (The Cable Regulatory Negotiation Dossier) (Brasilia: FENAJ, 1994); Herz, Ramos and Zanatta, interviews by author.

Asked about the controversy, representative Koyu Iha is clear: "both Daniel [Herz] and Palacio were denied [in the Forum] only after having reached an agreement with ABTA and party leaders at Congress." Iha, interview by author.

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common carrier basis386 - was then criticized not only as economically untenable (given the lack of resources for adequate investment by TELEBRAS) and technologically retrograde (due to the new media's pluralistic possibilities), but specifically, in the context of the cable process, as politically insensitive. "In a negotiation, you cannot ask the other side to commit suicide at the end" (Zanatta, referring to the fact that Globo and Abril had already made expensive investments in development and installation of networks, thus being unwilling to discuss - much less to relinquish - their ownership).387 Moreover, along the way, the FENAJ delegates identified TELEBRAS position (echoed by FITTEL) as similar to that of the private sector - merely a "market position," which became unnegotiable once the correlation of forces in the National Congress during the constitutional revision indicated, at a certain moment, that the state's telecom monopoly would not fall. "TELEBRAS ultimately upheld neither the state nor society's interests, but its market monopoly" (Ramos); "it stayed in the negotiation - as did the DISTV licensees - only to the extent of its convenience" (Zanatta).388 On the other hand, the position advocated by the negotiators from FENAJ, which got the concurrence of ABTA - that "single network" should be understood in terms of interconnectivity between state and private networks (the definition ultimately prevailing in the law) - came under even heavier criticism, from a wider range of interests. First and more obviously, it was comprehended as unconstitutionally anticipating the breakup of the state's monopoly over telecom infrastructures: "if what they wanted was to break up the monopoly, they should not have done it in the cable law, but through a constitutional amendment" (Veiga).389 Second and more seriously surpassed by the fact that there is no explicit disposition in the legislation preventing the

386 It is important to mention that the defense of a full common carrier model for TELEBRAS multimedia operations was also made by MINICOM bureaucrats thinking of a context of competition, in which the existence of private networks would not only be imperative but also independent of state deliberation - although in an environment of total interconnectivity. Savio Pinheiro: "if the press does not depend upon governmental authorization to function, why should those wanting to provide services through - or connected to - the state infrastructure be authorized? To say that a network with virtually unlimited capacity can be fully utilized only by those formally licensed is unprecedentedly perverse, a coup against democracy!" Savio Pinheiro, interview by author, 25 November 1996, Brasilia, tape recording.

For TELEBRAS and FITTEL, nevertheless, the production and distribution of information using the cable infrastructure could only be entirely free (meaning open to everyone, eventually precluding formal licensing even to cable TV operators) if the intermediary instance between such production and distribution - the carrying of information - were under TELEBRAS control, through its ownership of all networks.

387 Zanatta, interview by author.

388 Ramos and Zanatta, interviews by author.

389 Veiga, interview by author.

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monopolization of both the ownership of local distribution networks and the service operation390 "single network" has been interpreted as a division of labor between telecom concessionaires and cable licensees which is unfeasible,391 in fact legitimating the advance and consolidation of the current NET/TVA (that is, Globo-RBS-Multicanal/Abril) duopoly in cable television, thus extensible to the coming multimedia services. This actually informs Palacio's expressed resentment with regard to the other players' changing perceptions of the role of TELEBRAS in the cable process: At the beginning of the negotiation, our presence was important because we were dealing with ABRACOM (the DISTV licensees' original association), representing mostly small and medium entrepreneurs without resources to implement networks.

Later, when the oligopolistic interests took over ABRACOM and created ABTA to represent corporations with capital for infrastructure investment, TELEBRAS became dispensable - if not an obstacle to their pretensions.392 In the light of the history of Brazilian media, it is not surprising that the cable service's likely monopolization has been perceived as far from unreasonable - as already suggested by Mendes de Almeida's early comment about fiber-optic networks installed by NET, and Zanatta's corresponding recognition of de facto situations as not evocative of corporate "suicides." It is not also a novelty that it could even be seen as almost inevitable, irrespective of the side in the controversy - as exemplified by convergent views held by Ramos and an (otherwise) critic, Carlos Alberto Almeida (FENAJ vice-president), concerning the Forum's insufficient political power to keep the question on the negotiation table.393 What became entirely unprecedented, nonetheless,

390 In this sense, the drafters of Law 8,977/1995 would not have done enough to avoid monopolization of the cable service, by attributing to the Executive the responsibility to define (through complementary regulation) legal criteria to restrain licensees' abuses of economic power, plus necessary conditions for the service's development in a regimen of competition (Art. 10, V, VI).

391 Here the criticism from TELEBRAS/FITTEL is particularly virulent, focusing on the legislation's lack of workable dispositions. "The law is confused, with beautiful - but not enforceable - concepts" (Veiga). "The worst thing about it is that it 'looks' participatory and democratizing" (Herig). And Palacio: "the legislation in fact allows (by default) the existence of parallel infrastructures without maximization of resources... Daniel [Herz] thinks this law is wonderful, but the fact is - its applicability is none. It says everything and tells nothing, guarantees nothing, does not obligate anything!" Veiga, Herig and Palacio, interviews by author.

392 Palacio, interview by author.

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was a conceptual defense of private monopolies in communication as desirable for the best development of new media technologies and services, articulated after the conclusion of the cable negotiation process by the democratizing movement's main figure: Daniel Herz.

On November 28, 1994, during a conference at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), in Sao Paulo state, involving the participants in the cable negotiation plus members of the academic community, private and governmental executives and technicians,394 Herz presented a paper entitled "The Brazilian audiovisual market: economic, political and cultural impacts of the introduction of subscription television." In the paper, he stated the following - about "the necessity to overcome certain dogmas on the left": To demand the abolition of private monopolies and oligopolies, even of cartels, is nothing more than a mere naivety.

Marx already demonstrated, in the last century, that the falling rate of profit leads capitalist enterprises to associate and concentrate. To dispense with monopolies and oligopolies in a capitalist economy is to remain ... like a metaphysical dog barking at the moon.

We cannot adopt in Brazil an idyllic and utopian view regarding oligopolies, claiming for the country's economy conditions that are not realized in the central nations which, 393 Ramos argues that since other points were more important to assure in the law - as single network, public network and participation of society through the Social Communication Council and the access channels - there was no political condition to treat directly the question of monopoly in the negotiation process. "This is a matter which, given its implications and consequences, should be subject to a comprehensive antitrust legislation." Ramos, interview by author. Americo Antunes, FENAJ president, concurs. "The thesis of curbing monopolies through a general antitrust legislation is coherent because the problem is not restricted to communication, and its ultimate solution demands concerted action beyond the scope and strength of the Communication Forum." Americo Antunes, interview by author, 7 November 1996, Brasilia, tape recording.

Almeida - who was working on rebuilding FENAJ-FITTEL ties by the time of our interview - agrees with regard to the Forum's lack of political force to face the media oligopoly led by Globo and Abril on the cable issue.

However, his evaluation of Law 8,977/1995 is as critical as those coming from TELEBRAS: The law resulted far below our expectations, consolidating the dominant interests. It is important to remember that new conceptual possibilities do not ensure real alternatives. For example, the access channels will not have great (democratizing) impact because there is no production capacity, the social groups are not media groups. Therefore, the central question remains: how to democratize the mainstream (which is what matters) instead of being left with the residual/experimental (the access channels)?"

Carlos Alberto Almeida, interview by author, 31 October 1996, Brasilia, tape recording.

394 The conference was denominated "Encontro 'Communicacoes - Brasil Seculo XXI'" (Meeting "Communications Brazil XXI Century"), realized at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) on November 28 and 29, 1994, and promoted by UNICAMP, University of Brasilia, the Brazilian Society of Telecommunications (SBT) and the National Association of Graduate Programs in Communication (COMPOS). Its goals were to debate the future of the country's communications in times of convergence between telecommunications, mass media and computer technologies, and to

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on the contrary, found their economies on monopolies and oligopolies.

In strategic areas, especially those which place us in direct competition with the gigantic transnational groups, Brazil needs capital concentration, without which it will not be in position to compete.

This recognition of the role of monopolies and oligopolies in the country's development cannot imply, however, subordination to their particular policies. On the contrary, it is exactly the political management of the market [proposed here], with the establishment of politicized relations between monopolies, oligopolies, the state and society, which will allow the country to exercise its strategic autonomy.

The problem with monopolies and oligopolies in Brazil is not their very existence, but their mistaken policies; it is the exacerbation of their particularisms, their tendency to place their interests upon the country's interests. Such is what is unacceptable.395 This seems to confirm the impression among FITTEL and TELEBRAS negotiators about Herz's undue receptivity (as a Forum/FENAJ delegate) to ABTA positions in the cable process.

Actually, Herz affirms that the non-inclusion of any explicit disposition against monopolization in the law was "a fundamental option: it is not concentration which will prevent the service's democratization and accountability."396 Having learned throughout the process, he asserts that, in order to make effective commitments around enforceable dispositions, it is far better "to negotiate with a couple of sharks (Globo and Abril organized at ABTA) than with a hundred piranhas (the

offer suggestions to the then President-elect Fernando Henrique Cardoso for the establishment of a public policy for the sector.

395 Daniel Herz, "Mercado audiovisual brasileiro: impactos economicos, politicos e culturais da introducao da televisao por assinatura" (paper presented at "Encontro 'Comunicacoes - Brasil Seculo XXI,'" UNICAMP, Campinas, 28-29 November 1994); later published in Comunicacao & politica, nova serie (new series) 3, no. 1 (January-April 1996): 181.

396 Herz, interview by author. In this regard, Herz clearly disagrees from Murilo Ramos, his close ally, on why antitrust dispositions did not come about in the legislation - as already noted, a fact justified by Ramos rather in terms of the Forum's lack of political power than a convergence of principles with ABTA.

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DISTV "amateurs" of ABRACOM)."397 In responding to his critics, Herz contends that their objections are "merely academic: antitrust restrictions have always existed in broadcasting laws, and have never worked. Ends pragmatically envisioned and commonly agreed to, are what matter, not means which constantly change."398 He is especially acid about FITTEL/TELEBRAS, questioning their contempt for the cable law as much as their indignation concerning his "virtual capitulation" to the interests of cable licensees. "The undeniable fact is: TELEBRAS subsidiaries were already 'materializing' - although in a perverse, unaccountable way - the very principle they say is not feasible - of complementariness between state and private operations - through a series of unballasted commercial contracts with DISTV providers to carry cable TV signals."399 If criticism against Daniel Herz - extensive to Murilo Ramos and Carlos Eduardo Zanatta, the other Forum delegates linked to FENAJ - had ultimately been sharpened in the course of the cable negotiation as criticism against the National Federation of Journalists itself,400 after Herz's speech in Campinas a crisis slowly unfolded within FENAJ, the historically leading organization of the struggle for democratic media in Brazil. With the mounting frustration caused by the continuous delay of the installation of the Social Communication Council by the National Congress (through which the participation of society in communication policy making as a whole and cable in particular - was believed to be realizable) and the breakup of the state monopoly over telecommunications infrastructures and services in August 1995 (a major blow on the left, despite its internal dissensions), that crisis finally came to light. In August, Roberto Amaral Vieira and

397 Ibid.

398 Ibid.

399 Ibid.; FENAJ, "Dossie Negociacao da Regulamentacao da TV a Cabo," 22-27; Elvira Lobato, "'Teles' pretendem transmitir TV a cabo" (Telecom companies intend to transmit cable TV), Folha de S. Paulo, 28 May 1995, 1-17. At least seven TELEBRAS holdings - TELEMIG, TELESP, TELERJ, TELEBRASILIA, TELEBAHIA, TELPA (Paraiba state) and TELEGOIAS - had signed contracts with DISTV licensees - including Globo/NET and Abril/TVA - based on the TELEBRAS resolution RE-D 558 from October 5, 1993 (see Chapter 4) not only to carry cable TV signals but eventually to build joint fiber-optic networks. These strictly commercial, exclusory partnerships - many of them established during the cable negotiation process, and irrespective of it - were denounced by Herz and FENAJ as violating even the TELEBRAS resolution, in which was prescribed non-discriminatory access and/or participation to all interested in providing cable services within a given geographic area.

400 As an illustration, in July 1994 a publication by EMBRATEL Employees Association in Rio de Janeiro presented the Forum's internal divergence as an institutional divergence between FITTEL and FENAJ. It contrasts the inclusiveness of FITTEL positions and the exclusory character of FENAJ proposals concerning, for example, the definition of cable TV operator - "any state, public or private institutions thus entitled" (FITTEL) vs. "only artificial persons of private law" (FENAJ) - and the number of licenses for a given geographic area - "more than one" (FITTEL) vs. "only exceptionally more than one" (FENAJ). Associacao AEBT-RJ, July 1994.

Therefore, in the law FENAJ would have prevailed regarding the first point, and FITTEL, with regard to the second.

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Venicio Artur de Lima addressed directly - and mercilessly - Herz's argument. In closing a detailed analysis of his Campinas piece, they conclude: Transiting from an oblique and de-contextualized Marx to a pilfered Roberto Campos [former minister of the military regime, one of the top managers of the post-1964 "tripod" development model], and from Campos to Paulo Coelho [a popular Brazilian "new age" novelist], Herz, possessed by a magical-illuminist logic, points to the construction of an "intelligent society" integrated by "citizens of a new kind, endowed with intellectual autonomy," who would be the formulators of the new public, democratic policies of communications, side by side with the indispensable and vital monopolies and oligopolies. He characterizes that in terms of the new "revolutionary bases," turned feasible due to the fact that [now] we are free from the premises of the left, which would otherwise "place the country in a collision course with the bloc in which it (sic) is inserted, something which would generate strong reaction."

Actually, one of the fundamental mistakes made by Herz is to dissociate the ability to formulate and implement public policies from the constraints derived from the predominant forms of ownership. He treats communication policies and forms of media ownership as if they were autonomous, independent from each other. He speaks of an individual rationality of citizens which might be utopian if were not in fact uninformed, naive and ahistorical.401 The controversy was "settled" institutionally through a public resolution by the FENAJ executive on October 26, 1995, in which the organization reaffirms its historical commitment to policies restrictive of private monopolies and oligopolies in the media.402 In November, its vice-

401 Roberto Amaral (Vieira) and Venicio Artur de Lima, "Editorial: Monopolio das comunicacoes e democracia" (Editorial: Monopoly of communications and democracy), Comunicacao & politica, nova serie (new series) 2, no. 4 (August/November 1995): 10. Vieira and Lima, FENAJ members, have traditionally participated in the formulation of the organization's directives.

402 Federacao Nacional dos Jornalistas, Resolucao da Executiva da FENAJ, Brasilia, 26 October 1995. Concerning Herz, the resolution declared: "Daniel Herz's own history has been interwoven with the construction of FENAJ and

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president, Carlos Alberto Almeida, wrote an article defining Herz's position (as FENAJ director of institutional relations) as "an undisguisable rupture from FENAJ political program, where the struggle against the communication monopoly and its agents is a central focus."403 In referring specifically to the legal outcome of the cable negotiation process, Almeida observes that ... the deliberate absence of restrictions to monopolization openly permits the reproduction, in cable television, of the same concentration which has characterized conventional television.

Worse still is the fact that ["our"] alliance with the private interests in subscription television, which resulted in a legitimation of their monopolistic nature, has been presented as an example of their disposition to cooperate. Obviously, if the private sector did not have to yield anything crucially important, if its interests were preserved at the new law, why wouldn't it cooperate?404 Perhaps the question here is one of retrospective tautology (explanation and evaluation of a process solely from the perspective of its results), for better and for worse. Whether Daniel Herz feels compelled to articulate the necessarily limited outcome of a compromise between distinct and real and unavoidable - interests in its normative possibilities, his critics claim that what could be perceived from the start as a much too risky, if not doomed exchange - for both the unity of the democratizing movement and (worse still) the democratization itself - ended bringing no result at all. As Venicio Lima puts it, "the absence of antitrust dispositions in Law 8,977/1995 was bargained for something that did not happen: the installation of the Social Communication Council."405

The Social Communication Council established in the Brazilian Constitution promulgated on October 5, 1988, and regulated through Law 8,389/1991, has been generally considered Forum positions [in defense of public control over both private and state means of communication], and their struggle against monopolies and oligopolies in the sector. Therefore, his speech at the Campinas meeting does not reflect FENAJ historical positions." Ibid.

403 Beto (Carlos Alberto) Almeida, "Quem coopera com quem na defesa dos monopolios da comunicacao" (Who cooperates with whom in defending communication monopolies), Comunicacao & politica, nova serie (new series) 3, no. 1 (January/April 1996): 187 (first published in JAI - Jornal dos Jornalistas de Assessorias de Imprensa, Brasilia, November 1995).

404 Ibid., 189.

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despite its deficiencies406 - the most significant legislative victory by the communication democratizing movement in recent history. Although created as a mere consultative body subordinated to the National Congress, its installation has been delayed due to a combination of factors whose relative weights are variably measured in accordance with different interests and circumstances. In March 1992, a proposal for the Council's composition (institutions to be represented in it) was elaborated from a comprehensive agreement involving the Communication Forum, the Brazilian Association of Broadcasting Stations (ABERT), the National Association of Newspapers (ANJ) and the National Association of Magazine Publishers (ANER), among other organizations. Submitted to Congress, the matter was not deliberated within the time scheduled in the law for the Council's implementation.407 With the beginning of the constitutional revision in October 1993, ABERT reportedly maneuvered to suppress the Council in the Constitution; prompt reaction by the Forum and the revision's ultimate failure killed the broadcasters' scheme.408 The cable negotiation process brought again the issue to the fore, advocated vigorously by those representing what Patricia Aufderheide calls "the intellectual core of the Forum" - the journalists at FENAJ.409 In this sense, as Herz admits, "the cable law was definitely a pretext for the Council's implementation."410 Like him, the FENAJ executive justifies the effort in favor of the Council based on a clear idea of its political function and relevance in a context historically marked by opaque bureaucratism and clientelism: "we have desperately fought for it because we need to put communication in the political agenda" (Americo Antunes, FENAJ president); "with

405 Venicio Artur de Lima, interview by author, 13 December 1996, Brasilia, tape recording.

406 As registered in Chapter 3, the Council was originally conceived to become a major instrument for the democratization of communication - an organ with deliberative powers, to function independently from both the Executive and the Legislature, and to be integrated by delegates of representative institutions of the state and civil society. Bitterly fought by the media status quo during the 1987-1988 Constituent Assembly, as an undue attempt to curb freedom of expression (at best), it resulted in a consultative instance, auxiliary to the National Congress.

