Aug 11 2023 | Nº. 79

Editorial

This year the story regarding deforestation in Brazil under Lula has been mostly positive compared to the unimpeded devastation of the Bolsonaro years. In the first six months of Lula’s third term, deforestation fell by some 34 percent. This, of course, is not to say that any of the issues plaguing the region have been solved or that there are easy, unambiguous paths forward for the region and its inhabitants. In a powerful symbol of the Brazilian government’s redoubled commitment to the Amazon, President Lula this week hosted the various heads of state and other officials from countries whose territory includes parts of the world’s largest rainforest. Representatives of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela met in the city of Belém to chart a common path forward. While all agreed on the critical importance of the region and the need for locals to be able to support themselves and their families, they differed on major issues. Calling on the leaders of rich, industrialized nations to do more to help South American environmental efforts, an editorial in The Guardian noted that the summit “failed to formalize a target of ending deforestation by 2030 – a commitment already adopted by Lula’s Brazil, and one credited with driving much of the progress his government has made this year. Leaders were also unable to agree to a common position on the future of industries such as cattle farming, mining and oil, which are driving the destruction.”

Lula’s global standing has benefited greatly from the perception that he is a more dedicated steward of the Amazon than Bolsonaro ever was, but there are areas where consensus remains elusive. Lula insisted that the Amazon must not simply be treated as a refuge, that locals need — and deserve — the right to profitably use the natural resources around them. “The rainforest is neither a void that needs occupying nor a treasure trove to be looted. It is a flowerbed of possibilities that must be cultivated,” the Brazilian president said in his address. Lula leans toward accepting that oil drilling can and should be part of that economic activity while Colombia’s Gustavo Petro argues the region needs to do more to transition away from fossil fuels entirely. This is an issue in which the Lula administration is attempting to walk a fine line. Even as Lula appears to side with those in his cabinet who argue that oil can be safely extracted from the rainforest, he also reportedly plans to put his finance minister, Fernando Haddad, in charge of the green energy transition within the massive forthcoming infrastructure package known as the new Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento ( Program of Accelerated Growth). Haddad has been more successful than anyone expected in shepherding complicated and controversial pieces of legislation through Congress and stated last month that a new green infrastructure push will be one of the lasting legacies of the new Lula government. This week’s summit in the Amazon was not a victory lap by any means. The administration knows it can and must do more to set itself apart from its predecessors on the crucial issue of climate change. 

Highlights

• ATTACK ON ELECTIONS. On Wednesday, August 9, the police arrested Silvinei Vasques. He was director general of the Federal Highway Police during the administration of the Jair Bolsonaro. While in office, Vasques was responsible for commanding the operations of the Brazilian Federal Police on all federal highways. The arrest warrant was issued by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. Vasques was accused of having directed road inspection operations during the 2018 elections on cars and buses carrying supporters of the then presidential candidate, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in order to hinder or prevent these passengers from accessing polling places in the Northeast region Brazil. The Northeast is one of Lula's main electoral strongholds. Vasques, who denies the accusations, made a post on Twitter in support of Bolsonaro on election day but deleted it shortly thereafter.

• ATTACK ON DEMOCRACY. The day before Vasques' arrest, Anderson Torres, another important character in the coup plot, testified at the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry that is investigating the riot that took place on January 8. Torres had been minister of justice in the Bolsonaro government. After Lula defeated Bolsonaro in the October 2022 presidential elections, he became secretary of public security for the Federal District (Brasília). He was responsible for commanding the police in Brasília when the attacks on the headquarters of the Presidency, Congress and the Supreme Court took place, but he had left for the United States the day before the coup attempt. Afterward, the police found a draft of a presidential decree in Torres' house that proposed carrying out a coup d'état in Brazil. Torres insists that the document was not official and was going to be thrown away, but his story did not convince the members of the Parliamentary Commission. Torres attended the deposition wearing an electronic anklet since he is under house arrest and, therefore, monitored by the police.

• PRISON FOR COUP SUPPORTERS. Vasques and Torres are seen as prominent political figures in the plot against the 2022 elections and against democracy in Brazil, but there are hundreds of other people who have been held accountable. The day before Vasques' testimony, the Federal Public Ministry asked for a 30-year prison sentence for 40 people accused of participating in the invasion that took place on January 8. In all, 1,390 have already been charged for their participation in the attack on Praça dos Três Poderes (the Plaza of the Three Powers), the nerve center of political power in the capital of Brasília.

