Brazil - have you been there?

http://www.brasilwire.com/why-bolsonaro-won-beyond-the-cliches/?fbclid=IwAR3gXfw0jeAB7Dxcyx1NdPWtgbIKOFU8-PB1CBIVKLcRu5O51N7rB0RzNTI

International capital and the US government now have exactly what they want in Brazil. All natural resources will be opened to exploitation from foreign capital. The US military will be able to use the Alcantara rocket launching base as a take off point for forays into Venezuela. Brazil’s participation in the BRICS is dead in the water and US Petroleum companies will be swimming in Brazilian oil. Regardless of the level of participation by the US and its institutions, these events fit a pattern of US interventions in Latin America over the past 100 years. If we are truly interested in defeating fascism it is important to move beyond cliches and work to identify the real actors at play, so that their power can be countered. In order to do this, we have to move beyond the idea that Brazil operates in a geopolitical vacuum and that the return to neofascism, which was previously installed with ample US government support from 1964-1985, can be explained by oversimplified generalizations on public opinion.

i met a brazilian guy a few months ago and we became good acquaintances

i'm very uninformed of the details of brazil's current politics but from a cultural perspective, it's interesting that this brazilian guy voted for him and knows all the nasty things the english speaking world says about him, but he still voted for him and doesn't believe bolsonaro will actually kill anyone or will have anyone killed

he is studying business in canada, so i'm not sure how informed his opinions are on politics but i get a sense that he is definitely into US neoliberalism -- he seemed happy that bolsonaro wants to appoint guedes as financial advisor, at least

whether they're mutually exclusive or not, he enjoys getting high a couple times a day and is socially very progressive, with that tinge of homophobia and sexism that pervades most of south america

i did bring up a possible coup, but he believes it won't happen, since it's been a long time, since the 60s, that brazil has had one

bolsonaro's approach and social values are similar to trump's, but other than that, he sounds worse

the brazilian business student was trying to get me to understand how there's huge desperation in brazil, with a gdp comparable to canada's, yet a population 5 times bigger, and feels that brazil needs to be closed off, grow local businesses/companies, and provide/protect people's interests first, rather than big global companies. kinda typical, and in fact, lots of people have this mentality in vancouver/canada too though

fun dude

― F# A# (∞), Monday, October 29, 2018 1:56 PM (four days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm in a similar conversation with a brazilian business student, a woman, who really does claim that if PT had continued on its path (??) there would be 190 millions Brazilians refugees so really I suppose some sort of Fox News is operating over there.

That and she kinda have this nostalgia for Brazil in the 60s 'things used to work then'. My whole life I thought the right wing 'trains on time' thinking was usually a straw man from the left, a not so clever way to ridicule the narrow thinking of law and order types but the last 4 years have proved me some straw man come alive and haunt you.

Horrible story.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-47009118

Some fucking mega corporation involved, inevitably.

Terrible

At least the 2nd time this coal mining company has screwed up (I heard someone say on the BBC this morning). At least 60 dead

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-47151645

Lula’s jail term has been doubled to 26 years.

Anderson's piece on Bolsanaro is now free to read:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v41/n03/perry-anderson/bolsonaros-brazil

Is been fun seeing a million people shout 'GOOD' to this:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/08/brazil-president-jair-bolsonaro-hospitalised-with-pneumonia?CMP=share_btn_tw

perry reckons the stab's wot won it

Just in the past few days: 1) humanities courses will get defunded bc "not productive" 2) state-owned ads are explicitly censored from using "lgbt language" (sic) 3) 9 army soldiers who fired 80+ bullets to a civilian car killing two will have their charges dropped for now.

— Pedro Oliveira (@pedroliveira_) April 30, 2019

fun as that all is, I want the latest deforestation stats as well

It's not about what you want

insanity

https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/29/americas/brazil-prison-riots-intl/index.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/gang-members-behead-rivals-while-guards-look-on-inside-brazils-deadly-prison-riots/2019/08/03/4c3454cc-b2ed-11e9-acc8-1d847bacca73_story.html

“Brazil is a violent country, so people feel that they want harsher treatment, and isolating people in these conditions is the best response,” said Maria Laura Canineu, the Brazil director of Human Rights Watch. “They don’t understand that these abusive conditions only encourage gang violence.”

“Brazil is a violent country” — as description this cannot be denied. But does it mean more: that there is a violent essence to the nation? What would that mean?

And yet: I know many Brasilians and I have been there, and I think there is something to that claim.

they do love their martial arts

There's a violent essence to most nations, no? I don't think Brazil's history is particularly bloodier than that of its neighbours.

I think the person calling it a violent country wouldn’t have bothered if every country is the same way.

Yeah, but that's not what we're talking about - you asked if Brazil is a violent country because there is a "violent essence to the nation".

The person calling it a violent country also might not have a clue about it. You can visit or live in the country, but Brazil seems incredibly divided along class and racial lines and people often don't know other places within a city, never mind the nation.

