Democracy and Brazil: Collapse and Regression [1 ed.] 9780367897680

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series
Title
Copyright
Contents
List of Figures
1 De-democratization in Contemporary Brazil: From 2015 to 2020
Part I Political Collapse
2 Initial Observations on the Brazilian Disaster
3 Cycles of Democracy and the Racial Issue in Brazil (1978–2019)
4 Democratization and De-democratization in Left-Led Brazil: From “Low-Conflict Progressivism” to “Hyper-Reactionary Neoliberalism”
5 The Right and Neo-Golpismo in Latin America. A Comparative Reading of Honduras (2009), Paraguay (2012), and Brazil (2016)
6 Corruption and Neoliberalism in Contemporary Brazil
7 Bolsonaro and the Current Stage of the Brazilian Social Crisis: Historical Continuities as a Backdrop for the Present Situation
8 The Post-Depressive Constellation: From Political Effervescence to the Rise of Right-Wing Authoritarianism in Brazil
Part II Social Regression
9 Paulo Freire’s Legacy and the Ideological Battle in Brazil
10 The Urban Crisis in Brazil: From the Neodevelopmentalist Experiment to the Rise of Bolsonarismo
11 De-democratization in Brazil and the New Puzzle of Women’s Political Representation
12 Politics of Devastation: Remarks on De-democratization, Indigenous Peoples, and the Environment in Contemporary Brazil
13 Politics and Religion in Contemporary Brazil: The Neoconservative Turn in Evangelical Christianity
14 What Is Post-Truth? A Tentative Answer with Brazil as a Case Study
15 Psychiatric Power: Exclusion and Segregation in the Brazilian Mental Health System
16 A Return to the Past or a New Beginning? Why the Brazilian Case Merits Broader Discussion
Notes on Contributors
Index

Citation preview

Democracy and Brazil Democracy and Brazil: Collapse and Regression discusses the de-democratization process underway in contemporary Brazil. The relative political stability that characterized domestic politics in the 2000s ended with the sudden emergence of a series of massive protests in 2013, followed by the controversial impeachment of Dilma Rousseff in 2016 and the election of Jair Bolsonaro in 2018. In this new, more conservative period in Brazilian politics, a series of institutional reforms deepened the distance between citizens and representatives. Brazil’s current political crisis cannot be understood without reference to the continual growth of right-wing and ultra-right discourse, on the one hand, and to the neoliberal ideology that pervades the minds of large parts of the Brazilian elite, on the other. Twenty experts on Brazil across different fields discuss the ongoing political turmoil in the light of distinct problems: geopolitics, gender, religion, media, indigenous populations, right-wing strategies, and new forms of coup, among others. Updated analyses enriched with historical perspective help to illuminate the intricate issues that will determine the country’s fate in years to come. Democracy and Brazil: Collapse and Regression will interest students and scholars of Brazilian politics and history, Latin America, and the broader fields of democracy studies. Bernardo Bianchi is a visiting professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), Brazil, and a research associate at the Centre Marc Bloch (CMB), Humboldt University Berlin, Germany. His main research interests are political philosophy, history of philosophy, and contemporary political theory, as well as social theory. Jorge Chaloub is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF), Brazil. He is also senior advisor to the Moreira Salles  Institute  (IMS)  in Rio de Janeiro. His research interests include political theory, Brazilian political thought, political philosophy, social theory, and the history of contemporary Brazil. Patricia Rangel holds a PhD in political science from the University of Brasilia, Brazil, and a post-PhD in sociology from the University of São Paulo, with a research stay at the Latin American Institute at the Freien Universität Berlin, Germany. She has co-edited titles such as Gender and Feminisms: Argentina, Brazil and Chile under Transformation (2019) and Women’s Political Participation in Latin America (2018). She works in the fields of political science, gender studies, and feminist research. Frieder Otto Wolf is an honorary professor at The Free University of Berlin, Germany. He is a fellow of the research institute The Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and sits on the advisory boards of the journals Das Argument, Historical Materialism, Cosmopolitiques, and Écologie et Politique. He works in the fields of political philosophy, radical philosophy, critical Marxism, and the epistemology of the social and historical sciences, with an emphasis on applications to the fields of political ecology and alternative economic strategies.

