a Silva. For the first time in its history, Lula appointed four Afro-Brazilian national ministers, three of them women: Benedita da Silva, Minister of Social Services; Marina Silva, Minster for the Environment; and Matilde Ribeiro, who heads the Secretariat for the Promotion of Racial Equality, a cabinet-level ministerial position.
Federal universities around the country have continued to implement affirmative action programmes and the federal government has mandated the teaching of African and Afro-Brazilian history in high schools and universities. There are government quotas that require 20 per cent of new positions in federal government agencies to be filled by Afro-Brazilians; Itamaraty – the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs – is an exception; it has instead implemented admissions quotas for its prestigious training university, Rio Branco. The Ministry for the Promotion of Racial Equality has played an important role coordinating these new inter-agency initiatives, but there has been concern that the ministry faces severe structural limitations because it does not have an independent budget and instead must mobilize resources from the very agencies it is attempting to influence. Despite all this, Afro-Brazilians are still waiting for major social or political changes to benefit their communities. Moreover, the political crises in the latter part of the Lula administration have exposed corruption within the Partido dos Trabhaldores (PT or Workers Party), and shifted the party's attention away from issues of social inclusion as it defends itself against these allegations of corruption.
Brazil has also been in the forefront of affirmative action programmes, although not without controversy. Former Education Minister Paulo de Renato Souza voiced his concern that unprepared students might enter universities and called on the international community to help prepare Afro-Brazilian students for entrance exams. President of the High Court of Justice Paulo Costa Leite expressed concern that quotas represented an artificial way to allow black people to ascend in society, and that this may aggravate prejudice, although the federal court has declared the quotas constitutional. In 2006 a group of prominent opinion makers, including several leading Brazilian academics and artist Caetano Veloso, wrote a controversial letter to the Brazilian press condemning quotas. The fierce response to this letter referred to as the 'Manifesto Branco' by Afro-Brazilian activists and allies demonstrates how discussions about reparations and affirmative action programmes for Afro-descendants continue to engender fierce debates across the region.
Current state of minorities and indigenous peoples
In 2005 Doudou Diene, UN Special Rapporteur on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and related forms of Intolerance, visited Brazil and made recommendations on the importance of supporting affirmative action programmes, promoting cultural identity and youth development in the country. He followed up on this report with a visit to Brazil in 2006 for the Regional Conference of the Americas in Brasilia, an event that was envisioned as a continuation of the Santiago preparatory conference for the UN World Conference against Racism. At this meeting he met with civil society activists to discuss the findings from his report and analyse new paradigms of ethnic conflict and globalization. Immediately before this session in Brasilia, the Brazilian government hosted a meeting of the African Union in Salvador, Bahia, which was widely attended by African heads of state and international celebrities such as Stevie Wonder, who used the meeting as an opportunity to make a declaration in support of racial quotas.
Evidence of exclusion of the vast black minority in Brazil is rampant. Nearly 80 per cent of Afro-Brazilians live below the nation's poverty line, compared to 40 per cent of white citizens. Afro-descendants in Brazil earn half of what white groups earn; life expectancy is 6.5 years lower for blacks than for whites; and one half of all Afro-Brazilians ar