On 2 October, Bolsonaro and Lula go head to head in the Brazilian elections. We have put together an account of the current president's dramatic first term.
On 2 October, the people of Brazil are called to the polls to elect a new president. The far-right extremist Jair Bolsonaro, who is hoping for a second term, faces left-wing candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who was already president of Brazil from 2003 to 2011.
Polls show Lula in the lead. If he were actually elected, he would be called upon to put back on its feet a country that has emerged battered and bruised from these last four years of Bolsonaro's government. From the mismanagement of the pandemic to climate scepticism, from the war on indigenous communities to repeated attacks on the rule of law, Bolsonaro's Brazil has marginalised minorities, tormented the environment and lost international credibility. Let us look in greater detail at the Brazil that arrives at the 2 October elections.
On 28 October 2018, Brazilian voters elected Jair Bolsonaro. A nostalgist for the military dictatorship that held the country in its grip until 1985, the president immediately distinguished himself for populist ideas and policies from the extreme right, whose principal victims have included the environment.
The Amazon rainforest, which covers approximately 40 per cent of Brazilian territory, experienced one of its worst moments in the early 2000s. In 2004, deforestation activity reached a peak of over 30,000 square kilometres of forest destroyed, then something changed. The choices made by the Lula government and a series of market conditions had made it possible to reduce the rate of forest destruction, and in 2012 the lowest level of tree felling was recorded, with "only" 4,600 square kilometres cleared — 84 per cent less than in 2004. The deforestation rate then began to rise again due to some questionable forestry reforms under the Rousseff government, but the situation spiralled out of control precisely with the Bolsonaro era.
From the outset, the current president railed against environmental regulation that he considered excessively restrictive and limiting for mining and agriculture. To that end, while simultaneously adopting new cosmetic measures for environmental protection, he loosened restrictions on tree felling, cut resources allocated to fighting deforestation and reduced staffing at the Environment Ministry and at the state environmental protection agency Ibama and the biodiversity conservation agency ICMBio. Loggers and mining companies were grateful, and between 2019 and 2021 Brazil lost over 33,800 square kilometres of rainforest, an area the size of Belgium. More broadly, under Bolsonaro the destruction of the Brazilian portion of the world's largest rainforest increased by 80 per cent compared to the previous decade. Amid all of this, Ricardo Salles, Bolsonaro's Environment Minister, resigned in 2021 following accusations that he had played a role in timber smuggling.
From the very beginning of his term, President Bolsonaro adopted measures and policies that undermined indigenous rights. The reduction of the budget and staffing of the environmental protection agencies — which also deal with the protection of indigenous peoples — fits into this framework, as does the clearing of the way for extractive and agricultural activities in the forest.
A separate discussion is warranted by the upheaval inflicted on the Indigenous Affairs Agency (Funai). Marcelo Xavier was placed at its head, and he directed police to take a heavy-handed approach both against activists for indigenous rights and against indigenous leaders themselves engaged in campaigns and struggles. As the non-governmental organisation Human Rights Watch reported after gathering testimonies from several Funai employees, Xavier allegedly created a toxic atmosphere of internal pressure within the agency to stifle dissent and ensure that projects impacting the lives of indigenous peoples, such as a large power plant, were given the green light. As underlined by Sydney Possuelo, one of Brazil's most prominent activists for indigenous rights and head of Funai in the 1990s, "Bolsonaro has turned Funai into an anti-indigenous agency."
Among other things, Bolsonaro pushed through a law preventing indigenous communities from claiming and obtaining their traditional lands, as well as a regulation allowing people to claim land even within indigenous demarcation territories. So far, the Bolsonaro government has recognised 239,000 hectares of land in protected indigenous areas as belonging to non-indigenous people. In the face of this situation, the activism of indigenous peoples has made itself heard in an increasingly forceful and organised way. So much so that Bolsonaro was brought before the International Criminal Court.
One of the countries worst hit in the world by the Covid-19 pandemic was Brazil. Deaths numbered over 600,000 and confirmed cases over 30 million: no country except China and the United States has recorded figures like these. And the president did nothing to try to mitigate this dramatic situation — quite the contrary.
Bolsonaro has always publicly opposed vaccination against the virus, favouring from the outset the disastrous path of herd immunity. In Brazil, lockdowns were less stringent than elsewhere; on top of this, the population was encouraged to rely on remedies against coronavirus that were in reality entirely ineffective. Among these was hydroxychloroquine, for whose production public resources were spent with the involvement of private actors in what became a fully-fledged drug business. And in general the president always stressed the pointlessness of preventive measures, including the face mask, against what he called a "mild flu."
The result of all this, beyond the slaughter of citizens, was the production of a 1,200-page report by the Senate's Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (Cpi), which in October 2021 called for President Bolsonaro to be indicted for "mass murder" on account of his policies and statements that paved the way for the spread of the virus.
During his first term, President Bolsonaro repeatedly called into question the rule of law and democratic norms. This happened through a sustained campaign of intimidation against Brazil's Supreme Court, which was called upon to investigate him in connection with the numerous corruption cases in which he became involved. On one occasion the president went so far as to call for the impeachment of judge Alexandre de Moraes, whom he considered an inconvenience.
Under the Bolsonaro era, press freedom and freedom of opposition also narrowed considerably. In the first half of 2021 alone, the president directed insults and harassment at journalists on 87 occasions, while his legislative activity also extended to social networks, with a decree intended to prevent platforms such as Meta from intervening in the spread of fake news. His axe also fell on women: abortion in Brazil is legal only in cases of rape, yet this right is guaranteed in only a handful of hospitals across the country. Bolsonaro never missed an opportunity to come out against termination of pregnancy, including in the cases provided for by law — as when in recent months he criticised an 11-year-old girl who wanted an abortion after suffering sexual violence.
The Bolsonaro government also proposed the segregation of disabled pupils into ad hoc classes because they were considered "disruptive" elements for the other pupils, while another battle was waged over those four years against the lgbtqia+ community: the president said publicly that if he saw two gay men kissing in the street he would beat them, and he theorised that children adopted by homosexual people grow up 90 per cent gay.
