Brazilian Politics Research Articles

From Religious Populism to Civil Religion: a Discourse Analysis of Bolsonaro’s and Lula’s Inaugural and Victory Speeches

Religion played a major role during the presidential elections in Brazil in 2018 and 2022. Although much has been written about Bolsonaro’s religious influence on Brazilian politics, there is a need to understand how politicians on other sides of the political spectrum have positioned themselves in regard to religion. Thus, through transdisciplinary research rooted in Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) explanation phase, this article seeks to assess both Bolsonaro’s and Lula’s victory and inauguration speeches and their intricacies that appeal to various sorts of politicized religion by problematizing contrasting meanings in discourses of these Brazilian leaders and exploring how social circumstances have enabled or provided conditions for the reproduction of power relations between these politicians and the realm of religion, primarily Christianity. Hence, the article questions: First, which forms of political religion are expressed in the two presidents’ victory speeches and inauguration speeches in the aftermath of the last two general elections? Second, in what ways have both presidents been contributing to the politicization of religion and to what degree do Lula and Bolsonaro differ in this regard? It concludes by arguing that although Bolsonaro’s exclusionary religious populism can be contrasted to Lula’s inclusionary civil religion, there are also some important similarities in their discourses as both politicize Brazilian religion.

Fiction, history, and politics in brazil in the poetic narrative of Cyro dos Anjos in the novel Montanha

This paper aims to propose an analysis of the book Montanha, wrote by Cyro dos Anjos in 1956, using for this intent some concepts of the comparative literature, historical novel, and Roman a Clef. Cyro in this political novel tries to extract the essence from the facts in a very turbulent moment of the Brazilian society and brings them together to a very complex and fragmented plot. It is possible to observe in the construction of the storyline, an attempt to create a plot that could represent an innovation from the previous novels published by the author and a political novel that was deeply influenced by cinematographic elements and by the American novels produced in the first decades of the 20th century. To execute this analysis we worked with the theoretical framework of Antonio Candido with the book Brigada Ligeira, Alfredo Bosi com História Concisa da Literatura Brasileira, Vera Márcia Milanesi em Cyro dos Anjos: Memória e História e Wander Melo Miranda em Cyro & Drummond.

A Farewell to Arms: Brazilian Politics and Blame Avoidance during the COVID‐19 Pandemic

Brazil was one of the countries most affected by COVID‐19. Many deaths could have been avoided by implementing severe non‐pharmaceutical interventions. Despite support for stay‐at‐home requirements and masking mandates from subnational authorities, the president actively pushed back against it. What are the consequences of the political pressures against measures to mitigate virus dissemination and the utmost prioritisation of short‐term economic consequences? The article demonstrates that the strategies of shifting blame for the subnational authorities on health issues, focusing on the minimisation of economic downturn, worsened COVID‐19 results, measured by cases and deaths, in jurisdictions that voted heavily for Bolsonaro.

The Brazilian Military Dictatorship: a Present Past

The 1964 coup in Brazil launched a military dictatorship that for two decades subjected diverse social groups to authoritarianism and repressive violence. In 1985, the last military president was replaced by a civilian government following an agreement between dissident factions of the dictatorship and a section of the democratic opposition. This agreed transition allowed the military institutions to remain untouched and united, preserved from punishment or any need to express regret, while the Constitution approved in 1988 tried to set the grounds for a lasting democracy. These events from the 1980s have continued to shape politics in Brazil, including the more recent political scenario, which from 2014 experienced a radical shift rightwards that strengthened those discourses nostalgic for the dictatorship and gave rise to the Bolsonarist phenomenon.
 The purpose of my presentation is to synthesize this process as a means to understand the present political situation. In the conclusion, I comment on the role of the military corporation in the current Lula government and develop some hypotheses concerning the political future of the armed forces in Brazil.

