E vamos lutar contra a inflação // And let's fight inflation!
Remarcaram os preços eu fiquei a pé // They marked up the prices and I was left behind!
Bezerra became famous in the 1970s and '80s for his hard-core but humorous sambas about the hustling malandro lifestyle and life on the morro (favela). He was revered for his deft denouncement of government corruption, most notably the crooked and brutal police force.
Bezerra's acquaintances from the morro composed many of his best-love songs. They were bricklayers, carpenters, repairmen, and "22s" (crazies) who had chosen to steer clear of crime, but respected and wrote about malandro precepts like the "Lei de Murici" (Lei de Murici: Cada um cuida de si — Murici's law: every man for himself; mind your own business) and especially excelled at writing witty smack about snitches and sogras (mothers-in-law) in thick slang.
"A rasteira do presidente" was composed and released in early 1986, following the launch of a new economic plan, the Plano Cruzado.
At the time, Brazil was in the midst of a bumpy transition from military dictatorship to democracy, and was meanwhile suffering the consequences of the military government's brash fiscal and monetary policies (which were not much improved upon in the first years of the democracy). Hyperinflation topped 235% in 1985 and was on track to hit 500% in 1986. José Sarney had taken office as transitional president on March 15, 1985, and after a dismal first nine months, promised in January 1986 that he would not allow inflation to continue shooting up. In an ill-fated attempt to keep this promise, on February 28, 1986, Sarney declared a bank holiday and announced his Plano Cruzado – "shock treatment" for the Brazilian economy, which was also meant to serve as a symbolic rupture from the legacy of the military dictatorship.
This "heterodox plan"replaced Brazil's currency the Cruzeiro with the Cruzado (worth 1,000 cruzeiros), fixed at 13.84 to the dollar. Salaries were adjusted up by 8% (public servants) and 15% (minimum wage), and an "inflation insurance" mechanism was put in place to increase salaries automatically if inflation hit 20%.
A "fiscal do presidente" checks her price table.
The plan also froze prices for food, gasoline, hygiene and cleaning products, and services. These fixed prices were published on a table (mentioned in the song) as a means of holding business-owners to account. In announcing the plan, Sarney called upon every Brazilian citizen to be "um fiscal do president" – a president's inspector – making sure that shops were sticking strictly to the price table. And indeed, as the song makes reference to, the government shut down businesses that were caught cheating.
Not surprisingly, the plan led to basic supply-and-demand mismatches, empty shelves, dissatisfied producers and consumers… which as usual nurtured a flourishing black market. In November 1986, Sarney's government was forced to abandon the plan and launch Plano Cruzado II. Cruzado II unfroze prices and signaled the return of staggering inflation, which would plague Brazil and Bezerra's friends on the morro until 1994, when the Plano Real finally pulled the country out of this financial quagmire.
Bezerrra, who was born in 1927 in Recife, Pernambuco, and arrived in Rio as a stowaway in the 1940s, died in January 2005 at the age of 77.
Busy supermarket El Dorado in São Paulo in March 1986. The Cruzado plan led to a rush on supermarkets.