Frei Betto, 70, a Dominican Friar and author of 52 books, is one of the central figures in the Brazilian liberation theology movement. Tortured and imprisoned for four years during the military dictatorship, he went on to play a key role in the formation of the CUT labor union federation, the Central de Movimentos Populares […]
The partnership between Brasil Wire and LeMonde Diplomatique Brasil continues with our second shared article, by Dr. Marcio Pochmann, one of Brasil’s most important developmentalist economists. The filters that uphold Brazil’s meritocracy are expressed in social monopolies through education, recommendation networks and relationship circles. Public policies for inclusion are challenging them on several levels, revealing […]
Brasil Wire proudly announces its new partnership with Le Monde Diplomatique Brasil. Starting today, we will periodically translate and share their articles to advance our goal of providing the best English language news and analysis on Brazil from outside the echo chamber. Today, Silvio Caccia Bava, political scientist and Editor-in-Chief of Le Monde Diplomatique Brasil […]
Brazil currently has its most conservative Congress in decades. As violence against social movements increases and the criminalization of Brazilian social movements in the media and judiciary intensifies, it is a good time to take a closer look at who these movements are and what they are doing. How did they start, and what is […]
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 […]
Sunday, April 12, was supposed to be bigger than ever before. The same groups that organized Brazil’s March 15 demonstrations against Dilma Rousseff’s government via social media had planned a new wave of protests across Brazil. Today they are undoubtedly privately disappointed. The early crowd estimates indicate a drop of at least 50% in every […]
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 […]
For those outside Brazil, it went probably unnoticed the flood of messages on Twitter last Sunday night with the hashtag #vaiadilma (Boo Dilma in English). Brazil’s president Dilma Rousseff (PT, Workers Party) went to national television on Sunday (8) for a 15-minutes pronouncement, where she asked Brazilians for patience with the austerity measures adopted by the […]