A Response to Fabiano Santos and Fernando Guarnieri

Abstract

This article responds to Fabiano Santos and Fernando Guarnieri's dispatch, published under the title “From Protest to Parliamentary Coup: An Overview of Brazil's Recent History” in the December 2016 issue of JLACS. I start by pointing out several errors in the authors' use of terms such as “fascism” and “coup.” I proceed to map out the omissions that allow them to portray Rousseff's impeachment in a moral and Manichean light, as a coup of malignant social actors against innocent victims. I then reconstruct the chronology of Rousseff's long-winded downward spiral of self-inflicted agony, from the electoral larceny of October 2014 through the gigantic popular protests of March 2015 to the final vote in August 2016, showing how the authors chose to omit every fact that revealed Rousseff's and the Workers' Party's own responsibilities in the economic collapse and the political crisis of the country they governed for five and a half and thirteen and a half years, respectively. I conclude by pointing out the contradiction between the authors' claim that there was a parliamentary coup in Brazil and their claim that the country's political system has remained intact.