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Democracy and Brazil Collapse and Regression

Edited by Bernardo Bianchi, Jorge Chaloub, Patricia Rangel and Frieder Otto Wolf

First published 2021 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Taylor & Francis The right of Bernardo Bianchi, Jorge Chaloub, Patricia Rangel and Frieder Otto Wolf to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-89768-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-02100-1 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of Figuresviii   1 De-democratization in Contemporary Brazil: From 2015 to 2020

1

BERNARDO BIANCHI, PATRICIA RANGEL, AND JORGE CHALOUB

PART I

Political Collapse

17

  2 Initial Observations on the Brazilian Disaster

19

ANTONIO NEGRI

  3 Cycles of Democracy and the Racial Issue in Brazil (1978–2019)

26

FLAVIA RIOS

  4 Democratization and De-democratization in Left-Led Brazil: From “Low-Conflict Progressivism” to “Hyper-Reactionary Neoliberalism”

41

BARRY CANNON

  5 The Right and Neo-Golpismo in Latin America. A Comparative Reading of Honduras (2009), Paraguay (2012), and Brazil (2016)

61

LORENA SOLER AND FLORENCIA PREGO

  6 Corruption and Neoliberalism in Contemporary Brazil PEDRO LUIZ LIMA AND JORGE CHALOUB

78

vi  Contents   7 Bolsonaro and the Current Stage of the Brazilian Social Crisis: Historical Continuities as a Backdrop for the Present Situation

97

RÔMULO LIMA

  8 The Post-Depressive Constellation: From Political Effervescence to the Rise of Right-Wing Authoritarianism in Brazil

114

ARTHUR BUENO

PART II

Social Regression131   9 Paulo Freire’s Legacy and the Ideological Battle in Brazil

133

BERNARDO BIANCHI

10 The Urban Crisis in Brazil: From the Neodevelopmentalist Experiment to the Rise of Bolsonarismo

150

ERMÍNIA MARICATO AND PAOLO COLOSSO

11 De-democratization in Brazil and the New Puzzle of Women’s Political Representation

166

PATRICIA RANGEL, ENEIDA VINHAES DULTRA, AND DAVID MCCOY

12 Politics of Devastation: Remarks on De-democratization, Indigenous Peoples, and the Environment in Contemporary Brazil

194

ANA GUGGENHEIM COUTINHO

13 Politics and Religion in Contemporary Brazil: The Neoconservative Turn in Evangelical Christianity

208

MAGALI DO NASCIMENTO CUNHA

14 What Is Post-Truth? A Tentative Answer with Brazil as a Case Study

226

ERNESTO PERINI-SANTOS

15 Psychiatric Power: Exclusion and Segregation in the Brazilian Mental Health System MARLON MIGUEL

250

Contents vii 16 A Return to the Past or a New Beginning? Why the Brazilian Case Merits Broader Discussion

268

FRIEDER OTTO WOLF

Notes on Contributors Index

273 276

Figures

11.1 11.2 11.3a 11.3b 11.3c 11.3d 11.4a 11.4b 11.5

Elite Survey Responses by Year and Gender: Opposition to Abortion Female Councilors and Mayors Elected (2004–16) Female City Councilors Elected (2004–16) Male City Councilors Elected (2004–16) Female City Councilors Elected (2004–16) Male City Councilors Elected (2004–16) Party List Votes for Women (%): Pro-Impeachment (2004–16) Party List Votes for Women (%): Pro-Impeachment (2004–16) Female Candidates Elected (2002–18)

