Mar 14 2025| Nº. 157

Editorial

On Tuesday, March 11, during an event marking the inauguration of a new Stellantis auto plant in Betim, Minas Gerais, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva addressed tensions with U.S. President Donald Trump, urging him to "speak gently" and be respectful. “Brazil doesn't want to be greater than anyone,” Lula asserted, “but it won't accept being lesser; we want to be equals.” Lula’s comments came in the wake of the U.S. imposing new tariffs on Brazilian steel and aluminum, effective Wednesday, March 12. With a 25% tariff on these imports, Lula expressed confidence in Brazil's economic growth, despite the trade challenge. Lula has mostly avoided direct confrontations with Trump. Indeed, both leaders have not spoken directly since Trump’s return to office in January. Lula also defended his government's economic policies, highlighting achievements under Finance Minister Fernando Haddad and needling Governor Romeu Zema of Minas Gerais, an ally of former president Jair Bolsonaro who is currently trying to position himself for a presidential run next year. 

Also, this week, the lower house of Congress was set to determine new leadership posts for the various working groups and committees, with ranking positions determined by each party’s representation. One critical arena of dispute has been the Committee on Foreign Relations and National Defense (CREDN). As the largest party in Congress, Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party (PL) wants to place the president’s son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, at the head of the CREDN. For its part, Lula’s Workers’ Party PT has filed a request with the Supreme Federal Court (STF) to seize Eduardo's passport, alleging that he has used international trips to rally far right U.S. politicians against Brazilian institutions. Eduardo’s potential leadership of the CREDN is a top priority for the PL, which wants to use the position to challenge the Lula administration and the STF. PT leader Lindbergh Farias emphasized that if Eduardo still holds a passport, the PT will oppose his nomination, citing concerns over his ability to use the committee to conspire with foreign governments against Brazil’s national interests. Eduardo Bolsonaro, however, has pledged to continue criticizing Moraes, stating that he would not be silenced. 

Figures released this week showed that Brazil’s GDP grew by 3.4% last year, driven by strong performances in services (up 3.7%) and industry (up 3.3%), although agriculture saw a 3.2% decline due to adverse weather. This exceeded market expectations even if the positive numbers tapered off by the end of the year. Experts, however, point to enduring inflation and potential trade disruptions as cause for concern in 2025. Indeed, despite overall growth, concerns about fiscal policy and economic sustainability remain as elected officials begin turning their attention to next year’s electoral campaigns.

Highlights

• Coup plotters. Former President Jair Bolsonaro and seven others accused of participating in the failed 2023 coup d'état will have their cases heard for the first time by the Supreme Federal Court on March 25. The date was set by Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin. The analysis of the complaint filed by the Attorney General's Office will be carried out by the First Chamber of the STF, which includes Alexandre de Moraes, Cármen Lúcia, Luiz Fux and Flávio Dino, in addition to Zanon himself. The session will only serve to decide whether the complaint meets the legal requirements.
  

• Change in the cabinet. President Lula appointed Gleisi Hoffmann to head the Secretariat of Institutional Relations of the Presidency of the Republic, which is responsible for coordination between the Executive Branch and the National Congress. Gleisi is a federal congresswoman and president of the Workers' Party (PT). The choice indicates that the second half of Lula's term will be marked more by the government's PT identity than by maintaining the broad front that guaranteed Lula's victory in 2022. As a result, allied parties that are not left-wing are losing ground, and the PT is beginning to articulate its own candidates for the 2026 elections.

• Senate. Former President Jair Bolsonaro has begun working behind the scenes in his party, the Liberal Party (PL), to define who will be the candidates for the Senate in the 2026 elections. The articulation has begun with the party's president, Valdemar da Costa Neto. The two had been banned from meeting for over a year, but met this week in São Paulo after the court order was lifted. The Senate is a priority for the far right, because it can propose impeachment proceedings against Supreme Court justices who have been supporting the prosecution of Bolsonaro and his supporters involved in the coup attempt.

