Jun 19 2026| Nº. 210

Editorial

This week, two developments illustrated particularly clearly how disputes involving Brazil’s democratic institutions have begun to reverberate beyond the country’s borders.

The first was the decision by Brazil’s Supreme Court to convict Eduardo Bolsonaro for coercion in connection with proceedings related to the 2022 attempted coup. A majority of the justices concluded that the former congressman had sought to engage U.S. authorities to pressure Brazilian institutions during the trial involving his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro. Regardless of the differing political interpretations surrounding the case, the ruling represents an important milestone by recognizing that efforts to mobilize external pressure on domestic judicial proceedings may carry significant legal consequences.

The second development occurred during the G7 Summit. In public remarks, Donald Trump once again commented on Brazil’s political situation, describing the country’s political environment as particularly troubled. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva responded immediately. Lula stated that Brazil’s elections are a matter exclusively for Brazilians and reiterated that he does not accept any form of external interference in the country’s political process. The episode marked yet another chapter in the growing diplomatic tensions between Brasília and Washington that have emerged over recent months.

These two developments share a common element. Both revolve around the same fundamental question: who has the legitimacy to influence decisions related to the functioning of Brazil’s democratic institutions. The conviction of Eduardo Bolsonaro addresses precisely the boundaries between international political action and interference in domestic judicial proceedings. The exchange between Lula and Trump, meanwhile, highlights the enduring sensitivity of national sovereignty in a context of growing political polarization.

What emerges from this scenario is an important transformation in Brazil’s political dispute. Issues once largely confined to domestic debate — such as the role of the Supreme Court, the proceedings related to the attempted coup, and the electoral process itself — have increasingly become matters of international attention.

At the same time, foreign actors, governments, and international political leaders have become recurring references in the narratives mobilized by different political forces within Brazil.

Recent developments suggest that the dispute over the legitimacy of Brazil’s institutions will be fought simultaneously on two fronts: within the country and in the international arena. The growing overlap between domestic politics and foreign affairs is likely to become one of the defining characteristics of the electoral process that lies ahead.

Highlights

• Banco Master. The Banco Master scandal continues to grow and reveal new ramifications every week. As the Federal Police deepens its investigations, new names are emerging, revealing an endless chain of connections between banker Daniel Vorcaro and businessmen, congressional representatives, senators, former ministers, and even agents of the Federal Police themselves, as well as judges and their relatives.

• Root of the case. The scandal concerns the sudden growth of a bank that was previously relatively small and unknown, which began to promise exorbitant profits to its investors. Public banks and pension funds channeled funds to act as anabolic steroids for Master's illusory growth. This movement was driven by politicians who, it is now known, received money, favors, and bribes from Vorcaro in exchange for enacting laws that benefited the bank, as well as taking other actions that were in the banker's interest. Master Bank's money ended up in unlikely places, such as financing the film Dark Horse, which presents a false portrait of Jair Bolsonaro's life, and fintech companies accused of involvement with organized crime.

• Police officers involved. One of the suspicions revealed this week is that Vorcaro's father paid R$ 400,000 per month to current and former Federal Police agents to leak privileged information about the progress of possible ongoing investigations against the bank. The courts issued arrest warrants for all agents who appear in messages exchanged with Vorcaro and his father.

• Ally under suspicion. The Federal Police are also investigating whether Senator Jacques Wagner, leader of the Lula government in the Senate, received payments from the banker through companies belonging to his relatives and a transaction involving an apartment, as well as tickets and passes for his family members to attend a music concert in the United States. The courts issued search and seizure warrants that were executed at addresses linked to the senator. At one of the addresses, more than US$50,000 in cash was found.

• Gun at home. A 9mm pistol belonging to former President Jair Bolsonaro was seized in a police raid this week. The weapon was in the possession of a military officer with ties to Bolsonaro. The man was stopped in a routine police procedure on the streets of Brasília and said he was taking the weapon for maintenance. The pistol in his possession is registered in the former president's name. Bolsonaro, however, is under house arrest. The courts are now evaluating whether Bolsonaro violated the conditions of his house arrest by possessing a firearm and by possibly having contact with this police officer, whose visit was not authorized.

• Interest rates. For the third consecutive time, the Central Bank reduced the basic interest rate in Brazil by 0.25%. The decision pleases President Lula, who defends the reduction of interest rates as a way to stimulate consumption and the economy. On the other hand, it displeases critics who point to the risk of inflation and an increase in the public deficit. Despite the consecutive cuts, Brazil still has one of the highest interest rates in the world today at 14.25%.