• POLICE VIOLENCE. The Military Police of the State of São Paulo did not film nine of the sixteen police interactions that resulted in deaths in Baixada Santista between July 28 and August 2. Only seven of these fatal incidents were recorded. São Paulo police officers wear cameras on their clothes to record their operations, but the device failed in three cases and was not used in another six. The operation in Baixada Santista is one of the deadliest ever carried out by police in the richest and most influential state in the country. Community residents accuse the police of torture and execution. The state governor, Tarcísio de Freitas, was a former member of the army, a minister in the federal government, and is an ally of Bolsonaro. Freitas harbors pretensions of one day running for the presidency of Brazil. He praised the police operation, thus reinforcing his identification with the extreme right electorate.

• MORE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE. Data published this week by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) show that the country currently has 1.7 million indigenous people, which corresponds to 0.83% of the entire population of 203.1 million. This number is surprising because it is much higher than the figure tallied in the last population census that was carried out in 2010. At the time, the IBGE had counted only 896,900 indigenous people in the country, a number that is 88.8% lower than the current one. The difference is mainly due to a change in methodology, but a definitive conclusion about this discrepancy will only be possible with a refinement of data that has yet to be published.

• U.S. CONGRESSIONAL REPRESENTATIVES. From August 14 to 21, Brazil will receive the visit of a delegation of progressive congress people from the Democratic Party: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY), Joaquín Castro (TX), Nydia Velázquez (NY), Greg Casar (TX), and Maxwell Frost (FL). The group has scheduled meetings with civil society organizations and with members of the Lula government, including the possibility of a meeting with the Brazilian president. After Brazil, the group will also visit Santiago de Chile and Bogotá, Colombia.

NEWS FROM SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS AND MOVEMENTS:

MORE DIVERSITY. The Black Coalition for Rights, representing 250 affiliated organizations of the Brazilian Black movements, launched a campaign to pressure President Lula to nominate a black woman to occupy one of the eleven seats on the Supreme Court. Lula will have the right to appoint a replacement for the vacancy that will open after the retirement of Judge Cármen Lúcia, the current chief justice (president) of the country's highest judicial body. The Black Coalition presented a list with the indication of three names.

FIGHT FOR THE LAND. The Landless Workers’ Movement (Movimento Sem Terra, MST) accused far-right parliamentarians linked to former President Jair Bolsonaro of launching a campaign of defamation and persecution against the most active movement fighting for agrarian reform in Brazil. According to the organization, the MST has been the target of an unfair offensive by the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry created to investigate the movement in the Chamber of Deputies. “It is not possible to give credibility to an investigation that hears only one side”, says the note from the MST.

INDIGENOUS MOVEMENT. The Articuation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil, APIB) criticized the final declaration adopted by the eight presidents who participated in the Amazon Summit in Belém do Pará. The “Letter of Belém,” signed by the member countries of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO), was considered “frustrating”. One of APIB's main criticisms is the “lack of concrete goals for the demarcation of indigenous lands.”

Feature Article

by Augusto Jobim do Amaral

Brazil in Search of a Future

We find ourselves ensnared by a lingering sense of fear within our nation. This political disposition binds us to the cyclic retelling of familiar narratives – and most significantly, obstructs any potential for substantive transformation, instead favoring feeble reactions. This prevailing sentiment continues to drive the policy decisions of President Lula’s third administration. Even today, we remain unable to discern the concept of "coalition presidentialism," a phenomenon perpetually exposed through the exchange of positions within a frail base of support in the Brazilian Congress. The gradual co-opting of the political center as an indicator of representative politics appears incapable of success in light of overt parliamentary coercion. This form of coercion seems to have already coopted the familiar developmentalist agenda, hiding neoliberalism behind a more humane face.

In effect, what we are witnessing resembles a form of semi-presidentialism. Remarkably, the current government has been unable to substantially alter the previous administration's malevolent secret budget regime. Instead, it has substituted it with a variation of the same, conceding to the President of the Chamber of Deputies even before assuming office in January 2023. Half of the then-secret budget's value remains under the control of the budget bill's rapporteur, a consequence of Constitutional Amendment (EC) No. 126/2022, which formalized the regulation of "rapporteur amendments with their own budgets." The remaining half has been allocated to "individual amendments" that the government is mandated to implement, with values twice those of the Bolsonaro era. In essence, nearly the entire discretionary budget for investment in the country is now vested in the hands of the most conservative Congress in Brazilian history. The current government envisions taming this Congress through strategies that brought us to this point, albeit without any guarantee of support.

