An open letter in defense of Brazil’s democracy against the Bolsonaro government’s preemptive attempt to sabotage this year’s elections, drafted by the São Paulo Federation of Industries (FIESP) has quickly gathered over 1 million signatures. On August 11, Brazilian National Students Day, crowds in the thousands gathered at dozens of public universities where the letter […]
As the first meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and Brazilian counterpart Jair Bolsonaro is announced, Journalist Jamil Chade urges Biden to sieze a “historic opportunity to support democracy”, and not follow in the footsteps of predecessor Lyndon Johnson. In a letter to Joe Biden, Brazilian journalist Jamil Chade warned the president of the “historic […]
By Guilherme Boulos Bolsonaro, after a “sabbatical period” in which he stopped talking about electronic voting machines, returned to threaten the integrity of the electoral process. In the last few weeks, he attacked the Electoral Court (TSE) again, spoke again about the “secret room”, and demanded military personnel in the investigation process… As October approaches […]
On May 1, 1978, the first issue of the Brazilian underground newspaper O Trabalho hit the streets. The paper was the result of the fusion of 4 clandestine Trotskyist organizations with the student movement Libelu, all outlawed by the authoritarian military junta at the time. In this article, Paulo Moreira Leite, founding editor of O […]
In an interview by Leneide Duarte-Plon for Carta Maior, writer, philosophy professor and psychoanalyst Vladimir Safatle spoke of the coming elections and Brazil’s democratic collapse. In 2018, Safatle, then a regular columnist at Folha newspaper, was ridiculed for a literal reading of his suggestion that there would be no election that year. Three years later […]
An October 2018 sketch in Folha newspaper by screenwriter Antonio Prata is viralising three years after it was published. Putting aside what else is known about the manipulated election it preceded, ‘Obsessive-compulsive disorder. But it’s better than PT robbery’ was a tragicomic summary of a violent, manufactured anti-Workers Party hysteria which underpinned Bolsonaro’s vote – a milieu […]
The 2016 coup was ground zero. It was the inaugural act, but the process continues By Olímpio Cruz Neto Five years after being removed from the Presidency of the Republic during an impeachment in which no crime of responsibility was established, economist Dilma Rousseff has a clear vision of the process that culminated in her […]
Bolsonaro prays every day for a major crisis, be it Covid-related or out of growing hunger. He hopes the desperation of the people will lead to riots, mayhem, and violence. By Jean Marc von der Weid* I don’t believe a coup will happen now, but I do believe we are rehearsing for one. I have […]
As Brasil Wire has reported, Bolsonaro and his allies played a behind the scenes role in Bolivia’s November 2019 coup. Liszt Vieira argues in Le Monde Diplomatique that the increasingly unpopular far-right president may base his own auto-coup on the Bolivia model in order to stay in power. Vieira warns that beyond the risk of […]
Many are laughing at Bolsonaro’s failure to intimidate Congress, but things could still get a lot worse. by Brian Mier Brazilians woke up yesterday to visions of a nightmare they thought would never return: military tanks and armored vehicles rolling down the national mall in Brasilia, past the Congress and Supreme Court Buildings in an […]