Abstract
During the current pandemic, forest loss in 2020 has dwarfed the devastation of the previous year. The scale of environmental crimes and aggression towards indigenous peoples and people of African-descendent has been a characteristic of the Bolsonaro administration in the Amazon region. As cases of COVID-19 rise daily in remote areas of the Amazon, a recent study indicates that indigenous lands that aren’t formally demarcated are more vulnerable to intrusion and hence disease: indeed illegal loggers have emerged as a key vector of Covid-19 transmission in a region with Brazil’s lowest number of intensive care units. The weakening of environmental protection in the Amazon has been systematic and a feature of the Brazilian shift from neo-liberalism to neo-developmentalism which can be characterised politically as neo-liberal authoritarianism. If Covid-19 also is now becoming a metaphor for the poisonous spread of neo-liberal globalisation, plunder and land grabs in the Brazilian rainforest can be seen to represent the most egregious of many egregious cases on the ground zero of neo-liberalism unchained. With the rise of Bolsonaro, we can see that the previous conjuncture characterised by the hegemony of PT and Lula was the exception to Brazil’s long embrace of the caudillo going back to the 1930s. Even then, a look at the mechanism of Lula’s rule raises questions as to precisely what changed under Lula when it came to the state and the rule of big capital.
Highlights
Background toBolsonaro’s neoliberal authoritarianismThe military regime that took control following the CIA-backed overthrow of the leftist President Goulart oversaw the so-called Brazilian ‘economic miracle’ between 1964 and 1973 with the gross domestic product (GDP) growing annually by 11% between 1964 and 1973
As cases of COVID-19 grow by the day in remote areas of the Amazon, a recent study indicates that indigenous lands that aren’t formally demarcated are more vulnerable to intrusion and disease, with illegal loggers emerging as a key vector of COVID-19 transmission in a region with Brazil’s lowest number of intensive care units
Making sense of the import of cash transfer payments under the Programa bolsa famolia2 (PBF) is important since it illustrates both the context and time of this provision. It was a product of class conciliation, the modus operandi for soi-disant gains leveraged by social democratic parties in the current neoliberal era: enticements-cum-inducements sold as win–win outcomes even though, in the case of the PBF, the ability to deliver for labour was inextricably tied to the fortunes, literally, of finance and multinational capital
Summary
The Amazon fires of 2019 accompanied the greatest single-year loss of Brazilian forest in a decade (The Guardian 2019). Bolsonaro has challenged the Federal Justice order for the government to establish bases for environmental inspectors to restrict illegal logging and mining in hotspots of felling and burning (Ministério Público Federal 2020). These are areas in the Amazon where 60% of all deforestation occurs (Figure 1). In the period immediately following the 1973 oil crisis, Brazil’s petroleum-based imports increased significantly while the state continued to subsidise the involvement of international companies in massive infrastructure projects such as the TransAmazonia highway (Ianni 1979). As migration to the cities gathered pace by 2001 the favelas became home to 15 million unemployed people; the country saw a massive increase in work precarity and the neoliberal model was discredited to such an extent that space opened up for political change
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