Policing in Brazil and the legitimacy to kill: the Jacarezinho case and the brutality of police officers
by Luiza Correa de Magalhães Dutra* and Tamires de Oliveira Garcia**
Edited and reviewed by Anna Paula Bennech and Giovanna Imbernon
Discussing Brazilian police is not always comfortable, especially keeping in mind its disquieting particularities. However, a necessary dive into this subject could be elucidative. Criminological and sociological analyses in Brazil reveal that the public security field has appeared as a necessary discussion more and more since the 1990s, as the debate of crime containment and public security institutions got more attention from society.
Deeper into the containment of crime and violence, it is worth looking into the Public Security institutions. Research in the area of state violence demonstrates a fragile and worrying image about police and other Public Security institutions in Brazil (Adorno & Dias, 2014; Kant de Lima, 2014; Costa & Lima, 2014; Muniz & Junior, 2014). Furthermore, an extensive national bibliography has been focusing on the way these institutions operate, the intersections with different social markers, and the legitimacy of their acts, demonstrating alleged brutality by those corporations (Lima, Bueno & Sinhoretto, 2015; Muniz & Paes-Machado, 2010; Muniz, 1999; Muniz & Silva, 2010).
Historically, as a way to better respond to crime, police institutions have sought to increase the use of force to expand their prerogatives, including detaining and registering citizens. Nevertheless, a fundamental question concerns their target: who are those people watched and targeted as “criminals,” and how, in this context, is policing done? Accordingly, this essay aims to briefly discuss policing in Brazil, supported by quantitative data and the literature, using the Jacarezinho massacre – the worst in Brazilian history so far – as a case study.
Police Brutality in Brazil and the social difference: race, class, and gender
Let us start by focusing on police brutality in Brazil, especially on the social markers of difference. As a field of analysis, social markers – or social markers of differences – seek to give visibility to the actions of certain groups’ inclusion and exclusion in different social contexts.
Quantitative data from Brazilian surveys demonstrate the unsettling picture of the convergence of police violence and social markers of difference. According to the “Brazilian Yearbook on Public Security (2020)“[1], in 2019, the number of deaths from police interventions was 6,357. Compared to the US, in Brazil, police kill much more: a collaborative survey by The Guardian shows that there were 1,093 civilian deaths in 2019 in the US – about 3 lives a day. The difference between the countries is enormous and shows how the police in Brazil act: brutaly.
This fact becomes even more evident if we analyze the profile of people killed by the police: the aforementioned yearbook showed that 79.1% of victims of police interventions were black; 74.3% were young people up to 29 years old, and 99.2% were men.
Particularly in favelas, the interaction between police and community may become constant combat, in which the use of force and brutality is barely distinguishable. Those conflicts create different examples of excessive police use of force against the civilian population, for example, during anti-crime operations in major cities and against those regarded as criminals.
The case of Jacarezinho: suspicion, police action, and the death of “those who can be killed”
On May 6, 2021, in the community of Jacarezinho, north of the municipality of Rio de Janeiro, after a meeting between governor Cláudio Castro and President Jair Bolsonaro, the civil police undertook a police raid “to curb the enticement of minors into drug trafficking in the region.” The case became known as the “Jacarezinho Massacre” and left nearly 30 people dead.
This episode is another case in which the police’s version is not the same as that of the locals, including what appears in police reports. The media had access to some records of the murders committed by the police and the justifications pointed out. In some of them, there is a disparity between the version of the investigation document and that of the victims’ relatives (Barbon, Queirolo & Nogueira, 2021).
It is possible to say that there were search and seizure warrants in the operation that were used to justify the deaths that occurred in the alleged confrontation. However, no measure legitimizes the dimension shown by the facts. The images disseminated by the media showed a devastating scenario in Jacarezinho. Survivors explained that as soon as the gunshots started to be heard, people tried to protect themselves and their children as best as they could. After that, however, the operation in the streets took over the houses: injured people asking for shelter, as the police officers without a court order broke into their dwellings, executing and completing what they had started in the street (Gortázer, 2021).
