By Andrew Cumming. Rio has Baile funk, Salvador has Axé, Belem and the Amazon have Brega, but what does the vast interior of Brazil have? That huge expanse of outback that takes in the states of Goias, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, and Minas Gerais? It has Sertanejo, which is basically Brazil’s own Country […]
By Amanda Lisboa. This year, May Day had an increased meaning for Brazil; that feeling was not only present on the streets of many cities around the country, but also during protests worldwide, as seen in Portugal, England, Switzerland and Italy, among others. The deepened significance of the date was related to the fact that the Brazilian’s […]
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 […]
During the lead up to the 2016 Coup, a series of alarmist articles in the Brazilian and international media warned of Brazil’s spiraling public debt. In January, 2016, for example, the Economist wrote, “public debt is worryingly large for a middle-income country and rising fast. Because of high interest rates, the cost of servicing it is […]
April 30, 2018. Hundreds of buses have already arrived in Curitiba and hundreds more are traveling in caravans on route to this Southern Brazilian city of 3 million, where ex-President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has been held as a political prisoner for three weeks, for what promises to be the largest May Day protest […]
In the early hours of Saturday Morning, April 28th, as hundreds of protesters were sleeping in their tents at the Lula Livre Democratic Vigil outside the Parana Federal Police headquarters where Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is being held in solitary confinement, gunmen opened fire injuring two activists, one critically. As in the case of […]
By Cynara Menezes. The media repeat that Lula is not a political prisoner. Nevertheless, like all political prisoners, he is being barred from receiving visitors in jail. A judge from Curitiba is behaving as if she has superpowers and controlling who can and can not visit the ex-President of Brazil, an international personality with friends […]
When Rio City Councilwoman Marielle Franco was assassinated on March 14, much of the international coverage omitted the fact that she was a socialist and the most prominent critic of Rio de Janeiro’s federal military occupation. In this article from the Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ) Manchêtometro project, which quantifies bias in media coverage, […]