News from the Alliance and partner organizations

World of Work 1. The Brazil Office is organizing a virtual meeting on July 16th between leaders of the Brazilian trade union movement and Gilda Romero, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association. The meeting takes place within the context of the work developed by the Observatory on International Labor and Social Rights, which seeks to internationalize research and debates about the profound transformations that the world of work is undergoing.

World of Work 2. The WBO and the Instituto Lavoro are holding an international seminar on June 30th and July 1st called “Trade Unionism in the New (Dis)Order – Labor Relations, Democracy and Trade Union Action”. The event will bring together union leaders, intellectuals, and jurists from Brazil and other countries at FESPSP (São Paulo School of Sociology and Politics Foundation) to discuss the challenges of trade unionism and the defense of workers' rights in the contemporary world. Learn more.

Advocacy at the UN. The Brazil Office has been working in partnership with ABGLT (Brazilian Association of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Travesti, Transexuals and Intersex People) to carry out a series of joint actions during the 62nd Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, which runs until July 7th. The combined action seeks to expand diplomatic advocacy in Geneva and also with national, regional, and global partner organizations, contributing to broadening the debate on sexual and gender identity in Brazil and the world.

Redesca/CIDH. The Special Rapporteurship on Economic, Social, Cultural and Environmental Rights (REDESCA) of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) is conducting a working mission in Brazil this week to gather information on the impacts of illegal gold mining on human rights in the Amazon and the Guiana Shield. The delegation, led by Special Rapporteur Javier Palummo, held meetings in Brasília with authorities, public institutions, civil society organizations, and human rights defenders. The discussions addressed issues related to health, water, food, the environment, and the protection of indigenous peoples and traditional communities. Representatives of Traditional Communities in the Cerrado also presented complaints about human rights violations in their territories. The agenda continued in Roraima, where REDESCA is participating in the 8th Assembly in Defense of the Life of the Yanomami Indigenous Peoples and is directly engaging with their leaders about the impacts of illegal mining in their territories. The collected contributions will serve as input for the Rapporteurship's next regional report.

Brazil-USA. The Brazil Office is one of the organizations promoting the VIII International Symposium on Brazilian-U.S. Relations, which this year addresses the "encounters and disagreements" between Brazil and the United States. The debates will take place on June 25th and 26th at the Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa, in the Botafogo neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro. The president of the WBO's Board of Directors, James N. Green, will give the closing lecture of the event. Admission is free, subject to seating availability, and there will be a simultaneous online broadcast on the Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa channel.

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Article

Water Resources and Social Justice: The Challenge of Quilombola Communities

By Samara Santos*

Quilombos emerged in the mid-sixteenth century as a form of resistance by enslaved Africans seeking freedom from colonial oppression. Throughout their historical trajectory, these communities consolidated ways of life based on a collective relationship with the land, the preservation of traditional knowledge, and the sustainable use of natural resources – essential elements for their social, economic, and cultural reproduction.

Currently, several quilombola communities face threats stemming from the uncontrolled expansion of monocultures onto their territories, a process that has had significant impacts on their forms of organization and permanence in historically occupied spaces. This scenario is associated with the capitalist economic model, oriented towards the intensive exploitation of natural resources without due consideration of environmental, social, and cultural costs, favoring the prioritization of economic interests to the detriment of the protection of traditional territories. As a consequence, the activities that guarantee the livelihood of the communities and their traditional way of life have been compromised, contributing to the occurrence of environmental racism and subjecting these populations to conditions of greater socioeconomic and environmental vulnerability and, in some cases, to rural exodus.

In this context, access to water, one of their main bases for survival, is threatened. This resource is essential for human consumption, food production, economic activities, cultural practices, and the maintenance of collective health.