This situation demonstrates that the police intervention went beyond compliance with legal measures in what was justified as reasonable in “necessary operations against the war on drugs.” After a police officer was one of the first victims of the action, police brutality in the community exposes the character of revenge contained in this so-called revenge operation.
From the records released, at least 26 people affected by the raid arrived lifeless at different hospitals in Rio de Janeiro. In addition, the medical reports revealed details at the Evandro Freire Hospital, on Ilha do Governador, with injuries that indicated “torn faces,” “lacerations,” injuries to the lower limbs, compatible with firearm shots, and “deviations bones in the upper limbs,” characteristics of deaths that escape the idea of proportionality even for the defense of life itself.
Ultimately we can say that: a) it seems that the police acted disproportionately and violently in Jacarezinho; b) there was a profile of the people executed in the raid that is very close to the profile explained above (young, poor, and black); c) the social markers of difference create a criminal profile that, in practice, may and should be fought, no matter how it is done. Therefore, the deaths would always have some justification.
To sum it up
Based on this discussion, some points are worth highlighting: a) Jacarezinho is not an isolated case in Brazil; police officers normally work with violence directed at a very specific group that they claim to be the “criminals“; b) usually, this kind of case does not end with a real investigation of the police operation, creating some sort of legitimacy to act in the same way in another situation; c) police violence is a snake eating its own tail; in other words, police violence creates a violence circle, full of fear and anger.
This massacre is not a “one-off action” or an isolated case, but the reality of how policing creates an environment of combat, conflict, and unsafety – not only for the civilians but also for the officers themselves. The Jacarezinho case is an example that there is no right to life and the presumption of innocence for a specific part of Brazilian society. Many times, police kill before that.
[1] https://forumseguranca.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/infografico-2020-final-100221.pdf
References
Adorno, S. & Dias, C. 2014. Monopólio Estatal da Violência. In: Lima, R. S.; Ratton, J. L.; Azevedo, R. G. (Orgs.). Crime, Polícia e Justiça no Brasil (187-197). São Paulo, SP: Contexto.
Barbon, J., Queirolo, G. & Nogueira, I. (2021, May 12). Saiba quem são e como morreram as 28 vítimas do Jacarezinho. Folha de S. Paulo. Recuperado em jul. 05, 2021, em https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/cotidiano/2021/05/saiba-quem-sao-e-como-morreram-as-28-vitimas-do-jacarezinho.shtml.
Coelho, H. & Barreira, G. (2021, May 14) Jacarezinho: saiba quem são, onde morreram e o que dizem famílias e polícia sobre os 27 mortos. G1, Recuperado em jul. 07, 2021, em: https://g1.globo.com/rj/rio-de-janeiro/noticia/2021/05/14/jacarezinho-saiba-quem-sao-onde-morreram-e-o-que-dizem-familias-e-policia-sobre-os-27-mortos.ghtml.
Costa, A. T. M. & Lima, R. S. de. 2014. Segurança Pública. In: Lima, R. S. & Ratton, J. L. & Azevedo, R. G. (Orgs.). Crime, Polícia e Justiça no Brasil (482-490). São Paulo, SP: Contexto.
Gortázer, N. G. (2021, May 13). “Não vai embora, vão me matar!”: a radiografia da operação que terminou em chacina no Jacarezinho. El País. Recuperado em jul. 07, 2021, em https://brasil.elpais.com/brasil/2021-05-13/nao-vai-embora-vao-me-matar-a-radiografia-da-operacao-que-terminou-em-chacina-no-jacarezinho.html.
Kant de Lima, R. 2014. Éticas e Práticas na Segurança Pública e na Justiça Criminal. In: Lima, R. S. & Ratton, J. L.& Azevedo, R. G. (Orgs.). Crime, Polícia e Justiça no Brasil. (471-481) São Paulo, SP: Contexto.
Lima, R. S., Bueno, S. & Sinhoretto, J. 2015. A gestão da vida e da segurança pública no Brasil. Soc. estado., 30(1), 123-144.
