Brazil

BY SONALI KOLHATKAR Photograph Source: Valter Campanato/ABr – CC BY 3.0 br Brazil’s first round of elections, held on October 2, yielded a major victory for the man who held the presidency from 2003 to 2010, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Winning 48 percent of the vote in a multicandidate race, Lula now heads to a runoff against incumbent president Jair Bolsonaro, who won 43 percent. It’s the first chapter of a dramatic comeback for a leader who was once hailed as the epitome of Latin America’s resurgent left, who was then imprisoned on corruption charges by a politicized judiciary, eventually was released, and has now emerged onto the political scene in a very different nation than the one he once led. A founding member of Brazil’s Workers’ Party (P...

Brazil’s leftist presidential candidate Lula da Silva won with 48.4% and over 6 million more votes than far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro. The Workers’ Party is organizing with social movements in the lead-up to the October 30 runoff election. ByBenjamin Norton Brazil’s left-wing former president Lula da Silva won the first round of the presidential election on October 2 with 48.43% of the vote. Lula got over 6 million more votes than far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, who earned 43.20%. This put Lula just shy of the 50% he needed to avoid a runoff, which means the candidates will compete in round two on October 30. To analyze the election results and what they mean for not just Brazil, but also Latin America and the world as a whole, Multipolarista editor Ben Nor...

BY VIJAY PRASHAD Photograph Source: Ricardo Stuckert/PR – Agência Brasil – CC BY 3.0 BR Former Brazilian President Luíz Inácio Lula da Silva (known as Lula) runs about on stage at the Latin America Memorial in São Paulo. He was there on August 22, 2022, speaking at a book launch featuring photographs by Ricardo Stuckert about Lula’s trips around the world when he was the president of Brazil from 2003 to 2010. Lula is a man with a great deal of energy. He recounts the story of when he was in Iran with his Foreign Minister Celso Amorim in 2010, trying to mediate and end the conflict imposed by the United States over Iran’s nuclear energy policy. Lula managed to secure a nuclear deal in 2010 that would have prevented the ongoing pressure campaign that Washington is c...

BY JEAN WYLLYS – JULIE WARK Photograph Source: Fábio Rodrigues Pozzebom/ABr – http://www.agenciabrasil.gov.br/media/imagens/2009/01/26/1006FP6469.jpg/view – CC BY 3.0 br Census, or “race-colour” categories in Brazil supposedly cover skin tones ranging from very fair to very dark (broadly speaking, from branco (white), pardo (brown), and preto (black), to indígena (native), whatever colour that might be), in such a way that almost 99% of the population is “white”, “brown”, and “black” (in that order, of course), and the census uses the terms “colour” and “race” interchangeably. Naturally, there are other factors at work, like age, gender, region, and socioeconomic status, so a light-skinned pardo person with a well-paying job...

BY JEAN WYLLYS – JULIE WARK Photograph Source: HVL – CC BY 4.0 Sociopath: a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behaviour.– The Oxford English Dictionary Sometimes the micro can shed highly revealing light on the macro. The person of Jair Messias Bolsonaro, who neatly fits the definition of a sociopath, tells us a lot about the sociopathic political system that has thrown him up, and which he embodies. The latest manifestation of capitalism, neoliberalism, has led the whole planet to the brink of extinction with the extermination of species, peoples, languages, ecosystems, and cultures. It has managed to do so mainly because it is so ubiquitous as to be almost anonymous. Its symptoms are clear enough—corrupt political...

Abortion activism networks support and guide women through at-home procedures in Brazil’s legally restrictive and socially conservative landscape. A banner calling for legal abortion in Brazil reads “No woman should be imprisoned, mistreated, humiliated, or die for having an abortion.” (Agência Brasil, Wikimedia Commons). Last month, when Taís Oliveira* found out she was pregnant, she got in her car and cried. A single mother living in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, Taís had promised herself she would never raise a child alone again. The next day she began her search for an abortion. Under President Jair Bolsonaro’s radically anti-choice government, however, obtaining one through either legal or illegal means would be difficult. With scores of religious conservatives in Congress and...

BY SARAH SHENKER Rita Piripkura, the only contacted member of the Piripkura tribe. © S Shenker/ Survival International. “Follow me. I want to show you something,” Rita Piripkura beckoned as we sat by a stream on the edge of the Piripkura indigenous territory in the western Brazilian Amazon. We set off: Rita, her husband Aripan, four land protection agents from the Brazilian government’s indigenous affairs department, and me. We walked and walked. The air was humid and full of the constant thrumming of insects. We navigated tree roots, crossed streams and hacked at branches to carve our way, admiring the lianas and the ever-thicker forest as we moved. A forest which has witnessed many generations of expert stewardship by its indigenous guardians, as well as the most ap...