• Military crime. Bolsonaro himself is barred from running for election until 2030, due to two convictions he received in the Electoral Court. This week, the new president of the Superior Military Court, Maria Elizabeth Rocha, said upon taking office that the former president could also be tried for “inciting the troops” in the 2022 coup movement. The unexpected statement opens up a new area of ​​concern for the former president, whose case was sent to the Supreme Court earlier this year for involvement in the failed coup attempt against Lula.

• Dictatorship. The Office of the Attorney General of the Union has ruled in favor of changing the name of the 4th Light Mountain Infantry Brigade of the Brazilian Army, nicknamed the March 31 Brigade, in honor of the date of the 1964 coup d'état. It was from this brigade, located in Juiz de Fora, that the troops left for Rio de Janeiro for the coup that deposed President João Goulart and established a 21-year dictatorship in Brazil. The Supreme Court had ordered the change of the brigade's name, but the Army said it was in negotiations with the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office for an intermediate agreement.

• Inflation. Inflation in Brazil had its highest increase (1.31%) for this period of the year since February 2003. In the last 12 months, the index was 5.06%, well above the inflation target ceiling for 2025, which was 4.5%. The increase in prices was mainly caused by inflation in energy (up 16.8% in February) and food (0.7% in the same period). The price of eggs rose 15.39% and that of coffee, 10.77%.

News from ABO and social organizations and movements:

Course. The Brazil Office is promoting a course in April and May on the functioning of the Inter-American Human Rights System in partnership with the Behner Stiefel Center for Brazilian Studies at San Diego State University. The course is online and free for those selected. It takes place once a week, over eight sessions, always on Fridays, except on holidays. The course will begin on April 4. Applications must be submitted via the link.

CSW. The WBO is supporting Brazilian feminist organizations that traveled to New York this week to participate in the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) Conference. This meeting marks the 30th anniversary of the UN meeting in China in which there will be a review of the Beijing Plan of Action on Women's Rights. Sami Sternberg, Coordinator of Institutional Relations and Social Articulation at the Brazil Office, and Denise Dora, coordinator of the Gender and Freedom of Artistic Expression Program, accompanied the group.

Immigrants. The WBO is supporting an organization created to help Brazilian immigrants in the United States. The initiative is coordinated by the USNDB (United States Network for Democracy in Brazil), a network formed by Brazilian and U.S. academics and activists in the United States, with the participation of a group of four other entities. On March 7, two representatives of the WBO – the president of the Board of Directors, James N. Green, and the public relations specialist, Iman Musa Jadallah – participated in a meeting to coordinate the group, which was attended by the Brazilian ambassador to the United States, Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti.

U.S. politics. The most recent actions of President Donald Trump were the subject of analysis in two appearances by WBO members in the press. Rafael R. Ioris, a researcher associated with the Brazil Office, commented on aspects of current U.S. politics on the channel of the Brazilian magazine Carta Capital, while James N. Green, president of the Board of Directors, spoke to the ICL channel.

Feature Article

Blasting the Amazon: The Araguaia-Tocantins Shipping Channel’s Data Holes and Erasure of Traditional Peoples

by Tiffany M. Higgins

In the coming months, Brazil may begin blasting a river in the Amazon to create an industrial shipping channel. The Hidrovia Araguaia-Tocantins, largely unknown outside Brazil, could span over 3,000 km, bringing profound consequences: disrupting traditional livelihoods, endangering food security and biodiversity, threatening public health, increasing carbon emissions, and altering forests in Indigenous, quilombola, and ribeirinho territories. Experts warn that its impact could rival the Belo Monte dam, yet unlike Belo Monte, this project has advanced quietly through thousands of pages of studies with little civil society debate.

The project will involve dredging and rock-blasting over 4,500 km of riverbed, the most extensive reshaping of a river basin in Brazil’s history. But can it even work? My investigation found that a technical feasibility study was never conducted to assess whether a shipping channel could function in this basin. Water loss in the Araguaia and Tocantins rivers—both documented and projected—raises doubts about the channel’s viability.