Muniz, J. & Júnior, D. P. 2014. Mandato Policial. In: Lima, R. S. & Ratton, J. L. & Azevedo, R. G. (Orgs.). Crime, Polícia e Justiça no Brasil (491-501). São Paulo, SP: Contexto.
Muniz, J. 1999. Ser policial é, sobretudo, uma razão de ser. Cultura e cotidiano da Polícia Militar do Estado do Rio de Janeiro. Tese de Doutorado, Iuperj, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil.
Muniz, J. & Paes-Machado, E. 2010. Polícia para quem precisa de polícia: contribuições aos estudos sobre policiamento. Cad. CRH, 23(60), 437-447.
Muniz, J. & Silva, W. F. 2010. Mandato policial na prática: tomando decisões nas ruas de João Pessoa. Cad. CRH, 23(60), 449-473.
* Luiza Correa de Magalhães Dutra: Master’s Degree in Criminal Sciences (PUCRS). Specialization in Public Security, Citizenship and Diversity (UFRGS). Graduated in Law (PUCRS) and Social Sciences (UFRGS). Adjunct Coordinator of the Brazilian Institute of Criminal Sciences (IBCCRIM). E-mail: luiza.dutra15@gmail.com.
** Tamires de Oliveira Garcia: Doctoral Student in Criminal Sciences (PUCRS). Master in Law (Unilasalle). Graduated in Law (PUCRS). Volunteer at the NGO Somos – Communication, Health and Sexuality.
Special edition – Brazil’s Democratic “Backsliding”: The Erosion of Brazilian Democracy in Pandemic Times – Effects on Race and Class
by Deanivea Mendes Felix*
Reviewed and edited by Anna Paula Bennech and Giovanna Imbernon
Organized by Flavia Batista da Silva
The COVID-19 pandemic can be classified as the most significant health crisis in the last hundred years (Paula dos Reis et al., 2020). Some international organizations have been predicting this event for decades; this pandemic is not the first one and will not be the last global health crisis (De Freitas Lima Ventura and Costa Bueno, 2021). Still, most of the countries are struggling to deal with it. For the Brazilian democracy, the pandemic only escalated the debilitation of the yet unstable democratic regime.
Jair Bolsonaro, the current Brazilian president, contributed to this scenario by attacking the government’s transparency, with denialism (denying politics and denialism as a policy) and not considering the situation of vulnerable groups during the pandemic.
First, his electoral campaign’s strategy was to deny politics to distance himself from the previous political scenario. Then, in the pandemic context, a new strategy can be seen: Denialism as a policy, allied to his previous approach, culminating in the trivialization of deaths and separation between “valuable” and “disposable” lives (Duarte and César, 2020). One of the most powerful attacks on democracy is the intentional omission of the Executive Power in solving public problems, classified by the authors Linhares and Tormin (2020) as “Executive Underreach.” In a health emergency, much is expected from a president, and the population’s survival depends directly on public policies. Even though the SARS-COV-2 virus does not show contagious selectivity, the impacts of the pandemic and democratic crisis will be felt differently depending on race and class. The choice of public policies determines the (lack of) importance of lives to the current government (Linhares and Tormin, 2020; Estrela et al., 2020).
In the 2018 presidential elections, the candidates faced a scenario of democratic institutions’ erosion, where the Brazilian population was disappointed with the main parties running for the presidency since the mid-1990s. Jair Bolsonaro then launched himself as an anti-system outsider, despite having been part of that system for nearly thirty years as a member of the congress. He tried to disengage his image from the system, denying the broken policy he helped to build (Duarte and César, 2020). In a pandemic context, the search for quick and effective solutions to relieve the damage to the population means that many expectations are placed on the Executive Branch. However, access to unlimited powers under the alibi of solving the health crisis is dangerous territory.