171 173 175 176 176 177 178 178 184

1 De-democratization in Contemporary Brazil From 2015 to 2020 Bernardo Bianchi, Patricia Rangel, and Jorge Chaloub This book advances a discussion about the process of de-democratization, underway in Brazil since 2015. The first act of this process is represented by the questioning of the results of the 2014 presidential elections by the PSDB (Brazilian Social Democracy Party), won by Dilma Rousseff by 3.3% of the valid votes, i.e., 3.5 million votes, the thinnest proportional margin in Brazilian history. In this context, after a questionable parliamentary maneuver in 2016, Rousseff was impeached, unleashing a double process comprising the unsettlement of the political institutions and social unrest, which guides the division of this book into two main parts: Political Collapse and Social Regression. To these first acts, one must add the rise of Rousseff’s former Vice-President Michel Temer to the presidency, the murder of Marielle Franco, the Federal Military intervention in 2018, the imprisonment of Rousseff’s immediate predecessor and mentor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the victory of a far-right politician in the 2018 presidential elections, and Bolsonaro’s frequent statements and acts against institutions, minorities, and political groups. The conceptualization of de-democratization will shed new light on the interpretation of Brazilian politics by criticizing an understanding based simply on a formalist approach. In other words, by preferring the term dedemocratization, we aim to critique those perspectives which tend to consider contemporary liberal democracies as something given or completed once and for all, as if the word “democracy” could magically eradicate the threats of authoritarianism that haunt every democratic experience. It is also a perspective that brings together processes of the expansion of democracy (democratization) as well as its downfall (de-democratization).1 De-democratization addresses a different account of the Brazilian political debate. On the one hand, it can be related to analyses around the idea of an instrumentalization of the institute of impeachment, that is, the idea that instead of cancelling elections or electoral results, the ruler can be neutralized by means of the judiciary system as well as parliamentary maneuvers that materially subvert the existing political regime, even though they can hardly be regarded as a formal institutional break. On the other hand, de-democratization highlights the processual dimension of the transformations analyzed, considering them as a meeting of different times, which often cannot be connected to

2  Bernardo Bianchi et al. one specific episode, such as the impeachment of Rousseff in 2016, the legal impediment of Lula da Silva’s candidacy in 2018, and the subsequent election of Jair Bolsonaro in the same presidential campaign. The concept does not deny the existence of different weights for certain events, but aims to analyze them from a longer perspective. One of the main risks of a reading in terms of processual dimension is its tautologic historicization.2 This can be seen very clearly in the way some analysts read the Brazilian crisis, neglecting the particularities of the present state of affairs both in Latin America and on a global scale, refraining from elaborating a clear understanding of the present. Accordingly, analysts such as Vladmir Safatle (2017) and Paulo Arantes (2014) argue that the Brazilian crisis can be attributed to fundamental vices connected to the end of the military regime (1964–1985) and to the implementation of the so-called New Republic, which took shape under the 1988 Federal Constitution. This perspective is characterized by the idea of a depletion (esgotamento) of the New Republic, which amounts to the fundamental fragility of the agreement between conservative and progressive sectors of Brazilian society in the mid-’80s. According to Safatle, the current downturn in Brazilian political life should be understood as a consequence of this “original sin.” This perspective – which we call the inherent vices thesis3 – does not do justice to the long and painful democratization process of the late 1970s and 1980s. The emphasis on the fragility of the reconciliatory nature of the 1988 political regime leads such a perspective to a teleological analysis, a tautologic historicization, which depoliticizes the social processes concerned, postulating the current situation of the Brazilian politics as an unavoidable effect of foundational mistakes of the center-left and the Left, which were neither resolute nor conscious enough in their view to bring about the rupture needed by the political context.4 The 1988 pact was a major democratic accomplishment, marking a fundamental turn not only in terms of the transformation of national political institutions, but also on the level of social movement participation. In the tradition of Brazilian democratic constitutions (1934 and 1946), the 1988 Constitution deserved the appellation it received from Ulysses Guimarães, former President of the Constituent Assembly, as a Citizen’s Constitution, due to the rights it enshrined, and additionally for being the product of public participation. The Constitution, “like the sea snail, will conserve forever the roar of the waves of suffering, hope, and claims from whence it came”5 (Guimarães 2016). Historically neglected social movements were included in the debates of the 1988 Constituent Assembly – Indigenous, African Brazilians, quilombolas,6 Landless Workers Movement (MST), LGBTQI movement, favelados (slum inhabitants), etc. Even if it is true that the transition from the military regime to the New Republic was not made through a radical break with the past (in the form of a revolution, for example), analysts must admit that it marked a powerful transformation in the way politics was done in Brazil. Therefore, 1988 was not a compromise, but a true defeat of the reactionary sectors of Brazilian society.

