THE MAD KING AND HIS COURT: JAIR BOLSONARO’S MINISTERIAL MEETING VIDEO IS RELEASED

It’s become somewhat of a trope in Brazilian newsrooms to draw parallels between the storylines of Netflix’s House of Cards and the never-ending drama of Brazilian politics. However, after the Supreme Court made public a video of a meeting between Jair Bolsonaro and his ministers, it would seem that Scarface is the more fitting comparison.

Released as part of the ongoing investigation into alleged political interference by Jair Bolsonaro, the meeting shows the President ranting and raving like the Mad Kings of old.

“It’s a disgrace!” he screeches. “An absolutely disgrace that I don’t have the information I need.”

JAIR BOLSONARO, APRIL 2020

It soon becomes clear that the information he craves is really access — the ability to call up a friendly face in every organ to enquire about cases of interest.  

Spitting expletives, Bolsonaro shouts that that he will continue to interfere into any body he sees fit.

“This isn’t a threat, nor an extrapolation on my part” he barks “It’s reality.” 

Implicit in this bulldozing of checks and balances is the constitutionally independent Federal Police which is currently investigating two of his eldest sons. Son 01, as Bolsonaro likes to refer them, is being investigated re links to the Brazilian mafia. Son 02, for his role in the fake news machine that keeps the Bozo base outraged.

Next to speak are several senior ministers — each keen to demonstrate their loyalty to the sinking government ship.

The Minister of Education suggests jailing Supreme Court Judges.

The Environment Minister promises to let Big Agro run unchecked through the Amazon while the press is busy with the pandemic.

The Minister of Human, Family and Women’s Rights implies that the reason so many indigenous people have been infected is because “communists” got their first and started spreading the disease to discredit Jair Bolsonaro.

While each indulges in their own language of betrayal, mutiny or mission creep, the message is clear. This is a government that feels persecuted by the very institutions that elected them.  

While it’s not a new narrative in our populist era, it does acquire a unique flavour in Brazil.

Throughout his presidency, Bolsonaro has fattened the idea of a communist takeover into a sacrificial lamb. The more instable his government gets, the juicier it becomes.

Forget that the Communist Party have one of the lowest shares of power in Congress or that Bolsonaro has scared off more foreign investment than the last three Presidents combined. Communists — which has come to encompass anyone with centrist or left-leaning tendencies —are what has robbed Brazil of its destiny of becoming a modern thriving nation. 

By this same logic, any evidence against Bolsonaro must also be fabricated, planted by the rapacious commies that stalk the land.


“I didn’t ask for special treatment from Moro, just for him to prevent them planting evidence in my son’s house”

JAIR BOLSONARO, MAY 2020

Like most conspiracy theories, it obfuscates more than it reveals, robbing the population of the chance to have structured conversations around the very real problems of racism, inequality or corruption.

Instead we’re forced to live in the psychological territory Bolsonaro sets out for us. In this nostalgic Wild West, there is no nuance, just the light-skinned ‘goodies’ and the black ‘bandidos’ — both of which are brandishing arms. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is deemed “necessary” is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish.

Enter the military, often portrayed as the only viable alternative to the ups and downs of Brazilian politics. An almost knee-jerk reaction, Brazil has seen 4 military coups in the last century. Worse still, their cruel reigns are often revised as periods of relative “stability” in the shared consciousness —  despite their well-documented reputation for torture.

With an unscrupulous General for Vice President, it’s exactly this muscle memory of repression that Bolsonaro looks set to ignite. As the cards fold under this ramshackle government and recession looms, it’s hard to see how Brazil will avoid this most unfortunate of fates.

Feature Image Cartoon by the great Paulo Caruso for O Globo 

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TEARS OF A CLOWN: BOLSONARO & COVID-19

Brazil has a history of electing clowns. In 2010, Francisco Oliveira Silva, a television comedian and children’s entertainer, was elected as one of the federal deputies for Sao Paulo, garnering more than 1.3 million votes. His slogan? It can’t get any worse than it already is. Seven years later, Jair Bolsonaro crash-landed onto the political centre-stage — a reminder, if ever there was one, not to tempt fate.

Since then, Bolsonaro has gone above and beyond the role of jester, eroding away any respectability of office with his lewd jokes and unabashed racism. An increasingly erratic presence, his attempts at governance have provoked laughs from across the political spectrum. And while we are all entitled to a sense of humour, what happens when the punchline is democracy itself? 

His supporters would have you believe it sensationalism. To them, he is like a drunk uncle at a family barbecue — bumbling but harmless. For the rest of the population, he is a dictator-in-waiting, flanked by generals who have grown tired of chomping at the democratic bit.

