ABSTRACT
The restrictions on the political participation of black people point out the contradictions that compromise the effectiveness of Brazilian democracy. If one individual is capable of overcoming racism, everyone who suffers from its effects can also overcome it; as a result the problem is reduced to the individual level not that of the society and the only way to surmount it is by social ascent. The constitutional restrictions and the ideology of the myth of racial democracy imposed a silence on Brazilian social-racial inequities in the beginning of the 1970s. The dictatorship of GetulioVargas opened a way for controlled participation in the populist governmental system and adherence to the myth of democracy. The Organizational Law of Political Parties approved in December 1979 extinguished the Democratic Movement Party and ARENA and established rules for the operation of a multiparty system inside the great confluence of popular opposition to the military regime.