407 According to Law 8,389 (dated from December 30, 1991), Article 8, the Council should have been elected within 60 days from the law's publication (on December 31), and installed within 30 days after its election.

For a brief chronology of the struggle on behalf of the Social Communication Council, Forum Nacional pela Democratizacao da Comunicacao, Fax*Forum 30 (the Forum's newsletter), 28 August 1995, 2.

408 Fax*Forum 30, 2. Nevertheless, in April 1994 the Supreme Federal Tribunal (equivalent to the U.S. Supreme Court), in responding to a request of mandatory injunction, by FENAJ, to force the Congress to implement an already regulated constitutional disposition, stated that the journalists' right to integrate the Council was not being compromised by the Council's procrastinated installation. Ibid.

409 Patricia Aufderheide, "In Search of the Civic Sector: Cable Television Policy Making in Brazil, 1989-1996," Communication Law and Policy 2, no. 4 (autumn 1997): 580 [2 Comm. L. & Pol'y 563].

410 Herz, interview by author.

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the Council at the National Congress, it is the controversy about the media which would actually be installed within the Legislature! Such a political discussion, well-informed through full access to related congressional proceedings, would have a chance to become not only familiarized among the public, but also to become consequential institutionally" (Almeida).411 Therefore, introduced into the cable legislation as the mechanism for society's participation in the sector's policy making, the Social Communication Council is "a pillar of the law, the main concession made by ABTA along the negotiation" (Ramos).412 However, the Council's very existence in the cable law - particularly as a mandatory instance for the validation of any regulatory initiative by the Executive - has also been understood as constitutionally problematic, a case especially pursued by traditional opponents of broader and/or explicitly politicized influence on communication decisions. In this regard, Luiz Moreira, PFL representative at Congress and member of the House's Communication Commission, contends that both the Council's presence and attributions in Law 8,977/1995 are unconstitutional: "first, this is an agency conceived to deal with the provisions of the Constitution's Chapter on Social Communication - that is, concerning broadcasting, not cable; second, it is merely an agency auxiliary to the National Congress, which is in fact the instance that should be consulted when necessary."413 Teresa Mondino, general coordinator for broadcasting and correlated services at MINICOM, agrees with representative Moreira: "this is undoubtedly an agency for broadcasting. Regarding cable, the participation of society in defining the service's quality and purpose may occur through the actual use of the access channels."414 Actually, these opinions are to some extent questionable: although there are few doubts about the Council's constitutional unfitness, as an agency with mandatory powers concerning cable television, it would also be hardly disputable that the Council should not have its consultative functions jurisdictionally restricted to broadcasting.415 Beyond its legal dimension, nonetheless,

411 Antunes and Almeida, interviews by author.

412 Ramos, interview by author.

413 Luiz Moreira, interview by author, 29 October 1996, Brasilia, tape recording. It is important to mention that Murilo Ramos himself believes the Council is constitutionally questionable in the cable law because it would have originally been designed for broadcasting.

414 Teresa Mondino, phone interview by author, 18 November 1996, Rio de Janeiro, tape recording. One of Mondino's predecessors at the Ministry of Communications' general coordination for broadcasting and correlated services was Savio Pinheiro, also interviewed for this dissertation.

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the difficulty in implementing the Council has been markedly political, a marriage of its original weakness and the Legislature's resistance to it. "In reality, the cable law tried to force the installation of a weakened Council, without a determined role," concedes Koyu Iha, the sponsor of the legislation.416 Irma Passoni, the (former) representative who first institutionalized the ForumABRACOM/ABTA negotiation, thinks the Council designed in the Constitution as unworthy of the effort: "it is just an auxiliary organ of the Legislature, a vitiated power."417 Tilden Santiago, sponsor of the first cable bill, strongly disagrees: "the Council is fundamental as a window into proceedings which remain closed. The very fact that a Congress, quite mindful of its own powers, has resisted the implementation of the Council should remind us about this agency's potential relevance."418 Here Santiago voices a common perception among those at FENAJ, for whom the Council is not installed because, in Antunes' words, "the Congress does not want a tribunal of external control operating in its own facilities."419 This impression seems to be confirmed by the facts. In August 1995, the president of the National Congress refused to meet Forum delegates and media executives to discuss the matter. Unsuprisingly though, the head of the Legislature on that occasion was no one other than the indefectible senator Jose Ribamar Sarney, the former President of the Republic responsible for the worst burst of clientelist broadcast licensing in Brazilian history.420

415 At least according to the Constitution, Article 224: "For the purposes of the provisions of this chapter, the National Congress shall institute, as an auxiliary agency, the Social Communication Council, in the manner prescribed by law." (italics added). However, the Social Communication Chapter includes provisions concerning not only broadcasting. It refers, for example, to newspapers (Art. 222), covering in fact all social media, as illustrated by Article 220 (the Chapter's introductory one), caption: "The manifestation of thought, creation, expression and information, in any form, process or medium shall not be subject to any restriction, with due regard to the provisions of this Constitution." (italics added).

416 Iha, interview by author.

417 Passoni, interview by author.

418 Santiago, interview by author.

419 Antunes, interview by author.

420 As shown in Chapter 3. At the opportunity of Sarney's refusal to discuss the issue, his office also informed that the senator "was considering the elaboration of a bill to regulate (sic) the Council." Fax*Forum 30, 3.

In criticizing the Congress' alleged justification to not install the Council - that its composition is "corporative" (reflecting the interests of only those directly involved in communication), thus presenting "insurmountable political difficulties" - Venicio Lima and Paulino Motter ironically register the Legislature's absurd position of not implementing a law itself approved as a consequence of the well-known fact that many congresspersons are broadcasting licensees - thus behaving themselves in a corporative fashion. "During the 1987-1988 Constituent Assembly, these were the ones who fought most vigorously the proposal of a regulatory organ. Therefore, wouldn't it be natural that the Council's non-installation serve the corporative interests of such representatives and senators?"

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Another factor that came earlier probably to pose further obstacles to the Council, was a specific development of the FENAJ-FITTEL divergence in the cable negotiation, related to the process of nomination of the councillors. Perhaps the most serious charge made by those at FITTEL and TELEBRAS against the delegates linked to FENAJ is that the negotiation's process and eventual outcome would have, in the end, become dependent upon choices of certain persons to integrate the Council - the nomination of Daniel Herz being the case in point.421 Taking a moderate tone about a rather extremely divisive episode, Lima nevertheless believes that the Forum mistakenly "put too much energy not on behalf of the Council's implementation per se, but in favor of the Council's composition which was actually being negotiated."422 Beyond debatable political and/or even semantic distinctions between the options suggested in this observation, the fact is that - concordant to Herz's remark above - taking advantage of the cable process with the purpose of forcing the installation of the Council was a strategy openly assumed by the FENAJ presidency then and later.423 "The Social Communication Council should not, by any means, exist. Councils do not function in Brazil ... . In the wake of the constitutional breakup of the state monopoly over telecommunications, we should revise the Chapter of Social Communication in order to also remove the Congress from media licensing."424 Such an expression of contempt for institutional politics by Savio Pinheiro (former MINICOM executive, private consultant after heading the office of Motorola425 for South America's Southern Cone) not only reflects the historically technocratic Venicio Artur de Lima and Paulino Motter, "A questao das comunicacoes" (The question of communications), Correio Braziliense (Brasilia), 30 September 1995, 6.

421 Regarding this topic, Jose Palacio, Luiz Paulo Veiga and Luiz Claudio Herig don't mince words: intermingled with behind-the-scene deals around names for the Council, the cable negotiation is thus invariably described in terms of "a shameless swindle betraying the public interest." Palacio, Veiga and Herig, interviews by author.

The fact is that Herz has been nominated by the National Federation of Journalists (and its regional and local unions) to a seat in the Social Communication Council, a choice to be approved by the National Congress. To integrate the 13-member agency, organizations as ABERT, ANJ, ANER, the Interstate Federation of Broadcasting Workers (FITERT), the National Association of Artists and Entertainment Technicians (ANEATE), the National Conference of Brazilian (Catholic) Bishops (CNBB) and the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB) also submitted their nominations.

Among those directly involved in the cable process, only Herz was proposed for the Council. Correspondence (FENAJ/OF-295-95) from Americo Antunes, FENAJ president, to Raimundo Carreiro Silva, secretary-general of the Federal Senate Office, Brasilia, 30 October 1995.

422 Lima, interview by author. At that point, he recollects, "I was entirely against the conclusion of the cable negotiation (deliberately) associated with the choice of names for the Council." Ibid.

423 Antunes and Almeida, interviews by author.

424 Pinheiro, interview by author.

425 The U.S.-based transnational corporation in electronics, telecom and computers.

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nature of a bureaucratic culture whose paradoxical "privatist statism" - helped by a later conspicuous clientelism - was the chief characteristic of the post-1964 authoritarian liberaldevelopmentism in communications (as dissected here in Chapters 3 and 4). It also illustrates an ongoing structural rearrangement within the state-private media alliance, whose agents - as a means to continue to preclude broader participation and accountability in their affairs - now introduce a "new" technocratic panacea, more suitable to the current times of accelerated globalization and technological transition. In Pinheiro's words, "what we need is an independent regulatory organ, modeled from the United States' Federal Communications Commission (FCC)."426 Predictably, this became the private sector's unanimous call. "The Social Communication Council has not been missed. In the democratic world, the social control of the media is exercised by the Legislature and its thematic commissions" (Mendes de Almeida).427 "The oppportunity for an independent regulatory organ has finally arrived: a small, agile techno-administrative agency to define policies via public consultation and supervise the sector's development. Like FCC" (Tostes).428 "We need a FCC because we must look at the real world first, and regulate it only after that - contrary to what is, unfortunately, done in Brazil. We should not forget that private players are the ones which organize the market!" (Menezes).429 A commonly perceived lack of alternatives to the contemporary order - eventually tempered by old conveniences, particular frustrations and/or just pragmatism - has led not only entrepreneurs to advocate the advent of a native FCC. On the clientelist right, for example, representative Moreira thinks that "with the regulatory organ, the Council is dispensable. Since the Executive has traditionally exercised the power to formulate policies, if there is such an organ, then it takes the responsibility to submit policy proposals to the Congress."430 On the pragmatic center-left,

426 Pinheiro, interview by author. In 1993, Savio Pinheiro coordinated the elaboration of the "Blue Book," a document sponsored by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) with the purpose of guiding the restructuration of national telecom systems in Latin America in times of technological convergence, under the tenets of liberalization, de-regulation and privatization. Here, the institution of FCC-like regulatory organs to execute (thus rewritten) national telecom laws was thoroughly articulated. Union Internacional de Telecomunicaciones (ITU), "Politicas de Telecomunicaciones para las Americas: el Libro Azul" (Telecommunications Policies for the Americas: the Blue Book) (ITU Oficina de Desarrollo de las Telecomunicaciones [BDT] and Conferencia Interamericana de Telecomunicaciones [CITEL], April 1994).

427 Mendes de Almeida, interview by author.

428 Tostes, interview by author.

429 Menezes, interview by author.

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representative Iha wishes "a strong, truly independent regulatory organ to oversee the (now inevitable) post-privatization scenario."431 And on the dismayed left, Irma Passoni, in discussing her effort as a congresswoman towards the creation of it since the early 1990s, now fears what she considers a good idea might be lost amidst old practices: "the problem is that the debate about the organ has not evolved as part of a comprehensive proposal to modify everything in the sector concepts, processes, results. If the game remains vitiated, its outcomes will be vitiated."432 Finally, among Forum delegates in the cable negotiation, there is consensual support of the independent regulatory organ as a technical body distinct from the political Social Communication Council - that is, of a division of labor between the latter (a policy formulator) and the former (a policy executor). "Because we were always critical of the Ministry of Communications' management model, we defend the regulatory organ only if it comes to be a really independent agency," stipulates Jose Palacio.433 Despite recognizing the organ's imminent advent as an imposition from international organisms (the World Bank, IMF, ITU) and transnational corporations to administrate the liberalization of the Brazilian telecom market, Murilo Ramos believes that the least of the evils would be - "once it seems to be unavoidable" - a FCC-like agency.434 From a more hopeful perspective, Daniel Herz does not perceive the regulatory organ's 430 Moreira, interview by author. His comment suggests a misunderstanding concerning the relationship between regulatory agencies and the Legislature at least according to the American tradition, so frequently evoked in defense of an independent regulatory organ for Brazilian communications. In the U.S., once the Congress passes (a usually "lifetime") legislation defining a general policy for a given sector, authority is delegated to a given agency to implement the approved policy. This agency in fact acquires powers whose independence precludes much of representative Moreira's assumption about his Congress' participation in communication decision making in case of a similar regulatory organ being in place in Brazil. As Bernard Schwartz notes in the introduction of his The Economic Regulation of Business and Industry: A Legislative History of U.S. Regulatory Agencies, vol. 1 (New York and London: Chelsea House Publishers and R. R. Bowker Company, 1973), Regulatory agencies are vested with authority to regulate the economic activities of individuals and businesses. They have the power to prescribe generally what shall or shall not be done in a given situation (just as legislatures do); to determine whether the law has been violated in a particular case and to proceed against violators (just as prosecutors and courts do); and even to impose fines and render what amount to money judgments.

Agencies vested with these powers are usually called "regulatory" agencies because their activities impinge upon the rights of private individuals and regulate the manner in which such rights may be exercised. (3) (italics added).

431 Iha, interview by author.

432 Passoni, interview by author.

433 Palacio, interview by author.

434 Ramos, interview by author. Accordingly - but in a more pessimistic mood - Carlos Alberto Almeida sees the regulatory organ "projected as a private agency to administrate the new rearrangement of the dominant interests."

Almeida, interview by author.

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existence as necessarily deflating the Council: "throughout the cable negotiation process, we virtually 'installed' the Council as the space in which contradictory interests, once turned explicit, came to terms with each other. In this sense, we proved empirically its viability."435

NEW MEDIA REGULATION AND ITS PROSPECTS

Supporters of Law 8,977/1995 believed it would bring an impressive series of benefits: the implementation of the Social Communication Council; the vitalization of TELEBRAS subsidiaries; the regulation of de facto situations; the opening of "electronic windows" for institutions through the access channels; the regionalization of production; the explosion of television and video markets from the liberation of competition, and the consequent emergence of cable television as a mass phenomenon; the humanization of market relations with the adoption of innovative forms of public control; the establishment of new relations between the state, the private sector and society; the valuation of politics and the strengthening of rights of expression; the sustained development of the country's telecommunications.436 Whether the law could have achieved these results, clearly prospects of a commercial nature have had the opportunity of being effectively fulfilled. Reality was taking its course, mostly driven by the old dominant interests following structural trends, starting to play by the new rules of a globalizing economy concurrent with a qualitative, dramatic technological transition (as discussed in Chapter 2 of this dissertation).

With regard to the evolution of Brazilian subscription television as part of the new scenario in communications, the illustrations are conspicuous, and obviously not only restricted to cable.

Until 1992, neither Globo nor Abril had reportedly taken DISTV into serious consideration. While the former was thinking of direct broadcast satellite (DBS) as its future in the subscription TV business, the latter was investing in the multichannel multipoint distribution service (MMDS), the so-called "wireless cable."437 Nonetheless, once both realized the potential of DISTV/cable, a rush to buy DISTV licenses took place, and a virtual duopoly led by Globo was constituted (this process institutionally resulted in the creation of ABTA, as described in Chapter 4). With the purpose of

435 Herz, interview by author.

436 FENAJ, "Dossie Negociacao da Regulamentacao da TV a Cabo," 65-70.

437 Elvira Lobato, "Faroeste marcou o inicio da TV a cabo no Brasil" (Adventure marked the beginning of cable TV in Brazil), Folha de S. Paulo, 10 September 1995, 1-10.

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facing the hegemony of Globo-RBS-Multicanal association at NET Brasil, in a market projected to consist of six million cable subscribers by the year 2000, generating U$ 2.9 billion in annual revenues only from subscriptions,438 Abril opened the capital of its TVA Brasil to several foreign partners. Among them were Chase Manhattan, Hearst, ABC-Disney, Falcon Cable and Bell Canada.439 Abril's aggressive joint-venture policy was precipitated by unexpected losses in making what could be defined as a serious strategic mistake: its initial option for MMDS, a transmission technology inferior to cable, which presents reception problems in large urban centers and/or topographically irregular areas.440 To fully recover from this setback, Roberto Civita's group inaugurated a new front in its contention with Roberto Marinho's conglomerate. In March 1995, an association involving TVA, DirecTV International (belonging to the American Hughes, a satellite manufacturer and General Motors' subsidiary), the Mexican Multivision and the Venezuelan Cisneros was made public in New York, to offer the first direct-to-home (DTH) satellite TV service covering Latin America. In July of the same year, Civita's rival responded. A powerhouse union between Marinho's Globo/NET, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, John Malone's TCI and Emilio Azcarraga's Televisa (Mexico) was announced in the same city, to provide the same service for the same continent. In July and October 1996, respectively, the

438 This amount is three times larger than Globo network's total revenues from conventional television in 1994. Elvira Lobato, "Globo domina mercado e caminha para monopolio na exploracao de TV a cabo" (Globo dominates the market and is heading toward monopolization of the exploration of cable TV), Folha de S. Paulo, 9 April 1995, 1-16.

In September 1995, there were an estimated 600,000 cable subscribers, and this number was growing 10% monthly.

Lobato, "Faroeste marcou o inicio da TV a cabo," 1-10.

By April 1995, Globo reportedly had participations in 42 of the 70 cable TV providers already in operation in Brazil. At that time, Roberto Marinho's conglomerate had (a) got an U$ 125 million loan from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank's private arm, to install 11,600 kilometers of cable (almost twice the distance between Sao Paulo and Miami, USA); and (b) introduced bonds on the American and European markets to raise U$ 85 million to invest in subscription television. Lobato, "Globo domina mercado," 1-16.

439 Elvira Lobato, "Grupo Abril ja' tem 11 socios estrangeiros" (Abril group has already 11 foreign partners), Folha de S. Paulo, 31 December 1995, 2-6. Although a minor participant in most enterprises, Abril has kept 57% of the stocks of TEVECAP, the holding company for all its investments in the sector. Ibid.