Indeed, Bolsonaro’s frustration with his own government and the democratic process has become particularly pronounced over the last month. On the 15th March, he could be found greeting throngs of supporters, following a call-to-arms to “defend the President” against the scrutiny of Congress.

That swathes of people turned out despite strict warnings from the Ministry of Health about the risk of COVID-19 contagion is testament to the fervor he inspires amongst his base. 

Image captured by Roberto Sungi for Futura Press of the pro-President protests on 15/03/20 — engineered in part by former General Augusto Heleno.

Things reached a crescendo last Tuesday during an address to the nation in which Bolsonaro abandoned the government line on how best to mitigate the outbreak of coronavirus. 

Bolsonaro’s polemic address to the nation on 24/03/20

Over the course of five minutes, he skidded from one scapegoat to the next, attacking everyone from state governors to the media at large for instilling a climate of “hysteria” over COVID-19. The virus, he touts, is nothing more than a light flu, which would have no impact on a “former athlete” such as himself (such a claim is false on both counts). He concluded by urging Brazilians to return to schools and work, in effect sabotaging the nation-wide attempt at social distancing. 

This weekend, speakers could be heard blaring out in the capital of Minas Gerais encouraging residents to leave their homes for a pro-President parade in the park. 

In a rare act of unity, 26 of Brazil’s 27 state governors met to move against him, advocating the need for continued social distancing within their respective regions. Former allies such as Ronaldo Caiado (state governor of Goias) severed ties with the President all together, describing his behaviour as “appalling”.

A tearful Bolsonaro has since responded by looking to his military cronies for backing — among them General Walter Braga Neto, newly appointed Chief of Staff. In a truly ingratiating move, Neto took it upon himself yesterday to undermine the Minister of Health, Luiz Henrique Mandetta, mid-press conference, while dropping veiled hints of his potential dismissal.

Such fraying relations between a Head of State and congress are not uncommon in the Trumpian era. However, they do have sobering overtones in a nation whose last military dictatorship is within living memory. 

It’s a legacy that’s already been aggressively revised under the current President. This time last year, Bolsonaro sent a letter to the UN denying that a coup d’etat ever took place on the 31st March 1964. Instead, he claimed, the military takeover was a “necessary move to fight the growing threat of communism in Brazil”. 

Compare this unnecessary action in 2019 with the lack of action in 2020, and we have an insight into the hollowness of his far-right ideology. Like his ally in the White House, it’s clear that Jair Bolsonaro is only good at responding to imagined threats, rather than real, impending ones.

Climate change, pandemics, and rising global debt cannot be reduced to moral crusades and as such tend to infuriate men like Bolsonaro. In response, he lights all the political bonfires possible to avoid having to deal with them. 

However, with the economy sputtering and unemployment on the rise, this particular bonfire has the potential to blaze even larger than the Amazonian fires that engulfed much of north-west Brazil last August.

In positioning himself against the national quarantine, Bolsonaro flinches away from assuming any responsibility, preparing for a possible “I told you so moment” when the inevitable post-corona recession hits. 

At such a time, he will no doubt point to the governors and institutions of state who, in acting to save lives, allowed the economy to stumble.

How the wider population will view this is the great unknown. Jair Bolsonaro might be politically illiterate, but he has proven himself perfectly adept at inciting extreme emotions in the electorate. With the backing of his uniformed pals guaranteed, could Jair have the last laugh when it comes to Brazilian democracy? That remains to be seen.

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bjarke ingels meets jair bolsonaro – A B.I.G Opportunity?

It’s often been said that you can glean an insight into the aspirations of a society by looking at its buildings. And yet architecture can be misleading — particularly in a country as contradictory as Brazil.

Brazilian architecture first made its mark in the 1930s with the blistering debut of Oscar Niemeyer. His Brutalist buildings shot up like curvy concrete dreams —as bold in their sinuosity as they were in their hopes of bringing about a socialist utopia. While the latter was never realised, Niemeyer did establish concrete as the material du jour of Brazilian modernism. A symbol of power and permanence, it took on an almost reverent significance — the only material capable of taming Brazil’s Atlantic forests.

The years that followed were neither so glamorous nor as audacious. Concrete continued to eat its way through the jungle, connecting the prosperous south with the ancient forests of the North.  

Several major infrastructure projects began only to be forgotten. Sewn into each of the contracts — be it the Trans Amazonian railway or the Angra III Nuclear Plant — were ample opportunities for sticky fingered plundering by the Brazilian elite.

In 2019, Elaine Brum tapped into popular sentiment when she described Brazil as a “constructor of ruins” — a claim now poignantly underscored by the festering Rio Olympic park.

