This weekend was a real emotional rollercoaster. I got married on Saturday in a beautiful little civil ceremony in Rio, which my mom and a dear friend flew down to witness. (For new folks here, I moved down to Brazil in June in large part because of how the Trump administration was treating noncitizens like my partner.) And the next day, the far right swept Brazil’s elections. Flávio Bolsonaro—son of Jair Bolsonaro, the fascist ex-president who infamously let the Amazon rainforest burn and is on house arrest for attempting a coup—edged out leftist incumbent Lula for president. Multiple members of the Bolsonaro family, including former first lady Michelle, were also elected to the Senate and Congress on Sunday, creating a terrifying new political dynasty in Brazil that has close ties to paramilitary militias and gangs.
The only race that remains uncertain is Flávio’s. He won 47% of the vote to Lula’s 45%, and since neither candidate broke 50%, that means the election goes to a runoff later this month. But no candidate since 1985 in Brazil has come back from losing the first round to win the second, and Flávio is widely expected to become president barring some kind of miracle from the left.
In the past couple of days, some folks have been texting me questions and condolences about the election results. I’m far from an expert on Brazil politics, having only lived here for four months now, but I do have a few general insights about what happened here and what it probably means for the nation and world.
First and most obviously, a Bolsonaro win would be devastating for humanity. Flávio is deeply corrupt and every bit as fascistic and hardline as his dad, though he tries to present himself as a more palatable successor. He denies climate change and supports destructive agrobusiness at a time when the Amazon is at a critical tipping point of turning from a rainforest into a savannah. He wants to give away Brazil’s rare earth minerals to Donald Trump, keep the working class trapped into the six-day workweek, and privatize public transport and utilities. He wants to gut all of Lula’s investments in education and healthcare and the environment, which have lifted tens of millions out of poverty. He’s expected to appoint about five new Supreme Court seats, solidifying the far right’s power for a generation. And he would fully align South America’s largest country and economy with Trump and Israel, likely crashing its currency and turning Brazil, essentially, into a new American colony.
So how did this happen? American interference may have played some small part in this outcome. We know that Trump tried to pressure Brazil’s Supreme Court to let Jair Bolsonaro out of jail, imposed heavy tariffs on the country to punish Lula, and is under investigation for funding right-wing causes in Brazil. Tech billionaires like Elon have been boosting far-right Brazilian agitators on their platforms for years, while Zuckerberg inexplicably blocked Lula’s ads from appearing on Facebook days before the vote. Trump tried to send two officials here to meddle in the elections, though they were denied visas when Lula discovered what was happening, and bizarrely closed American embassies across Brazil on election weekend due to vague “security threats.”
But there are many other factors at play here. Evangelical Christianity is sweeping Brazil, to the point where it’s poised to overtake Catholicism as the main religion here. Unlike Catholics, who generally preach that you should help the poor and feed the hungry and take care of the sick and welcome immigrants (see this incredible moment yesterday), Evangelicals tend to be very conservative and individualistic: Help only your own family, and if you go to church every Sunday and have a wife who’s subservient to you and persecute gay people, you’ll make it to heaven. Flávio presents himself as Evangelical and had preachers telling their congregations to vote for him.
Lula is also 80 years old and running for a fourth nonconsecutive term. When people are generally dissatisfied with the status quo and their own lives, they blame and demonize the incumbent president, and that’s clearly happening here. Folks are frustrated by perceived crime and high gas and food prices and economic stagnation, despite the many very good things Lula has done to improve people’s lives and reduce crime here. And Trump’s depressing effect on the global economy and the global oil crisis he caused is coming across to many voters here as a Lula problem. So even though Lula is trying to move Brazil from a six- to a five-day workweek and invest in social programs that help the poor and working class, the people who are being helped the most by his policies are still voting for “change.”
Ironically, I moved here to escape the U.S.’s fascist turn, and now the U.S. is swinging hard to the left while Brazil falls to the far right. I’m holding onto a glimmer of hope that the scare of a second Bolsonaro presidency inspires the 30 million or so people here who didn’t vote in the first round to get out and boost Lula, and that the people who voted third party swing to Lula too, though that hope is a little delusional. A slightly less delusional hope is that the blue tsunami in the U.S. in November significantly blunts Trump’s power before he and his puppet Bolsonaro are able to do maximum damage to Brazil’s future and sell off half the Amazon to tech oligarchs for data centers.
I’ll end on this quote from Assata Shakur’s autobiography that a friend sent me yesterday when I was really spiraling into despair and wondering how anyone could justify bringing children into this world amid all the doomsday horror. In case it helps you too: “I am about life. I’m gonna live as hard as I can and as full as I can until I die. And I’m not letting these parasites, these oppressors, these greedy racist swine make me kill my children in my mind, before they are even born.”
Keep fighting!
First of all I want to say congratulations on your marriage. 💕I wish you both happy!
It is very discouraging to hear about things in your new home. I was inspired by the quote you shared at the end of your post. Let that be your guide into this new stage of your life! I am cautiously very cautiously optimistic about the midterms here in the states. 😬😳