440 "TVAssinantes insatisfeitos" (Unsatisfied TVA subscribers), Isto E', 11 October 1995, 110-112. Despite having installation schedules shorter and costs far lower than cable, MMDS can offer up to 33 channels with traditional analog technology (TVA was actually offering only one-fourth of them until November 1994), a figure dwarfed by cable's virtually unlimited channel capacity. Ideal for suburbs and towns located in flat areas and without tall buildings, MMDS nevertheless faces frequently insurmountable difficulties in the largest markets for subscription television in Brazil - the big cities. Because microwave transmissions demand visual contact between transmitting and receiving antennas, in centers like Sao Paulo - whose scenery is outlined by countless edifices of all forms and sizes - MMDS signals suffer interferences which compromise the service's quality.

As a result, Abril's TVA has lost existing and potential subscribers to NET Brasil's cable services. Until 1993, TVA Brasil had half of the country's television subscribers. By the end of 1995, its participation had declined to onefourth of this market - 245,000 subscribers, against 655,000 by (Globo-RBS-Multicanal) NET, and 70,000 by all the other providers. Such a poor performance has reportedly dragged Abril into debts totaling U$ 160 million. Ibid.

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resulting joint ventures - Galaxy/DirecTV (Abril) and Sky (Globo) - began their operations in Brazil looking for a domestic market of 2.5 million subscribers by 2000.441 Therefore, the transnationalization of the country's duopoly in subscription television seems to obey strictly the imperatives posed by the currently accelerated globalization and technological change, with Marinho's Globo being - as always - the incarnation par excellence of what is required to remain on top of the contemporary megatrends. Economically, through a series of strategic partnerships aiming at concentrating capital for large-scale competition in a regional section (Latin America) of an oligopolized global market, Globo has "concluded" the extension of its interests to crucial segments of the subscription TV business. Besides repeating the traditional dominance of its television production in the new services (Globosat), controlling service operation and distribution (NET Brasil), and infrastructure implementation (Globo Cabo), Marinho's empire is now not only robustly involved with DTH satellite television (NET Sat /Sky) but also with satellite manufacturing and launching (Class).442. Technologically, as a result of such an increased

441 "Satelite dentro de casa" (Satellite at home), Veja, 15 March 1995, 102-103; "Imperios contra-atacam" (Empires strike back), Isto E', 19 July 1995, 108-109; Lidia Reboucas, "A parceria de dois gigantes" (The partnership of two giants), Gazeta Mercantil (Sao Paulo), 19 September 1995, C-1; "TVs criam servico para a America Latina" (TVs create service for Latin America), Jornal do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro), 21 November 1995, 19; "TV com setenta canais" (TV with 70 channels), Veja, 19 June 1996, 114-115; "Guerra nas estrelas" (Star wars), Folha de S. Paulo, 27 October 1996, "TVfolha" supplement. DTH is an advanced DBS operating a digital transmission system in Ku band, whose high powered signal is received by a portable 24-inch antenna (called in Brazil "pizza dish" because of its size). As a whole, DirecTV and Sky invested estimated U$ 500 million each to put their services into operation, with an additional U$ 300 million (by each) expected to come in the next years. In Brazil, both were initially offering around 50 channels (the system can eventually provide more than a hundred) to their subscribers.

442 "Imperios contra-atacam," 108-109; "TVs criam servico para a America Latina," 19. It is important to mention that, contrary to Abril (which according to law has had to keep temporarily at least 51% of the voting shares of its transnational joint ventures in Brazil, although being allowed to release up to 83% of their total capital to its partners), Globo has major participations in every association of this kind, in Brazil and abroad. For example, despite different accounts, Globo would own 60% of NET Sat (its joint enterprise with News Corporation for satellite TV distribution)/Sky in Brazil, and 40% of Sky in Latin America; or at least 30% of it in the continent (with 30% belonging to News Corporation, 30% to Televisa, and 10% to TCI).

In order to get a picture of Roberto Marinho's leverage in this mega-association, it should be remembered that Murdoch's News Corporation is the world's largest media conglomerate, Azcarraga's Televisa has 80% of Mexico's broadcasting audience, and Malone's TCI is the leading cable TV provider in the United States. Their partnership with Globo at Sky - and also Abril's joint venture at DirecTV - would have inhibited the entry of other competitors in Brazil's satellite TV market. Dilio Penedo, EMBRATEL president, revealed that "until mid 1995, four [other] companies were candidates to rent satellite transponders to explore [DBS/DTH]. Three gave up after the announcement of the [Sky] association." Elvira Lobato, "Consorcios inibiram a entrada da concorrencia" (Consortia inhibited the entry of competition), Folha de S. Paulo, 31 December 1995, 2-6. The remaining candidate was Multicanal, one of Globo's partners at NET Brasil.

In March 1994, the Brazilian groups Bradesco (the country's largest private bank), Odebrecht (a construction contractor), Monteiro Aranha (insurance and securities) and Globo (through Victory International, its satellite investor) joined the French Matra Marconi Space at Class, a consortium to manufacture and launch three private satellites - the first two (then) expected respectively to 1996 and 1997 - covering Brazil and South America's Southern Cone (Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay). Class' ultimate goal is to provide satellite infrastructure for Sky's further expansion. Elvira Lobato, "Empresas disputam espaco com satelites" (Enterprises dispute space with satellites), Folha de S. Paulo, 25 March 1994, 2-8.

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volume of resources, Globo has quickly incorporated the latest advances towards digitally converged multimedia, placing itself solidly in two of the three dimensions of an equally fast converging market for equipment, production and distribution. The first dimension is mass media, and the second, telecommunications (here with the additional foot of its stock control of NEC Brasil, the subsidiary of the Japanese telephone manufacturer).443 Socioculturally, Globo's role as major TV producer (its telenovelas and minisseries have been exported to more than a hundred countries) and its association with global (Murdoch's Hollywood studio Twentieth Century Fox, and Fox broadcasting and cable networks) and continental (Televisa's soap operas) media producers will feed with "cosmopolitan" programming, not only Sky's coming 150 satellite channels in Brazil and Latin America, but also NET Brasil's cable, and ultimately Globo's broadcasting network. In this regard, whether Marinho's conventional television was able to develop in the 1970s and 1980s a format and language of its own (usually defined as characteristically "Brazilian," whose best example would be the telenovela444), the transnationalization of media ownership on the verge of a globalized world market will likely recede production characteristically "national" and/or "local," whatever these mean as distinct, specific, "territorialized" cultural expressions.445 At the other end of this process, to receive at

443 With the computer industry remaining the only dimension seemingly not reached by Globo yet.

444 To understand the role and particularities of this soap-opera genre central for the Brazilian cultural industry, Renato Ortiz, Silvia Helena Simoes Borelli and Jose Mario Ortiz Ramos, Telenovela: Historia e Producao (Telenovela: History and Production), 2d ed. (Sao Paulo: Brasiliense, 1991).

445 Daniel Castro, "Globo e Abril travam 'guerra' a 36 mil quilometros da Terra" (Globo and Abril fight a war 36,000 kilometers from Earth), Folha de S. Paulo, 27 October 1996, "TVfolha" supplement, 4. Discovery, Eurochannel, NHK, RTPi, Sony, Teleuno, Travel Channel, TV Educativa, CNT/Gazeta, HBO Brasil 1 and 2, Multipremier, TNT, ESPNi, ESPN Brasil, TV Espana, CNNi, BBC, Bloomberg, CBS Telenoticias, Deutsche Welle, TV Seriado, Cartoon, Warner, ZAZ, CMT, MTV Latino, MTV Brasil, Bravo Brasil, TVN Chile (Abril/DirecTV); Globo News, CNNi, WorldNet, Ritmoson, Canal de Las Estrellas, MTV Brasil, ECO, Teleuno, Cultura, Shoptime, Travel Channel, Telenoticias, TV Educativa, TV Espana, Deutsche Welle, TV 5, Telehit, NBC, USA, TNT, Fox, Multishow, GNT, Sportv, Telecine 1, Cartoon, Discovery, Sony, Warner, ESPNi (Globo/Sky) are among the channels offered through DTH in Brazil.

Paradoxically, such a babelic diversity is made possible by the undisguisable concentration of those options at the global level: an internationalized domestic duopoly with both sides offering several of the same channels...

Even though foreign languages and subscription payments may initially pose a barrier preventing conventional television's vast audiences from taking DTH or cable, the combination of multiplied channel availability (demanding unprecedented volumes of programming) and needed economy of scale (to make programming production and distribution cheaper) will probably reverse the trend mentioned by Renato Ortiz in A Moderna Tradicao Brasileira: Cultura Brasileira e Industria Cultural (The Modern Brazilian Tradition: Brazilian Culture and Cultural Industry) (Sao Paulo: Brasiliense, 1988): If in the totality of programming transmitted in Brazil the percentage of foreign programs was around 60% in 1972, this figure decreases to 30% in 1983. However, considering prime-time programming, this number decreases further to 23% [in 1983], placing Brazil beside countries as France, Italy and United Kingdom/BBC, which transmit in prime time respectively 17%, 19% and 21% of imported programs, and far ahead of nations as Mexico (44%) and Venezuela (42%)

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home those contents "from nowhere," millions of satellite antennas are already installed throughout the nation's urban and rural areas, in its cities, villages and communities - from its exclusive neighborhoods, middle-class condominiums and exporting plantations to even its shantytowns.446 And finally, Globo has politically challenged legal controls over telecommunications by counting not much, as before, on the terms of the old state-private media alliance. In taking advantage of the technological convergence now engulfing the sector, it has laid infrastructures which, due to their own technological nature, allow (previously authorized) specific services to fully converge into (not yet regulated) multimedia services. Globo's new status of a globalizing player has also turned it into a "de-territorialized," "placeless power" beyond the Brazilian state's fiscal grasp. Its DTH arm is formally controlled by a fictitious enterprise registered at the trade board of Montevideo, Uruguay - one of Brasil's partners in South America's Southern Cone Common Market (Mercosul).447 However, this context of an everlasting, growing power (Roberto Marinho's conglomerate) now facing the emergence of a sizeable competitor on the brink of the information society (Roberto Civita's Abril) has been perceived by a presumedly vanishing state/government (the argument of globalization theorists) as a historical opportunity to redefine the previously monopolistic character of private interests in Brazilian communications, through the politicojuridical consolidation of a duopoly. This consolidation, nevertheless, has happened in the oldfashioned procedural style - something which suggests the continuing existence of the state-media

[concerning indigenous production]. (201-202) 446 "Floresta de antenas" (Forest of antennas), Veja, 15 November 1995, 130-132. By that time, 2.5 million antennas were in place, with 50,000 being installed every month. Besides customers who can pay for subscription television, there are those from the low middle and working classes buying such aerials in principle to improve the quality of their broadcast TV reception. Nonetheless, it is highly probable that the purchase of these relatively very expensive devices - frequently compromising between one third and half of wages, despite being paid in monthly installments - has also become (as certainly occurred with cellular phones) a mechanism of social distinction among the poor, who do not want to feel they are missing the wagon of technological modernity.

447 Elvira Lobato, "Globo registra empresa em paraiso fiscal" (Globo registers enterprise in fiscal paradise), Folha de S. Paulo, 14 July 1996, 1-14. Ivens Sociedad Anonima, created in Uruguay in 1995 presumably to avoid Brazilian taxes, has 80% of its capital belonging to Globo, with the remaining 20% owned by Brazil South Network, RBS (Globo's partner at NET Brasil). Ivens controls 60% of the Brazilian NET Sat (Sky) - the other 40% being under Rupert Murdoch's News DTH. Information provided by Sao Paulo's trade board - where NET Sat is registered indicates that Murdoch's company has its address in Cayman Islands (Jamaica), another fiscal paradise.

According to legislation, Brazilian enterprises are those constituted in Brazilian trade boards - thus functioning under Brazilian law. Nevertheless, in being totally controlled by foreign firms - the "Uruguayan" Ivens and the "Jamaican" News DTH - NET Sat (Sky) could not legally operate the DTH service in Brazil. What apparently explains the situation is the fact that Globopar (the holding company of the Globo conglomerate, headquartered in Brazil) was actually the enterprise licensed to operate DTH, having later "contracted" NET Sat to execute the service domestically. Ibid.

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industry alliance, although on a rearranged basis.448 In November 1994 - near the end of Itamar Franco's Presidency, at a moment in which the conclusion of the cable negotiation seemed to inaugurate a distinct mode of media policy making - the Minister of Communications Djalma Morais, allegedly concerned about the competitiveness of Abril's MMDS service, authorized unilaterally the duplication of the number of channels offered by TVA.449 This arbitrary measure, diversely attributed to overwhelming pressures towards the solidification of the hegemony of Abril's TVA over the MMDS segment of subscription television,450 was taken by a Ministry which, in spite of having been virtually marginalized during the cable negotiation process, kept its regulatory drive quite alive with regard to other pay-TV technologies, namely MMDS and satellite.

Here, paralleling cable but somewhat diverging it, the Globo-Abril duopoly was blessed by MINICOM free from any political hazard.

Regarding the multichannel multipoint distribution service (MMDS), its implementation obeyed the same regulatory strategy for new media technologies employed by the Ministry of Communications during the Sarney Administration. With the purpose of avoiding public attention (thus interference from the National Congress), the service is defined as a special one - to be

448 It is important to remember that during the 1964-1985 military regime, the Abril group - despite its power in magazine publishing, comparable to Globo's in broadcasting - had its entry in the television business systematically barred due to (a) its perceived unwillingness to fully adhere to the National Security and Development state - its constitution, doctrine and objectives (presented here in Chapter 2); and (b) the very nature of the adopted liberaldevelopmentist model, which concentrated (often monopolistically) investments by sector in order to accelerate capital accumulation, and the fulfillment of the regime's geopolitical goals. Such factors also prevented other potential candidates - as Jornal do Brasil (as indicated in Chapter 4), the Visao group (magazine publishing and hotels) and Unibanco (banking and finance) - from having the same opportunity. Later, in the early 1980s, President general Joao Figueiredo (the last military ruler) rewarded old allies - Adolpho Bloch and his Manchete (a magazine publisher) and Silvio Santos (a popular TV host) with broadcast TV licenses for the exploration of network segments of the then bankrupted Diarios Associados (founded decades earlier by Assis Chateaubriand). Sergio Euclides de Souza, "Concessoes de Radiodifusao no Brasil: A Lei como Instrumento de Poder (1932-1975)" (Broadcasting Licenses in Brazil: The Law as an Instrument of Power [1932-1975]) (master's thesis, Universidade de Brasilia, 1990), 213-214.

449 Elvira Lobato, "140 empresas disputam sinal por microondas" (140 enterprises dispute microwave signal), Folha de S. Paulo, 16 December 1994, 2-10; Helio Contreiras and Mario Chimanovitch, "Injecao no ar" (Injection on the air), Isto E', 21 December 1994, 107-109. Morais signed MINICOM Portaria 896 on November 24, 1994, increasing MMDS frequency band capacity from eight to 15 or 16 channels, depending on the service area. Abril's TVA, which provides the service in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre and Curitiba (Parana state), and has partnerships in Brasilia, Goiania (Goias state) and Belem (Para state), was the Portaria's main beneficiary, conceived to mitigate its already mentioned problems with MMDS. However, the measure also benefited Globo's (RBS and Multicanal) NET Brasil due to its participation in MMDS operations in Porto Alegre and Recife.

450 Contreiras and Chimanovitch, "Injecao no ar," 107-108. While Paulo Cesar Ferreira - a media entrepreneur previously licensed by former President Sarney to provide pay-TV service (from Decree 95,744/1988), then Globo's associate at NET in Rio de Janeiro - defined Portaria 896 as consolidating the dominance of Abril on MMDS, representative Irma Passoni saw it as the result of intense political pressure by a powerful economic group then in financial trouble. Ibid.

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disciplined administratively. It is then disguised under an euphemistic denomination, aiming at unilaterally, discreetly granting its operation only to those close to power. Before translating cable television into DISTV (Portaria 250/1989),451 Minister Antonio Carlos Magalhaes concealed MMDS under the "Service of Closed-Circuit Television by Radio-Linkage" (CFTV) through Portaria 86 on April 7, 1986.452 Subsequently, 12 licenses without public submission or term limit were released.453 Once a de facto situation was established, and after a series of legitimating administrative acts and maneuvers by MINICOM and the short-lived National Secretary of Communications - which included the discussion of a SNC regulatory proposal at a public hearing in February 1991, with the presence of only its bureaucrats and representatives of the private sector454 - Minister Djalma Morais signed Portaria 43 on February 10, 1994, regulating MMDS and transforming "automatically" CFTV licensees into MMDS licensees for renewable 10-year terms. Ironically though, this is the act in which an unprecedented limitation on the number of licenses per enterprise or affiliate - seven for cities with population above one million, and 21 for towns between 300,000 and one million inhabitants - was explicitly established in subscription television.455 Despite reactions by the Communication Forum, FENAJ and a National Congress

451 See Chapter 4.

452 Ministerio das Comunicacoes, Portaria no. 86, de 7 de abril de 1986, publicada no Diario Oficial, Brasilia, 10 de abril de 1986. There, CFTV was characterized as "the special service of telecommunications which employs at least one link of radiofrequency for generation and/or retransmission of images or images and sounds, between well-defined fixed points or fixed and mobile points, to attend spectators concentrated in specific places."

453 Daniel Herz, "Relatorio MMDS" (MMDS report), preliminary version for internal discussion at the National Federation of Journalists (Brasilia: FENAJ, 1994), 2.

454 Ibid. This consultation meeting was missed by those who months later, in another public hearing, launched the cable process.

Such acts and maneuvers by the state telecom bureaucracy also included a frustrated attempt to merge cable and MMDS into a single regulatory piece, consultations to CFTV providers about converting administratively their licenses to MMDS, and progressive increases of existing operators' channel capacity combined with systematic refusal to release new licenses to potential competitors (this under the pretext of "waiting until a definitive regulation"). Ibid., 3-4.

455 Ministerio das Comunicacoes, Portaria no. 43, de 10 de fevereiro de 1994, publicada no Diario Oficial, Brasilia, 16 de fevereiro de 1994. It is important to register that, despite by that time the Communication Forum and ABTA were already converging to an agreement regarding cable television at the National Congress, MINICOM kept insisting on regulatory proceedings of the old authoritarian, technocratic kind. Concerning MMDS, the "wireless" cable television, the resulting regulation repeated the same vices of similar outcomes: conceptual imprecision and awkwardness (as always, the problem of contextually distinguishing the new television from broadcast television, as well as placing both in the new technological reality according to an explicit, comprehensive policy), absence of mechanisms for public participation and/or (even) accountability, reduction of a service with socioeconomic, political and cultural dimensions to its technical and commercial aspects - all aiming the fulfillment of the everlasting implicit policy pervading Brazilian communications: selective privatism under state favoritism.