Transparency of political acts must be a central element to a healthy democracy (Linhares and Tormin, 2020). During the pandemic, Bolsonaro is not concerned with fighting the virus. Instead, he politicized the pandemic, classifying it as a “little flu” (BBC Brasil, 2020). In the absence of coherent public health policies, denialism became the political strategy for managing the pandemic and the population’s living conditions (Duarte and César, 2020). Combining denial with lack of transparency, the Brazilian government approved measures that changed the ‘Access to Information Law,’ such as the provisional measure 928/2020, which aimed to suspend the response time during the pandemic. Thus, affecting the population’s access to government data. There were also periods of official data omission about deaths and infections rates, known as “blackouts.” It happened in June 2020 and in November, on the eve of the second round of the municipal elections (Nexo, 2021), directly affecting the reliability of these data. The right to information gets even more relevant contours due to its intersection with the constitutional right to health (Linhares and Tormin, 2020). Without accurate information, public policies cannot correctly reach the people.
For example, the understanding that Covid-19 does not differentiate people, hence a “democratic disease” that would affect everyone equally. Therefore, there would be no need for different policies to fight the pandemic (De Oliveira et al., 2020). However, the way the virus arrived in Brazil shows us how perceiving equality among those affected is wrong: on the one hand, the first affected were the upper classes, who arrived from trips abroad. On the other hand, the most affected victims were professionals directly linked to these people.
In an emblematic case in Rio de Janeiro, COVID-19’s first fatal victim was a house cleaner who worked in Leblon, an upscale neighborhood, and got COVID-19 from her employer, who had returned from a trip to Italy (Istoé, 2020). There were countless cases in which domestic workers, app drivers, and the delivery staff were infected during working hours in the periphery, as these people were unable to work remotely.
The class approach is also closely linked to race in Brazil. Data from 2018 from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE, in Portuguese) shows that 75% of people living in extreme poverty are self-declared as black or brown (Estrela et al., 2020). This disparity can also be observed in the proportion of hospitalizations and deaths. Initially, the percentage of hospitalization and death of white people was higher when compared to black people. As time went by, the situation changed, showing a low proportion of hospitalization of black people compared to the number of deaths (G1, 2020). This data also indicates inequalities in access to health services and greater social vulnerability among black and brown people (De Oliveira et al., 2020). Bad living and income conditions in Brazil are also correlated with race, pointing to a large social group unable to practice social distancing (Galindo and Pedreira Júnior, 2021). The relationship between the lockdown required as a security measure and precarious housing accelerated the infection rates among the low-income population due to the difficulty in achieving intra-household distance. On the subject, once again demonstrating his denial strategy, Bolsonaro called “Idiots” people who stay at home while obeying restrictive measures to prevent the dissemination of the coronavirus (Folha de S.Paulo, 2021).
The lack of transparency, the denial, and the trivialization of deaths led the country to reach, on June 19th, 2021, the sad mark of 500 thousand deaths due to Covid-19. Brazil is in a scenario of democratic erosion, marked by misinformation, intense political polarization, degradation of institutions, and expansion of the Executive Power. During the current pandemic’s management, there is no doubt there is an executive underreach, a willful omission of constitutional obligations attributed to the president (Linhares and Tormin, 2020). A very distinctive feature of Bolsonarism – the extreme right-wing political phenomenon that emerged with the rise of Jair Bolsonaro – is defining which lives matter and which ones matter little, following a distorted meritocratic ideal (Duarte and César, 2020). President Bolsonaro seems not to care about losing lives during the pandemic, seeing them as expendable. Already knowing that his government’s actions resulted in the death of half a million citizens, he briefly lamented the deaths and then returned to defending the use of drugs proven to be ineffective, thus continuing his denial strategy (G1, 2021).
References
BBC Brasil. 2020. “2 momentos em que Bolsonaro chamou covid-19 de ‘gripezinha’, o que agora nega” 11/27/2020. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/brasil-55107536 .
Duarte, André de Macedo, and Maria Rita de Assis César. 2020. “Denial of Politics and Denialism as a Policy: Pandemic and Democracy.” Educacao and Realidade 45 (4): 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1590/2175-6236109146.
