Tag: Brazil

The Story: The Governors of the 26 states of Brazil, a country that has been hit very hard by the Covid-19 pandemic, are now executing...

The Story: "Propolis" is a waxy material used by bees as a cement in repairing and maintaining the hive. One particular variety of propolis, known...

The Story: The World Health Organization has referred to the health care system in the Federative Republic of Brazil as "flawed but fair." The flaws,...

The family of Samuel Costa, a five-year-old boy from Brazil with a special condition effecting his organs, is speaking out as they face deportation after Trump’s ends protection for immigrants in the U.S. receiving critically needed medical attention. Madeline Cronin,…

Two South American countries have been in the news a lot lately. For musicians in both those countries, the news is affecting their work. Luna has been very outspoken in her music about the political unrest in her country. "I know that is not my afraid, it's they are afraid of me — of my power, of our power." As Contreras notes, Luna joins a long legacy of Brazilian musicians speaking truth to power. "During the military dictatorship there in the 1960s, there was an entire genre of music that developed around these musicians," Contreras says. Contreras describes Luna, like other artists in this lineage, having "almost a sacred responsibility" to speak up for her people who are subjected to racism, classicism and unfair treatment of any kind. While Venezuelan vocalist Lolita Del Sol made it to the festival this year, Contreras spoke with Alicia Zertuche, SXSW senior programmer and visa supervisor, who recalled a heartbreaking exchange with Venezuela's Desorden Público who couldn't make it this year. It's not because we can't leave the country, we are afraid to leave our families behind.'" Contreras says that whether they could make it to SXSW this year or not, the music of these acts will serve as a timestamp of the political climate and a symbol of perseverance.

Inauguration ceremony for Brazil's new leader, former army captain Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro came to popularity on a far-right nationalist platform and has drawn comparisons to Donald Trump for his populist, bombastic style. In attendance is US Secretary of State Mike…

In the jungle, the jaguar reigns supreme. On Oct. 28, Jair Bolsonaro was elected president of Brazil. Until the end of August, Bolsonaro trailed a man campaigning from a prison cell — former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. In September, Bolsonaro was stabbed in the stomach by a man who claimed to be on “a mission from God” to bring Bolsonaro’s candidacy to an end. Far-right proclivities aside, Brazilians should worry about Bolsonaro’s dictatorial tendencies. As the campaign reached its closing chapters, Bolsonaro, in “Trumpian” fashion, suggested his political rivals would end up in jail or in exile. It would be a shame if they ended up in his jaws. Bolsonaro has suggested packing the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court with 10 new judges who would serve his political whims. Brazil’s democracy may be relatively young, but its political culture has become as rough-and-tumble as any. If those institutions are the casualties of Bolsonaro’s rule, Brazil will be worse off.

Global proud boys are dancing. The crackdown on universities began even before his final victory. There’s a lot to grapple with in Bolsonaro’s win, not least the way it reflects the successful importation of US-style right-wing cultural politics into Latin America, represented by what in this country are often called wedge issues, including abortion, sexual rights, guns, gender equality, prayer in school, and so-called “religious freedom.” Two years ago, when Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, there was a lot of talk about how he represented the Latin Americanization of US politics, a kind of populist style associated with Third World dictators. “He’s the most popular politician on earth.” Less than a decade later, Obama is gone, Trump is president of the United States, and Lula is in jail, on a flimsy corruption conviction. The state began to repress social movements. As commodity prices tumbled, and some of the most corrupt politicians on the planet shamelessly launched an anti-corruption campaign to destroy the PT and prevent Lula from running for president, a deep disaffection set into national politics: Brazilians are obligated by law to vote, but Sunday’s election saw absenteeism running at 30 percent. At first, polls showed that up to 80 percent of the population supported the ban. But after the National Rifle Association began pouring money into the campaign, paying for ads urging Brazilians to vote no—to defend their right to bear arms, even though Brazil’s Constitution contains no such right—the referendum lost, with more than 60 percent voting no. Meanwhile, many of Bolsonaro’s supporters showed up to vote carrying assault weapons, defending what they imagined was their universal right to bear arms. So we might rephrase Thomas Frank’s perennial question: What’s the matter with São Paulo?

Capping off an electoral campaign marked by passionate anti-establishment sentiment, the jailing of a former president and rising political violence, Brazil took a collective leap of faith and elected right-wing nationalist strongman Jair Bolsonaro to a four-year term. The big picture: Throwing out the conciliatory political playbook that winning presidential candidates have used since the country’s 1985 transition from military rule, Bolsonaro won for a simple reason: He credibly promised to turn Brazilian politics upside down. Under a banner of radical right-wing reform that raised investors’ expectations, Bolsonaro’s insurgent candidacy became a social phenomenon. The 63-year-old former Army captain and longtime Congressman exploited popular social media platforms with fake news, thrived on misogynistic and homophobic rhetoric, promised a purge of the left and embodied a no-holds-barred approach to the country’s spiraling criminal violence. Though his Social Liberal party performed better than expected, winning 52 seats in the 513-member lower house of Congress, Bolsonaro will need a larger coalition to pass legislation. While Bolsonaro himself has equivocated about his position on old government pension programs, his market-friendly economics advisor has promised comprehensive pension reform. It remains to be seen where exactly the requisite votes will come from. Meanwhile, a proposal to privatize state electricity and energy companies has reportedly been shelved. Public security is the campaign issue on which Bolsonaro may feel he most needs to deliver immediate action. Why it matters: Brazil’s hard turn to the right opens the door to the military’s return to power as Bolsonaro sets the country on a new course for trade and foreign policy.

The caravan itself — the way it's being portrayed in the media and manipulated by the president and his party, and the response to all of it on the part of the Democrats — encapsulates everything that's going wrong with politics in 2018. Let's take a look at three of the guilty parties here. The charlatan-demagogue in the White House Roughly 7,000 people (most of them Hondurans fleeing poverty and violence in their home country) are walking north through Mexico toward the southern American border over 1,000 miles away. This, says President Trump, constitutes a national emergency. Never mind that the caravan adds up to just 0.7 percent of the roughly 1 million people who will immigrate to the United States this year — or that there is zero evidence for Trump's race-baiting claims that "unknown Middle Easterners" are "mixed in" with the caravan. But treating a modestly sized group of people seeking to make a better life for themselves in the United States as some kind of existential threat to the country is both morally outrageous and an expression of world-historical cowardice on the part of the president. But it's a form of cowardice tailor made to appeal to timorous Trump supporters, and they appear to be responding appreciatively to the message. If those who favor a liberal immigration policy hope to prevail, they need to combine that position with an acceptance of the legitimacy of sovereignty and borders — with Americans consciously choosing to accept a high number of immigrants. But there's another reason as well. Put it all together, and we're left with a perfect storm of ugliness, civic breakdown, and dysfunction — with maximalist demagogues encouraging and empowering one another on either extreme, and no one standing up for a more sustainable and broad-based consensus on which a fair-minded and reasonable policy on the migrant caravan might be constructed.