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again put aside,456 and although the self-arrogated licensing power having declared that requests for new licenses would be considered "30 days after the Portaria's publication,"457 by February 1997 (when the field work for this dissertation was concluded) no single license had been granted, besides the 12 CFTV licenses originally on behalf of seven enterprises. This paralysis ultimately favored the consolidation of Abril's TVA market dominance on MMDS.458 Moreover (and concurring to it), a year earlier Sergio Motta, President Cardoso's Minister of Communications, had successfully submitted to public consultation an administrative proposal for a new MMDS regulation, according to which only one operator per urban market would be admitted to explore the service.459

Concerning satellite television, the very same philosophy of permitting de facto situations in disguise, and later legitimating them, also took place. On October 1, 1991, SNC Secretary Joel Rauber (from the Collor Administration) approved a norm for the "Provision of Means and Services of Telecommunications Via Satellite" through Portaria 230, a SNC administrative act addressed to national companies related to Brazilian and foreign telecom satellites (covering the country's territory) by owning them, commercializing their capacity and/or intending to build,

456 In March 1994, the Republic's Attorney General received a FENAJ correspondence - signed by its president Americo Antunes - requesting the impetration of a direct action of unconstitutionality before the Supreme Federal Tribunal to annul the Ministry of Communications' Portaria 43. With the same objective, representative Luiz Salomao (from the Democratic Labour Party, PDT) submitted to Congress a proposal of legislative decree. Also in March 1994, representative Irma Passoni introduced Bill 4,481, a MMDS regulatory proposal, followed in April by Bill 4,529, of representative Aloisio Vasconcelos (from the Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement, PMDB), on the same subject. In the following years, none of these initiatives was reported as having any further development.

457 MINICOM, Portaria no. 43, IX. 458 Lucas Figueiredo, "Guerra por TVs recomeca em 95" (War for TVs restarts in 95), Folha de S. Paulo, 5 December 1994, 2-1; Elvira Lobato, "140 empresas disputam sinal por microondas," 2-10. By December 1994, MINICOM reportedly counted around 1,700 requests to provide MMDS by 140 candidates - among them, Abril's TVA (with 190 requests), NET Brasil (Globo-RBS-Multicanal; RBS alone requested 70 licenses), the Bandeirantes network (broadcast television), Jornal do Brasil (a leading Rio de Janeiro newspaper), the Icatu and Itamaraty groups (banking and finance). From the 140 candidates, the top 10 enterprises were responsible for 63% of all requests (approximately 1,070). Two years later, the total number of MMDS licensing requests had grown to 2,200, covering 800 prospective service areas. MINICOM, "As Transformacoes no Setor de Comunicacoes," 6.

459 Elvira Lobato, "Governo decide limitar exploracao de TV paga" (Government decides to limit exploration of payTV), Folha de S. Paulo, 10 March 1996, 2-8. The official justification for the one-operator-one-market thesis was the alleged impossibility (mentioned before by another MINICOM Minister, Djalma Morais) of MMDS licensees to compete - due to their inherently limited channel capacity - with cable and/or satellite providers. However, as Lobato observes, even though this might be true for newcomers in the service, it would not be so for those few already in operation - meaning Abril, which also explores cable and satellite television. Ibid.

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launch and operate them.460 Specifically, Portaria 230 came to protect Globo's and Abril's nonlicensed contracts with EMBRATEL (the state long-distance carrier and operator of Brazil's satellite system, SBTS461) for the retransmission of pay-TV signals.462 On November 28, 1995, Minister Sergio Motta signed Portaria 281, altering Portaria 230/1991 by abolishing its "automatic permission" clause. From then on, the exploration of any telecom service via satellite would depend on previous licensing by MINICOM, and the existing non-licensed operations - like those contracted by Globo and Abril before EMBRATEL - would be reviewed on a case-by-case basis.463 Nonetheless, what in principle looked like an attempt to "moralize" proceedings prone to scandal, soon revealed a familiar inclination: in April 1996, Globo and Abril were the first ones to have their satellite contracts converted into 15-year DBS/DTH licenses despite a complete absence of legislation on these services. Worse still, such conversions - by proceeding without cost to their beneficiaries, and precluding public submission - occurred in flagrant violation of Decree 1,719/1995, signed by President Cardoso to approve a new MINICOM comprehensive regulation for licensing telecom services operating on a commercial basis, according to which licensing processes would now include auctions.464 Later in November, a third license without public correspondence and free of charge was released, rewarding an old servant of the state-media industry alliance - Romulo Villar Furtado, former MINICOM secretary-general. Challenged judicially by FENAJ before the Republic's Attorney General and the Supreme Federal Tribunal, the Ministry justified its "policy" - again consolidating a handful of interests while marginalizing

460 Secretaria Nacional de Comunicacoes, Portaria no. 230, de 1 de outubro de 1991, publicada no Diario Oficial, Brasilia, 3 de outubro de 1991.

461 For a succinct description of the origins (as part of the military regime's geopolitical project) and development (until the late 1980s) of the Brazilian satellite program, Greta S. Nettleton and Emile G. McAnany, "Brazil's satellite system: The politics of applications planning," Telecommunications Policy (June 1989): 159-166.

462 Lobato, "Globo registra empresa em paraiso fiscal," 1-14. In the regulatory text annexed to Portaria 230, at 5.2, is written: "It is automatic the permission to explore or execute, through already authorized means ... the limited service of multiple destinations, the service of distribution of programs of sounds and sounds and images, and any service of unidirectional character [excepting conventional broadcasting, as stated at 5.4] ... of telecommunications via satellite."

463 Ministerio das Comunicacoes, Portaria no. 281, de 28 de novembro de 1995, publicada no Diario Oficial, Brasilia, 29 de novembro de 1995. In accordance with it, item 5.2 of the text annexed to Portaria 230/1991 was rewritten as follows: "The exploration of service of telecommunications via satellite depends upon previous license by the Ministry of Communications, in the light of regulation enforced for each service." Nevertheless, item 5.2.2 changed into the following: "[MINICOM] will determine the cases in which a simplified (sic) licensing procedure [for such services] will be adopted." (italics added).

464 Decree 1,719/1995 - part of an overall effort by the Cardoso Administration to reorganize juridically Brazil's telecommunications after the constitutional breakup of the state monopoly - is approached as such in the Conclusion of this dissertation.

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others - as allegedly observing the three enterprises' "acquired rights" to service provision due to their previous contracts with EMBRATEL.465 Coming back to cable, the negotiation process and its result certainly set this pay-TV segment procedurally apart from MMDS and satellite - meaning that differently from these two cases, the National Congress became formally involved in cable decision making, as indicated ahead. However, the development of cable television at both politico-juridical (complementary legislation and policy) and economic (commercial) levels did not or could not ignore its context of corporate "synergetic" concentration and transnationalization, technological changes supposedly defying state controls, and consequent, eventually induced legal disarray as a pretext for exercises of arbitrariness of the old kind. In this sense, the extent to which cable TV has concretely paralleled MMDS and satellite has been a matter of debate and perspective.

For example, contrary to what happens in MMDS, the government's licensing paralysis on behalf of the Globo-Abril duopoly did not prevent a legally controversial expansion of cable operations throughout the country. By February 1996, there were dozens of small providers serving nearly 100,000 subscribers in at least 23 cities, taking advantage of a breach in the previous DISTV legislation (Portaria 250/1989), which allowed ill-defined closed-community systems to function independent of MINICOM licensing. In May 1995, 21 of these providers created the National Association of Subscription Television Operators (ANOTA), aiming at obtaining the same conversion rights enjoyed by the 101 DISTV licensees in the cable law.466 But not only non-

465 Forum Nacional pela Democratizacao da Comunicacao, "Diante da Omissao do Legislativo e do Judiciario, Governo FHC Retoma Praticas de Autoritarismo, Exclusao e Beneficiamento de Grupos na Area das Comunicacoes" (Due to the Legislature's and Judiciary's Omission, the Cardoso Administration Resumes Practices of Authoritarianism, Exclusion and Abetment of Groups in the Area of Communications), preliminary dossier for internal discussion, May 1996; Lobato, "Globo registra empresa em paraiso fiscal," 1-14; "Outorga sem licitacao vai para a Justica" (Licensing without public submission goes to the Judiciary), Folha de S. Paulo, 27 November 1996. Globo's and Abril's new licenses not only extend for 15 years their DBS use of EMBRATEL satellites but also allow them to offer the new DTH pay-TV service through foreign satellites - respectively the Americans Panamsat 3 and 6 (Sky) and Galaxy 3R and 8R (DirecTV). This arrangement would definitely consolidate their duopoly on multichannel subscription television via satellite because the third licensed - Romulo Furtado's Key TV - has specialized in transmitting horse races and auctions...

Curiously - to say the least - weeks after the release of Globo's and Abril's licenses, MINICOM reportedly started to discuss a regulatory proposal for satellite pay-TV in which (a) the next licenses would be auctioned (as if there were no legislation at the time disciplining the procedure!), and (b) the term limit for the next licenses would be ten years (as mentioned, the first three were for 15 years...).

466 As I note in Chapter 4, the definition of "closed community" as receiver of the service according to Portaria 250 was too imprecise to eventually not include any DISTV provider: "group of users located in areas of restrict access, as vertical and horizontal condominiums, commercial centers, hotels, restaurants, buildings, hospitals, schools and the like." Furthermore, the fact that no limit on the number of communities attended by one operator was established in the Portaria gave to some the opportunity to cover entire neighborhoods as "series of closed communities."

Elvira Lobato, "Justica manda reabrir empresa de TV a cabo" (Court orders the reopening of cable TV enterprise), Folha de S. Paulo, 28 August 1995, 2-9; Elvira Lobato and Mario Cesar Carvalho, "23 cidades tem TV a

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licensed operators organized at ANOTA wanted to regularize their businesses in the legal environment inaugurated by Law 8,977/1995. In addition, the seven TELEBRAS subsidiaries involved in joint ventures with DISTV/cable operators (as already mentioned) were also pleading for the transformation of their contracts into free cable licenses. In trying to accomodate all sides, representative Luiz Moreira introduced a controversial bill to amend the cable law. Submitted to the National Congress in February 1996, it became a subject of intense (and inconclusive) discussion along that year.467 In the meantime, while interests in the segment were beginning to test some of the democratizing possibilities of its law - the access channels being a case in point468 - the Ministry cabo sem concessao" (23 cities have cable TV without license), Folha de S. Paulo, 18 February 1996, 1-8. The controversy heated up when the Ministry of Communications closed nine providers in the states of Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, Bahia, Parana and Espirito Santo then charged with illegal operation (functioning without license), and in eight cases the Federal Justice overruled MINICOM actions. Nevertheless, because small operators basically retransmit signals from NET and TVA, they were informed by ABTA - the DISTV licensees' association - that they would lose such retransmission rights unless their status were definitely regularized.

Lobato and Carvalho, "23 cidades tem TV a Cabo sem concessao," 1-8. Among the situations challenging legal enforcement, Petropolis, a historical city of 260,000 inhabitants in Rio de Janeiro state, is illustrative: surrounded by mountains, it had its first CATV system to improve television reception installed in 1958; by February 1996, 26 non-licensed, mostly "artisanal" providers were serving 70,000 subscribers. In Currais Novos, an inland town of 40,000 in the northeastern state of Rio Grande do Norte - at the rim of the arid sertao nordestino, Brazil's poorest region - an extraordinary experience was taking place since 1992. In a community where more than half (57%) of the people live with less than the minimum wage, Sidy's TV a Cabo was attending 1,500 of the town's 8,500 households (17%, against the country's 2.9% of homes then with pay-TV) after having laid 27 kilometers of cable covering 80% of the area. Besides retransmitting TVA channels (Warner, Sony, MTV), Sidy's was transmitting the local Sunday mass, sessions at the City Council, carnival parties and public-service information. The reason for the service's astonishing success according to its owner, Jose Siderley Menezes, was that "people like to see themselves and their neighbors on TV." Despite Currais Novos' City Council having passed a law "transforming all the town's blocks into condominiums (sic)," Sidy's TV a Cabo was closed by MINICOM in August 1995.

467 Mara Bergamaschi, "Projeto da' concessoes de TV a cabo de graca" (Bill gives cable TV licenses free of charge), O Estado de S. Paulo, 15 August 1996, A4; Elvira Lobato, "Lobby de TV a cabo agita Congresso" (Cable TV lobby agitates Congress), Folha de S. Paulo, 18 August 1996, 1-15. Bill 1,562/1996 was presented by Moreira aiming not only at the regularization of 18 contracts between TELEBRAS holdings and cable providers, but also the elimination of any role by the Social Communication Council with regard to cable policy and decision making. Later, this proposal was amended to include closed-community providers among those to have their operations licensed as cable services.

Predictably criticized by executives linked to ABTA - as Antonio Carlos Menezes - as "illegal" and "meaningless," and attacked by representative Tilden Santiago as "immoral" (mainly due to Moreira's hostility towards the Communication Council, and probably because his son, Luiz Moreira Filho, was at the time director of TELEBAHIA, one of the proposal's potential beneficiaries), Bill 1,562, if approved, was estimated to bring losses up to U$ 200 million in public revenues otherwise collectable from licensing auctions.

468 Ricardo Balthazar, "TV a cabo leva politicos `a casa do cidadao" (Cable TV takes politicians to citizens' homes), O Estado de S. Paulo, 5 January 1997, A8. Given television's high production costs - which, concerning the cable access channels consigned in accordance with Law 8,977/1995, are not the responsibility of the cable operator legislative powers at national and state levels were the first to take advantage of their availability. By January 1997, the Senate and the state assemblies of Sao Paulo, Minas Gerais and Brasilia (Federal District) had channels in operation (somewhat following the American C-SPAN format), while the House of Representatives, the state assemblies of Ceara and Santa Catarina, and the city council of Campinas (Sao Paulo) were reportedly taking measures to have theirs.

Regarding other access channels, former representative Irma Passoni and Murilo Ramos started consulting firms having NET Brasil as their client with the declared purpose of installing community channels. Passoni and

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of Communications was working on legislation complementary to it - that is, the cable administrative regulation and technical norms, without which (in principle) neither existing DISTV licenses, nor closed-community operations, nor contracts with telecom concessionaires would formally be converted into cable. Neither would new licenses be granted. In April 1995, Minister Sergio Motta sent the MINICOM proposal for this regulation to the president of the National Congress, senator (former President) Jose Sarney.469 After submission to the House of Representatives' Communication Commission - whose suggestions, opinions and consequent modifications were consolidated into an amendatory proposal by representative Koyu Iha later between August and November - it was approved as the "Regulation of the Service of Cable Television" by President Cardoso, through Decree 1,718, signed on November 28, 1995.470 The main innovation introduced (by the Ministry of Communications) in the legislation is a licensing process based on a score system, whose points are counted in accordance with (at least) the following specific criteria: (a) participation, in the candidate's voting stock, of residents in the service area; (b) proposed channel capacity; (c) schedule for the service's implementation; (d) schedule for the implementation of the free programmed channels; (e) time allocated to local programming; (f) number of channels reserved for cultural-educational programming (among the free programmed channels) beyond the basic one assigned under the cable law; (g) number of establishments in the local community (schools, libraries, hospitals, etc.) to which the basic Ramos, interviews by author. Nonetheless, in a newspaper article entitled "TV a cabo e canais comunitarios" (Cable TV and community channels) published in O Tempo (Belo Horizonte), 22 January 1997, 8, Venicio Lima and Paulino Motter argue that in the service areas where the implementation of these channels was more advanced - Belo Horizonte, Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre and Brasilia - the cable providers were assuming the costs of their installation.

After questioning what possible independence and autonomy such channels could enjoy in this arrangement, Lima and Motter defend "the creation a fund for the development of a public system of communication in Brazil ... constituted with revenues from cable licensing auctions and contributions by individuals and corporations deductible from taxes ... administrated by the [thus installed] Social Communication Council." Ibid.

469 Roberto Cordeiro, "Pronto regulamento da TV a cabo" (Ready regulation of cable TV), O Globo (Rio de Janeiro), 18 April 1995, 34; Elvira Lobato, "Governo regulamenta lei de TV a cabo" (Government regulates cable TV law), Folha de S. Paulo, 19 April 1995, 1-8. The proposal was also submitted to public consultation through publication at Diario Oficial on April 18, 1995. Ironically, in the message sent to senator Sarney, Motta refers explicitly to the noninstalled Social Communication Council as the ultimate destination of his correspondence thus seeking, as established in the cable law (Art. 4, par. 2), advice and deliverance of "opinion [from] the auxiliary Organ of the National Congress." Ministerio das Comunicacoes, Gabinete do Ministro, Aviso no. 118/MC from Sergio Motta to senator Jose Sarney, president of the National Congress, Brasilia, 17 April 1995.

With regard to the proposal's content, MINICOM willingness to limit the number of cable licenses per enterprise or affiliate considering its presence not only in other subscription television services but even in conventional broadcasting - "if necessary to ensure conditions of [real] competition" - was clearly stated, suggesting further restrictions to those observed for the first time in the MMDS regulation (Portaria 43/1994, already mentioned).

Also recommended was the penalty of abrogation to transference of license without MINICOM authorization. A novelty in the proposal was the Ministry of Culture's attributed responsibility to define directives for the development of the national industry of media production - film, video and multimedia - in the context of the cable service.

470 Decreto no. 1.718, de 28 de novembro de 1995, publicado no Diario Oficial, Brasilia, 29 de novembro de 1995.

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service/channels would be offered without cost (exempted from adhesion fee and basic subscription); and (h) proposed rate of the basic subscription. The service areas are divided into three groups according to their population - the first group corresponding to areas with less than 300,000 inhabitants; the second, between 300,000 and 700,000; and the third, more than 700,000.

In order to be qualified for the service's operation, the candidates have to score at least 50% of the possible points for areas of the first group, 60% for the second, and 70% for the third. The winners of the licensing process will be those which (a) in the case of service areas of the first group, earned the highest scores to qualify; (b) in the second group, obtained the highest results from the multiplication of their scores to qualify by the points corresponding to their bids for the licenses in question; and (c) in the third group, offered the highest bids for the licenses in question.471 By the time this cable administrative regulation was ready to enter in force, the Communication Forum, FENAJ, ABTA and ANJ (the National Association of Newspapers) released a public notice demanding the installation of the Social Communication Council as a precondition for any legislative action in the segment; once the regulation came out, FENAJ requested its invalidation before the Republic's Attorney General.472 In December 1995, Paulo Cesar Ferreira, then former partner of Roberto Marinho at Globo/NET in Rio de Janeiro, publicly accused Sergio Motta of sponsoring a legislation aimed at curbing real competition by allowing the Globo-Abril duopoly's stifling practices against other operators. "The Minister betrayed the spirit of the cable television law. [It] gave powers to the Executive to avoid market concentration and abuses of economic power [Law 8,977/1995, Article 10, V, VI], but there are no related preventive dispositions in the Regulation."473 On the first day of 1996, an article by Daniel Herz was

471 Ibid., Articles 23-29. With regard to candidates' bids for licenses, it should be noted that the piece of legislation in which the criterion and procedure of licensing auction (as well as the score system) were instituted for every public telecom service in Brazil - the already mentioned Decree 1,719/1995, to regulate licensing of services operating on a commercial basis - was signed by President Cardoso on the same day of his approval of the cable regulation. Also on November 28, 1995, the President signed Decree 1,720, altering dispositions of the Regulation of Broadcasting Services (Decree 52,795/1963) to extend to conventional radio and television the new licensing proceedings (auction and the score system).