Does Politics even use Lipstick? A study on power, gender, and legitimacy in Brazilian Politics

Although societies have made some progress in gender equality, in most countries, women remain a minority in parliaments. In Brazil, women work, vote, syndicate, and exercise other fundamental rights. However, in many areas, especially those related to work, the participation of women still needs to be questioned, as is the case of political participation. This investigation aimed to investigate how Brazilian female political representatives see the scenario of female participation in the country’s politics. For this, the theories of the Glass Ceiling with that of Max Weber’s Legitimacy of Power were associated. The study is qualitative in the qualitative approach and the narrative method, with structured interviews applied to state and federal deputies and Brazilian senators; the discourse analysis technique was used. The fusion of the two theories provided resources for the analysis of power if considered gender and the understanding of the role of sexism in the low rates of female participation in politics. There is a vicious circle in which the female population hardly gets involved in public life because it oversees private life and the few women who participate face many obstacles. It is up to the parties’ fundamental role to include women in their staff, not only to comply with Brazilian legal provisions but also to eradicate the idea that politics is masculine.

A Lei 14.164/21 e políticas públicas de prevenção à violência de gênero no Brasil

The main aim of the following article is to analyze the current paths taken by gender education in Brazil in the face of offensives mounted by conservative movements, which position themselves against such a debate in school institutions, as well as in light of the urgent need for government coordination to establish new guidelines for preventing such a problem, based on the new Law 14.164/21 which, by determining the inclusion in school curricula of subjects related to the prevention of violence against women, children, and teenagers, broke new ground by creating a systematized network of protection for vulnerable groups, refuting any kind of socio-political ideological argument that prevents the implementation of educational policies designed to overcome gender inequalities in the country. To this end, the article has been divided into two sections, in which the first seeks to identify the history of gender politics in Brazil’s education system, among disputes, resistance, and setbacks, while the second evaluates the need for school design with a gender-based perspective and under feminist educational practices. The research poses the question: Notwithstanding the rise in gender studies in Brazil, what are the key aspects of an educational structure featuring a gender-based perspective? The research here is qualitative, using the hypothetical-deductive method as well as bibliographic and exploratory research techniques.

A parresía jornalística e Djamila Ribeiro: levantando-se contra o racismo bolsonarista nas páginas do jornal Folha de S.Paulo

The philosopher Djamila Ribeiro, a columnist for Folha de S.Paulo, has suffered several instances of racism throughout her life. Faced with the sequence of racist statements made by former president Jair Bolsonaro throughout his career in Brazilian politics, the philosopher used her parresía to denounce a resolution published by the government to remove quilombolas from the municipality of Alcântara, ignoring the history and cultural identity of the descendants of Brazilian slaves. Historically contextualizing the case and presidential racism, the columnist makes use of what we call journalistic parresía, presenting the five characteristics necessary for this: frank speech, coherence between discourse and way of life, use of frank speech in the public space, taking risks to make use of this frank speech in an act of courage.

Fringe heroines: situated struggles of women scientists in Brazilian agriculture

ABSTRACT Feminist scholarship regards the Western scientific revolution and twentieth-century agricultural modernization as patriarchal endeavors and technoscientific regimes as entangled in societal interests and politics. In this article, I engage with these perspectives by focusing on women scientists working in Brazil’s leading agricultural sciences organization, Embrapa. My analysis draws on life history interviews with three women, juxtaposing their personal and career trajectories with the history of the organization, which is a symbol of the triumph of science over nature. Besides filling the gaps in a male-dominated history, these women’s accounts reveal what I argue to be feminist struggles for more equitable and pluralistic agricultural sciences and practices. I refer to them as “fringe heroines” as they adopt research agendas that are at odds with the prevailing technoscientific paradigm and often find themselves subject to condescending attitudes and discrimination. These fringe heroines experienced a short-lived moment in the limelight during a period of progressive politics in Brazil. However, confronted by a less favorable context during the Bolsonaro era, they have taken a step back but have maintained their resolve to swim against the tide in their unyielding quest for justice and diversity with respect to agricultural knowledge production. The time is ripe for reflecting on the place of their situated struggles and knowledges in the past, present, and future of Brazilian agricultural sciences.

