The two Brazils

Brasilia, January 1, 2023. Aline Sousa, a 33-year-old waste recycler, climbed the Planalto stairs to hand over the presidential sash to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to replace his defeated predecessor Jair Bolsonaro, who hurried off to Florida to avoid attending the event.
Next to her, Francisco, 10, a child from a favela in São Paulo, the worker Weslley Rodrigues, the indigenous leader Raoni Metuktire, the teacher Murilo de Qadros Jesus, the cook Jucimara Fausto dos Santos, the militant Flávio Pereira and the disabled Ivan Baron. Seven women and men of different backgrounds, cultures, geographical and ethnic origins representing the polyhedral people of Brazil in which, just like in this group, the excluded predominate.

Brasilia, January 8, 2023. The same Brazilian people – yet at the same time, another people – broke into those stairs to vandalize the Planalto, the Parliament and the Supreme Court to claim the imaginary victory of Bolsonaro. Just a week had passed between the two images. The time of politics, however, does not always coincide with the time of history.

The difference between the two watches is the expression of the deep wound that tears the flesh of the Giant of the South. In which two non-communicating nations have lived together for at least four years. One, that of real Brazil, which struggles with poverty at 30%, with the return of hunger faced by 33 million people, with corruption, the destruction of the Amazon by the mafias of the earth. The other is the post-truth Brazil of which the crowd that attacked the institutional offices of Brasilia is a prisoner. For the latter, the danger is "the red abyss", a phantom communism which, after having defrauded the vote, wants to take over the country. His actions are so unrealistic as to engage in a battle as fierce as it was lost from the start. The action was prepared with time and economic resources. Just the flow of money is the track followed by the investigators. And it was completed thanks to a series of connivances and complicity that it will now be up to the judiciary to identify and prosecute. Despite the expenditure of resources, however, the attack on democracy did not last more than five hours. The president declared federal intervention, the governor of Brasilia, Ibaneis Rocha, was suspended and placed under investigation, the police chief, Anderson Rocha, ended up in a cell accused of complicity together with hundreds of vandals, the legislative and judicial powers sided decisively with Lula, in defense of democracy. The world, led by the USA, rallied around the incoming government.

Is Brazilian democracy stronger or weaker? The question torments analysts and commentators after the assault on the headquarters of the institutions in Brasilia. The answer is not unique. Certainly, the internal and international solidarity received represents a window of opportunity for the president. In Orlando, where he has been for a month, Bolsonaro appears increasingly isolated. Washington has already made it known that, having entered with a diplomatic visa, he will have to ask for a new permit or leave the country. At home, however, in addition to the numerous investigations into the management of Covid, he is under investigation by the Supreme Court for complicity in the Brasilia attack. Lula, by contrast, gained allies.

At the head of the progressive Partido dos trabalhadores (PT), he won last October 31, with a broad coalition ranging from moderate conservatives to the left. An alliance of anti-authoritarian forces – including those of the right – had called it which, however, until Sunday, existed only as an electoral strategy. So much so that the government had been defined as an amorphous body with a record number of 37 ministries, at the top of which are figures with divergent objectives. The attack perpetrated by supporters of the former president demonstrated the concreteness of the coup threat, transforming the idea of a democratic front into necessity. With the rubble of the presidency, of Parliament, of the Supreme Court, the Administration of "Lula III" was forged.

His window of opportunity is, however, narrow. Very narrow. The rift in the country is real and the polarization is maximum. Healing the wound is just one of the challenges facing the new executive. Poverty has increased to include 30% of the population, a decade high. And hunger has returned: 33 million are its victims. The primary deficit is equivalent to 77% of GDP, twelve points more than the average for emerging countries. In this unfavorable scenario - with the repercussions of the Ukrainian crisis in the background - Lula will have to try to adapt Bolsa familia, the "star" program that during his previous governments saved thirty million Brazilians. And give an environmental content to their social policies, starting with the protection of the Amazon, where deforestation has grown by 60% in the last four years.

Every day, during 2022, the forest has lost an area equivalent to three thousand football fields due to the action not of simple "land grabs" but of powerful criminal organizations operating in the shadows of national and international politicians and entrepreneurs. To counter them, the government will have to put the system of environmental protection that was dismantled, piece by piece, in the Bolsonaro years back on its feet. The choice of the well-known ecologist Marina Silva to the Ministry of the Environment indicates the intention to do so. After all, the president knows that the forest and the climate are the gateway for Brazil to join the club of the Great within which he aims to return - after his fame at the beginning of the 2000s - as the voice of the global South. The success of the dress rehearsal at the COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, chosen by Lula for his international debut even before taking office, leads him to continue on this path. Or, at least, to try. A first sign is encouraging. Brazil has nominated the Amazonian city, Belém do Pará, as the venue for the 2025 UN climate summit (COP30).


Lucia Capuzzi
NP February 2023