472 ABTA, ANJ, Forum and FENAJ, "Regulamento da Lei de TV a Cabo" (Regulation of the Cable TV Law), public notice, Brasilia, 27 November 1995; Federacao Nacional dos Jornalistas, "FENAJ pede anulacao de decretos sem parecer do Conselho de Comunicacao" (FENAJ requests annulment of decrees without opinion by the Communication Council), press release, Brasilia, 30 November 1995.

473 Paulo Cesar Ferreira, "Motta e' acusado de favorecer empresas" (Motta is accused of favoring enterprises), interview by Elvira Lobato, Folha de S. Paulo, 19 December 1995, 1-11. Ferreira refers to a clearly deliberate absence of dispositions disciplining the relationship between cable programmers and providers: In the first version of the regulation released in April [1995, for public and Congress consultation], it was stated that operators could neither demand exclusivity from, nor impose financial [stock] participation upon programmers

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published in O Estado de S. Paulo, one of the city's two leading newspapers. Entitled "Communications: the logic of insanity," Herz addressed the National Federation of Journalists' dramatic struggle on behalf of the Social Communication Council as well as Ferreira's charge of state-promoted private duopolization of the new television - adding to the latter another accusation, the governmental institutionalization of the abuse of economic power in telecom licensing, "with a license to be granted by auction not to the best project, but to the candidate paying more for it to the Ministry of Communications."474 Moreover, in defining Decree 1,718/1995 as an "affront to the public interest," Herz criticized the lack of strategic vision displayed by the Brazilian state and its partners in the media. This was reflected in the approval of regulatory acts irrespective of a comprehensive policy (still entirely absent) with regard to the inclusive possibilities offered by the new technologies: The most devastating effect of this cable regulation ... is the total de-characterization of the complex conceptual basis established in the cable TV law, which would permit Brazil to lever the introduction of the new communication networks ... .

What could be a differential element to reduce Brazil's distance from the central nations was thrown away in the cable TV regulation.475 Here, Herz certainly refers to the complete omission, in the Regulation or any other equivalent act, of directives and corresponding procedures for the coexistence, complementariness [and vice versa]. Surprisingly, such restrictions concerning programmers were eliminated in the approved Regulation. ..............................................................

According to the Regulation, candidates to operate cable will have to previously negotiate with programmers [in order to inform the licensing process about contents to be offered]. The problem is that since NET and TVA dominate the market [of programming distribution], future providers will be in their hands. The Regulation prevents operators from buying programs abroad. It is an absolute market reserve. (italics added).

As I describe in Chapter 4, and Flavio Lopes revealed when I interviewed him, blackmailing pressures from corporations with a foot in programming to gain stock participation or even control of cable providers have been registered since Globo/NET and Abril/TVA started to buy DISTV licenses and/or operations. Concurring with Ferreira's argument, it should be observed that MINICOM initial disposition (noted earlier) of limiting the number of licenses per enterprise or affiliate in the Regulation had its treatment "postponed" - already in the amendatory proposal consolidated by representative Koyu Iha - to a complementary act by the Ministry (Regulation, Art. 38).

Questioned about Ferreira's position, Antonio Athayde, director-president of NET Brasil, replied that both NET and TVA want to sell programming to as many operators as possible. According to Lobato's report on Athayde's view, the NET executive understands the provider's dependence in relation to the programmer as due to "the very nature (sic) of the business." Lobato, "Motta e' acusado de favorecer empresas," 1-11.

474 Daniel Herz, "Comunicacoes: a logica da insanidade," O Estado de S. Paulo, 1 January 1996, B2.

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and interconnectivity between state (carrier) and private (local) networks, to be defined by the Executive as determined in Law 8,977/1995 (Art. 17, paragraph; Art. 18, I, c, d, par. 3; Art. 19, par. 2). Such complementary dispositions could have attained the maximization of resources through coordination of joint investments, and the consequent acceleration of infrastructure expansion correlated with a faster establishment of economies of scale concerning not only cable television but also coming multimedia services. This would, in turn, structurally favor an increasing socialization of their use. As a result of this omission (obviously mirroring the absence of a comprehensive policy), ... today we have cable operators implementing the service with networks that fundamentally serve their interests without potentiating public use. We also have telecom concessionaires ... burdening themselves with investments without social priority, which could be made by the private sector. We are renouncing the need to establish synergy between the state and the private sector for structuring these networks - the electronic superhighways that will define the future of culture, politics and economy in contemporary societies.476 Nevertheless, those who persistently take advantage of historically distinct arrangements for the accommodation of their particular interests seem to see no reason to change their philosophies and practices - in spite of their new surroundings: The Legislature continues to violate systematically, shamelessly, two laws [concerning cable and the Communication Council] itself approved. President Cardoso, while continuing to affirm discursively that "the state bureaucracy does not have the monopoly of representation of the public interest," belies himself through his own acts and refuses to share responsibility with society.

And the monopolistic and oligopolistic groups came again to superpose themselves on the public interest through the cable regulation. The artificers of chaos are again imposing their logic, despite politicized and democratic means having been introduced 475 Ibid.

476 Ibid.

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through the cable law with the purpose of containing the system's elements of irrationality. ..............................................

Therefore, we are still forced to ask: until when will the patrimonial and corporate interests which dominate Brazilian communications - a vital area for the country's development continue to nourish from the insanity of their forms of organization and unfoldment?477 A possible answer is suggested ahead.

477 Ibid.

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CHAPTER 6 Conclusion: The National Interest and the Future of Brazilian Communications Policy

By August 1996 - 19 months after the approval of Law 8,977/1995, regulating cable television in Brazil - cable operators organized at the Brazilian Association of Subscription Television (ABTA) were complaining about the Ministry of Communications' slowness in generating the necessary regulatory environment for the sector's long waited economic explosion.

Although its administrative regulation had come in November of the year before (Decree 1,718/1995), nine months later its complementary norms (technical specifications) had not yet been released. Consequently, cable providers were still functioning as DISTV licensees in the spirit of MINICOM Portaria 250/1989, and no license had been granted besides the 101 "golden ones" bestowed or under consideration by March 1991, when new requests were suspended. Therefore, in August 1996, Roger Karman, president of ABTA, expressed his impatience: "The complementary norms have been expected for four, five months. Why aren't they signed? Why aren't they published? Why aren't public submissions for new licensing opened?"478 The Ministry finally seemed to have listened. In September, its first cable complementary norm, numbered 13/1996, came to light and brought immediate surprise. In spite of the fact that MINICOM disposition to limit the quantity of licenses per enterprise or affiliate - fixed at seven for 478 Roger Karman, "TVs pagas cobram acao do ministro" (Pay TVs demand action from minister), interview by Elvira Lobato, Folha de S. Paulo, 2 August 1996, 2-12. Karman then revealed that even though ABTA delegates were keeping frequent contact with MINICOM executives, they were not having access to Minister Sergio Motta: "I do not know the reason for that. Perhaps he wants to avoid pressures. But we do not want to pressure him, we only would like to know what is going on." The ABTA president also expressed his concern about an industry at that time with already U$ 1 billion invested in cable networking, 1.5 million subscribers and 20,000 employees precariously based on a hundred DISTV licenses: "... these licenses should have been converted into cable licenses, something that did not happen until now. This situation raises instability and anxiety among entrepreneurs, affecting their plans for business expansion." Ibid.

When I interviewed Antonio Carlos Menezes (Multicanal/ NET Brasil) in November 1996, he confirmed Karman's information regarding the Minister's inaccessibility: "Sergio Motta never received any of us to talk about subscription television, never showed himself receptive to the private sector. He has been unapproachable, and we do not know why." Antonio Carlos Menezes, interview by author, 6 November 1996, Brasilia, tape recording.

Actually, I suspect that Menezes - then ABTA director of institutional relations, a reputed negotiator with access to power circles and (from my experience with him) an obviously reserved interlocutor - "suspects" that the Minister's imperviousness is selective: for example, it is known that just after assuming MINICOM, Motta dined with Roberto Marinho at the media mogul's residence in Rio de Janeiro reportedly "to discuss the government's proposed changes in telecom licensing procedures [here introduced in Chapter 5]." "Ministro janta com Marinho" (Minister has dinner with Marinho), Folha de S. Paulo, 7 February 1995, 1-6.

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service areas with more than 700,000 inhabitants, and 12 in areas between 300,000 and 700,000479 - was anticipated in the Regulation (Article 38) ten months earlier, it was reportedly received with apprehension at Globo and Abril.480 Nonetheless, while this measure could be perceived as an important step towards the prevention of the service's oligopolization, the duopoly actually had no real reason for alarm. The limitations above would be appliable only where there was no competition from other subscription television technologies (excepting the omnipresent satellite) - meaning that once the hundreds of processes for cable and MMDS new licensing were launched, there would be no sizeable market left without such competing pay-TV services.

Furthermore, an attentive reading of both this norm and the cable administrative regulation indicates that the Ministry of Communications would still have room - as a last resort on behalf of its friends - to contradict its legal utterances due to three related points. First, contrary to the situation of service areas with population above 300,000, there was no limitation on the number of licenses for areas with less than 300,000 inhabitants. Second, differently from the language of MMDS Portaria 43/1994 - through which service areas were conceived in terms of municipalities there was no such equivalent in the cable norm. And third, revealing the ultimate imposture of MINICOM manifested intention, there was Article 13 of the Regulation: "The Ministry of Communications, when it considers appropriate, eventually following a public consultation, shall divide a given region or locality into more than one service area, observing, as far as possible, that all the resulting areas must have equivalent market potential.481 (italics added).

"Denying at retail what is announced by wholesale" (to paraphrase a Brazilian popular aphorism) is what deceptive practices of the kind above are about. They are exemplary, in the history of the country's communication law and policy, of how resourceful the owners of power

479 In the MMDS regulation - MINICOM Portaria 43/1994 - such limits were seven for cities with population above one million, and 21 for towns between 300,000 and one million inhabitants. However, the new limits established for cable became also valid for MMDS. 480 Elvira Lobato, "Norma freia expansao da TV paga da Globo" (Norm checks expansion of Globo's pay-TV), Folha de S. Paulo, 12 September 1996, 2-13. By then, Globo had participations in 11 cable providers operating in eight cities with population above 700,000 - thus in principle standing irregular under the new rule. Conversely, Abril was just within the limit - it had stocks in MMDS operations covering seven cities with more than 700,000 inhabitants. In any case - if the disposition actually were what it appeared to be - both NET and TVA strategies for growth in such services would be definitely compromised.

481 Perhaps because of similar textual "inconsistencies" - translatable into judicial actions and more political pressures - after February 1997 (when the field work for this dissertation was concluded), the Cardoso Administration replaced the whole complementary legislation to Law 8,977/1995: on April 14, through Decree 2,206/1997, a new cable administrative regulation was approved, and four days later, a revised 13/1996 cable norm (MINICOM Portaria 256/1997). Nevertheless, concerning the mentioned pseudo-antitrust dispositions, only a single (but quite illustrative of

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can be in rhetorically assimilating political demands while working to kill them administratively.

The state telecom bureaucracy (at MINICOM), its allies at the National Congress and its private associates and beneficiaries have mastered this "art," especially when the structural changes in the 1980s and after (described here at their global and national levels, in their socioeconomic, political and technological dimensions) threatened, and finally eroded the monolithic character of the stateprivate media alliance which, for better and for worse, built the world's largest - and technically most sophisticate - cultural industry among the so-called developing countries. How (and in what direction) this alliance has been structurally transformed is now the focus of my attention, paving the way for the articulation of an analytically - as well as politically - acceptable answer to this dissertation's basic question: to what extent is it still possible for the Brazilian state to autonomously conceive and implement communications policies based on a common understanding of "the national interest"?

In order to do so, I must place the developments already presented in subscription television in general, and cable in particular, within their immediate politico-legislative frame. The circumstances of the breakup of the state monopoly over telecom structures and services have undoubtedly unfolded in direct relation to both the dominant discourse about globalization and technological transition, and the concrete interests behind it. After assessing the policy climate of the post-breakup environment, in connecting the cable television case to the nature and quality of the state-private media alliance's structural shift, and to a feasible definition of the national interest at the gates of "the information society," another question - certainly linked to the broader one in the paragraph above - still has to be answered. What might the cable negotiation process (as an inclusive process seeking consensus between distinct interests) point to, in terms of prospective communication policy making in Brazil?

FOLLOWING THE TREND: THE MONOPOLY BREAKUP

The Constitution promulgated on October 5, 1988, effectively marked the end of the order established by the 1964 military regime. Nevertheless, the Constitution resulted from a tacit compromise between forces which, despite their historical divergence regarding development strategies for Brazil, still shared the same perception about the need for a strong presence of the state in economic affairs. If in the 1987-1988 Constituent Assembly these forces were still able to the Ministry's "democratic spirit") change took place: in the redaction of the Regulation's Article 13, the phrase "eventually following a public consultation" was simply suppressed.

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beat powerful private interests then converting into privatist ones, due to the liberaldevelopmentism's irreversible bankrupcy, the winds of globalization and technological change definitely shifted the balance of power in favor of such privatist interests along the 1990s.482 In this sense, state monopolies over infrastructures and services in the oil, mining, electric energy and telecommunications industries - the most important sectors securing the state's role in the economy - reaffirmed in 1988 by the traditional left and by "nationalists" on the right (the military; segments of the state bureaucracy; private businesses dependent upon governmental favors and subsidies; clientelist politicians), soon came under attack by those that could no longer benefit from a healthy technocratic/patrimonial order and/or were more in tune with the contemporary globalizing context. In 1993, the first serious attempt by these newborn "laissezfaire" interests against those monopolies - a constitutional revision allowing the post-1985 order to eventually review its 1988 positions five years later, in the light of the new times - failed because of the lack of legitimacy incurred by its main advocate, President Fernando Collor de Mello, due to corruption charges.483 Nonetheless, the success of a new President, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, in ending years of high inflation484 allowed him to respond to an Establishment then overwhelmingly receptive to neoliberal reforms. He finally obtained from a newly elected Legislature the feat demanded by his "cosmopolitan" supporters: on August 15, 1995, the leadership of the National Congress promulgated Constitutional Amendment no. 8, breaking up the state telecom monopoly.485

482 Here, the conversion of private interests into privatist ones must be understood as the conversion of their dependence on state infrastructures to a dependence on joint ventures with transnational interests, following the collapse of the developmentist state as a business partner - and the consequent transference of its participations to other hands through privatization.

As I argue at the Introduction, disputing hegemony in Brazilian politics since the first decades of this century, developmentists on the right and on the left, seeking either the country's full insertion in the capitalist world system or its "delinking" from it, tended to agree about a central role to be performed by the state in the process of leapfrogging the nation from its peripheral socioeconomic condition. Throughout the 1980s, however, the demise of the post-1964 liberal-developmentist "tripod" model due to the collapse of the state as its main sponsor (investor and entrepreneur) progressively released the state's most dynamic private associates, domestic and foreign, to search for other means to continue to accumulate capital now taking advantage of the new global trends - as liberalization, de-regulation and transnationalization.

483 See Chapter 4.

484 Ibid.

485 After discussion and voting of the amendatory proposal in both houses - each in two rounds - and its approval, in every round, by more than "three-fifths of the votes of the respective members" (Constitution, Article 60, paragraph 2), Article 21 of the Brazilian Magna Charta was rewritten as follows: "The Union shall have the power to: ... XI operate, directly or through authorization, concession or permission [the phrase to companies with the majority of voting shares under state control was then eliminated], the services of telecommunications in accordance with the law,

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The TELEBRAS/EMBRATEL monopoly breakup was actually a major step in a process articulated by domestic and foreign interests, which anticipated from the start the system's complete privatization. In September 1992 - at the very moment of President Collor's removal from office by a Congressional vote - his Minister of Transportation and Communications, Affonso Camargo, signed an administrative commitment before the World Bank (BIRD) to restructure Brazil's telecommunications, promising that the government would "continue its efforts to remove constitutional and other legal obstacles [sic] to the privatization of TELEBRAS."486 Such a troubling initiative - clearly indicating the Executive's willingness to comply with external impositions at the expense of the Constitution - was followed in 1993 by the participation of MINICOM bureaucrats in the elaboration of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) "Blue Book" for the restructuration of national telecom systems in Latin America. The Blue Book recommends a common (thus "from outside") reform orientation to different nations throughout the continent, under the tenets of liberalization, de-regulation and privatization.487 Not coincidentally, the mantra's key words were benignly recited later by the Vice-President of the United States, Al which shall provide for the organization of such services, the creation of a regulatory organ and other institutional aspects." (italics added).

As an unmistakable sign of the new times, then the presidents of the Federal Senate and the House of Representatives were respectively senator (and former President) Jose Sarney, and representative Luis Eduardo Magalhaes, son of the senator (and President Sarney's former Minister of Communications) Antonio Carlos Magalhaes.

486 The piece, entitled "Memorandum of Understanding Relating to the Restructuring of the Brazilian Telecommunications Sector" (Brasilia, 25 September 1992), is an unsurpassed example of neocolonial subjugation of a presumedly sovereign power to an agency of transnational interests. Co-signed by a BIRD third-level employee Armeane M. Choksi, director, Country Department I (Brazil, Peru, and Venezuela), Latin America and the Caribbean Region - the document is a summary of "understandings" between the Collor Administration and the World Bank on "a strategic approach" to restructure the country's telecommunications, agreed during a BIRD "mission" in Brazil on September 14-25, 1992. There, the parts involved consider "the present constitutional and legal framework and the endeavors of the Government to achieve necessary and eventual changes": The Government has recognized, through a series of significant policy initiatives, the importance of the rapid development of the Brazilian [telecom] sector as an engine of economic growth. Such development will require a substantial increase in the historic levels of investment in [telecom] infrastructure which can only be achieved through an acceleration of the process of sectoral reform and restructuring. These reforms seek to strengthen the efficiency with which the sector meets users' demands through the removal of unnecessary regulatory and government controls and through a realignment [sic] of the respective roles of the public and private sectors. Establishing efficient price levels and structures, stable pricing mechanisms, and a long-term plan for rate rebalancing are fundamental to generating the required investment capital. (italics added).