Rio Aquatic Centre
Photograph: Pilar Olivares/Reuters

So it might take readers by surprise to learn of a new architectural masterplan in Brazil’s North East.

In late January, Bjarke Ingels, of the all-star architecture firm, BIG, joined Jair Bolsonaro and a couple of cabinet cronies for a two-week tour of Brazil. Accompanied by investors from the Mexican group, Be-Nômade, they were here on a fact-finding mission to discuss the future of tourism in the country’s idyllic North East.

“”We have travelled Brazil’s northeast region with our collaborators from Nômade Group and met with local governors and mayors, as well as the relevant ministries of economy, culture and tourism and finally the president’s office to gauge the possibility of devising a holistic masterplan for the northeastern coastal states of Brazil to create ecologically and economically sustainable development,” Ingels affirmed .

News of the pairing initially took the media off guard, with portions of the design community immediately denouncing Ingels for fraternizing with a fascist.

Dezeen Comment Thread 17/01/2020

While the allegation may ring true, in his impassioned defence, Ingels stumbles upon two important questions.

How we do deal with despots when it comes to international development? And is it ever possible to separate the project from the regime?

How better to impact the future of the region and the country than to plant the ideas we believe in at the highest level of government? Neither the president nor the ministers are our clients, but we are happy to share our ideas and ideals with a government that is willing to listen. As much as I would enjoy working in a bubble where everybody agrees with me, the places that can really benefit from our involvement are the places that are further from the ideals that we already hold. I love Brazil as a country, and I really want to see Brazil succeed.

Bjarke Ingels

In this particular instance it helps to get a little bit of context on the area that Bozo and his cabinet cronies are looking to develop.

This is not a down-town region of San Fran, destined to morph into a slick Apple Campus, but rather an area larger than France, Spain and Greece combined.


North East – Highlighted in Orange
Via Revista Galileu – Globo

Comprising nine giant states, 8 thousand kilometres of pristine beaches and the lowest human development index in the country, it is a beautiful yet complex region.   

Critics most ardent claim is that such a grandiose plan would legitimise the government, opening the floodgates for investors to do business with the belligerent Jair Bolsonaro.

However, the essence of this project — described as a bare-foot tourism endeavour — seem to be entirely at odds with the slash and burn conservatism of the Bolsonaro government.

If it came into fruition it could be the start of a new era of architecture in Brazil — a chance to turn the page from some the Brutalist tenets that have proved so ecologically damaging.

And if Brazil is to wean itself off its dangerous dependency on commodities (and the corresponding ecocide that comes with them) it will need other service-based sectors.

Sustainable tourism – however oxymoronic that might sound – represents a viable alternative. Not only does it employ citizens of all education levels but its profits, for the most part, can be relied upon to remain local.

Another question that must be asked is if not Ingels, then who? This is a government who has committed itself to development at all costs, accused of inciting violence against whoever gets in their way.

The knee-jerk reaction to any figure as repugnant as Bolsonaro is isolation. And yet in sitting back and letting things fester, we surrender the possibility of a better future.

The proposed masterplan offers a vision that Brazil’s maligned north-east deserves, one rooted in community, renewables and a celebration of its culture.

At a time in which clowns and xenophobes occupy public office, perhaps its only right that we must rely on architects to build diplomatic bridges. But build we must. Because if public opinion is anything to go by, Bolsonaro is not going anywhere. And we let him trample over Brazil at our peril.

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Joseph Goebbels Resurfaces In Brazilian Politics

Philosopher Hannah Arendt once wrote that the aim of totalitarian education is not to instil convictions, but to destroy a population’s capacity to form any. As one of the most prominent intellectuals in Nazi Germany, she had reason to fear its advance. So too, it would appear, do Brazilian creatives, following the announcement of Roberto Alvim, Brazil’s Minister for Culture, on Thursday evening.

“Culture will be national and heroic,” he snarled “or else it will be nothing”.

The announcement was accompanied by the allocation of 20 million reais for cultural projects that emphasise “the motherland, the family, the courage of its people and their profound connection with God.”

It wasn’t long before the Twitter Police began to investigate Alvim’s statement. In announcing the new cultural agenda, Alvim had swapped his usual brand of Old Testament tough talk for the chilling words of Hitler’s Minister of Propoganda, Joseph Goebbels.

An outpouring of public pressure ensued, in which Alvim was removed from his post and government strategists clamoured to distance themselves from the video. 

And yet the notion that this is even slightly off-message for the Bolsonaro government requires stern examination.

