ABSTRACT
Brazil, relative to most Latin American countries, began its neoliberal revolution late, and at a time when opposition to the Washington Consensus was already evident elsewhere in the world. President Fernando Collor commenced the liberalization of the Brazilian economy in 1990, but it was President Fernando Henrique Cardoso who fully enforced the neoliberal agenda in the mid-1990s. Cardoso aggressively liberalized trade and agriculture, deregulated the economy, and privatized public enterprises. While the victory of Luis Inácio Lula da Silva and the Workers Party (PT) in the 2002 presidential elections generated hopes for a shift away from neoliberalism, Lula continued and deepened Cardoso’s neoliberal reforms.