De-democratization in Contemporary Brazil 3 After 1988, Brazil achieved an important consensus over basic human rights and values, which were not directly attacked by any relevant political group. This was a major accomplishment of the adversaries of the dictatorship, who were able to build a solid resistance against previous authoritarian practices. The 1988 Federal Constitution is a milestone of this political victory. Neither authoritarian ideas nor reactionary actors were publicly supported. Many current debates in Brazilian politics would seem absurd through the lenses of this recent past. The right-wing agenda was limited to economic policies, and their victories were far less relevant than the ones accomplished by progressive groups in cultural, social, and political realms. Although a few conservative groups (both religious and secular) had succeeded in influencing and preventing advances in polemical issues such as abortion, the country experienced an era of progressive neoliberalism (Fraser 2016). In the decades following the establishment of the New Republic, Brazil witnessed important transformations, even though it continued to experience effects of the authoritarian organization of society and the state, entangled with the democratic features of the new regime. The Brazilian Police Apparatus has never been reformed and has continued to act under the protection of Military Justice like an imperium in imperio. In addition, the political training of public security officers remains untouched. In their headquarters, military and police agents continue to be educated along the same lines as employed during authoritarian times prior to 1985. Systematic massacres undertaken by police agents are regarded as ordinary mishaps, although they target African Brazilians, the poor, and other marginalized segments of the population, in both rural and urban contexts: Carandiru (1992), Candelária (1993), Vigário Geral (1993), Corumbiara (1995), Eldorado do Carajás (1996), Baixada (2005). The first Brazilian president to directly approach this issue was Rousseff (2011–14, 2015–16), who, among other measures, created the Truth Commission (Comissão da Verdade)  – responsible for addressing not only the political assassinations by military agents during the dictatorship but also police violence in contemporary times.7 Nevertheless, Brazil experienced a period of stability after the introduction of the 1988 Federal Constitution, notwithstanding the impeachment of Fernando Collor in 1992, and the large popular demonstrations in 2013. The dramatic shift took place in 2016, when Rousseff was impeached by an illegal parliamentary maneuver. The episode represented a clear break from the political nature of the regime as it denatured the Brazilian presidential system into a de facto parliamentarism. This marked the difference between Rousseff’s impeachment process and Fernando Collor’s in 1992.8 The lack of legal elements demanded by law, together with clear purposes of undermining popular participation in major political decisions, produced a rupture in Brazil’s democratic trajectory. The impeachment opened the door to a series of institutional reforms, first carried out by the newly sworn-in Temer, Rousseff’s vice-president, who replaced her in office, and then radically intensified by Bolsonaro. The main

