UNDERSTANDING BRASIL

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...

On January 24, Brasil Wire editor Brian Mier appeared on Eoin Higgins podcast, Flashpoint, to present his analysis of Brazilian Congressman David Miranda and his husband Glenn Greenwald's abandonment of the...

By Daniel Hunt. João Gilberto, who along with Antônio Carlos Jobim is considered the father of Bossa Nova, died on Saturday 6th July 2019, sixty years on from the release of his...

João Gilberto, native of Bahia and pioneer of Bossa Nova, which put Brazilian popular music on record players in homes across the planet during the 1960s, has died aged 88 in...

The plot against Getúlio Vargas is often considered to be a purely internal Brazilian affair. This was contradicted by his own suicide note, in which he refers specifically to an alliance of...

The clear displacement of power from the executive may be an attempt to remove the royal power from the President, transforming him into another Queen of England. This would be a...

Six years ago today, President of the Republic Dilma Rousseff made her customary televised Workers Day address to the Brazilian people. With towering public approval, up to 79%, exceeding that of her...

Taking lead from right wing Venezuelan opposition leader Brazilian actor declares himself President - challenges Juan Guaidó to debate By Brian Mier On February 25, veteran Brazilian character actor José de Abreu announced...

On the morning of 11th January, a 44 year old Bell B06 JetRanger helicopter carrying TV Bandeirantes News Anchor, Ricardo Boechat crashed in São Paulo, near Anhanguera, as it brought the...

In an interview on the WNUR Chicago radio show This is Hell, which aired on Saturday, December 22, 2018, Brasil Wire co-editor Brian Mier explained what Jacobin and the Western /...

On the 50th anniversary of Institutional Act 5, the 1968 "coup within the coup" which ushered in an even more brutal and repressive phase of the Military dictatorship, historian Fernando Horta explains...

by Gabriel Deslandes In the middle of the worst political and economic crisis in Brazil's republican history, certain themes and ideological rallying cries that were dormant have re-emerged. Some of them involve...

Brazil elected its new President on 28 October 2018 – the improbable, unspeakable fascist former army captain Jair Bolsonaro won against the affable unimpeachable democratic candidate of a left alliance led...

by Larissa Jacheta Riberti “When education is not liberatory, the dream of the oppressed is to be the oppressor” This quote is from Paulo Freire, one of the most renowned and frequently cited...

Uma batalha de cinquenta anos que veio dos EUA, para combater a Teologia da Libertação Católica no Brasil, promete ricas recompensas a grandes custos humanos para os que investiram nela e...

A fifty year foreign battle to combat Catholic Liberation Theology in Brazil promises rich rewards for the vested interests which initiated it, at great human cost. "Brazil is at the vanguard of...

by Gaía Passarelli. I never thought I'd get here. And sometimes I want to believe that it will not get worse. But then I pinch myself: I did not think Dilma would fall,...

Faced with the threat that Bolsonaro poses to the nation's democratic values – values that the founding leaders of the PSDB fought against during the military dictatorship – history will require...

Brasil's Education crisis is not a crisis, it is a project. - Darcy Ribeiro. Across the political spectrum Brazilians will tell you that the principal problem in the country is education, yet...

In 1964, after President Jango Goulart announced he was going to implement agrarian reform, the US Government helped install a Military Coup in Brazil. In 1967, Carlos Marighella, grandson of a...

Selling strategic state-owned enterprises to private capital is a sensitive issue in Brazil’s upcoming elections This article has been reprinted, with authorization, from Brasil de Fato . Twenty years ago, on July 29th, 1998, the...

By Larissa Jacheta Riberti* I have been writing for a truck driver's trade newspaper for the past six years but would not risk making a thorough analysis of the current strike. However since many...

In his landmark work, “A Fantasia Organizada”, legendary developmentalist economist Celso Furtado described the modern history of Brazil as a conflict between internationally-backed monetarist economic strategies and efforts to implement a...

The following article is an edited version of the transcripts of an interview Chuck Mertz conducted with Brasil Wire editor Brian Mier on This is Hell radio show, on Chicago's WNUR,...

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...

To mark 3 years since the registration of brasilwire.com on 12th August 2014, this is a selected chronology of some of our most read and/or most important stories. Our emphasis was on missing...

Luiz Gonzaga Gegê da Silva is a historic figure on the Brazilian left. A member of the MR-8 resistance movement during the military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985, he spent time...

By Brian Mier. During my 22 years in Brazil I've gotten used to gringos moving down here who, before taking the time to understand how things work, begin immediately bad mouthing the...

By Patricia Azevedo Boyd In Brazil, racial issues are complex and contentious but very important to talk about. The tendency has been to pretend that problems do not exist, and many Brazilians...

On January 6, 2017, the traditional Folia dos Reis festival was declared historic cultural patrimony by the Minas Gerais state government. According to their research, the city with the most number...