Foreign travelers who arrived in Brazil at the end of the 19th century described the natives of the land as poor, miserable, and ugly people. In contrast, the elite was outnumbered and did not see themselves as a part of the national culture. The Brazilian heterogeneity imposed an impasse: who could be called as the Brazilian people?
Since 2015, the Brazilian state has been making budget cuts in several areas that deal with fundamental human rights. One of them refers to education itself. The Brazilian state has been influenced and subjected to the discourse that the only way to recover the economy refers to austerity. Such argument, according to the same document, concerns the clear objective of redefining the role of the State to satisfy certain interests.
While trying to understand the dramatic rupture and the erosion process of the young and fragile Brazilian democracy, as if it could even be considered one in such a brutally unequal country, especially with the "surprising" election of Jair Bolsonaro at that time elected by the PSL (Social Liberal Party) and who today due to tensions has no Party, experts, especially from Political Science, need to combine and draw on other areas to understand this process.
If the elections were held today, the elected president would be Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, according to a new survey conducted by Datafolha this month.
Translated by Giovanna Imbernon. Edited and reviewed by Anna Paula Bennech. According to Dr. Tainá Reis and Prof. Dr. Vinício Carrilho Martinez, "If approved, we will have the loss of indigenous peoples’ rights, constraints on land demarcation, reversion of demarcated land, and the possibility for mining exploitation. This means more deforestation, more environmental degradation. This is a destructive policy, a death policy, a genocide policy."
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."
Edited and Reviewed by Giovanna Imbernon and Anna Paula Bennech. "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, his government neutralizes the power of the Press to direct the political debate, and also uses some kind of chaos management through recurring political half-truths, underpinned by a moral traditionalism."
Organized by Flavia Batista da Silva. Edited and reviewed by Anna Paula Bennech and Giovanna Imbernon. "The current worldwide democracy crisis is not unexpected. In 2020, the Global Satisfaction with Democracy Report was published concerning news for democratic regimes (Centre for the Future of Democracy, 2020). Covering over 154 countries, Brazil included, it was the first time throughout the past 25 years that the world has spoken how unsatisfied it is with democracy. Since 1990, the share of individuals who are "dissatisfied" with democracy has risen by 10% points, from 47.9% to 57.5%. This raise represents the highest level of democratic discontent. Why are citizens so discontent with democracy? Why is Brazil at its highest-ever recorded level for democratic dissatisfaction?"
Edited and reviewed by Giovanna Imbernon. "Just when the world economy was sailing smoothly after the double economic shocks of the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 and the Euro crisis of 2012, the COVID-19 Pandemic has once again managed to disrupt world economies. This unexpected jolt to the economies has compelled all central banks to introduce immediate monetary policies to save their grappling economies from crashing."
Edited and reviewed by Giovanna Imbernon. "Limitation to the constitutional reform represents the very idea of constitutional supremacy and the resulting duality of democratic politics, as this tool enables to identify the constitutional norm and its differentiation from infra-constitutional political acts."