The increasing pressure on the Cerrado's water resources highlights the vulnerability of quilombola communities, whose subsistence depends directly on the availability of water. In this sense, Althoff, Rodrigues, and Silva (2021), when analyzing 4,531 river basins of the biome (drainage areas and river stretches coded according to the Otto Pfafstetter method), identified an unequal spatial distribution of water availability, with higher rates in the western and southern portions and lower rates in the eastern and northern regions. The authors also observed greater pressure on water resources in the months of September and October, with the latter showing the highest occurrence of high risk (28.2%), while the average risk levels were 2.4 in September and 2.3 in October. Furthermore, they observed significant differences in hydrological dynamics between regions of the biome, with higher levels of infiltration, soil moisture, and runoff in the west and southwest. These results highlight the hydrological heterogeneity of the Cerrado and indicate greater vulnerability to water scarcity in certain areas. In this context, quilombola communities, whose social and economic reproduction depends directly on water availability for consumption, agricultural production, and food security, are particularly exposed to the impacts of these changes, which may deepen historical inequalities in access to natural resources.

There is also research by Jorge, Ferreira, and Filho (2024), which analyzed 27 rural quilombola communities in Goiás and the Kalunga territory, totaling 371,010.25 hectares, using data from 1985 to 2020 from MapBiomas integrated with information on soils, slope, and fire scars.

The results show that these communities maintain a predominance of native vegetation over time: in 1985, 86.38% of the area was covered by native vegetation (320,487.96 ha), and in 2020 this percentage was still 81.65% (302,928.29 ha). During the same period, 19 communities remained predominantly covered by native vegetation, while only two were more affected by the advance of agriculture, and seven began to show greater pasture cover.

The study also points out that a large part of these areas is located on soils and slopes poorly suited to mechanized agriculture, which helps reduce the pressure for intensive land conversion and favors the conservation of the Cerrado.

Furthermore, the highest occurrence of fire was recorded in 2014, with 36,350.19 ha burned (9.45% of the total area), followed by 2010, with 31,516.11 ha (8.19%), while 2009 presented the lowest occurrence, with 1,917.45 ha burned.

These data reinforce the idea that quilombola lands act as a conservation space because they combines traditional land use, less intensive production, and maintenance of native vegetation cover, which contributes to the protection of biodiversity, soil, and water resources. Traditional knowledge is important because it guides practices adapted to local conditions, respects the environmental limits of the land, and favors less degrading forms of occupation. In the case of this study, this contribution appears indirectly, through the permanence of extensive native cover and the low conversion of land to more intensive uses.

The research conducted by Moreira and Heller (2025) in the quilombola community of Croatá, located in the municipality of Januária, Minas Gerais, concretely demonstrates the difficulties faced by quilombola communities in accessing water and basic sanitation. The study found that the community does not have an official water supply network, depending mainly on rainwater harvesting and, during periods of drought, on water supply by Civil Defense tanker trucks. Furthermore, there is no monitoring of the quality of water consumed by the population.

Regarding sanitation, among the 32 residences analyzed, only 3 had adequate sanitary infrastructure, while the others had incomplete or precarious facilities. The results demonstrate that, given the insufficiency of public actions, the residents themselves need to develop strategies to meet their basic needs for water supply and sanitation, although several demands remain unresolved. This scenario highlights a persistent condition of socio-environmental vulnerability and reveals how the precariousness of essential services affects historically marginalized populations more intensely, configuring an expression of environmental racism through the unequal distribution of infrastructure and access to water resources (Moreira; Heller, 2025).

Given this scenario, it becomes fundamental to expand public funding, international cooperation, and accountability of global commodity chains focused on the conservation of the Cerrado, especially in actions to protect water resources, regularize traditional territories, strengthen public policies, and promote adequate infrastructure for quilombola communities.

International participation in this process is necessary because a large part of the agricultural production associated with pressure on the biome, such as soy, beef, and other commodities, is destined for the foreign market. This means that the economic benefits of exploiting the Cerrado's natural resources are shared globally, while the environmental and social impacts remain concentrated in local communities. Therefore, importing countries, multinational companies, and international organizations also have a responsibility to promote more sustainable production chains and to finance conservation and climate adaptation initiatives.

In this context, quilombola communities play a strategic role in the preservation of the biome, since their lands maintain high levels of native vegetation and their traditional knowledge favors management practices compatible with the conservation of biodiversity, soils, and water resources. Thus, investing in the protection of these territories represents not only a measure of social justice but also an essential strategy to contain the advance of deforestation and guarantee the conservation of one of the most important biomes for the water, climate, and environmental security of Brazil and the world.

*Samara Santos de Oliveira is part of the Rio Paranaíba community in Minas Gerais, and of the Rede Retalho network.

External articles express the opinions of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Brazilian Alliance or the editors of the bulletin.