On Monday, February 19th, as millions of Brazilians participated in a General Strike against the coup government’s proposed retirement reform amendment, Congress announced that it will delay voting on the measure until December. To the Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT/Unified Workers Central), Latin America’s largest labor union federation and largest strike actor, this is a […]
On the day of former President Lula’s appeal hearing, which upheld a sentence that is widely considered to be politically motivated, leaders Gilmar Mouro of the MST landless rural workers movement, and Guilherme Boulos, of the MTST homeless workers movement and popular front Povo Sem Medo, delivered impassioned speeches in his defence to tens of thousands of assembled social movement militants […]
Translated and edited for readability by Brian Mier On January 24, 2018, after three conservative judges rejected ex-president Lula’s appeal against charges that he received illegal reforms in an apartment that prosecutors were unable to prove he ever owned or set foot in, a crowd of some 70,000 people gathered on Praça de Republica in […]
Dear Comrades An aggressive attack is being waged against MST landless peasants in the northern state of Pará, Brazil. Large-scale landowners along with local judicial authorities, mainstrain media and the Brazilian military police are targeting MST camps throughout the country. 2.000 peasant families living in 20 camps located in the northern State of Pará are […]
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 […]
During the lead-up and in the aftermath of last year’s overthrow of democratically elected Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, several writings appeared in progressive English language publications analyzing the state of the Brazilian left. Most of them were written by members of the white middle class, based on little or no contact with the Brazilian organized […]
The Rise, Success and Decline of the PT Party’s Virtuous Cycle Model of Urban Governance. By Brian Mier. In 1964, the US helped overthrow democratically elected, center-left president Jango Goulart and install a military dictatorship in Brazil, which lasted for twenty-one years. As the government arrested and tortured peaceful protesters, several different groups started armed […]
By Brasil Wire Contributing Editor Brian Mier. During the 1960s, legend has it that governor José Sarney sat down at a table with a group of cattle-ranching cronies and aerial photographs of Maranhão state, in Northeastern Brazil. They marked boundaries on the photos with pencil and divided up the […]
In a recent article in NACLA, Sujatha Fernandes argues that there is a problem in the Northern left’s writing and analysis on Latin America, based on little or no dialogue with the working class, with some writers seeming more concerned with criticism than solidarity. At Brasil Wire we believe that the same thing has been […]
During illegitimate, corrupt president Michel Temer’s attempt to implement an unnecessary extreme austerity regime that plunged millions of people below the poverty line and caused the UN to warn that Brazil may return to the World Hunger map, one of the most under-covered stories is the organized left’s efforts to resist the state of exception. […]