Estrela, Fernanda Matheus, Caroline Fernandes Soares E Soares, Moniky Araújo da Cruz, Andrey Ferreira da Silva, Jemima Raquel Lopes Santos, Tânia Maria de Oliveira Moreira, Adriana Braitt Lima, and Márcia Gomes Silva. 2020. “Covid-19 Pandemic: Reflecting Vulnerabilities in the Light of Gender, Race and Class.” Ciencia e Saude Coletiva 25 (9): 3431–36. https://doi.org/10.1590/1413-81232020259.14052020.
Folha de S.Paulo. 2021. “Relembre o que Bolsonaro já disse sobre a pandemia, de gripezinha e país de maricas a frescura e mimimi” 03/05/2021. Available at: https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/poder/2021/03/relembre-o-que-bolsonaro-ja-disse-sobre-a-pandemia-de-gripezinha-e-pais-de-maricas-a-frescura-e-mimimi.shtml.
Freitas Lima Ventura, Deisy De, and Flávia Thedim Costa Bueno. 2021. “De Líder a Paria de La Salud Global: Brasil Como Laboratorio Del ‘Neoliberalismo Epidemiológico’ Ante La Covid-19.” Foro Internacional, 427–67. https://doi.org/10.24201/fi.v61i2.2835.
G1. 2020. “Coronavírus é mais letal entre negros no Brasil, apontam dados do Ministério da Saúde” 04/11/2020. Available at: https://g1.globo.com/bemestar/coronavirus/noticia/2020/04/11/coronavirus-e-mais-letal-entre-negros-no-brasil-apontam-dados-do-ministerio-da-saude.ghtml.
G1. 2021. “Dois dias depois, Bolsonaro diz que lamenta 500 mil mortes por Covid” 06/21/2021. Available at: https://g1.globo.com/sp/vale-do-paraiba-regiao/noticia/2021/06/21/bolsonaro-500-mil-mortes-covid.ghtml.
Galindo, Ernesto Pereira, and Jorge Ubirajara Pedreira Júnior. 2021. “A Cor Da Moradia: Apontamentos Sobre Raça, Habitação e Pandemia.” Boletim de Análise Político-Institucional, no. 26 (March): 73–83. https://doi.org/10.38116/bapi26art8.
Istoé. 2020. “ Primeira vítima do RJ era doméstica e pegou coronavírus da patroa no Leblon” 03/20/2020. Available at: https://istoe.com.br/primeira-vitima-do-rj-era-domestica-e-pegou-coronavirus-da-patroa-no-leblon/.
Linhares, Emanuel, and Mariana Tormin. 2020. “Pandemia e Erosão Da Democracia Constitucional: Uma Análise Dos Ataques à Transparência No Brasil. Brasília. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7500-0705.
Nexo. 2021. “De questionamentos a apagões: o governo e os dados da covid” 03/28/2021. Available at: https://www.nexojornal.com.br/expresso/2021/03/28/De-questionamentos-a-apag%C3%B5es-o-governo-e-os-dados-da-covid.
Oliveira, Roberta Gondim De, Ana Paula Da Cunha, Ana Giselle Dos Santos Gadelha, Christiane Goulart Carpio, Rachel Barros De Oliveira, and Roseane Maria Corrêa. 2020. “Racial Inequalities and Death on the Horizon: Covid-19 and Structural Racism.” Cadernos de Saude Publica 36 (9). https://doi.org/10.1590/0102-311X00150120.
Paula dos Reis, Ana, Emanuelle Freitas Góes, Flávia Bulegon Pilecco, Maria da Conceição Chagas de Almeida, Luisa Maria Diele-Viegas, Greice Maria de Souza Menezes, and Estela Maria Leão Aquino. 2020. “Desigualdades de Gênero e Raça Na Pandemia de COVID-19: Implicações Para o Controle No Brasil.” Scielo Preprints, 27. https://doi.org/10.1590/0103-11042020E423.
