The average age of the PT membership and leadership increased sharply during the 1990s, partly because the student movement is fragmented, and no longer plays the same vanguard role as in the 70s and early 80s. Although young people faced no future under Rio Grande's previous neo-liberal government, few saw the PT as offering an alternative programme relevant for them. This changed with the 1998 election campaign, in which the PT again spoke more clearly to young people. The party as a whole has no statistics on youth membership, but the radical left Socialist Democracy current recruited some 150 young members during and after the November 1998 election campaign. This reflects not only the growing attraction of the PT among young people, but the migration of young people to the left of the party.
Rapid growth poses a major challenge to the party.
But our challenge is not only to integrate and consolidate. We also need to make the party more organic, and more integrated. All members must have a forum where they can genuinely participate. So we face a major, new challenge in translating social resistance into organic forms of expression, in which each militant will intervene. Isolation The Rio Grande PT has always been dominated by the left, which is a minority in the national party.