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For our February 27 issue, Christopher de Bellaigue traveled to Brazil in order to document how, in a decade in which one president was impeached, another was imprisoned after leaving office, and a third fomented an attempted coup, “the politicization of the law and the sleaziness of public life have left Brazilians deeply skeptical of their institutions.”

Bellaigue crisscrosses the country—visiting, among other places, the Square of the Three Powers in Brasília; the world headquarters of the Pentecostal Church of Deus é Amor in São Paulo; the metalworkers’ union in Sao Bernardo do Campo where the current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, got his start; a cattle town in Mato Grosso; the soybean megafarms of Bahia; and, back in São Paulo, a fundraiser where he meets Jair Bolsonaro, “wearing a blue shirt and his biggest, most infantile smile”—and finds shrinking aquifers, the ashes of severe wildfires, powerful agribusiness and evangelical caucuses, a resurgent right wing, and no one in line to replace an aging leftist president.

Below, alongside Bellaigue’s essay, we have collected five articles from our archives about Brazil’s recent history.

Christopher de Bellaigue
Brazil: The Threat from the Right

Former president Jair Bolsonaro and his allies have brought violence into Brazilian political discourse, with consequences that will endure.

Vanessa Barbara
Brazil at the Crossroads

Lula’s election comes as a relief to many Brazilians, but in this historically violent and unequal country, a void in the democratic field endures.

—February 23, 2023

Vincent Bevins
Bigger than Bolsonaro

After four years in power, a movement created by elite campaigns has built a mass base.

—October 28, 2022

Larry Rohter
Brazil’s Brutal Messiah

“Bolsonaro, a truculent sixty-three-year-old congressional deputy from a small fringe party whom some have already taken to calling ‘the Trump of the Tropics,’ owed his ascent to a coalition that included the São Paulo financial elite, the rural landed interests that have devastated the Amazon over the past fifty years, and a growing population of evangelicals. But what put him over the top was the support of urban middle-class voters disgusted by rampant corruption, rising crime rates, and what at least some of them view as the coddling of the darker-skinned poor in recent years.”

—December 6, 2018

Lilia M. Schwarcz
Politically Incorrect: Brazil’s Clown-Elect

“The unpredictable behavior of Brazilian voters can also lead to more baffling outcomes. In 1959, for example, Cacareco, a placid, middle-aged rhinoceros at the São Paulo zoo, was voted onto the city council, having won over 100,000 votes—and this is only the most famous case in Brazil’s long history of ‘protest votes.’ Cacerco has been succeeded by other non-existent candidates, along with candidates from outside the sphere of professional politics, such as soccer players, fashion designers, TV stars, brash pop singers, faded ex-models, and various C-list celebrities with zero knowledge or experience of political life.”

—October 14, 2010

Kenneth Maxwell
Brazil: Lula’s Prospects

“To understand Lula it is essential to realize that he is at the core a union man, a tough labor negotiator, a deep believer in the power of listening to different sectors of opinion and conciliating divergent interests through debate, a formidable forger of consensus, and a leader with a charismatic ability thereafter to mobilize the crowds in the direction chosen.”

—December 5, 2002

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