Bolsonaro and the authoritarian instincts of today’s Brazil
by Claudia Pires*
Edited and Reviewed by Giovanna Imbernon and Anna Paula Bennech
Authoritarianism in Brazil is a root that has been pruned and not gone. It has been used repeatedly in Brazil throughout history, but authoritarian regimes were not introduced until the arrival of the Republic. There have been two authoritarian regimes in the history of Republican Brazil: (a) the Estado Novo (1937-1945), which established a civil and military bureaucracy and whose main effort was to create a basic industry in the country; and (b) the military dictatorship (1964-1985), a state of emergency that served the interests of internationalized finance capital and worked for years on a project to harden the regime, culminating in the decree of Institutional Act No. 5 (AI-5) in December 1968.
In all the governments that succeeded the military dictatorship (1964 to 1985), we find in their traces the military power’s discreet shadow in national life, the result of a negotiated re-democratization, in which important questions about the responsibility of the army for crimes committed by the State have been swept under the carpet.
If, in the end, the policies pursued by the PT governments in dealing with the 2008 international financial crisis exposed the limits of reconciliation in satisfying the interests of the various factions of capital and the people’s desires for new social gains, leading to growing disappointment in the Expectations of various segments of Brazilian society that culminated in the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, then there is a seemingly marginal problem that deserves attention.
To what extent do the results of the Brazilian Truth Commission, which Dilma established to investigate the serious human rights violations that occurred during Article 8 of the Law on the Transitional Provisions of the Constitution (of 1988), and thereby the right to memory and historical truth does not violate the spirit of the Brazilian armed forces [1], which since 2016 have been increasingly involved in the crucial legal and political processes of today’s Brazil?
With the election of Jair Bolsonaro for Presidency, an ex-paratrooper in the Brazilian army, now a reservist with a captain’s rank; with Vice-President Mourão, an Army General in the Army Reserve, military power has achieved a relative protagonism.
Who is Bolsonaro, the “Myth”?
Bolsonaro is the most regressive and mediocre representation of what Brazil has. He appeared in Brazilian politics as a representative of the interests of the lowest-ranking officers in the armed forces after being exempted from the army due to administrative proceedings for insubordination during the first years of the country’s speech-democratization. For more than three decades, he served as a federal MP for the so-called lower clergy embodied in the most common practices of clientelist politics. Still, because of his strange and insignificant actions, he presented himself as an anti-system politician. He is an apocalyptic integrated, to paraphrase Umberto Eco, who, in a political crisis, capitalized on the chorus of the resentful and excluded from the centers of power.
Bolsonaro gives a misogynistic speech against blacks, LGBTs, academics, the press, or any other group who disagrees with him. He has his own Holy Trinity in which each member has a role. This trinity is composed of:
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Carlos Brilhante Ustra, the Ethical Reference who was the only military man recognized by the Brazilian judiciary as a torturer and responsible for at least 50 murders during the military dictatorship;
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Olavo de Carvalho, his intellectual guru who presents himself as a philosopher without being, and who is popular in the press and social media because of his sour discourse against progressive intellectuality and, in recent years, anti-PT (Workers’ Party) has become.
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Bolsonaro represents the white, Christian, and heterosexual Brazilian man who has lost his credentials as well as privileges over the years due to the politics of inclusion, equality, and social processes of minority empowerment. His political leadership pattern was set inspired by Donald Trump. He brought military representatives, Protestant churches, part of the police and the militia, and the armed forces to his royal court.
The result of this new Brazilian panorama can already be seen in the democracy index of The Economist, which evaluates the democratic performance of governments. When the ranking was introduced in 2006, Brazil held the 42nd position. However, during PT’s governments (Lula and Dilma), the country was always below the 48th position:
Source: Democracy Index from The Economist magazine
In 2015, when the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies initiated the impeachment proceedings against Dilma Rousseff, Brazil reached the 51st position in the ranking. During the first year of Jair Bolsonaro’s government, it only scored 6.8 points, moving down one position.
A Press Freedom Index analysis shows that Brazil fell from the 71st position in 2003 (the first year of Lula’s government) to 107th position in 2020 during Bolsonaro’s government.
