The lobbying by the Brazilian far-right in the United States in recent months, aimed at imposing tariffs and other sanctions against Brazil and its authorities to obtain internal political and electoral benefits, is illegal. Equally illegal is conspiring internationally against the regular functioning of one's own democratic institutions.

Where standing babassu palms remain, there is food, water, work, memory, and resistance. For thousands of women who harvest babassu nuts, defending the palm tree means defending their territory, traditional ways of life, and the continued presence of their communities within the forests, fields, and waterways.

 One often hears it said that Brazil is a country without memory. This narrative circulates among progressive groups and voices of various stripes. It serves to explain everything from the difficulty of punishing crimes committed during the dictatorship to the 2016 coup against Dilma Rousseff and the political rise of Jair Bolsonaro in 2018. We argue that this premise is false. Brazil is not a country without memory; rather, it is a country where memory regarding the dictatorship is contested, internally contradictory, and politically consequential.

In March 2026, an 18-year-old man was arrested in Rio de Janeiro in relation to a brutal case of group sexual assault of a 17-year-old girl earlier that year. The culprit was photographed wearing a t-shirt with the provocative slogan “regret nothing” at his police hearing, sparking public outrage around the diffusion of Red Pill ideology among young males in Brazil. The motto refers to the British American online influencer, Andrew Tate, who for years has been fostering extreme misogynistic opinions from his social media channels, where he counts millions of followers, many of whom are youngsters.

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.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who personally experienced the challenges of drought in the northeastern hinterland, has before him the opportunity to correct a historical omission and transform the recovery of the Caatinga, a semi-arid biome in northeastern Brazil,” into a permanent commitment of the State. The enactment of Bill 1990/2024, approved by the Brazilian Congress, will institute the National Policy for the Recovery of Caatinga Vegetation, creating the first Brazilian legal framework specifically aimed at the recovery of a biome.

A delegation of party leaders from the government coalition is arriving in Washington to meet with members of the U,S. Congress, diplomats, international organizations, the Inter-American Human Rights System, journalists, academics, and local civil society organizations. In addition to informing and explaining the strengths of our democracy, the delegation will also deliver a clear message against any interference that may exist in the United States in relation to Brazil: there is no room for intrusions in the October election, whether rhetorical, economic, informational, or even military.

The coordinated offensive by the rural caucus in Brazil's National Congress this week perhaps represents one of the most significant institutional reconfigurations of Brazilian environmental policy since the Bolsonaro government. Under the guise of "modernization," "legal certainty," and "debureaucratization," a set of projects approved or accelerated by the Chamber of Deputies, the lower chamber of Congress, profoundly alters environmental oversight mechanisms, expands the political power of agribusiness over state regulatory structures, and reduces instruments for protecting strategic biomes.

In a few months, Brazil will hold what could prove to be one of its most consequential elections in recent history. Until last week, polls had consistently indicated a dead heat between sitting President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Flávio Bolsonaro, former President Jair Bolsonaro’s oldest son and the caretaker of the extreme-right’s positions in the country. Recent revelations indicate that Flávio has had an on-going close relations with now disgraced and recently arrested former celebrity-banker Daniel Vorcaro, the owner of Master Bank and main figure in what could prove to be one of Brazil’s biggest financial corruption scandals. This seems to have tilted the scale in favor of Lula, at least for now. But, as the turbulent winds now favoring the democratic forces currently in power in the country could eventually blow in the opposite direction, it is important to understand the elements of the structural polarization that has helped define politics in Brazil for much of the last decade.       

At the end of March at the 14th World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference in Yaoundé, Cameroon, Brazil was the most forceful voice of resistance to the U.S. proposal to make permanent the moratorium on e-commerce, which had prohibited tariffs on streaming, software, and downloads since 1998. Lula maintained his position even under pressure, and the moratorium expired for the first time in 28 years. USTR Jamieson Greer, the main U.S. negotiator, warned at that time that there would be "natural consequences."

Amid the presidential race and in the wake of bitter defeats in his relationship with Congress, President Lula da Silva set aside a few days in his agenda as president and pre-candidate for re-election to meet with Donald Trump in Washington on Thursday, May 7th. Unlike the numerous international trips Lula has undertaken throughout his term, the meeting with Trump is less about international relations and more about the electoral landscape that has been unfolding in recent months.

The meeting between President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and President Donald Trump is far more than a diplomatic gesture: it represents a revealing moment in how the international order is being reshaped under growing tension.

The 2026 presidential election will be the most polarized confrontation since redemocratization. The clash is a referendum, with no competitive third option on the horizon: on one side, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva; on the other, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro.
 But the chess game is much more complex. The real scenario involves economics, geopolitics, a war of narratives, digital platforms, and a series of external variables that could reshape the board.

In Brazil, there is a recurring misconception that the 1988 Constitution created the rights of Indigenous peoples. This is not true. These rights were not born there; they already existed long before. The Constitution did not create these rights; it only recognized them.

Authoritarian leaders around the world have developed a sophisticated repertoire for interfering in the political and electoral processes of other countries in recent years. Everything indicates that this repertoire will be used in Brazil this year, and we need to understand how it works to prepare for what may come.

The weekly newsletter of the Brazil Office Alliance completes its 200th issue in the first week of April. We are very happy and proud to reach this milestone because it represents our commitment to maintaining a regular, reliable, democratic, accessible, free, and bilingual communication channel for almost 4 years, practically without interruption.

The United States has classified two Brazilian organized crime factions – the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) and the Comando Vermelho (CV) – as threats to regional security. Furthermore, the country is flirting with the possibility of classifying them as terrorist organizations, as it recently did with drug cartels in other countries in the region. This has reignited the debate about whether organized crime in Brazil could or should be classified as terrorist. Making this classification, however, would be a mistake for several technical, legal, and practical reasons. Below, we list some of them and present an alternative for more productive cooperation in combating organized crime.

For the first time, a Brazilian intersex person, Caia Maria Coelho, co-director of Intersexo Brasil, spoke at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights during its sessions in Guatemala. To understand the relevance of this moment, this article proposes to outline the disputes surrounding harmful practices aimed at modifying intersex bodies, as well as the institutional limitations that still structure states' responses to these violations.

Under Jair Bolsonaro's leadership, the election will be a true referendum on the existential question that plagues all nations around the globe today. Should we maintain our democratic regime, however flawed it may be, or should we ignore those who care about it and open space for new power arrangements with an authoritarian bent?

Last week, the Association of Professors of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro organized a conference on the Praia Vermelha Campus with Minister Celso Amorim, the experienced diplomat and special advisor to the presidency of the republic. We begin this short article commenting on this conference less for its content than for the symbolic dimension it represents.