The personification of white, male power, Bolsonaro has perfected the art of hiding in plain sight. A ‘political outsider’ despite his 27 years of parliamentary experience, he cannot be seen to be governing. Instead, he relies upon more-qualified minions, the Ricardo Salles’ and Roberto Alvims of the world, to deliver the reforms that will pave the way for his binary vision of Brazil.  

And so it was that just hours before the video’s release, Alvim could be found side by side with the President in his weekly address, receiving compliments and back-slaps for his “bold new vision of national art”.

For older Brazilians, this will all sound eerily familiar. From the critical underfunding of cultural institutions to the slow degradation of artistic subjects in universities, Bolsonaro is following a tried-and-tested agenda to return Brazil to the cultural winter of his 21-year dictatorship.

The slow creep of censorship comes at a the height of interest in Brazilian art, with nominations at this year’s Oscars (Democracia em Vertigem / The Edge of Democracy) and prestigious titles secured at the Cannes Film Festival (Bacarau — Juri Prize).

So unnerved were the Bolsonaro government by the new documentary that a boycott ban was issued via the pro-Bolsonaro Whatsapp groups that proliferate fake news and debate among loyal supporters — an instant form of communication of which Goebbels could only dream.

Like any fascist, Bolsonaro naturally fears arts ability to subvert the status quo, creating futures and ideas that soar above the fickle constraints of politics. And so he’ll continue to use whatever leverage he can to stamp out that which he deems degenerate — the right to imagine new realities, to empathise with others and to ask inconvenient questions.

That Brazilian artists will go on creating goes without saying. Whether they’ll be able to continue to do so without repercussions is another. This month, we invite you to indulge in one of the many Brazilian series on Netflix, from Petra Costa’s Oscar-nominated documentary (Edge of Democracy) to the dystopian world of ‘3%’. In doing so, we save ourselves from a future in which expression is only permissible insofar as it serves the instruments of power.

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Ricardo Salles Vs The Amazon

At 3pm on Monday in São Paulo, night fell. And yet, for the local paulistas there was nothing restful about it. Artificial and pungent, it was the result of rampant wildfires that are eating away at eight Amazonian states. In many ways, the thick smoke was a case of the chickens coming home to roost. In a city that glistens with greed, the black blood of the Amazon is everywhere.

Photo Credit: Rafael Goldzweig (@schmuziger)

Call it irony, pathetic fallacy —the terminology doesn’t matter. Brazil is losing the war on climate, and there is no going back. Not without radical, international pressure. Any local campaign to save the planet will not be polite like the ones in Europe. The environmental activists, the Greta’s of the Global South, are dead. Shot down in the heart of the Amazon by illegal loggers. You might wonder what you have to do with this? Why you should even care at all? And yet the reason they are setting it on fire is to feed the growing global appetite for meat, soy and coffee. I do not say this to scare you or to trick you into feeling guilty. I say it to remind you that it is all connected. We are all connected. And together we must put a stop to this massacre.

To understand how we got here one has to understand Brazil — it’s size, it’s people, it’s politicians. As the fifth largest country in the world, Brazil is enormous, bigger than Europe yet still considered a developing nation. The reasons for this are multiple but many of them can be traced back to colonialism in which its latent wealth was siphoned off and sent to Portugal.

Contrary to Western opinion, Brazil is not all rainforest and beaches. It is home to a staggering array of landscapes, from the crackling cerrado (Savannahs) to the undulating wetlands of the Pantanal. Two thirds of the Amazon Rainforest sit within its borders, making it one of the most biodiverse nations on Earth.

And yet, Brazil’s natural gems occupy a curious position in the public imagination. While the great rivers and forests are generally a source of pride for Brazilians, the people who live there are not. Be those indigenous communities or members of long-suffering quilombos, for Brazilians blighted by Eurocentric conditioning, they are a reminder of Brazil’s lack of development.

It’s a notion that has been courted and encouraged by the controversial new Environment Minister, Ricardo Salles. The poster boy for the powerful Brazilian beef caucus, he is on a mission to privatize the Earth’s lungs. For anyone looking to survive beyond 2050, the timing couldn’t be worse.

Fresh from an appearance at the annual AgriShow in Brazil, Salles spent the month of June visiting impoverished communities that surround areas of particular commercial interest. One such visit was to the Chico Mendes Reserve, a 2.3 million acre area of pristine rainforest placed under protection in 1990.

The trip was documented via a Tweet on Ricardo Salles Twitter account in which he decried the living conditions of the reserve’s 25,000 residents.

Translation: “900 thousand hectares. Thousands of people on the verge of living in misery. The farce of “florestania” (sustainable forestry). They cannot, nor do they want to, survive from the rubber tree, the açaí and the Brazil nut. They want to raise cattle, plant coffee and produce fish in tanks. They (governmental environment protection agencies) will not let you.”