4  Bernardo Bianchi et al. achievements of this process came through in the form of an amendment to the Constitution, which precluded any real increase in public expenses for the following 20 years (Constitutional Amendment No. 95/2016), and by means of a deep reform in social security, which preserved well-paid groups that support Bolsonaro, such as military forces and the judiciary. Other constitutional reforms are already underway, involving the tributary system and public service reform. The Brazilian context cannot be understood without reference to the continual growth of the right-wing and ultra-right discourse amid the political turmoil. Since the massive rallies in 1984, which culminated in the restoration of democratic institutions, the depth of Brazilian social problems has undermined the power of right-wing rhetoric in both liberal and conservative sectors. The very label “right-wing” has been regarded as an efficient disqualification method in the political arena. For this reason, right-wing intellectuals have repeatedly insisted on the need to overcome the Left-Right dichotomy in Brazil – when they do not simply reject any affiliation to right-wing ideas. The last few years have changed this situation. The right-wing camp is no longer ashamed to state their preferences. Organized through think tanks, as well as by ideologues, and with the support of the media, they have developed a sophisticated ideological front, which spreads hate speech against minorities and what they label “cultural modernity.” There is a clear effort to eliminate every idea that could be regarded as leftist, ideas which are then characterized as cognitive pathologies and moral deviations. Just like before 1964, moralism has become a central feature of the new Brazilian conservatism, which, notwithstanding its intrinsic heterogeneity, reveals important general characteristics. With the election of the ultra-right candidate Bolsonaro in October 2018, the Brazilian government seems to adhere to a radical combination of economic neoliberalism and neoconservatism.9 Although this arrangement was already present under Temer’s administration, it has taken a radical expression in more recent developments. In Brazil, criticism against “cultural modernity” comes alongside the praise of capitalism and market-driven distribution of wealth, as can be seen in the discourses of Olavo de Carvalho (2013). Analyses such as those from Jürgen Habermas on the “new conservatism” (Habermas 1991), Brown (2006) on the relationship between “neoliberalism” and “American neoconservatism” in the United States, or Jacques Rancière’s (Ranciere 2014) on “hatred of democracy” express the global inscription of the right-wing tide and prevent any isolated interpretation of the Brazilian context, which also hinders any insistence on the inherent vice thesis presented in the beginning of this text. Nevertheless, Bolsonaro is one of the most radical expressions of contemporary right-wing forces. Even though Brazil is not a fascist political regime, there is a clear expansion of fascist politics (Stanley 2018), like the open defense of violence, a strong sense of natural hierarchies and the pick of minorities as public enemies. We call ultra-right the political movements that combine a fascist political language and an electoral strategy for power. The conjunction between regular institutional means, present in neoliberal and

De-democratization in Contemporary Brazil 5 neoconservative political languages, with frequent symbolic and physical violence demands a different concept, distinct from the regular uses of terms like extreme-right, that usually concern groups that do not act in those different political scenarios. Moreover, unlike the populist radical right, as defined by Cas Mudde (2017, 5), economics is a central issue for the Brazilian ultra-right, which incorporates elements from neoliberal and ultraliberal discourses. Additional approaches can be found throughout the work of other authors. On the one hand, David Runciman (2018) and Steven Levitsky, together with Daniel Ziblatt (2018), point at conjunctural troubles concerning the relationship between capitalism and democracy. On the other hand, Wolfgang Streeck (2014, 2016) and Antonio Negri (see Chapter 2, this volume) argue that such a relationship is altogether impossible. Nevertheless, both sides converge in emphasizing the emergence of new tensions arising from the alliance between capitalism and democracy, which could (in the opinion of Runciman, Levitsky, and Ziblatt) or will necessarily (Streeck and Negri) lead to an articulation between capitalism and authoritarian politics. Other authors, like Wanderley Guilherme dos Santos (2016) and Michel Löwy (2016), define a new type of democratic breakdown, close to the concept of neo-golpismo. For them, a different kind of coup has emerged in recent years. It differs from usual coups by its methods, which do not explicitly rupture democratic institutions, but rather develop with an apparent respect for them. Indeed, parliament and the judiciary are frequent protagonists in this phenomenon. The de-democratization process in Brazil comes in line with the emergence of a new legitimation order (Foucault 2004; Streeck 2016), informed by a market-conforming economic policy by means of which the state seeks to decouple popular democracy from the management of the economy. This rearrangement implies the emergence of a new political paradigm amidst liberal democracies, according to which democracies should only exist under tutelage. Democracy under tutelage is thus the paradoxical form undertaken by liberal democracies as the mistrust against the people forecloses the traditional forms of popular participation. The neoliberal language is largely compatible with recent changes in conservative discourse. Almost three decades ago, Habermas (1991) already saw a clear modification in US-American and German forms of conservatism. Differently from old conservatism, which directly opposed free-market policies, neoconservatism seeks an alignment with neoliberalism. According to Habermas, both in the USA and Germany, conservatism has abandoned the usual criticism against capitalism and chosen cultural modernity as its major opponent. In the aftermath of 1968, neoconservative discourse directed its harshest criticism against the struggles and claims made by minorities. Neoconservative discourse is based on what it regards as the fundamental sources of socialization, such as family, from whence emerges its strong attack against feminism and LGBTQI movements. This ideological frame based on the idea of “traditional family” allows one to readily understand the attacks by neoconservatives against what they have labeled as “gender ideology.” This bet on neoconservatism and a careful effort to represent Bolsonaro as a