To accomplish such goals - whose means were set according to five "policy reform priorities" (tariffs; regulatory framework; oversight of the government's ownership stake in TELEBRAS; increased private sector participation; privatization of TELEBRAS) - "the World Bank and the Government are committed to establishing, through an intensive consultative process, a technical assistance program that will support the Government's [related] efforts ... ."

487 As mentioned in Chapter 5 , a project coordinated by Savio Pinheiro, one of my interviewees for this dissertation.

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Gore, when exhorting the creation of a Global Information Infrastructure (GII) at the first ITU development conference held in Buenos Aires in March 1994: regulatory flexibility, private investment and competition, open access to networks, universal service.488 Harping upon the same string, the Group of Seven Industrial Nations (G-7) released in February 1995 its prospects for the information society that should come from the implementation of GII. In this "shared vision of human enrichment," a grandiose rhetoric - about "ensuring universal provision of and access to services, promoting equality of opportunity to the citizen and diversity of content (including cultural and linguistic diversity), and recognizing the necessity of worldwide cooperation with particular attention to less development countries" - could barely veil what really matters in such developments: "promoting dynamic competition, encouraging private investment, defining an adaptable regulatory framework and providing open access to networks" by means of "promoting interconnectivity and interoperability, developing global markets for networks, services and applications, ensuring privacy and data security, protecting intellectual property rights, cooperating in R&D [research and development] and in the development of new applications, and monitoring [sic] the social and societal implications of the information society."489

488 Remarks prepared for delivery by Vice-President Al Gore (International Telecommunications Union, World Telecommunication Development Conference, Buenos Aires, 21 March 1994). Two months earlier, at the Television Academy in Los Angeles, Gore had outlined the Clinton Administration's vision for the National Information Infrastructure (NII). At that time, based on the philosophy that "government often acts best when it sets clear goals, acts as a catalyst for the national teamwork required to achieve them, then lets the private and nonprofit sectors move the ball downfield," the White House was elaborating a legislative package that would aggressively confront "the most pressing telecommunications issues." Remarks prepared for delivery by Vice-President Al Gore (University of California, Royce Hall, Los Angeles, 11 January 1994). Five directives were then being contemplated: (1) encouragement of private investment; (2) provision and protection of competition; (3) provision of open access to the network; (4) action to avoid an information society of "haves" and "have-nots"; and (5) encouragement of flexible and responsive governmental action. In introducing the general lines of this effort to a domestic audience in Los Angeles, the Vice-President emphasized his view of what desired relations between government and the private sector should be: "... we must move from the traditional adversarial relationship between business and government to a more productive relationship based on consensus. We must build a new model of public-private cooperation that, if properly pursued, can obviate many governmental mandates." (italics added). In Buenos Aires, Gore projected unproblematically his national model into the international scenario: "... I believe that an essential prerequisite to sustainable development, for all members of the human family, is the creation of this network of networks. To accomplish this ... legislators, regulators, and businesspeople must ... build and operate a Global Information Infrastructure." (italics added).

The contents of these speeches by the U.S. Vice President had already been anticipated in September 1993, when the Clinton Administration released a policy statement about the issue at the national level. National Telecommunications and Information Administration, "The National Information Infrastructure: Agenda for Action," Federal Register 58, no. 181 (21 September 1993): 49025-36.

489 G-7 Ministerial Conference on the Information Society, Chair's Conclusions (Brussels, 25-26 February 1995). The U.S. government unveiled its GII policy - another "Agenda for Cooperation," a report by the Presidency's Information Infrastructure Task Force (IITF) - aiming this G-7 meeting, the first-ever telecommunications summit. The very fact that the Secretary of Commerce, Ronald H. Brown, was then the IITF chairman illustrates the American essential approach to the subject at the global level - just a big-business opportunity. Its policy's key recommendations were therefore to eliminate trade, investment and technical barriers to stimulate cross-border trade; rely on private sector

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In Brazil, this unrelenting discourse in the media and the powerful interests behind it (with an eye to golden opportunities in the last of the world's large telecom markets still to be explored), the needs of big service users and the TELEBRAS system's de-capitalization, fueled the movement that broke up the state monopoly over the sector. The debate preceding Constitutional Amendment no. 8 was mostly polarized between "laissez-faire" advocates, arguing the imperative to open a market whose sole provider was no longer capable to attend a demand then exploding after years of economic recession, and "nationalists" on the left and on the right, arguing the imperative to preserve the only economic-institutional arrangement that could in principle universalize service access.490 Both sides resorted to exercises of retrospective tautology - each selectively recovering standard-setting process, and include proprietary technologies in standards plus government participation in standardsetting process to assure interoperability; implement GATT agreement on trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights to protect intellectual property; agree on legal and technical issues to assure privacy in transmitting personal data; promote universal service by private enterprises in a competitive market; and open access to research and development to all companies, regardless of nationality. Information Infrastructure Task Force, "Global Information Infrastructure: Agenda for Cooperation" (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce, February 1995).

However, the United States' European partners were also thinking the GII economics as their priority in preparing themselves for the coming "global market war." In October 1994, the Commission of the European Communities publicized its "Green Paper on the Liberalisation of Telecommunications Infrastructure and Cable Television Networks (Part One: Principle and Timetable)" (Brussels: Communication from the Commission [COM(94) 440, final], 25 October 1994), whose Preface's first paragraph read as follows: The information society is on its way. Digital technology is transforming the telecommunications, computer, information and audio-visual industries. In fact, it is converging them all into one. It is also beginning to have a profound effect on society and the economy, changing the way we work, live, and play, the way we do business, the way we organise ourselves, the way we interact.

These changes are happening all over the world, everyone is busy preparing for and adapting to the challenges of the new information age. That includes Europe. It also includes the USA, Canada, and Japan - Europe's principal economic competitors. The nature of that economic competition itself is also changing. To compete effectively today, one must have the means to access, to process, manipulate, stock and produce information quickly and effectively. One must also have good access to markets and to customers all around the globe. It is therefore vital that Europe places itself at the forefront of this inevitable drive towards a global information society. (3) (italics added).

490 In 1993, Ethevaldo Siqueira, director of RNT (a telecom magazine) and a leading defender of the breakup, summarized the reasons for the monopoly's abolition: (1) with only seven telephone lines per one hundred inhabitants, Brazil is placed behind ten countries in Latin America and 41 in the world concerning telephone density; (2) the nation faces a deficit of ten million telephone lines; to attend this demand, it would have to double the existing number of lines; (3) telephone in Brazil reaches only 2% of the rural households, 19.1% of the urban ones; and 53.7% of the business establishments; (4) delays in TELEBRAS expansion plans have left more than one million people waiting years for the service after having paid for it; (5) the country's telecom development has been hindered by TELEBRAS shortage of resources; (6) service uses are congested; any expansion of volume by existing users (e.g., due to the nation's economic recovery) could collapse the system; (7) to not lose competitiveness, corporations are bypassing TELEBRAS networks despite additional costs. According to Siqueira, the reasons for TELEBRAS decay are politicopartisan interference, de-professionalization, tariff anarchy, corruption, revenue transferences to cover government deficits (totaling above U$ 7.5 billion), and investment cuts. Ethevaldo Siqueira, "Por que acabar com o monopolio da TELEBRAS" (Why to end TELEBRAS monopoly), O Estado de S. Paulo, 18 September 1993, B2.

At that time, Gaspar Vianna, EMBRATEL chief attorney and a monopoly advocate, illustrated the "nationalist" position by contending the points above: regarding (1), (2) and (3), telephone density is an index that cannot be divorced from income per capita or distribution; in Brazil, virtually all households and establishments with U$ 1.500 or more monthly income have telephone, and TELEBRAS offers non-profit service alternatives (e.g.,

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past situations which could either support a preestablished "choice" or dismiss anything otherwise to frame the issue on behalf of their respective political stances, strait-jacketing the search for other feasible, more meaningful alternatives to overcome the sector's investment shortage. Spurred by massive corporate support - with domestic and foreign groups having interests at stake as existing telecom users (looking for the system's expansion and upgrade) and/or prospective service providers - those averse to the monopoly took advantage of the global neoliberal climate and played up the rhetoric of globalization: to liberalize the system would mean to unleash the country for the coming wonders of the information society. To better contrast the point, they discursively linked state monopolies to historical failures from a recent past of "big government" on the left (communism) and on the right (post-1964 developmentism). Meanwhile, those in favor of the telecom monopoly swam against the stream and found no feasible future, in strict accordance with their position, to advertise. They turned back to a past too remote to have popular appeal, limiting themselves to a desperate effort to remind policy makers and the public about the chaotic situation of the nation's telephony when explored by private multinationals decades ago, before the sector's nationalization and the creation of TELEBRAS. In the end, the flagrant political advantage of the "privatists" over the "statists," potentiated by their common inflexibility - a fatal combination to those in the weaker side and with something to lose - precipitated the former's victory in August 1995. Such was a triumph which, in the light of further developments, came to look more and more conspicuous.

In this sense, a description of the legislative process that set the pace for the following restructuration of Brazilian telecommunications - consisting entirely of initiatives by the Executive - clearly indicates the extent to which the Cardoso Administration maneuvered politically, by resorting to the popular rethoric of globalization and the information society, in order to fully adhere to the directives of the World Bank and ITU (and also WTO, as indicated ahead) for the sector's reform. As presented in Chapter 5, legislation introducing detailed administrative and economic (in the cases of cable and MMDS, also content) criteria for telecom licensing was approved in November 1995, for the first time including auctions (a further step in the services' commodification), discrimination of service areas according to population (except broadcasting), community telephone) to those with less income (something private providers would not do). Concerning (4), (5), (6) and (7), to solve such problems it would be enough to just let TELEBRAS employing all resources it generates; the system has been profitable to the point of unduly financing government deficits, with its eventual privatization being defined as "the end-of-century finest bargain" in the international markets. TELEBRAS was in fact suffering from a pseudo-crisis deliberately induced to justify attempts to break up its monopoly: in Vianna's words, "what the 'privatists' actually want is uncommitted freedom to explore three high-profitable (U$ 50 billion by year 2000) markets: cellular telephony, data transmission and satellite communications." Gaspar Vianna, "Telefones e distribuicao de renda" (Telephones and income distribution), Folha de S. Paulo, 5 October 1993, 2-2. See also his Privatizacao das Telecomunicacoes (Privatization of Telecommunications) (Rio de Janeiro: Notrya, 1993).

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and a score system. The new rules were also valid for cellular mobile telephony/communications, the most disputed service open to private operation.491 In July 1996, a so-called "minimal law" Law 9,295/1996 - was passed by the National Congress, attributing to MINICOM the power to unilaterally discipline the private exploration of cellular telephony, satellite transmission (by common carriers) and data transmission (intra-firm) until the implementation of the regulatory organ established through Constitutional Amendment no. 8.492 In December 1996, Minister Sergio Motta submitted to the National Congress a much anticipated proposal for a general telecom law, the most comprehensive effort to re-regulate the sector since Law 4,117/1962, (the Brazilian Code of Telecommunications, CBT), in which not only the regulatory organ's attributions and timetable for installation were defined, but also the process and conditions for the telecom system's privatization.493 In his message presenting the proposed general law to the Republic's Presidency and Congress,494 Motta made full use of the current hegemonic jargon. The structural reform of telecommunications in Brazil "has been discussed and implemented in the context of the sector's

491 Decrees 1,718 (the cable administrative regulation), 1,719 (regulating the licensing of telecom services operating on a commercial basis) and 1,720 (altering dispositions of the broadcasting regulation), all signed by President Cardoso on November 28, 1995.

492 According to Law 9,295/1996, the Executive, "by taking the national interest into consideration," was committed to limit the participation of foreign capital in those services up to 49% of the licensees' voting shares - but only for the following three years. Since another constitutional amendment had eliminated any distinction between "national" and "foreign" enterprises, this was a controversial disposition. By then, nonetheless, several joint ventures - involving transnational corporations like AT&T, Bell South, NYNEX, Southwestern Bell, Motorola, Bell Canada, Bank of America, etc.; Brazilian media enterprises like Globo, RBS, Bandeirantes, Folha da Manha (Folha de S. Paulo), O Estado de S. Paulo, Editora Tres (IstoE'), etc.; and Brazilian capitals from electronic manufacturing, banking, construction, etc. - were already articulated to dispute licenses in cellular telephony. They were expected to bring U$ 5 billion in investments to the service until 2002, for the provision of at least three million lines. "Telecomunicacoes sao privatizadas" (Telecommunications are privatized), Jornal do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro), 19 July 1996, 3.

The approval of Law 9,295 led the Supreme Federal Tribunal to suspend Decree 1,719/1995 in November 1996 (as just mentioned, new licensing proceedings for telecom services had been established through this decree). In responding to a direct action of unconstitutionality by the Democratic Labour Party (PDT), the Tribunal understood that Law 9,295, in referring to the same subject of Decree 1,719, implicitly "superposed" it. "Governo sofre derrota no STF" (Government is defeated at the Supreme Federal Tribunal), Correio Braziliense (Brasilia), 28 November 1996, 21.

493 Renata de Freitas and Jose Ramos, "Motta encaminha lei geral ao Congresso" (Motta submits general law to Congress), O Estado de S. Paulo, 13 December 1996, B9. The Minister personally delivered the proposal to the respective presidents of the Senate and the House, Jose Sarney and Luiz Eduardo Magalhaes. Once in the Legislature, it became Bill 2,648/1996.

As an illustration of the Executive's "sensitivity" to the contemporary global context, the proposal's conditions of elaboration deserve a register: its 211 articles were drafted by MINICOM bureaucrats reportedly assisted by three international consulting firms - Lemon Brothers, Mackinsey, and Klenwort. "Aval Externo" (External Approval), Folha de S. Paulo, 3 November 1996, "Painel" column, 1-4.

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profound transformations around the world, which are dictated by three interrelated ... and reciprocally determined forces: (a) the globalization of the economy; (b) the technological evolution; and (c) the speed of change in the market, and in the needs of consumers."495 After stressing the inadequacy of a legislation (the 1962 Code) inherited from a time of "an essentially monopolistic and non-diversified market, in a technological stage long obsolete,"496 the Minister reminded his interlocutors that Brazil had signed the General Agreement on Services (GATS) in Marrakech, Morocco, in April 1994 (one of the roundtables that prepared the advent of the World Trade Organization, WTO, in January 1995).497 He noted that, according to GATS (an agreement defining universal principles and rules for increasing liberalization and competition in services), telecommunications perform a double function - first, as an independent sector of economic activity, and second, as the fundamental carrier for other economic activities - which is crucial for the expansion of an information-based global economy.498 Therefore, the underlying rationale justifying a new, comprehensive legal framework for the Brazilian telecom sector - to guide its restructuration with the purpose of allowing the nation to "catch up with the information age" - was summarized by Sergio Motta as follows: (a) the availability of an adequate telecom infrastructure is a determining factor for any country aspiring to a prominent insertion in the international context; (b) the more developed countries are working together to develop an adequate infrastructure - whether in terms of means or applications - capable to launch the development of the so-called "information society," on behalf of their citizens and enterprises ([structurally speaking,] the so-called information highway); (c) developing countries like Brazil must participate in this true revolution, which will occur on a world scale, in order to take 494 Ministerio das Comunicacoes, Gabinete do Ministro, Exposicao de Motivos no. 231/MC by Sergio Motta, Brasilia, 10 December 1996.

495 Ministerio das Comunicacoes, "Projeto de Lei Geral das Telecomunicacoes Brasileiras" (Proposal of General Law for Brazilian Telecommunications) (Brasilia: MINICOM, 1996), 8. This official publication includes Sergio Motta's 69-page message (E.M. 231/MC) above.

496 Ibid.

497 Ibid., 9. The Brazilian position (taken by the Executive) was confirmed by the National Congress in December 1994.

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advantage of opportunities to leapfrog stages of technological development, and stimulate socioeconomic development.499 Motta's proposal was in strict accordance with President Cardoso's basic directive toward a competitive economy in a globalizing and technologically changed environment - the promotion of a comprehensive program of public and private investments, from domestic and foreign sources, to improve and expand the nation's productive structures. The consequent attribution to, and strengthening of a regulatory role by the state, and the elimination of its entrepreneurial dimension characteristic of the "old" developmentisms, would be translated, in telecommunications, into the creation of an institution to regulate the competition between new providers - competition heightened by the current technological "diversity" - on behalf of "the public interest" then understood as the consumers' interest. This situation would come with the liberalization of the market (meaning the breakup of telecom monopoly), the alienation of state enterprises (that is, TELEBRAS concessionaires), and the arrival of new capital (from transnational consortia to service exploration).

In this regard, Law 9,472, the General Telecommunications Law promulgated in July 1997, set the legal framework for the sector's restructuration along the guidelines above.500 The National Telecommunications Agency (ANATEL) was thus established as "an entity ... subject to special government agency rules and connected to the Ministry of Communications, acting as the telecommunications regulatory organ."501 The Executive/MINICOM was authorized to restructure

498 Ibid.

499 Ibid., 9-10.

500 An English translation of Law 9,472/1997 is available on the Internet, at the Ministry of Communications' website (http://www.mc.gov.br).

501 Ibid., Article 8. "The Agency shall have the Board of Directors [five Councillors appointed by the President of the Republic, upon approval by the Senate] as its maximum entity, having also an Advisory Board [12 representatives appointed by the Legislative and the Executive, by class entities for telecom service providers and users, and by entities representing society], a General Council Office, an Internal Affairs Office, a Library and an Ombudsman, besides the specialized units holding various functions." (Art. 8, par. 1). "The special government agency nature granted to the Agency is characterized by administrative independence, lack of hierarchical subordination, fixed mandate and stability of its directors, as well as financial autonomy." (Art. 8, par. 2).

