Successive demonstrations in its most important cities, brawls between militants of opposing ideological sides who see the other as an enemy rather than a political adversary, growing numbers of strikes, verbal and written attacks in the media, rising polarization in Congress. A good description of what has been taken place in the country of the […]
On April 29 2015, the Military Police of Paraná attacked thousands of striking teachers in Curitiba with tear gas, pepper spray, dogs, and rubber bullets. Hundreds were wounded, and the governor has attempted to divert responsibility by blaming shadowy infiltrated anarchist “agitators.” This is the story behind the carnage, from a Paraná university professor who […]
Brasil’s right-wing march under a banner of anti-corruption but the protests of the past weekend illustrated what is actually a fresh manifestation of Brasil’s ongoing class conflict, with an undercurrent of racial tension and a dash of anti-communist hysteria. The Petrobras scandal is a primary concern of many Brazilians today, across the political spectrum, but nebulous […]
“There’s an unwritten understanding amongst Foreign Correspondents that the U.S. wants PSDB in power.” – Foreign Correspondent, São Paulo, 22/6/2013 Originally published March 2015. As we discussed in the article ‘Brasil’s Citizen Kanes’ the mainstream press in the country has a long tradition of antidemocratic bias. In 1989, as documented in the British film “Beyond […]
A world constructed from the familiar is a world in which there’s nothing to learn, since there is invisible autopropaganda, indoctrinating us with our own ideas. – Eli Pariser, author of ‘The Filter Bubble’. There is a growing democratic unease worldwide, acute in Brasil, one of the developing nations with highest saturation of social media, about how […]
Operation Car Wash, the investigation into the misuse of funds within Brazil’s partially state-owned oil company Petrobras, is little over a year old – but it has already taken as many twists and turns as a Brazilian telenovela. Federal judge, Sergio Moro, and federal prosecutors are investigating a complicated scheme in which construction companies allegedly bribed Petrobras […]
This article was originally published in Portuguese on the blog of veteran Brazilian journalist Mauro Santayana 01.31.2015. Brasil Wire have chosen to translate and republish the article to add some factual and historical context to the current debate regarding the Brazilian economy in 2015. All views expressed are those of Mauro Santayana For several months, and especially during […]
Brasil today sits at a rare turning point for any country. Despite the furore surrounding the Petrobras scandal and the water crisis in São Paulo there are far more pressing issues that underpin whether Brasil can make the very difficult jump from middle income to rich, emerging to developed country, in the near future. Brasil […]
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The US will become as unequal as Brasil. And that bothers both societies. As we watched President Obama’s second inauguration 2013 it was hard not to notice that, once again, Latin America was completely absent from any major initiative for the next four years. Even the immigration reform that came as a result of growing […]