This is just one example highlighting the fact that the system of agreements that once underpinned the New Republic in Brazil has long been exhausted. The denial of this reality or the absence of a clear and effective alternative seems to sentence us to an ongoing cycle of intensified tragic repetitions. A pressing question emerges: how long will the fear of a potential resurgence of Bolsonarism (if anyone dares to believe it has waned) allow timidity to prevail over the courage necessary to mobilize political creativity, even in the face of potential setbacks?

Without a sense of agency and a well-defined vision, the scope for profound and necessary change within Brazilian society will remain limited. In a time of widespread exhaustion, coupled with growing disillusionment with the representative framework of liberal democracy, which should ostensibly offer an opportunity for experimentation,  the prevailing reaction appears to be a cynical dismissal that is only content with crisis management. This stance intentionally disregards the latent potentials that continue to linger. For instance, consider the inevitable direct clash between militarization and punitive measures, constituting Brazil's exercise of democracy within a security context.

It is by no means groundbreaking today to find ourselves immersed in the news of more incidents involving military police massacres. These events have resulted in at least 14 deaths in Guarujá, São Paulo, 10 in the state of Rio de Janeiro, and 19 in Bahia over recent weeks. This style of governance is encapsulated by these occurrences and has, above all, become routine for marginalized populations across the country. Notably, one of the President's closest confidants and the Chief of Staff (Ministro da Casa Civil) previously held the position of governor in Bahia. His tenure was characterized by a record surge in deaths inflicted by law enforcement, exemplifying a lack of interest in altering the context of genocide and the persecution of Black youth in the nation.

The urgency within the realm of public security cannot be postponed. At the very least, it necessitates a discussion on the dismantling of police forces in Brazil – extending beyond mere demilitarization. This represents a practical policy that various movements in different countries are already advocating. In Brazil, however, progress remains tepid despite its historical status as home to the world's most lethal police force. Similarly, mass incarceration, perpetuated by the criminalization of individuals not yet charged by the State through criminal drug policies, exacerbates social control, warfare, and death within an illicit substance market. Incidentally, the ongoing Supreme Court deliberations regarding drug consumption decriminalization, as imperative as they may be, still fail to address the fundamental core of the issue – whether the comprehensive regulation of the presently illegal drug market or confronting the major ramifications of prohibitionism will have a significant impact on homicide rates driven by armed conflicts between rival groups vying for control of unlawful markets.

Unless we acknowledge the broad-scale demise of the agreement-driven framework of liberal democracy – as the extreme right has already anticipated and organized around – we will be confined to defending deteriorating institutions and repeatedly adopting the role of a party aligned with maintaining order when impending uprisings erupt. Only by breaking free from this cycle can we potentially foster substantive discussions, mobilize and organize agendas – including those mentioned and numerous others – to pave the way for a plausible political future. To radicalize the discourse, regardless of whether victories are achieved or setbacks endured through elections or popular revolts, one thing is clear: the struggle and the persistent force of political creativity must not dissipate. Brazil has become a case study, a laboratory for extreme right insurrections globally, largely due to this very reason: its popular extreme right managed to tap into discontent (mobilizing it through reactionary concepts) and continues to this day to maintain a state of imminent and effective upheaval, always poised to exert pressure on the government.

At the very least, striving to disentangle ourselves from the conventional approach that has confined hegemonic segments of the Brazilian left, which historically sought to align with enlightened bourgeoisie sectors and the democratic right (to say nothing of the privileges and the arbitrary nature of the judiciary) – requires a vigilant focus in Brazil on the intricate processes of politicization supported by novel experiences of self-organized collective life. These processes involve fewer sporadic electoral alliances and more "confluences" for concerted action. It is imperative to remember that the Indigenous village/favela/Quilombo represents the unclaimed potential of future possibilities. Naturally, these forces are not devoid of contradictions, yet they possess a transformative quality that cannot be reduced to government-sanctioned integration. The pursuit of producing disruptions that open the present to the future will inevitably demand a degree of audacity, given the circumstances at hand. Radical events, those that diverge from the familiar narratives, achieve this precisely because they are uniquely equipped to respond to the intolerable.

Augusto Jobim do Amaral is Professor in the graduate programs in Philosophy (School of Humanities) and in Criminal Sciences (School of Law) at the Pontificate Catholic University/Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS). He completed his doctorate in Contemporary Studies from the University of Coimbra, Portugal. Additionally, he has served as a Visiting Professor at the Universidad de Sevilla, Spain, and is a Research Fellow at the Università degli Studi di Padova, Italy. He is the author Politics of Criminology (Tirant lo Blanch, 2020) and is the editor of Algoritarismos and The City as a Biopolitical Machine (Tirant lo Blanch, 2022).

Feature articles express the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or WBO.