The Fundamental Rights in the Brazilian Constitution

Abstract

The brazilian society is revealing, in the last decades, the growing of new social forces born in the figthing against military dictatorship and influenced by the world conviction that human rights must be the fundamental principles of a just and harmonic society. Notwithstanding, besides these new infuential factors, the constitutional frame of the country shows clearly the partial permanence of the negative colonial heritage, as the domination of conservatives and reactionaries elites, including old fashioned land-owners, impresarios, politicians and intelectuals. That contradiction can be detected in the brazilian Constitution of 1988. The most democratic in the constitutional history of the country, in terms of people's participation, incorporating new fundamental rights and guaranties, the some Constitution assures the permanence of a discriminatory social and economic order. The next decade must know the overcoming of that contradiction.