The Moralization of Politics in Brazil

This article analyzes the formation of a media framing of political moralization in Brazil that was consolidated during the decade of 2010, during the peak of an anti-corruption prosecution and the campaign against ‘gender ideology’. This media framing was characterized by the association of the agenda for probity in the conduct of public business with a traditional family morality. The research methodology is anchored in studies of media framing in an analytical perspective that joins sources of digital sociology to political communication studies to analyze an archive collected on platforms of social networks and news media. We contrast the results of the investigation to contributions and gaps of political sociology and gender and sexuality studies focused on either public or private morality. The analysis of the materials shows how the far-right developed a political-communicational strategy on social networks to unite the two dimensions of morality to gain electoral support.

Autism Spectrum Disorder: general aspects and concerns about Brazilian politics

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) encompasses a highly variable set of neurodevelopmental disorders with early onset and non-degenerative pattern. According to the World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases (11th Revision), ICD-11, ASD is characterized as “persistent deficits in the ability to initiate and to sustain reciprocal social interaction and social communication, and by a range of restricted, repetitive, and inflexible patterns of behaviour, interests or activities that are clearly atypical or excessive for the individual's age and sociocultural context.”

Gilberto Freyre, identidade nacional e Latinoamericanidade

The main aim of this essay is to present a set of reflections on Gilberto Freyre, highlighting his ideas on national identity and Latin Americanness. What connections may we establish between his work Casa-Grande & Senzala [The Masters and the Slaves] (1933) and various issues which remain relevant to the current Latin American political debate? First, we locate Freyre’s thoughts within the Latin American debate on issues around national identity. We then move on to proposing several theoretical reflections and methodologies that we consider key to the debate on the theme of our work, namely: Gilberto Freyre’s political thought and his strategies for Brazil; the author’s studies abroad (in the US and in Europe) and the epistemological repercussions in Casa-Grande & Senzala; Freyre’s own brand of romantic conservatism and Brazilian politics; and the relations between ethos and pathos in the implicit political pact in Freyre’s work. Finally, we provide a summary of Freyre’s debate on Americanness (at the onset of the 1940s) and his political agenda for Latin America.

A Tale of Two Crashes: Pandemic Politics in Brazil and Peru

Health care system preparedness did not correlate consistently with policy performance during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Brazil and Peru, the preparedness of health care systems was inversely related to the perceived political risks associated with the spread of COVID-19. Lack of preparedness of the Peruvian health care system heightened fears of a system crash and thus encouraged a more stringent initial response by President Martín Vizcarra, the political actor both most accountable and able to act. In Brazil, the combination of a robust health care system and the highly fragmented political system enabled President Jair Bolsonaro to politicize the pandemic and prioritize economic growth while blaming his opponents for what he considered excessively costly public health measures. La preparación del sistema de atención de salud no se correlacionó de manera consistente con el desempeño de las políticas durante la pandemia de COVID-19. En Brasil y Perú, la preparación del sistema de salud estaba inversamente relacionada con los riesgos políticos percibidos asociados a la propagación de COVID-19. La falta de preparación del sistema de salud peruano aumentó los temores de un colapso del sistema de atención médica y, por lo tanto, dio lugar a una respuesta inicial más estricta por parte del presidente Martín Vizcarra, el actor político más responsable y capaz de actuar. En Brasil, la combinación de un sistema de salud robusto y un sistema político altamente fragmentado permitieron que el presidente Jair Bolsonaro politizara la pandemia y priorizara el crecimiento económico mientras culpaba a sus oponentes por lo que consideraba medidas de salud pública excesivamente costosas.

Women Journalists on the Frontline: Exploring Violence Enacted Against Women Journalists in Brazil and South Africa

Violence in its various forms (be it physical, verbal, or structural) is enacted by political figures against women journalists across the globe. This study focuses on the violence experienced by women journalists reporting on politics in Brazil and South Africa. The paper examines the question: How are elements of violence enacted against women journalists by political actors in South Africa similar to those in Brazil? The study samples eight pieces of visual data in which the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and President Jair Bolsonaro verbally and physically assault women journalists. The research explores the individual and intersecting tenets of gender-based violence in both contexts. Videos from Brazil and South Africa were sourced from YouTube and Twitter and analysed using thematic analysis. The two main themes the paper explores are: strategic gender-based violence and the avoidance of accountability, and the intersections of power, patriarchy, and physicality. The research concludes that the political figures are aware of the woman journalist’s position in society and use strategic forms of violence to wield their power to both undermine and silence the journalists. Their strategy requires a violence toolkit that consists of the structural and patriarchal gender-based violence embedded in both contexts. The politicians want to avoid accountability for their actions as well as ensure that the woman journalist understands the risk and violence they face if they continue to probe and question them. The paper recommends that further studies should research the strategies that are used to address the gendered violence experienced by women journalists.