6  Bernardo Bianchi et al. popular individual are the bases of right-wing victory, and a ultra-right hegemony, which is not only based on the power of political or economic elites, but also leans on strong popular support. Bolsonaro first won the preferences of wealthy groups, but soon achieved solid popularity. Notwithstanding the huge rejection linked to his name, he holds solid popular support, which sticks to him even amidst a difficult economic situation and a long series of accusations linking him and his family to criminal activities. The affinities between neoliberalism and neoconservatism hinge on the refusal of the democratic idea of citizenship. Furthermore, they share a common interest in the dismantling of public education, since both perspectives defend the idea that education should result from the private space – exclusively based on individual preferences (neoliberalism) or on family values (neoconservatism). Even though the two discourses (neoliberalism and neoconservatism) still present differences, they have become strongly united in a moment of right-wing expansion. In this sense, Brown (2006) describes how neoliberalism and neoconservatism work together in de-democratization processes, that is, processes culminating in the undermining of the democratic idea of citizenship. Brazilian neoconservatism is nourished by a strong conservative tradition, which resulted from specific Brazilian particularities and forged a lexicon to deal with Brazil’s peripherical place in a global order (Ricupero 2010). After a sound defeat embodied by the 1988 Constitution and several losses to political groups identified with a neoliberal discourse, this conservative tradition moved decisively towards neoconservatism, combining, as previously explained, economic neoliberalism and a conservative agenda. In Brazil, the global level must be continuously confronted with the local history of a new construction of political hegemony. On the one hand, it is important to draw on two series of episodes. First of all, the history of Latin America over the past 15 years, which has been shaken by repeated instances of presidential removals – Jean-­ Bertrand Aristide in Haiti (2004), Manuel Zelaya in Honduras (2009), Fernando Lugo in Paraguay (2012), Evo Morales in Bolivia (2019). Second, we must consider the radicalization of conservative positions such as those of Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Donald Trump in the USA, and Matteo Salvini in Italy. However, we believe that the decoupling between democracy and capitalism in Brazil can only be fully grasped with reference to the long development – in part explicit, in part underground – of a Right and ultra-right activism at the base of society, organized around social media, and in articulation with the proliferation of think tanks since the 1980s, such as the Instituto Liberal and Instituto Millenium. On the other hand, the success of the articulation between these two dimensions would not be possible without the active adherence of sectors of the judiciary, the armed forces, and segments of the neo-charismatic movements. The cohesion of this articulation, however, does not lie in itself, as a prior feature of this new hegemony. It was against “cultural modernity” and, especially, by means of a struggle and stigmatization of the Left – and the Partido