ANATEL is responsible for the implementation of telecom policies set forth by the Executive and the Legislative, including the (administrative) regulation, organization and supervision of "the performance, commercialization and use of services, and the implementation and operation of telecommunication networks, as well as the use of orbit resources and radio-frequency spectrums." (Art. 1, sole paragraph). The full exercise of telecom licensing powers is among the Agency's attributions, except for broadcasting and cable. "The granting of broadcasting (radio and TV) services is hereby excluded form the jurisdiction of the Agency, and same shall remain within the authority of the Executive Branch, having the Agency to prepare and maintain the respective channel distribution plans, taking into consideration the technological aspects." (Art. 211). "The cable TV service, including acts, conditions and grant procedures, shall continue being governed by Law 8,977, of January 6, 1995, the responsibilities

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the TELEBRAS system (the holding company, 27 state/local subsidiaries, and EMBRATEL) in order to prepared it for privatization.502 And "privatization" was then defined as "the disposal of rights which ensure the Union prevalence in social decisions and the power to appoint the majority of the company's administrators ... either direct or indirectly ... ."503

"ELUSIVE AUTONOMY": A CLOSING OVERVIEW

I began this dissertation with the argument that during the last authoritarian period of Brazil's political history (1964-1985), the design, implementation and development of the nation's telecommunications and network broadcasting occurred under the terms of an alliance between a techno-bureaucratic military regime and a private oligopoly of domestic capital. Such terms were conceived in accordance with a totalizing vision for the country's future, paradoxically translated into a narrow - politically repressive and socially exclusory - conception of "the national interest" (the Doctrine of National Security and Development), whose liberal-developmentist economics (the "tripod" model) implied a coordinated division of labor between state, private domestic and foreign capitals. Accordingly, concerning the state-media industry alliance, the former monopolized the ownership and control of telecom structures and services for their accelerated, sustained expansion toward the nation's geopolitical integration - an enterprise which resulted in significant infrastructure development (TELEBRAS). The ideological and commercial contents of this integration were carried out by the state's private partners (Globo in the lead) then making use of the telecom system to operate broadcast television in network formation, thus creating a native cultural industry and fostering the emergence of a national market. Finally, the regime counted on foreign presence in telecom equipment supply, initially in order to prevent the country's

attributed to the Executive Branch by the law being transferred to the Agency." (Art. 212) (italics added). There is no disposition in this law concerning the other modalities of subscription television approached in this dissertation MMDS and satellite (DBS/DTH).

The administrative regulation of ANATEL was approved through Decree 2,338 in October 1997. Savio Pinheiro, one of my interviewees for this dissertation, was appointed to the Agency's Advisory Board as representative of the class entities for service providers in February 1998.

502 Ibid., Art. 187. "To restructure [these] companies ... the Executive Branch is authorized to adopt the following measures: I- split, merger and incorporation; II - company dissolution or partial deactivation of its businesses; III reduction in the company's corporate capital." (Art. 189).

503 Ibid., Art. 191. "... [privatization] may be carried out by the use of the following operating categories: I- disposal of shares; II - assignment of rights of preference to the subscription of shares in increases in capital." Ibid. "The ... privatization process shall follow the principles of legality, impersonality, morality and publicity, and may adopt the form of an auction or bidding, or further, of sale of stock in a public offer, as established ... ." (Art. 197).

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technological backwardness from hampering the launch of its national project for communications, and later as a means to co-produce (indigenous) technology.

During the 1980s, however, the state-private media alliance and the status quo it served came under increasing pressure by exogenous and endogenous factors (world recession and decreased global investment; decline of state institutions; Brazil's debt crisis and the state's bankruptcy) and accompanying responses to them (rise of global neoliberalism; collapse of state socialism and end of the Cold War; end of military rule in Brazil and political re-democratization).

In this study, I approached the (potentially) disruptive impacts of globalization, technological change and Brazilian re-democratization on the country's state-media industry alliance as it constituted itself after 1964 - an alliance which effectively materialized a communications policy based on an explicit conception of the national interest. I argued that a resulting, ongoing shift has eroded its basis and forced its renewal, depicting the cable television's unprecedentedly open regulatory process (preceded by the 1987-1988 Constituent Assembly) to demonstrate the nature of this shift, illustrate its extension, and identify conditions for political intervention on behalf of the democratization of communication in Brazil (the normative horizon of this research). Finally, I introduced current regulatory trends in other subscription television technologies (and in the nation's telecommunications in general) which, although denying to a considerable extent the unprecedentedly participative elements of the cable case, also point to a new configuration of the alliance's interests at the economic and politico-juridical levels.

The structural shift within the state-private media alliance. As already observed, the old alliance consisted of an authoritarian techno-bureaucratic regime, under military rule, and a private oligopoly of domestic capital. The former's presence in the sector was realized through the Ministry

of

Communications

and

TELEBRAS,

institutions

respectively

performing

"administrative" (political) and "executive" (technical) functions. The latter was a private oligopoly only nominally. The Globo network, evolving quickly into a conglomerate under the skillful management of Roberto Marinho (Brazil's most influential citizen in the last three decades), was always far and comfortably in the lead, constituting a de facto monopoly in broadcast television, and controlling the broadcasters' class association, ABERT. Foreign participation was subordinate, confined to telecom equipment supply - basically Siemens, Ericsson and NEC, subsidiaries later absorbed in joint ventures controlled by Brazilian companies.

The trends, factors and processes described here reconfigured this alliance profoundly, reaching all its components and redefining its internal power balances and relations dramatically.

The Brazilian state has undeniably lost influence in this equation. Exhausted as the infrastructure

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entrepreneur consecrated by an overspending liberal-developmentism, it had the organically bound will of its military governments broken by the socioeconomic crisis and challenged by an irrepressible opposition. The state has literally been put up for sale - besides budgetary reasons, certainly to prevent oppositional forces, once in power, from making a better, probably more democratic use of it. The recent alienation/privatization of state corporations (TELEBRAS among them, as presented ahead), following the recipe internationally set by globalization's beneficiaries, seems to represent the final stage of the Brazilian state's transition to a much reduced, merely regulatory role of the economic activity (at best). On the private side, if Globo remains the dominant force in broadcasting, in the rapidly expanding subscription television a virtual GloboAbril duopoly has taken place, strengthened exponentially not only by partnerships with transnational powerhouses in media, communications and entertainment, but also by its geographic extension (far beyond the Brazilian borders) and business diversification (far beyond what is conventionally seen as the "mass media" sector). In telecommunications, the breakup of the state monopoly over structures and services has brought an impressive array of interests from areas as distinct as computers and agriculture, finance and mining, electronics and construction. These interests are organized in consortia to explore old and new services (from telephony to telematics), implement infrastructures (from cables to satellites) and manufacture equipment (hardware and software).

The technological and capital convergence of these forces, on one hand, and the visible decrease of the state's involvement in such issues, on the other, seem to indicate a definitive inversion of the state-private power asymmetry which characterized the history of Brazilian broadcasting on behalf of the first pole, and whose evolution reflected and reproduced atavistically hegemonic features of Brazilian society and culture - predatory privatism under state favoritism, bureaucratism and clientelism. As I noted before, these aspects are manifestations of a state-civil society structural relation, whose corresponding formation in Brazil has been basically defined by scholars as either "peripheral-dependent" (the Marxist perspective) or "patrimonial" (the Weberian perspective), depending on what realm ultimately determines the formation's nature and constitution.504 Coincidentally, the very intellectual who suggested the artificiality of this antinomic argument 25 years ago - sociologist Fernando Henrique Cardoso, by proposing that the Marxist and Weberian perspectives should be comprehended as "reflecting 'a simultaneous process of contradictory development'"505 - is the today's President, who justifies his privatization

504 See Introduction and Chapter 3.

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program as imperative to dismantle a Brazilian patrimonial state then seen as impeding a favorable insertion of the country (since it is "inevitable") in the new world order.506 Consequently, whether the Weberian position would now be deflated by the liquidation of the patrimonial state, bureaucratic resistance to the process of its alienation pointed out the existence of state interests and dynamics of their own - in the cable case, exemplified by the antagonism between MINICOM and TELEBRAS. However, here lies again the paradox correctly identified by Cardoso (the sociologist) about the deceptive nature of the state-civil society antinomy: the more the MINICOM-TELEBRAS antagonism validates the Weberian analysis as an opposition involving state institutions, the more it can actually be grasped from a Marxist viewpoint. The divergence between the Ministry of Communications and the Brazilian Telecommunications Company - perhaps the most conspicuous expression of the state-media industry alliance's transformation, from the collapse of its formerly stronger pole - disclosed itself in its structural nakedness. It ended as a privatized dispute between the former's power to act as a market gatekeeper (a function now lost to ANATEL, the new regulatory organ), and the latter's power to keep its market monopoly (a situation now enjoyed by the system's new owners, on a state/regional scale). Such a considerable reduction of state matters to economics (the business of civil society) would be a process thus better explained in Marxist terms.

Nonetheless - as the regulation of MMDS and satellite television clearly reveals - the end of the patrimonial state has not necessarily been followed by a corresponding demise of clientelist politics (the politics of patrimonialism). The state is still indispensable to mediate distinct private interests - speaking euphemistically, "to regulate the market." Here, economics as an euphemism, a pretext for the exercise of power relations never entirely reducible to questions of narrow economic rationality, brings again the Weberian eye to the scene, again indicating the existence of a paradox - not a contradiction - between it and the Marxist approach, between the patrimonial and the peripheral-dependent views of Brazil.507 Therefore, with regard to the current status of the stateprivate media alliance, what I understand as the re-privatization of the Brazilian state by a larger

505 Introduction.

506 Fernando Henrique Cardoso, "FHC poe suas ideias no lugar" (Fernando Henrique Cardoso puts his ideas in their proper place), interview by Vinicius Torres Freire, Folha de S. Paulo, 13 October 1996, "Mais!" supplement, 4-10. In a long conversation, Cardoso argued that his approach to peripheral dependency "has not changed - instead, Brazil and the world have changed."

507 To reinforce this point, I must say that probably its most compelling example in Brazilian communications is the organic connection between "the modern" and "the archaic" in the nation's broadcasting system - the reality of "electronic colonelism." See Chapter 4.

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number of actors (transnational, oligopolistic consortia), adapted to a new stage of (global) capitalist accumulation, has ultimately ensured its continuity. On a renewed basis.

The cable television case in perspective. I have maintained that the process of regulation of cable television in Brazil is a milestone in the country's communications history due to two related fundamental reasons. First, it revealed (for the very first time, I would argue) the irreversibility of the state-media industry alliance's structural shift, which resulted, on one hand, from the stress to which this power bloc was submitted along the crises of the 1980s, and on the other, in its adaptive rearrangement for the current economic and technological moment. This irreversibility, initially illustrated by the 1993 Communication Forum-TELEBRAS collaboration on a cable regulatory proposal against the interests of MINICOM and cable (DISTV) operators, was confirmed then and after by TELEBRAS all-around, tenacious fight to preserve the state telecom monopoly established by the military regime.508 Second, the cable case refers to an unprecedented situation in which an oppositional group, forged by the re-democratization struggle of the 1980s and leading a "rainbow" civil coalition (the Forum), forced its (re)entry in the communication policy arena by making two crucial moves: (1) it "imploded" a later strategy by MINICOM/SNC to legitimate its two-decade-old intent to regulate cable administratively (the SNC public hearing in July 1991), moving the issue to the National Congress; and (2) it departed from a reactive and doctrinaire position (concerning what this reality should be) to an active and pragmatic participation (toward what this reality could become) in the regulatory process. Circumstantially, this group took advantage of what I call the alliance's "period of recomposition" (a time of relative vulnerability), regarding a subject still not structured, at that point, under its dominance (subscription television).

In this sense, both the cable negotiation and its outcome (Law 8,977/1995) reflected the possibilities and limits - foresights, related accomplishments and eventual mistakes - of the negotiators, as well as of evaluations of the process by their supporters and critics. Among my interviewees, I identified three basic views of the cable process, which I define respectively as

508 TELEBRAS had already fought the privatist forces during the 1987-1988 Constituent Assembly - but indirectly, through its employees' national union (FITTEL), because of its institutional subordination to the Ministry of Communications. Although this development certainly exemplified - before the cable negotiation process - the shift in the state-media industry alliance which is my argument here, it is my contention that this shift could be taken as irreversible only when the deepening structural divergence between TELEBRAS and MINICOM emerged conjuncturally, when it became open - that is, during the cable negotiation process, at a moment just preceding the 1993 constitutional revision (which placed again the state telecom monopoly under threat).

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"pragmatic," "liberal," and "critical." The pragmatic view sees the cable case as a unique development in Brazilian communications history, initially an example of successful democratic resistance against authoritarianism (stopping the state telecom bureaucracy in the 1970s), and later, of ability to formulate a conceptually and politically feasible democratic alternative to the status quo (the Forum's performance in the 1990s). It stresses the unprecedentedly high level of public advocacy in cable law-and-policy making, the open and arduously negotiated character of each disposition accorded, the process as a learning experience, and the excellence of its outcome as the possible common denominator between quite distinct interests (the coexistence of state and private networks; the access channels; the Social Communication Council's mandatory role). This view is espoused by those who provoked such proceedings, were most engaged in, and supportive of the negotiation, and/or are still most committed to the implementation of its results, from both the Communication Forum and the National Congress.509 The liberal perception is far more variable and/or flexible in its evaluation of the cable case, and far less bound to any of its aspects. It ranges from an eulogistic (frequently superficial) assessment of the negotiation's open, participative, democratic spirit - qualified by a generalized skepticism about its outcome's practical application - to a barely disguised contempt for some of its features (for example, taking some negotiators' innovative conceptualizations as "presumptuous").

It commonly assumes that whatever the resulting legislation, this would be quickly outdated by new, overwhelming economic and technological realities - rapid developments which would demand administrative, market-oriented (instead of political, socioculturally sensitive) regulatory mechanisms. Such is the typical perception of those who represented the private interests in the cable negotiation, and their associates at MINICOM and the Congress.510 Finally, the critical standpoint emphasizes the negotiation's results - appraised as considerably beneath the initial expectations on the left, in comparison to its initial promise. Worse still, the estimation of the negotiation's development from this perspective acquires an accusatory tone concerning the actions of certain "pragmatic" players. It condemns the Forum's leading It should be remembered that the holding company's obstinacy in maintaining its monopoly led it to antagonize those in the Communication Forum who advocated the coexistence of state and private networks for the cable service. See Chapters 4 and 5.

509 They are Daniel Herz, Murilo Ramos (from the Faculty of Communication at the University of Brasilia, UnB) and Carlos Eduardo Zanatta, the Forum negotiators linked to the National Federation of Journalists (FENAJ); Irma Passoni, Tilden Santiago and Koyu Iha, representatives at the National Congress; and Americo Antunes, FENAJ president.

510 Walter Longo (Brazilian Association of Subscription Television, ABTA; Abril/TVA), Antonio Carlos Menezes (ABTA; Multicanal/NET), Flavio Lopes (ABTA; Video Cabo Campinas), Andre Mendes de Almeida (Globo/NET) and Luiz Edgar Tostes (Abril/TVA); Savio Pinheiro and Tereza Mondino (MINICOM); and representative Luiz Moreira.

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delegates (Herz, Ramos and Zanatta) for having made decisions irrespective of their constituency, and ultimately in accordance with the cable (DISTV) providers' essential interests (for example, defending the coexistence of state and private networks, in flagrant violation of the state telecom monopoly then in force). More specifically, the trio is charged with having bargained the absence of antitrust restrictions in the cable law for democratically ineffective, insufficient and/or unrealizable dispositions (especially the immediate installation of the Social Communication Council). Such is the position of those negotiators linked to TELEBRAS, and critics on the traditional left.511 Before addressing the normative questions of this dissertation (in the next segment), I must approach these conflicting perspectives - articulated by self-conscious agents with subjective interests, endowed with powers to make or influence policy decisions - initially by recalling two critical, factually indisputable aspects of the cable process: 1. The Forum-TELEBRAS tactical collaboration in 1993 gave the democratizing movement enough leverage to force the private sector (DISTV licensees organized at ABTA) to negotiate. A series of coordinated legal and administrative actions by the Forum and TELEBRAS (especially by the latter, against operations of DISTV providers), in October and November 1993, brought ABTA back to the negotiation table.512 2. The coexistence between state and private networks, established as a principle in Law 8,977/1995 and questioned in its feasibility and/or constitutionality, was actually being "accomplished" by TELEBRAS subsidiaries through commercial contracts with DISTV operators in at least seven states (based on TELEBRAS resolution RE-D 558, from October 5, 1993). These were partnerships created not only to carry cable TV signals, but also to eventually build joint fiber-optic networks.513 When taken together, these facts shed light on crucial elements of the cable case's shortfalls - implicit in the excessive conceptual optimism of its advocates as well as explicitly (sometimes unreasonably) derided by its critics. They reveal - through an assessment of the choices made by

511 Jose Guimaraes Palacio, the Forum delegate from the Interstate Federation of Telecommunication Workers (FITTEL); Joao Mello, Luiz Claudio Herig and Luiz Paulo Veiga (TELEBRAS); Carlos Alberto Almeida, FENAJ vice-president; and Venicio Artur de Lima, from the Department of Political Science at UnB. 512 See Chapter 4.

513 Chapters 4 and 5. It should be remembered that these partnerships were working so well that representative Luiz Moreira introduced Bill 1,562/1996 in the Congress, aiming at their regularization (as cable licensees) under Law 8,977/1995. See Chapter 5.

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the actors involved - that a considerable "margin of maneuver" for subjective agency in this process was present, despite objective, structural restraints and impossibilities: (a) Since the Forum-TELEBRAS collaboration was essential to advance the interests of both sides in the cable negotiation, it is reasonable to think that it should have been cultivated from both sides - as a factor for further advancement of their respective interests; (b) But, in regard to the motives discussed at length here, this is not what happened, mainly due to what I understand as a doubly poor foresight. On one hand, the Forum negotiators linked to FENAJ seem to have believed that an enforceable agreement with ABTA could be reached without the support of those responsible for the telecommunications carrier networks (at that time, TELEBRAS and its subsidiaries, according to the very agreement then attained - representative Koyu Iha's amendatory proposal to Bill 2,120/1991, later approved as the cable law). By doing so, they placed too much trust in the private sector's willingness to promote and comply with the settlement - something improbable considering the "liberal" indifference regarding the arrangement's fate, and which the history of Brazilian media would hardly recommend. On the other hand, the Forum delegate from FITTEL and his TELEBRAS constituency seem to have concluded that, with the failure of the 1993 constitutional revision, the state telecom monopoly would last. By refusing to contemplate the principle of coexistence of state and private networks (which was already occurring, as indicated above), in ignoring the politico-economic implications of globalization and technological change (the powers associated with such trends), they lost a historical opportunity to offer an acceptable alternative to what came after the breakup of TELEBRAS monopoly.