Brazilian Politics on Trial: Corruption & Reform under Democracy by Luciano Da Ros and Matthew M. Taylor (review)

Brazilian Politics on Trial: Corruption & Reform under Democracy by Luciano Da Ros and Matthew M. Taylor (review)

Leopoldo Miguéz's Nocturnes Opp.10 and 20/1: Political Context and Stylistic Analysis in the "City of Pianos"

As in Europe, the piano reached the height of its popularity in the mid- to late nineteenth century in Brazil. Its presence in cultural life increased significantly, with performances in concert halls, theatres, and even cafés. Nocturnes— particularly Chopin's— were fre quently played at home and in public venues. Leopoldo Miguéz (1852–1902), considered at the time to be influenced by Wagner, Liszt, and the so-called Zukunftsmusik, was the first Brazilian composer to write a symphony, a violin sonata, and a symphonic poem. This ar ticle provides an overview of Miguéz's piano Nocturnes Opp.10 and 20/1 in the context of their relationship to contemporaneous Brazilian politics and his compositional practice. An in-depth analysis of the two nocturnes aims to map out his style, taking as parame ters his implementation of nineteenth-century constructive procedures previously established in analyses of his Violin Sonata Op.14 and his Allegro Appassionato Op.11 for piano. These include: the use of proto-themes, mediant regions, smooth voice-leading, complex tonal plans, motivic economy, and roving harmonies. These procedures are shown to be significant elements in Miguéz's palette of compositional traits and stylistic character istics; notably, they may have been common in Europe at the time but were unknown in Brazil. [...]

Exposing Fascism: The Rise of Bolsonarismo and the Naked Politics of Brazil’s First Trans Men’s Football Team

AbstractFrom 2016 to 2019, the backlash in Brazil against so-called gender ideology framed gender dissidence as a reason for the country’s perceived decline, playing a central role in the rise of Bolsonarismo, a movement increasingly identified as fascist. In this gender-hostile environment, I examine Brazil’s first trans men’s soccer team, the Meninos Bons de Bola (MBB), and its use of nudity as a response to the political shift rightward and to tell a story about the precarity of minoritized groups across the Americas. The team’s changing approach to trans representation exposes the period as a watershed in Brazilian politics. The MBB’s naked protest during this time of governmental change reveals resistance to the machinations of Brazilian fascism, including censorship, backlash, and shaming. By asserting that the MBB were never just about futebol, the team uses the national sport to enact trans politics and to claim belonging beyond the bounds of normative citizenship.

Protected Truths: Neoextractivism, Conservation, and the Rise of Posttruth Politics in Brazil

Recent scholarship links authoritarian populism to environmental governance and changing forms of neoliberalism, yet the central role of the contradiction between territory demarcated for (neo)extractivism and territory demarcated for conservation and protection is heavily understated. This article analyzes the rise of posttruth politics in Brazil as an effort to legitimate unmitigated extractive capitalist growth through a renewed obfuscation of this inherent ecological contradiction. We first demonstrate the concealment of the contradiction through Latin America’s “post-neoliberal” period, based in a neoextractivist economic model. Following, we argue that posttruth politics represents a specific attempt to supersede the previous neoliberal consensus in the face of shrinking commodity returns. Designed to downplay, deny, and remove existing public environmental concerns, we view the posttruth of authoritarian populism as a necessarily spatial project, beyond accounts of cultural or institutional politics alone. The article thus furthers understandings of posttruth by centralizing its role in obscuring the extractivism–conservation contradiction in Brazil and beyond, and as such aligns with a critical effort to mobilize alternatives to the untenable reprimarization of Latin American societies.