That the minister for Environmental Protection should be seen advocating for big agribusiness is perhaps not a surprise in Bolsonaro’s Brazil. What is impressive, however, is the rhetoric being used to accomplish it.

In just 140 characters, Salles deliberately conflates two pressing social issues: rural poverty and environmental conservation. The straw man goes something like this. In supporting the protection of endangered lands, one is not just an enemy of progress but a threat to the prosperity of rural Brazilians.

It’s a slippery move but not entirely out of character. In 2016, Salles was charged with administrative impropriety for his role in the manipulation of the Environmental Management Plan of the Tietê River Basin. The Public Prosecutors Office accused him of modifying the maps developed by the University of Sao Paulo with the specific aim of benefiting national mining companies.

The recent tragedies in Mariana and Brumadinho tells you everything you need to know about the respect this industry has for human life.






  • Brumadinho
    Foto: Rogério Alves/TV Senado

Flanked by members of the Mendes community, Salles once again draws on the festering frustrations of a nation who’s wealth has always been just out of reach. Rather than atribute blame to corrupt elites or colonial powers, he instead focuses on environmental protections, without which the target of keeping global warming under 2 degrees cannot be achieved.

That the sustainable rubber tapping and nut harvesting that takes place on this reserve is not as immediately profitable as cattle raising is without question. And yet, it’s beyond the pale to suggest that industrialised farming will produce the kind of living standards these rural communities crave.

In the last 6 months alone, Brazil’s Queimada Programme has registered 74,000 forest fires, the worst of which have been centred in Roraima and Amajari. More than 2 thousand families who live off the land lost their livelihood as plantations, pastures and fish plants went up in flames.

  • Photo Credit: Gabriel Uchida via The Intercept Brasil
    Link

The increase in forest fires is both an intended and unintended consequence of monocultural farming practices. On the one hand, there are the illegal loggers and clearers, who use fires to clear rainforest so it can quickly sold as sparse grazing pastures for cattle. Then there are the farmers themselves, who’s poor management of land often sends them in search of greener pastures.

The deliberate loosening of environmental protection under Bolsonaro has served as carte-blanche for loggers to set fires with impunity. As a result, the number of forest fires in Amazonian states has sky-rocketed by an average of 85% in the last eight months alone.

These wave of ecological tragedies offer just a tiny insight into the critical condition of environmental protection in Brazil, a situation that was publicly laid bare on the front of this month’s Economist magazine. In a harrowing report, the author revealed what scientists have long feared. That unprecedented deforestation is threatening to transform the world’s largest carbon sink into a barren, inhospitable desert.

In a world on fire, we are all refugees.

Such a grim and dystopian future was met with disdain by President Jair Bolsonaro. The head of the Brazilian National Space Research Institute, Ricardo Galvao, was fired for his role in divulging the data, and plans put in place for a new system to assess environmental damage.

As luck would have it, nature made it impossible to bury the hatchet, sending rolling waves of black smoke over the city of Sao Paulo.

Salles, once more took to Twitter, paraphrasing a letter from the INPE (now edited) in which he attributed blame to a cold weather front and forest fires raging in neighbouring Bolivia.

Such negligence in the face of fire is indicative of what Salles clearly finds to be an unbearable contradiction: a mineral rich Amazon and a government perfectly poised to exploit it.

It’s an agenda that was on display once again in today’s Financial Times, in which he called for “capitalist solutions” to the environmental crisis. This demand belies not just a flagrant disregard for his office, but a fundamental misunderstanding of what is at stake. Climate change is not a Bolshevik plot, but rather the inevitable consequences of a system that posits forests as real estate for the highest buyer. Without them, there is no us, no future, no hope, a fact that has been clearly outlined in the IPCC’s latest climate report.

In dipping beneath the unctuous public veneer, a grim picture of Salles emerges. Neither the People’s Prince nor a defender of public health, he represents the ugly face of corporate interest, prepared to co-opt any narrative he can in the pursuit of short-sighted financial goals.

If we wish to save what is left of the Amazon rainforest, solutions must be immediate and bold. They certainly won’t be found in meeting with large car manufacturers, as Salles did on the 6th August, to discuss the lifting of taxes on polluting industries.

With the announcement of a new trade deal between MercoSul and the European Union, we find ourselves at an important crossroad. Any trade negotiations must be subject to strict scrutiny, favouring nations whose environmental policies are in line with the ambitious targets set by the European Union itself. Most importantly, we need men like Ricardo Salles to wake up and smell the scorched earth. History will judge him either way.  

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