I am not suggesting that if these actors' choices had been different, the structural factors and related agents analyzed in this work would not have prevailed. But a combination of poor foresight, inflexibility, and the consequent split of forces already in structural disadvantage certainly played a role in preventing Law 8,977/1995 from having a real chance of being fully tested in its democratizing possibilities. And now, it will likely never have this opportunity. The privatization of the TELEBRAS system in July 1998, by alienating the Brazilian state's ownership of telecom carrier networks, eliminates one of the three fundamental components that might have generated a situation of relative, dynamic equilibrium between "state," "private" and "public" interests in the cable television service.514

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The national interest and democratization amidst globalization and technological change.

The greatest irony about the privatization of TELEBRAS (realized through an auction at Rio de Janeiro's Stock Exchange on July 29, 1998) is the fact that its biggest winner was a state telecom company - Telefonica de Espana (Spain), which took over Sao Paulo state's conventional telephony (TELESP), and Rio de Janeiro and Espirito Santo states' cellular telephony (respectively TELERJ Celular and TELEST Celular, operating in the A-band) for a combined bid of U$ 7 billion. Another state enterprise - Portugal Telecom - acquired Sao Paulo state's cellular telephony (TELESP Celular, A-band) for U$ 3.5 billion.515 These developments, truly corresponding to the 'restatization' of the cream of the Brazilian telecom market, not only exposed the fraudulent character of the rhetoric of globalization's "privatizing" string (when articulated in unqualified terms). They also confirmed - concerning TELEBRAS, unfortunately too late - the existence of possible alternatives (observing the strategic dimension of such services for minimally autonomous policy measures) to the hegemonic discourse of contemporary times, which might have been explored by informed and conscious agents making policy decisions in favor of the public interest.516 What might the cable case suggest, in terms of prospective communication policy making in Brazil? To what extent is it still possible for Brazil, as a nation-state, to autonomously conceive and implement communication policies based on a common understanding of the national interest?

514 In Chapter 5, see my argument about the opportunity for the constitution of a public space in the new service, from the likely realization of "two partial discontinuities" (between control and operation, and between operation and use, of the new structures).

515 As determined in the 1997 General Telecommunications Law, the TELEBRAS system was restructured into 12 holdings. The system's 20% of shares under state control were sold for a total of U$ 22 billion. Telefonica de Espana also won the cellular telephony (A-band) of Bahia and Sergipe states (with an one-third participation in a consortium with Iberdrola, an investment company headquartered in Portugal). And the state-controlled Telecom Italia (Italy) integrates the consortium that bought the TELEBRAS subsidiaries (conventional telephony) in the states of Parana, Santa Catarina, Goias, Tocantins, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Acre and Rondonia, and in Brasilia, for U$ 2 billion. Among the transnational private giants, the American MCI purchased the long-distance EMBRATEL for U$ 2.6 billion.

Regarding conventional telephony, the new owners will keep their monopolies until 2003, when an auction process for a second concessionaire in each area will be realized. The exploration of cellular telephony in Brazil is divided into two band frequencies, A and B (thus allowing two competitors in each service area). The B-band started to be auctioned in 1997.

Information about TELEBRAS "privatization" and related issues is accessible in the ANATEL website at the Internet: http://www.anatel.gov.br .

516 The so-called "European continental model" for telecom privatization was strikingly "forgotten" in the Brazilian "mainstream" debate over the matter. It basically consists - following market liberalization - in capitalizing state corporations (thus reformed to aggressively compete at home and abroad) by disposing part of their shares for private investment without relinquishing stock control.

It is important to observe that, in the already mentioned "Green Paper on the Liberalisation of Telecommunications Infrastructure and Cable Television Networks," released by the Commission of the European Communities in 1994, the word "privatization" (so frequent in international documents telling developing countries what to do to upgrade their telecom systems) is simply absent.

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Based on the history recounted in this dissertation, I conclude that, despite the currently dominant neoliberal ideology - which is overwhelmingly hegemonic only rhetorically (given, for example, the results of TELEBRAS alienation) - both the cable negotiation process and its legal outcome held clear opportunities for democratic intervention. It is also my argument that the extent to which Brazil will be able to set communication policies founded on a democratically shared perception of its interests as a nation-state - meaning the interests of its citizenry - will considerably depend upon the ability of its leaderships to make the best possible use of those opportunities. In this regard, I believe that the following should be observed: I. The very fact that the state-media industry alliance advanced its interests in both the authoritarian/developmentist (1964-1985) and liberal/globalizing (after 1985) contexts clearly demonstrates that effective power is ultimately articulated at the institutional level; in a nationstate, at the state and its institutions (especially the Executive and the Legislature). The democratic organization of civil society - although a necessary condition for the continuing democratization of every aspect of social life - is not sufficient for an enduring realization of democracy. In an increasingly globalized and interdependent world, it is imperative to overcome romanticized ideals of self-sustaining "public spheres" apart from and/or precluding institutional politics. In building up from the local, community level toward the institutions of power, it is critical to not lose sight of the final task in the construction of a truly democratic society - the democratization of the state. In a global order whose basic unit - the nation-state - remains the powerful possible realm of political representativeness, its democratization thus remains an irreplaceable task.

II. This task's progressive achievement presupposes the adoption, by the democratizing forces, of a pragmatic attitude before reality (replacing a doctrinaire one), with the purpose of (a) avoiding politically debilitating splits, on behalf of mutually acceptable - and feasible - means and ends; and (b) recognizing, incorporating and enhancing consensual elements of (in principle) disparate views regarding communication and related issues, aiming at enlarging bases of support for proposed policies. It is fundamental to prevent (otherwise healthy) disputes for hegemony on the left that resort to exclusory attitudes - like reciprocal disqualifications of positions in contestation, about which the controversy at FENAJ concerning monopolies was sadly exemplary517 - because it is impossible for the movement to advance either disunited or

517 See Chapter 5. What was regrettably missed in the altercation involving Daniel Herz, Roberto Amaral Vieira, Venicio Artur de Lima and Carlos Alberto Almeida was a mutual acknowledgment of how difficult is to approach the question of monopolies and oligopolies in the current times of global concentration and convergence. The fundamental problem of submitting a powerful actual phenomenon to practicable mechanisms of social control and accountability was then put aside, on behalf of analytically simplistic and/or politically sterile categorical assumptions about it.

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insufficiently inclusive. Conceptions of democratic communication and national, public interest should, instead, be negotiated results of a continuous process of inclusive participation and debate thus revisable outcomes facing the complex, changing realities of political struggle - rather than constructs from abstract reasoning.

III. Paralleling this pragmatic conceptual openness, it is crucial to articulate a sound, critical, counter-hegemonic discourse about globalization. And here, "the national" will have to embrace "the local." The construction of democracy in contemporary times (at any time) must be based on the perception of locality as the only space still able to permit "a human level of cultural experience in a globalized system."518 What empirically differs the spatial locale from other spaces is the very fact that locality is the place in which human beings are tangible, palpable bodies of living matter with observable spatiotemporal properties (quantitative occupation of space, motion in time; perceptual, cognitive and linguistic faculties) and physical needs (to eat, drink, sleep, procreate, shelter, etc.). These properties and needs have evolved and been diversely satisfied through the human propension and ability to live in collectivity - the only mode of human existence anthropologically known. In a world increasingly governed by the functional logic of the space of flows,519 the space in which human beings are endowed with corporeality must be the privileged space for the cultivation of their humanness - of their properly cultural attributes.520 IV. From "the local," citizens, groups and communities must acquire the capacity to challenge the current re-privatization of the Brazilian state by transnational interests, in order to achieve the kind of media "re-privatization" proposed by the Forum in 1991: [It] expresses the necessity of surmounting the usurpation of the social whole by some "particularities" ... . We aspire to a kind of privatization in which all the Nation's "particularities" may find

Mostly important, their dissension reflected a failure to observe a minimal requirement for any progressive movement which aims to be democratically effective: to find - respectfully - its common ground.

518 John Tomlinson, Cultural Imperialism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 178.

519 This expression is in reference to Castells' and Henderson's following passage (quoted in the Introduction): "The new territorial dynamics ... tend to be organized around the contradictions between placeless power and powerless places, the former relying upon communication flows, the latter generating their own communication codes on the basis of an historically specific territory." Manuel Castells and Jeffrey Henderson, "Techno-Economic Restructuring, Socio-Political Processes and Spatial Transformation: A Global Perspective," in Global Restructuring and Territorial Development, Henderson and Castells, eds. (Beverly Hills, Cal.: Sage, 1987), 7.

520 Philosophically speaking, attributes related to both spheres of work and leisure (intellect and emotion, discipline and imagination, aesthetic expression, communication and communion, transcendence and spirituality) through which humans may recognize themselves - individually as well as collectively - and/in the world they create, and interact with.

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expression, at least regarding the services of 'public nature.' ... Re-privatization must be understood as the legitimate process of affirmation and expression by all the particularities integrating the Nation through their private use of the means integrating the public services of communication. It is through this use that freedom of expression will be realized, without prejudice of the social role consensually attributable to these means of public nature.

The diverse 'parts' of the Nation ought to find their [respective] interests represented in the control and operation of the public means of mass communication.521 If the mainstream media deny access to the nation's diverse "particularities" from the top, these must be able to empower themselves from the bottom. In this regard, the experience of community ("pirate") radio in Brazil has been a powerful - albeit adapted - demonstration of the feasibility of the Forum’s conception of re-privatization. Community radio's proliferation (taking advantage of an affordable technology) has forced the media Establishment to capitulate in favor of a "coexistence" which would be unthinkable years ago.522 V. Such a vigorous "grass-roots re-privatization" is essential to the enhancement of democracy, and serves it in two basic ways. First, by improving the communicative abilities and critical consciousness (about the exclusory mainstream media) of the people involved. Second, by challenging the dominant communication culture. Politically, the first way corresponds to the conception and implementation of non-systemic and decentralized public media networks employing technologies economically and operationally accessible, in accordance with the human and material resources available at a given place and period. These media, under direct control of individuals, groups, associations and communities, would in principle dispense with mediations by

521 Secretaria Executiva do Forum Nacional pela Democratizacao da Comunicacao, "Proposta de bases para a regulamentacao do Servico de Cabodifusao (TV a Cabo)" (Proposed bases for the regulation of the Cable Service [Cable TV]) (Brasilia, September 1991), 3. First quoted in Chapter 4.

522 With their number multiplying from 100 in 1989 to more than 3,000 in March 1996 - a figure estimated to reach 10,000 by year 2000 - low-potency community radios have been used by religious, neighborhood, grass-roots and class associations to organize their constituencies, and by small businesses for advertising. Despite being systematically fought by the Ministry of Communications and ABERT (the regular broadcasters' national association) due to frequency interference and market losses - with hundreds of them shutdown by the Federal Police - their pervasiveness, growing political influence and further mobilization resulted in several bills seeking their legalization at the National Congress by 1996. Mario Chimanovitch, "Pirataria no ar" (Piracy on the air), IstoE’, 23 August 1995, 40; "Radios piratas ja' superam as regulares" (Pirate radios already outnumber the regular ones), Correio Braziliense (Brasilia), 24 March 1996, 29; Nivaldo Manzano, "Radio comunitaria e cidadania" (Community radio and citizenship), Gazeta Mercantil (Sao Paulo), 29 March 1996, A-2.

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the state/government beyond the necessary ones (like the administration of the electromagnetic spectrum allocation). The second way refers to the development of political and legal strategies and tactics before and/or within the existing institutions of representative democracy (the Executive, the Legislature, and now the telecom regulatory agency), with the purpose of creating distinctive public spaces in state and private media structures, based on the recognition of new possibilities for widespread, socialized participation in the production of communicative forms and contents opened by the new communication technologies. In its dispositions concerning the Social Communication Council and the access channels, the cable legislation is, undeniably, a first step in this direction.

Limitations of this study and directions for future research. The question of the limitations of this study is not ultimately answerable in strictly conceptual terms. As the reality of regulation of new communication technologies in Brazil unfolds, more research about its players, interests, processes and structures is necessary to continuously identify opportunities for democratic intervention. For example, an investigation of the socioeconomic conditions for implementation of the cable access channels could indicate the extension to which the experience of community radio would be applicable to the new service (in this case, certainly hampered by the still prohibitive weight of financial considerations). The new politico-legal environment that resulted from TELEBRAS

privatization

-

particularly

the

function

and

impact

of

the

National

Telecommunications Agency in defining it - could be addressed in another line of inquiry. Related to it, the new prospective status of the Social Communication Council must be assessed, considering the different opinions about its probable (perhaps definitive) deflation from the advent of ANATEL. Nevertheless, the answers eventually provided by such efforts will never fulfill the ontological gap between theory (as an epistemologically "reliable" and "valid" representation of a given subject) and practice (as an informed, pertinent and meaningful action toward the transformation of this subject). As Jurgen Habermas advises, there must be an interdependent, subjective process - enlightenment - intermediating the relation between theory and practice in critical thinking: The organization of action must be distinguished from [the] process of enlightenment. While the theory legitimizes the work of enlightenment, as well as providing its own refutation when communication fails, and can, in any case, be corrected, it can by no means legitimize a fortiori the risky decisions of strategic action.

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Decisions for the political struggle cannot at the outset be justified theoretically and then be carried out organizationally. The sole possible justification at this level is consensus, aimed at in practical discourse, among the participants, who, in the consciousness of heir common interests and their knowledge of the circumstances, of the predictable consequences and secondary consequences, are the only ones who can know what risks they are willing to undergo, and with what expectations.523 What Habermas introduces here is the component of subjective responsibility, by the agents, concerning any political decision and its outcomes, whatever these may be - a component which is ultimately irreplaceable within a critical political economy committed to substantive democratic change. Metaphorically speaking, dialectical processes are inevitably open. By attributing to enlightenment - as a process of acquirement of self-consciousness - a mediating role in the dialectics of theory and practice, Habermas brings to the political agents facing the world the responsibility of closing this dynamic relation, however imperfectly. As a result, critical thinking's claims to validity - one of the conceptual cornerstones of methodological objectivity524 - can be verified "only in the successful process of enlightenment, and that means: in the practical discourse of those concerned."525 The extent to which "those concerned" decide to exercise their responsibilities in the face of existing, restrictive structures, will ultimately define the extension of their autonomy - or, conversely, of their autonomy's elusiveness. The fate of their autonomy is crucial for the welfare of 160 million people, living in that territory of 3.3 million square miles.

523 Jurgen Habermas, Theory and Practice, trans. John Viertel (Boston: Beacon Press, 1974), 33. According to Habermas, these three levels - "theory," "enlightenment" and "practice" - have distinct functions, separate criteria for evaluation, and different aims. Theory refers to "the formation and extension of critical theorems which can stand up to scientific discourse." Enlightenment corresponds to "the organization of processes ... in which such theorems are applied and can be tested in a unique manner by the initiation of processes of reflection carried on within certain groups toward which these processes of reflection have been directed." And practice consists in "the selection of appropriate strategies, the solution of tactical questions, and the conduct of the political struggle." Regarding theory, the aim is "true statements"; concerning enlightenment, "authentic insights"; and with regard to practice, "prudent decisions." Ibid., 32.

524 Following Jerome Kirk and Marc L. Miller, Reliability and Validity in Qualitative Research (Beverly Hills, Cal.: Sage Qualitative Research Methods Series 1, 1986), 19, in quantitative research "objectivity" is partitioned into two components: "... 'reliability' is the extent to which a measurement procedure yields the same answer however and whenever it is carried out; 'validity' is the extent to which it gives the correct answer. These concepts apply equally well to qualitative observations."

525 Habermas, Theory and Practice, 2.

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________. Exposicao de Motivos no. 231/MC by Sergio Motta. Brasilia, 10 December 1996.

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"O Servico de Teledifusao de Sinais de Televisao por Cabos como Parte da Estrategia de Dotar o Pais

de

uma

Infra-estrutura

para

Informatizacao

da

Sociedade

atraves

das

Telecomunicacoes."Contribuicao do Sistema TELEBRAS `a Comissao de Estudos sobre a Regulamentacao da Cabodifusao da Comissao de Ciencia, Tecnologia, Comunicacao e Informatica da Camara dos Deputados. Brasilia, April 1993.

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225

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Newspapers, magazines and newsletters

226

Associacao AEBT-RJ. July 1994.

Correio Braziliense (Brasilia). 24 March; 28 November 1996.

O Estado de S. Paulo. 26 July 1988. 22 December 1989. 30 June 1991. 15 August; 15 December 1996. 5 January 1997.

Fax*Forum. 16 November 1993 (no. 15). 28 January (no. 16); 16 May (no. 17); 22 September 1994 (no. 22). 28 August 1995 (no. 30).

Financial Times. 4 February 1997.

Folha de S. Paulo. 3 September 1988. 28 November 1993. 25 March; 5, 16 December 1994. 7 February; 9, 19 April; 28 May; 28 August; 4, 10 September; 31 December 1995. 18 February; 10 March; 14 July; 18 August; 12 September; 27 October; 3, 27 November 1996.

Gazeta Mercantil (Sao Paulo). 19 September 1995.

O Globo (Rio de Janeiro). 18 April 1995.

Isto E'. 21 December 1994. 19 July; 23 August; 11 October 1995.

Isto E' Senhor. 31 July 1991.

Jornal do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro). 21 November 1995. 19 July 1996.

Pay-TV/Tela Viva. January 1993.

Veja. 15 March; 15 November 1995. 3 April; 19 June 1996.

Selected legal/regulatory references

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227

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Decreto no. 52.026, de 20 de maio de 1963. Publicado no Diario Oficial, Brasilia, 27 de maio de 1963.

Decreto no. 95.744, de 23 de fevereiro de 1988. Publicado no Diario Oficial, Brasilia, 24 de fevereiro de 1988.

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Lei no. 4.117, de 27 de agosto de 1962. Publicada e retificada no Diario Oficial, Brasilia, respectivamente em 5 de outubro e 17 de dezembro de 1962.

Lei no. 8.389, de 30 de dezembro de 1991. Publicada no Diario Oficial, Brasilia, 31 de dezembro de 1991.

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Lei no. 8.977, de 6 de janeiro de 1995. Publicada no Diario Oficial, Brasilia, 9 de janeiro de 1995.

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________. Portaria no. 43, de 10 de fevereiro de 1994. Publicada no Diario Oficial, Brasilia, 16 de fevereiro de 1994.

________. Portaria no. 281, de 28 de novembro de 1995. Publicada no Diario Oficial, Brasilia, 29 de novembro de 1995.

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Telecomunicacoes Brasileiras S. A., TELEBRAS. Resolucao RE-D 558, de 5 de outubro de 1993.

Brasilia: Sistema de Documentacao TELEBRAS.