Oct 27 2023 | Nº. 90

Editorial

On Monday, members of paramilitary gangs in Rio de Janeiro staged one of the largest, most blatant acts of criminality in the city’s history, burning 35 buses and a train. These organized criminal enterprises known as milícias, which often involve active or former members of police forces and the military, have come to dominate large swathes of Rio de Janeiro over the past two decades. One 2019 study found that milícias operated, and exerted some form of control, in over 58 percent of the territory of the city of Rio de Janeiro. Monday’s destruction, which came in retaliation for the killing of the second-in-command of the city’s largest milícia by police forces, illustrates the extent to which these organizations can inflict incredible disruptions to the lives of ordinary people in the areas that it controls. On the heels of other major public security crises in recent weeks, this incident fueled calls for a stronger federal response. Justice Minister Flávio Dino said on Wednesday that “one of the biggest political mistakes that occurred in Rio de Janeiro was the encouragement of milícias. The militias were encouraged by politicians and protected by politicians.” Among those politicians with close ties to milícia members is former president Jair Bolsonaro, who, along with his family, once celebrated these paramilitary forces as grassroots actors working to improve their neighborhoods. 

Milícias represent one of the most intractable public policy challenges facing Brazilian elected officials at the municipal, state, and national level. On Tuesday, Dino stated that he urged President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to use the armed forces in Rio de Janeiro to help ensure the safety and recovery of the affected areas. Lula was set to meet with Defense Minister José Múcio to discuss options. Dino, who is widely expected to be Lula’s pick to fill a vacant seat on the Supreme Federal Court, insisted that the “central issue in defeating milícias and criminal organizations involves the combination we are working on: intelligence, technology and capitalization.” The governor of Rio de Janeiro also requested federal support in ensuring security along federal highways, ports, and airports in the state. President Lula is expected to announce a new security package to address those areas next week. Demonstrating an effective federal response is an urgent necessity for the federal government. In the same way that economic and political crisis fueled the rise of far-right figures like former president Jair Bolsonaro, there is broad recognition among progressive forces that an inadequate response to legitimate safety fears can also empower anti-democratic forces. Public security is already shaping up to be one of the central challenges of this third Lula term.

Highlights

• POLITICAL ESPIONAGE. This week the Federal Police launched a major operation against the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (ABIN) that during Jair Bolsonaro's government used Israeli software to monitor the cell phones of journalists, activists, and political opponents of the then president. Among the information obtained from the 33,000 people monitored with this software were records of actions directed against the British journalist Glen Greenwald and his husband, Congressman David Miranda, who died in May, both linked to progressive currents, left-wing parties, the independent press, and social movements. Another victim of ABIN’s surveillance was Jean Wyllys, a former congressman who went into exile during the Bolsonaro government due to death threats.

• SPY SOFTWARE. The software called FirstMile was purchased without a bidding process during the administration of President Michel Temer, who preceded Bolsonaro. The mechanism was produced by the company Cognyte, which at the time was linked to the Israeli group Verint Systems Inc., whose representative in Brazil was Caio Cruz, son of General Santos Cruz – a Brazilian army reserve soldier who commanded peace missions in Haiti and the Democratic Republic of Congo before joining the Bolsonaro government as chief minister of the Government Secretariat. Later, Santos Cruz would fight with Bolsonaro and leave the government as a political opponent resentful of the former president. His son was one of the targets of Federal Police search operations in the espionage case.

• ARRESTS AND DISPUTES. The Federal Police operation led to the arrest of two agents from the Brazilian intelligence service and the dismissal of the agency's third most important agent, Paulo Maurício Fortunato Pinto, as well as two other employees. Upon executing a search and seizure warrant, police found US$171,800 in cash in Fortunato's home.

• VEILED DISPUTE. The case also involves a veiled dispute between ABIN and the Federal Police. ABIN says it was already conducting internal investigations into misuse of the software. The agency also states that it had been discreetly passing on this information regularly to the Supreme Court and the Federal Police. On the other hand, the Federal Police, whose current leadership was appointed by the Lula government and is politically aligned with the president, gave wide publicity to the operation, mainly exposing agents who were loyal to Bolsonaro in the previous administration.

• BOLSONARO SUED. The Superior Electoral Court began judging yet another case involving former President Bolsonaro. On Tuesday, October 24, judges began analyzing the case that refers to the fact that Bolsonaro used the September 7th Independence celebrations to campaign for his own re-election with use of public money and involve politically the Armed Forces in the events. The former president has already been declared ineligible to run for office for eight years, after being convicted by that same court in a case that involved a meeting with foreign ambassadors to criticize the Brazilian electoral system.

• GOVERNMENT ASSESSMENT. A Quaest survey released on October 25 shows that after ten months the positive evaluation of the Lula government is 38 percent, while the negative evaluation is 29 percent. The percentage of people who consider the current government to be average is also 29 percent. In August, 42 percent considered the government's management to be positive, which represents a drop of four percentage points.

• POLITICAL NEGOTIATION. The Lula government announced this week the change of command at the public bank Caixa Econômica Federal. Rita Serrano was removed from office. She had been appointed at the beginning of Lula's third term. In her place, Antônio Vieira Fernandes entered. He is linked to Arthur Lira, the president of the Chamber of Deputies. The maneuver is a way to please political sectors on the right and center in an effort to increase the government's support base in Congress.

NEWS FROM SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS AND MOVEMENTS:

BRAZIL IN TRANSITION. On October 19 and 20, the WBO and Georgetown University promoted the Brazil in Transition conference in Washington, D.C., which brought together fifteen experts and activists from Brazil and abroad to discuss issues such as human rights, racism, economic development, the environment, and Indigenous peoples. The full discussion is available in two videos on the WBO website, which also includes photos and texts that summarize the main points discussed during the two-day conference.