There is violence in the country, which is often true of many parts of Latin America and the US. And yet it's also often the case that Brazilians are v friendly compared to some European nations. Things - and clichés - which can co-exist.

they do love their martial arts

― ogmor, Tuesday, August 6, 2019 6:32 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

TBF, jiu jitsu is the least ostensibly "violent" martial art. Watching it is like watching a slug wrestle a snail.

The person who called Brazil a violent country is Brazilian, the Brazil director of Human Rights Watch. The person is on Twitter, I could ask them what they meant.

I don't think it's unfair to call Brazil a violent country, in that it's a country suffering under tremendous violence from gangs, militias, police brutality, etc.

Where I get skeptical is in trying to pin this down to some sort of essential national characteristic. Seems to me the reasons for the current situation - inequality, poverty, corruption - are pretty prosaic and exist in plenty of other places, so there's no need to grasp for deeper explanations concerning national character.

I just did a cursory google but there are a lot of statistics about Latin America in general being the most violent region in the world relative to its population with most of the homicides in Venezuela, Brazil and Mexico cities.

it's the fiery latin temperament

Not disagreeing with Euler's post that Brazil is violent. But a lot of the initial post was just fucking weird. Violence, as I said, is often true of parts of Latin America, which would bring a question on whether violence was a thing in essence for just Brazil...which was sort started on and left as we moved to Euler's experience as a visitor, recounting some anecdotes of his (assuming here) middle-class academic friends fearing for their lives, in their closed off flats. We don't know about that so I make it up because a lot of Euler's post was weirdly cloaked in an attempt to think about things.

Mexicans being essentially violent:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/08/mexico-bodies-police-uruapan-drug-cartels

So, this happened.

Last night, President Jair Bolsonaro was very publicly linked to the murder of Marielle Franco, and then lashed out wildly at former political allies, and the country's most important TV station. This is going to keep rocking Brazilian politics today

— Vincent Bevins (@Vinncent) October 30, 2019

saw that. Was his denial enough to make the story go away

Not gonna lie, I'm not sufficiently informed on Lula to know whether he was crooked or not, but seeing the jubilant reaction of ppl at his being set free - people whose lives he directly contributed towards making better - and the teeth gnashing of the Bolsonaro crowd at it does make me really happy.

lula is good

Lula is good even if crooked. Corruption is like the deficit, no-one gaf unless it can be levered against left wing figures

This guy writes for the WSJ

Legend. I can't decide who I like more, Lula or Bolsonaro. Seriously, they both seem like great guys who have far-different views but truly love their country. Hope the future is bright for Brazil. https://t.co/N6EycFE89P

— Dan Molinski (@molinskidan) November 8, 2019

If there was evidence Lula was crooked, they wouldn't have had to make up a story the way they did. The trial was a complete sham, designed to disqualify him from office. I think that's pretty well established by now.

There's a great film on netflix called The Edge of Democracy, which pretty straightforewardly explain what happened. It didn't get to incorporate the latest revelations from the intercept, but after having watched the film, no new scandal has been that surprising.

https://jornalistaslivres.org/brazilian-secretary-of-culture-paraphrases-goebbels-in-official-statement/

That URL doesn't sound too good

The most shocking thing about that story is that he got fired for it.

Vile.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/24/jair-bolsonaro-racist-comment-sparks-outrage-indigenous-groups

Nice:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/08/lula-convictions-annulled-by-brazil-judge-bolsonaro-election-2022

so is this officially a coup / occupation now?

Vice magazine have a 4 part series called Black Lives Matter A Global Reckoning. It covers the black experience in 4 countries which are Italy, Denmark, Brazil and Israel. I haven't watched the Israel one yet but did watch the Brazil a few days ago.
Seems that there has been way too much linking thinking of black Brazilians in terms of slavery. Which has lead them to be treated way too much like 2nd class citizens. It was also saying that there was a coming wave of black politicians vying to get into parliament where they were very under represented.
I assume that the series was filmed over the last year since they were wearing covid masks during a lot of it.

Not been to Brazil or any of South America but that programme was pretty scathing on the black experience. Police officers sent to the fave last while training being given an open day on how violent they can get with residents and so on.

I do know that Paolo Friere's work on education had been used as a model in the pre Bolsanaro govt. So it was possible for things to be much more progressive.

This is all half-knowledge cobbled together from having had a few Brazilian friends and listening to Brazilian music/watching Brazilian cinema, so reader discretion is advised:

One thing to keep in mind about racism in Brazil is that it's a much more mixed country compared to the US or the UK - so there's not really the same kind of ethnic minority status (in numbers), and bigotries can often be as much about colourism as racism; the gap of opportunity between light-skinned and darker skinned black people seems to be quite huge.