Intersectionality, political rights and gender relations: interdisciplinarity in research on female participation in politics

The development of knowledge in the areas of humanities and social sciences has been transmuting and resizing the paths trodden for the understanding of complex phenomena, of an inter/transdisciplinary nature, which were once analyzed from methodical macromodels and theoretical frameworks circumscribed to the specific scientific field in which it was researched. This mode of elaboration of knowledge has been questioned, leading to the reflections that configure the objective of this article, which consists in the search and identification of new theoretical-methodological possibilities for the development of research dealing with the theme on political rights and gender relations, problematized in the causes of low female participation in Brazilian politics. For this, considering the reflective nature of the article, the method used is exploratory and basic. Considering the theoretical and prospective nature, the reflections developed sought to see the usefulness of intersectionality, inter/transdisciplinarity and transversality in studies involving the object theme of reflection, especially issues involving gender relations, the causes of low female participation in Brazilian politics and the possibilities of its expansion.

Geochemical characterization and assessment of contamination in mud depocenters from the southern Brazilian shelf

Continental shelves hold ecological, environmental and economic importance. Mud depocenters found on continent shelves are able to adsorb and incorporate organic and inorganic pollutants into the surface of their grains, creating an effective record of anthropogenic influence and environmental changes in a region. The aim of this study is to perform a chemical characterization of mud depocenters on the southern Brazilian shelf, providing an inventory of elements and evaluation of their distribution and potential contamination or enrichment. The sediments from seven short cores were analyzed by Inductively Coupled Plasma-Optical Emission Spectrometry (ICP-OES) and X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF). The high correlation of metals such as Fe, K, Ti and V with PC 1 of PCA indicated the predominance of a terrigenous signal in the region. This signal was more evident in the cores collected further south and closer to the continent, because they were better related to PC 1 in the scatter plot of PCA. Furthermore, they presented the highest concentration of terrigenous elements, Fe/Ca and Fe/K ratios. The results corroborate the importance of Rio de la Plata discharge and local inputs, such as Patos Lagoon, to the southern Brazilian shelf. A period of decreased terrigenous input, identified by low element ratios from one of the cores, correlated with a drought that occurred in Rio Grande do Sul in 1943. The results of the pollution indices with almost all enrichment factors (EF) below 2, modified degree of contamination index (mCd) below 1.2, sediment quality guideline quotient (SQG-Q) around 0.1, and the elements with concentrations below those established by Brazilian regulation as safe, demonstrated the absence of potential risks to the biota and contamination levels by Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb and Zn. Nonetheless, increases in some EF vertical profiles after 1928 and 1988, which may be associated with the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in Brazil and the establishment of Neoliberal politics in Brazil and Latin America, respectively, and the differentiated results for As, suggest that the influence of anthropogenic activities in the sediments of the region must not be neglected.

The evangelical foreign policy model: Jair Bolsonaro and evangelicals in Brazil

The article proposes an evangelical foreign policy model to analyse the relationship between evangelical groups and conservative governments in foreign policymaking. Using Brazil as a case study, we argue that the model is defined by the convergence of views and interests between conservative cabinet members and domestic evangelical groups on four foreign policy issues that are critical to evangelicals worldwide – the relationship with Israel, persecution of Christian minorities, abortion rights, and evangelical missions in Africa. To analyse the convergence, we use an original database of 207 speeches from Brazilian evangelical parliamentarians (Evangelical Parliamentary Front) and 1992 discourses from Jair Bolsonaro’s cabinet members from January 2019 to July 2022, as well as multiple documents from the main evangelical groups in Brazil. In the case of Brazil, this is the first time that typical religious considerations have been officially adopted by the country’s foreign policy, indicating the growing importance of evangelical thinking in Brazilian politics. This is also one of the first analyses, not centred in the United States, that shows how views and interests of evangelical groups and conservative governments converge in international affairs, broadening perspectives on the political participation of the ever-growing evangelical movement in the Global South.