Supporters of the Brazilian ex-President Jair Bolsonaro stormed Brasília today, in a scene reminiscent of the far-right attack on the U.S. Capitol in 2021. In 2019, Jon Lee Anderson wrote on the rise of Trumpian authoritarianism in Brazil:
, who is fending off charges of fraud and bribery, got a riotous cheer. Bolivia’s President, Evo Morales, the only left-wing leader to attend, was subjected to shouts of “Get out, communist,” and “Despite Bolsonaro’s divisive rhetoric, American conservatives were enthusiastic about his Presidency. He had expressed leeriness of China and hostility toward socialists in Cuba and Venezuela; he promised to move Brazil’s Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
For Brazilians watching the news in recent years, the country can appear to be perilously in decline. An enormous scandal—called Operação Lava Jato, or “Operation Car Wash”—seems to involve every third official in the government. Two dams have collapsed at mine sites in the countryside, releasing millions of gallons of waste. Last September,, destroying an irreplaceable ethnographic collection.
In 1970, during the first decade of military rule, a Brazilian Army unit descended on Eldorado in pursuit of Carlos Lamarca, an officer who had gone rogue and joined a Marxist guerrilla group. As the soldiers ransacked houses and searched the woods for hideouts, Bolsonaro, who was fifteen, was enthralled; he offered to help them in their search.
During Bolsonaro’s Presidential campaign, women protested his candidacy, under the slogan #NotHim. Nevertheless, he got more than half the female vote. When he was denounced, it often seemed only to strengthen his support. Last September, a month before the first round of voting, he visited the provincial city of Juiz de Fora. He was relaxed, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, as his supporters carried him through the streets on their shoulders.
Much of Bolsonaro’s political support comes from agribusiness, the arms industry, and the religious right, a nexus of power referred to as the Three “B”s—beef, bullets, and Bibles. In Brasília, I met with Alberto Fraga, one of his oldest friends and a close political ally, who headed the “bullet bloc” in congress for two decades, until a recent conviction on bribery charges.
The investigation has produced no conclusions, but there has been some political fallout. Jean Wyllys, one of the country’s three openly gay lawmakers, was on a trip abroad when the news broke about Flávio’s connection with the Crime Bureau. Wyllys, a friend and political ally of Franco’s, announced that he would not return to Brazil; he did not want to choose between living with bodyguards and risking death. Wyllys was an antagonist of Bolsonaro’s.
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