Crucially, Brazil’s Transportation Infrastructure Department (DNIT) based its water data only on Tocantins River levels through 2017—failing to account for the severe droughts of 2023-2024 or future water scarcity projections. Lower river levels increase waterway transport’s fuel use and carbon emissions. Leading experts—including Carlos Souza (MapBiomas Água), José Marengo (CEMADEN), Rodrigo Paiva (UFRGS Hydraulic Institute), and Suely Araújo (Climate Observatory)—agree: DNIT must update its studies with projected lower water flows before proceeding.

Despite this, DNIT and agribusiness are exerting pressure to issue an installation license in the coming months to begin three years of explosions at the Pedral do Lourenço, a crucial regional fishery that sustains thousands. The 43-km-long, 80-meter-deep rocky labyrinth, formed over millions of years, would be permanently destroyed—without certainty that the channel will remain navigable as river levels drop. Experts insist that DNIT must resolve these glaring uncertainties before detonations begin.

Beyond feasibility concerns, the project threatens vast areas of traditional lands, a soy expansion corridor accelerating the conversion of smallholder-managed forests into industrial agriculture, exacerbating carbon emissions, warns Carlos Souza. On the Tocantins River alone, it will impact more than 35 Indigenous territories, dozens of quilombola communities, and more than 10 conservation units. The entire channel would cross Mato Grosso, Goiás, Maranhão, Tocantins, and Pará, with plans for new megadams to control water levels for barges.

A 2009 ruling affirmed that a project of this scale requires comprehensive environmental impact studies for all affected stretches, to be submitted at the same time to licensing organ Ibama. But DNIT adopted a different strategy: dividing the project into smaller parts and denying that it is a shipping channel. Instead, they claim to only be making “navigation improvements” in the 500 km between Marabá and Barcarena in Pará—while recycling studies from an earlier channel licensing attempt. DNIT recently told a judge it “gave up on” Araguaia hidrovia plans. Yet documents show DNIT, since 2022, is the "responsible party” for Hidrovia Araguaia construction.

This fragmentation is “fraud,” says Suely Araújo, the former director of the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA). By minimizing the project’s scale, DNIT has kept public scrutiny at bay, preventing meaningful debate on its impacts.

A February 5 ruling on licensing falsely claimed no traditional river communities exist at the Pedral do Lourenço. This is demonstrably untrue. Since 2019, I have documented the traditional riverfolk communities who for generations have dwelled and fished there, maintaining deep cultural ties to the river. Their collective of 23 ribeirinho communities has a consultation protocol, and they have long demanded their legally guaranteed free, prior, and informed consultation—a right that has been ignored.

The ruling also wrongly stated that a fishing diagnostic had been conducted for the Pedral. Professor Cristiane Cunha (UNIFESSPA), who researches Pedral fishing, attests that it was not done. Federal prosecutors argue that without a baseline assessment of the riverfolk’s catch and income, there will be no way to measure the impact of three years of explosions on their livelihoods. Without this, future legal claims for damages may be impossible.

DNIT publicly seeks to license 177 km of dredging of the Tocantins River between Marabá and Barcarena. However, documents I reviewed suggest the true dredging area planned by DNIT there may be over 400% larger than what is being presented for licensing. This raises alarming questions about communities left out of impact assessments.

DNIT’s approach relies on a government directive that classifies navigation as having minimal environmental impact, supposedly negating the need for licensing. It’s a claim that federal prosecutors challenge, and that a judge rejected in the case of the Hidrovia Paraguai-Paraná. Communities on islands and riverbanks excluded from DNIT’s studies will still face the consequences: riverbank erosion, disruption of fish populations and reproduction, pollution from barge waste and fuel leaks into drinking water.

These oversights have serious human rights implications, say federal prosecutors. Without urgent action, the Araguaia-Tocantins channel risks becoming another Belo Monte, bringing lasting harm to river communities.

Before the explosions begin, fundamental flaws in data, impact assessments, and community rights must be addressed. The future of these river ecosystems—and these riverfolk, quilombola, and Indigenous peoples—depends on it.

*Tiffany M. Higgins is an independent multimedia investigative journalist covering the Brazilian Amazon. A Fulbright scholar and Pulitzer Rainforest Journalism Fund grantee, she has reported extensively on the competing interests shaping the conflict over turning the Tocantins River into an industrial shipping channel.

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