BRAZIL UNFILTERED. In the new episode of the WBO podcast, Brazil Unfiltered, James N. Green interviews anthropologist Athayde Motta about the impact of the actions of social movements and popular participation on political and social processes. The episode is available on the main apps and can be viewed on the WBO profile page on YouTube.

NEW AFFILIATES. Two new organizations joined the WBO in October: the Observatory of Whiteness, which contributes to the promotion of racial and democratic discussions, from the perspective of whiteness, and the Institute for the Defense of Human Rights (IDDH), an organization that seeks increase the number of educators and human rights defenders in Brazil.

AWARD-WINNING JOURNALISTS. The 45th annual Vladimir Herzog Amnesty and Human Rights Award ceremony was held on October 25 in São Paulo, which recognizes reporting and other journalistic activities linked to the defense of human rights and democracy in Brazil. This year the award, created by the Vladimir Herzog Institute and named after the journalist killed under torture by the dictatorship in 1975, paid special tribute to journalists Glória Maria, Sonia Bridi, and Fernando Morais.

Feature Article

by Andrew Janusz

Black Underrepresentation in Brazilian Legislatures

Brazil is home to the largest African descendant population of any country outside of Africa. Despite comprising a majority of the Brazilian population, though, politics is dominated by whites. At the local, state, and national levels, elected officials are overwhelmingly white. The more prestigious and powerful the office, the lower the chances that an Afro-Brazilian holds power. According to Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court, in 2022, only 26 percent of the politicians elected to the Chamber of Deputies, Brazil’s lower house of Congress, identified as Afro-Brazilian. Fewer still attained seats in the Federal Senate. Just 5 of the 27 Senators elected in 2022 to Brazil’s upper house of Congress identified themselves as Afro-Brazilian. 

Following each election, media outlets in Brazil dutifully report that Afro-Brazilians are underrepresented and speculate about why.  What is it that is keeping Afro-Brazilians out of office? Is their underrepresentation due to insufficient opportunity, a lack of resources, or discrimination?  What traditionally receives passing attention, however, is why Afro-Brazilian representation “matters.” Some Brazilians contend that it doesn’t. Several politicians have personally told me that whether a legislator is white or Afro-Brazilian says nothing about what they do in office and claimed that white legislators are capable of representing the interests of Brazil’s nonwhite citizens. Others, however, maintain that the racial composition of Congress affects how it looks, it determines who it serves.

Brazilian legislators have broad discretion over the policy issues they focus on, but scarce time and energy. They simply cannot devote themselves to every issue. As a result, they dedicate themselves to addressing the problems they are knowledgeable and passionate about -- issues that affect them on a personal level. Among the issues that personally affect Afro-Brazilian lawmakers is racial discrimination.  In her memoir, Benedita da Silva, the first Afro-Brazilian woman elected to Congress, not only recounts a variety of times she personally suffered racial discrimination but also how those experiences shaped her priorities.

I know the position of blacks in this country. From the time I was tiny, I was made tofeel my place. I learned to go in through the back door. I was told I was ugly because I had crinkly hair and black skin...I have a special responsibility to speak out on the subjects that I know about - against racial discrimination, against the unequal rights of women and against the injustices suffered by the poor. (Riding 1987).

Benedita Da Silva’s congressional record demonstrates that her comments are not cheap talk. Over her career, she has sponsored a number of bills on racial issues as well as publicly spoken out against racism. While she has distinguished herself as a strong proponent of Afro-Brazilians, she is not the only one.  According to data on bill sponsorship, between 1995 and 2022 Afro-Brazilian legislators were significantly more likely to sponsor legislation that addresses the material needs of the Afro-Brazilian community and bills that valorize blackness in Brazilian society.

Not all Afro-Brazilian legislators, however, are committed to advocating for Afro-Brazilians.  Some see it as unnecessary. Hélio Lopes, an Afro-Brazilian congressional representative and Bolsonaro ally, for example, publicly proclaimed that “There is no racism in Brazil. Brazil is not a racist country.” In contrast to many other Afro-Brazilian legislators, he is also opposed to affirmative action policies that take into account race. He stated, “I am totally against racial quotas. My children are black, but they have to compete on equal terms. Do you know why? Because poverty has no color. If they are going to give a social quota, it has to be because of vulnerability.” In Brazil, however, poverty does have a color -- Black.  As noted in the WBO annual report, Afro-Brazilians are significantly poorer than their white counterparts. Expanding access to education though quotas though has the potential to change this.  As noted by my colleagues, higher education is the most effective tool for social mobility. 

Not all Afro-Brazilian lawmakers are committed to advancing a racial agenda.  Importantly, though, not all white lawmakers are opposed to it.  In 2012, when affirmative action policies were first implemented, most white lawmakers voted in favor of them.  White lawmakers affiliated with leftwing parties like the PT and PSOL routinely support race-conscious legislation.  Their support is consequential.  Due to racial disparities in political representation, Afro-Brazilian lawmakers cannot advance the legislation they propose without their help. They simply do not have the votes.

Afro-Brazilians make a difference in the policymaking process.  They have different policy interests, preferences, and priorities than their white counterparts.  But the policies that are debated, voted on, and ultimately enacted are conditional on elected assemblies as a whole. When Afro-Brazilians have little representation, their needs are likely to be left off the national agenda and the policies that are implemented can be expected to reinforce racial inequality.

Andrew Janusz is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Florida and a WBO research fellow. His research focuses on elections and political representation in Brazil. He has published several articles in peer-reviewed outlets and is currently writing a book on racial politics in Brazil. This text was originally written for issue 90 of the WBO Newsletter, published on October 27, 2023. Fill in the form at the bottom of the text to access and subscribe to the WBO weekly newsletter in English.

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