Also of note is the sociological theory of "luso-tropicalismo" developed by Gilberto Freyre. Basically this suggests that the Portuguese, by dint of having been colonized themselves, had a different attitude towards race issues than other colonizers, foremost amongst them that racial mixing was encouraged. This rather thin premise was then seized on by the dictatorships in both Portugal (where it was used to justify the country's occupation of various African countries - not "colonies", you see, but "just part of Portugal") and Brazil, where it was launched as a way to prevent the then-emerging ideologies of black power from gaining traction in the country. So the official government policy included paying some lip service to ideas of racial equality and celebration of black culture while inequalities remain.

It should be noted that populations in Brazilian favelas are pretty mixed as well, so the issue of police brutality intersects with racism but not quite as closely as it does in the US. Sadly, the one black guy who's lived in a favela I know tends to be quite fascist when it comes to the police, because he's been targeted by local gangsters in the past. His stance on Bolsonaro used to be "I wish he didn't talk so much nonsense but at least he's creating order"; he has changed his mind due to dude's handling of the coronavirus crisis though.

The Brazilian left is to the far left of any US or UK left and Lula's government elevated millions out of poverty, which has earned him eternal adoration from some sections of the population and eternaç hatred from a bourgeoisie very pissed at seeing their status threatened.

Some good films to check out on race and class in Brazil: Pixote, Bacurau, The Second Mother.

Oh, also, a very important figure in recent Brazilian politics: Marielle Franco, whose murder the police are almost certainly implicated in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marielle_Franco

I think she may have been featured for a few minutes but it slipped my mind this morning. one of the triggers for a number of new candidates to stand.

looong piece attempting to define The Brazilianization of the World. There are lots of interesting bits, but it ended up drawing a long 'hmmmmmmm' from me.

central theses include, from my single reading:

• deaption: the behaviour and social responses to ideas (such as enlightenment liberalism) displaced in zones with different material conditions (eg colonised countries) - strong
• the applicability of that process back out globally - v wary
• high level geopolitical mechanics of end of history to

this quote gives a good example of where i'm super-wary: do they *actually* make rich and powerful states look like banana republics? (an unhelpful term, given its literal meaning - i assume the meaning here is more 'shoddy governance and public corruption').

yes we have seen very recent examples of political indifference to corruption, which in turn do seem greater in venality and magnitude that the sort of corruption visible in earlier decades, but on the whole the public and civic structures in western democracies are still very strong.

i'm also incredible wary about generalising patterns of wealth inequality across different countries - wealth inequality in the US has grown significantly since the bicentennial of the declaration in 1976, wealth inequality took a jump in the thatcher years but has stayed static in the UK since. (that's not to say there aren't very visible signs of how we fail the most vulnerable eg homelessness, or substantial deficits being built up in the civic realm eg social care, which will probably lead to significant increases in wealth inequality, just that the measures have been static, and wealth inequality in the UK is more of a London and its large financial hinterland, and everywhere else.

the piece is good on the telos of post-history liberalisation that endorses fascism when it doesn't get its way (eg the outcome of the telos doesn't materialise) - the relief with which papers like the Economist welcomed Bolsanaro being the best example.

at one point the author identifies a social mechanic for the absence (and therefore the conditions for the presence of) culture:

Writing in the early 1940s, the great Brazilian historian Caio Prado Jr. analyzed the colonial form of contemporary Brazil, remarking upon the efficiency of the colonial order as an organization of pro­duction combined with a sterility with respect to higher-level social relations—all economy, no culture. What defined a modern periphery molded by colonialism was therefore a “lack of a moral nexus,” that complex of human institutions that maintain individuals linked and united in a society and that weld them into a cohesive and compact whole. If we already hear echoes of the contemporary neoliberal dis­aggregation of society here, it is not by chance.

I buy it. But you then don't get to do this later in the same essay:

Given the country’s natural bounty, its admired and widely shared culture (despite everything)

nope, you don't get to do a 'despite everything' there i'm afraid. it exists in the conditions you have outlined so what does that mean for the 'lack of moral nexus' thesis? Maybe at most it just means that culture is not dependent on that moral nexus, and is just shaped by, adaptive to, and reflective of the material conditions of its creation. (and indeed the frictions of 'deaption' (a new concept to me).

it gets pretty sketchy towards the end, referring to 'the EU's neoliberal death spiral'. really? i mean it's been pragmatically and frequently badly managing crisis from day one and continues to do so and presumably will one day cease to exist or transform beyond its current definition. but i don't see any reason to call that a death spiral.

so yes, some easy mode thinking, but it's a good piece with plenty of ideas in it.

picked it up from Adam Tooze's excellent Chartbook series - this one on Central America and the Caribbean.

*high level geopolotics from end of history to the end of the end of history

i should probably say the whole piece is an attempt to understand what comes next via an analysis of what a definition of what Brazilianization is and might look like. i think there's a lot of *reach* there tbh, but as i say, it's good.

DEATH OF SATIRE KLAXON tho ffs.

Social movements flood São Paulo's Paulista Avenue demanding vaccines, food and the immediately impeachment of Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro.pic.twitter.com/u2o5HgOk2U

— Kawsachun News (@KawsachunNews) May 29, 2021

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/14/bolsonaro-brazil-hospital-hiccups