Word: brazil
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...That may be a dream too far, but many in the audience will have acknowledged that the bearded, gravelly voiced President has been a revelation. When he was first elected in 2002, many U.S. experts on Latin America worried that he and his leftist Workers Party would trash Brazil's economy by pursuing socialist and populist policies. But Lula stuck to the market-oriented fiscal reforms of his predecessor, Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Those policies, plus a windfall from high global prices for Brazilian products like soybeans and steel, helped Lula tame the country's notorious hyperinflation and create a boom...
...Remarkably, Lula has managed to steer Brazil between the Scylla and Charybdis of the right-wing Bush Administration and the left-wing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, whose clashes are rocking Latin America. Lula, in fact, is one of the few leaders both Bush and Chavez will listen to. "I joke with them and tell them their fight is very weird," Lula says, "because oil makes them so dependent on one another...
...shoes on the streets of São Paulo, has pumped some $100 billion into anti-poverty projects like Bolsa Familia (Family Purse), which provide everything from rewards for poor families who keep their kids in school to financing for small farmers and entrepreneurs. As a result, 52% of Brazil's 180 million people now occupy the middle class, up from 44% when Lula took office...
...Lula enters the homestretch of his presidency - it ends in 2011 - many of Brazil's oldest problems remain unsolved. Chief among them is its education system, which despite increased funding remains a dysfunctional shame. There's also rampant corruption, exorbitant taxes, Amazon deforestation and one of the world's most wasteful public bureaucracies. Lula, who many Brazilians hoped would tackle those plagues more forcefully, blames "a [political] structure that has been there for centuries" but which "we are trying to dismantle." To do that in the two years he has left, however, may require more divine intervention...
...photos of Pope Benedict XVI's trip to Brazil here.) (See TIME's pictures of the week here...