Jair Bolsonaro’s ideological prejudice, ignorance about public policy and the lack of social sensibility leave 60 million Brazilians without medical treatment, as Cuba calls back 11,000 doctors – the only ones currently working in public clinics in 700 Brazilian municipalities and hundreds of favelas. By Brian Mier 5 years ago, Dilma Rousseff’s government made one […]
Menezes, an economist who works for ActionAid and IBASE, says the data suggests Brazil will return to the UN World Hunger Map. The study, which will be released at the end of this month, raises new warnings. By Thiago Domenici* In 2014, Brazil left the list of countries in which over 5% of the population consume fewer […]
New data shows homicides increased during coup year of 2016. Most victims were Afro-Brazilian males. By Brian Mier Wednesday, June 6 marked the release of the most comprehensive annual study of national and state level homicide data in Brazil, the 2018 Atlas da Violencia, conducted by 12 researchers from the federal government’s Applied Economic Research Institute […]
By Brian Mier. In the early morning of May 1, a 24 story building on Paysandu square in central São Paulo caught fire and collapsed. There are three confirmed deaths and 36 people are still missing. The building was a squat which was home to 140 families. The fire department was quick to the scene […]
Although squatters are frequently treated as criminals in the national and international media, according to article 5 of the 1988 Brazilian Constitution, any citizen who does not own property has the right to occupy any abandoned tax-scofflaw building and pressure the government to convert it to ownership-based social housing. In São Paulo, a dozen buildings […]
According to the Brazilian Constitution of 1988, land banking is a crime. Unlike in, for example, the United States, it is illegal for a landlord to hold a building empty for years, without paying real estate taxes or maintaining the property, waiting for real estate values to rise so that he can flip it. If […]
Facing politically-motivated imprisonment, former President and leading 2018 candidate, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, shared this message to Brazil. My Friends, I’ve thought a lot about the paths that our lives take. The future, after all, does not seem to be such a distant place, does it? It’s not that my life has been easy… Far from […]
By Gabriel Deslandes. Rio de Janeiro Carnaval parade groups, called Samba Schools, are preparing social and political criticism for the 2018 carnaval, with parades that will denounce politicians, social problems and recent political scandals. Of the 13 most important Samba Schools, 4 will focus on protests during their parades in the Rio Samba stadium, the […]
When Brasilians talk about the organized left, they usually refer to the social movements, labor unions and the organic intellectuals who support them. There is another category of civil society, however, that has a positive influence on progressive advances in Brasilian society, the non-governmental organizations, or NGOs. Over the past few decades a number of […]
By Brian Mier. When the Brazilian Military Dictatorship ended in 1985, citizens began a nation wide campaign to petition for people’s amendments to the new constitution, which was ratified in 1988. One of the most important victories, from a popular participation standpoint, were people’s amendments 182 and 183, which guarantee the right for anyone who […]