Bolsonaro’s authoritarianism in a nutshell
Bolsonaro has distilled his authoritarian slope in increasing numbers since he took office. April and May were very emblematic months. Crises within the ministries, legal proceedings against their children, and the coronavirus pandemic provided the perfect scenario for him to take this direction.
On March 15, Bolsonaro had his image shaped on videos calling on the population to protest against the National Congress. He distributed this material through his private WhatsApp account.
On April 19, the country reached 2,400 confirmed deaths from the coronavirus. President Bolsonaro and his supporters, who called for military intervention in Brazil, participated in a demonstration outside Brasilia’s army headquarters. The demonstrators were shouting “AI-5”[2], “Close the National Congress,” and “Close the Supreme Court.” Many of them carried banners that read “Military intervention with Bolsonaro Now!” – on the opposite way of the Constitution. Bolsonaro’s stance has been heavily criticized by members of the National Congress, Supreme Court, state governors, the press, and the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB). The next day, Bolsonaro spoke to the press, defending the Supreme Court and the National Congress “openly and transparently.” The President once again claims that there is “a lack of intelligence” for those who accuse him of being dictatorial.
On May 22, one of the Supreme Court decided to publish the video of a ministerial meeting whose content presented many of the ideas of the Bolsonaro government’s political activities: disregard for democratic institutions (Supreme Court and National Congress), deforestation of the Amazon; Contempt for indigenous people, blacks, Romani people and other minorities; lack of policy for the coronavirus crisis and other Bolsonarian guidelines.
Just two days after the video broadcast was published, Bolsonaro posted on his social networks an excerpt from the law on abuse of authority, implying a direct attack on the Federal Court of Justice. Immediately after it, the President flew in a military helicopter over the Esplanada dos Ministerios and circled the Praça dos Três Poderes, apparently in an attempt to defeat the other two powers.
These attitudes and other episodes reveal two authoritarian sides of the President: on the one hand, the disregard for democratic institutions, on the other hand, the death drive (Freud’s terms) for promoting agglomerations during the pandemic, revealing a disregard for fundamental civil rights and a distorted view of the minimum requirements for citizenship.
Since his campaign, Bolsonaro has shown authoritarian features, and many of them were copied and articulated by the former Trump’s strategist, Steve Bannon. Among them is the use of social networks as a monitoring tool to control political decisions that consider the volatile circumstances of public opinion. Therefore, Bolsonaro has no clear plan for politics and uses social networks to orient his decisions. In addition, his government neutralizes the power of the press to direct the political debate. He also uses some kind of chaos management through recurring political half-truths, underpinned by moral traditionalism.
In conclusion, Brazil, deliberately not ruled by Jair Bolsonaro, is seeing its delicate democracy go down the drain. The institutions are trying too slowly and timidly to react to Bolsonaro’s authoritarian wave. However, it is not clear whether these institutions will be able to support the Bolsonarian forces that have no ties; because of the condescension they have enjoyed until recently from the established powers and the press. We must not forget that one of the reasons we have reached the current situation is that Bolsonaro has not been expelled from military or civil justice.
[1] Law No. 12.528 of November 18, 2011, Article 1.
[2] AI-5: Institutional Act Number 5.
References
Avritzer, L. (2017). The Rousseff impeachment and the crisis of democracy in Brazil. Critical Policy Studies, 11(3), 352-357.
Hunter, W., & Power, T. J. (2019). Bolsonaro and Brazil’s Illiberal Backlash. Journal of Democracy, 30(1), 68-82.
Alfredo Saad-Filho and Marco Boffo, Geoforum, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2020.02.003
Samuels, D., & Zucco Jr, C. (2014). Lulismo, petismo, and the future of Brazilian politics. Journal of Politics in Latin America, 6(3), 129-158.
* M.A. Claudia Pires: Head of BRaS’ Communication and PR Department, Head of BRaS’ Social Media Studies Research Group, Member of BRaS’ Academic Committee, Associate Editor of BRaS-J. E-mail: claudiapires.br@gmail.com.
BRaS Blog ISSN 2701-4924