De-democratization in Contemporary Brazil  7 dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party, PT)  – that this movement developed a common ground and an identity. This attack against the Left, nevertheless, hides a deeper hatred against the New Republic – which is viewed as a confluence of leftist movements. In this sense, even center-right parties are taken for far-left political actors. One central idea of this far-right project is to build a new political order, hostile to most of the post-War democratic institutions. The main political aim seems to be to wreck the 1988 Constitution. On one hand, neoliberal ideologues, such as Paulo Guedes, refuse the communitarian soul (Cittadino 2009) of the Constitution, while, on the other hand, being an explicit supporter of military dictatorship, Bolsonaro logically refuses the legal mark of this reactionary’s defeat. As he declared in the third month of his government: I always dreamed of freeing Brazil from the nefarious left ideology. . . . Brazil is not an open land where we aim to build things for our people. We must deconstruct a lot. Undo a lot. So later we start to do this. If I succeed to be, at least, a turning point, I will already be very happy.10 Even though he says that his main objective is to destroy the actual “leftist” order, it is evident, in other speeches, that his future is a sort of renewed past. With the destruction of the 1988 order, Brazil would logically return to its natural political order, as it existed under the military dictatorship. In that newold order, civil rights, new social expressions, and all kinds of government contestations would be police matters. Furthermore, because of its 13 years in office, the PT attracted not only the animosity of those who considered it a leftist party, but also anti-system criticism, which associated the PT with the Establishment tout court. Because of these changes, the current fascist political language may become a new-old type of political regime, making Brazil an important case in a scenario of global expansion of ultra-right ideas, actors, and movements. These elements and dimensions are explored by our authors in numerous ways throughout this volume. *** The book is divided into two major parts which encompass two different analytical levels. Part I provides theoretical insights into processes of de-democratization, neo-golpismo, and the rise of right-wing forces. These processes form a comprehensive basis for understanding the impacts of such deep transformations in the political background on specific policies and social groups. Part II then brings together different case studies and debates on the political downturns of particular and concrete instances: gender and ethnic equality, urban policy, education, the role of media and churches. Selection of the case studies follows two criteria: their relevance in the current political crisis and their role in the discourse of Brazilian far-right-wing actors. All of them were main fronts in

8  Bernardo Bianchi et al. the political dispute after 2013 and continue to be important fields in the current ultra-right narratives.

Part I Political Collapse In the first part, authors address the new right-wing forces and the crisis of Brazilian democracy. Antonio Negri analyzes how authoritarianism can, under certain circumstances, result from democratic procedures rather than from the direct overthrow of legitimate political institutions in its classical form. In this sense, what is at stake is not a modification of the constitutional process or a break with legality. Instead, the downturn of Brazilian democracy sheds new light on the internal building of a new legitimation frame, which is authoritarian. Negri thus addresses some paradoxical designations to classify the political processes undertaken in Brazil since the impeachment of Rousseff in 2016, such as institutional putsch and constitutional putsch. At the same time, Negri argues that these processes do not limit themselves to Brazil. The paradoxical association between democratic institutions and the emergent authoritarian institutions is a contemporary phenomenon that reaches many different countries. Flavia Rios elaborates an interesting discussion on the relationship between social movements, political parties, and the state during three cycles of democracy in Brazil, namely democratization, democratic establishment, and dedemocratization. The first corresponds to the period of 1978–89, the second from 1994–2014, and the third period refers to 2015–20. Rios provides a longitudinal sociological approach that seeks to understand trajectory, types, and quality of socio-state interactions. The main hypothesis is that social movements have lived three distinct moments: contestation of categorical inequalities, institutionalization of mediation spaces with the state and, finally, institutionalization of public politics and political arenas that allowed for the development of a relationship between social movements and the party, especially through executive power. Other authors place the 2016 impeachment within a debate on neo-golpismo. They draw on the experiences of presidential removals in Latin America mentioned earlier, which are analyzed in parallel with the overthrow of Rousseff presidency. In all cases, there was the emergence of dramatic political crises accompanied by mobilizations of civic discontent that led to the removal or resignation of presidents, but without the use of force.11 Afterwards, governments committed to neoliberal and neoconservative reforms took office and founded new arrangements that allowed traditional elites to regain voice. This phenomenon can be hardly interpreted as something other than a putsch, usually understood as a radical change of government violating the legal Constitution of the state. However, unlike the traditional coups that took place in the 20th century, in which military forces usurped power through violence, neo-golpismo is performed by agents inside the state itself (i.e. parliament or the justice system) and does not establish an authoritarian/military order.

De-democratization in Contemporary Brazil  9 That gives the putsch an appearance of institutional normality and compliance with democratic procedures. Consequently, they have been addressed as “constitutional coups,” or “soft-coups”: a strategy of right-wing forces in a context of Left hegemony to force rulers out of office with little bloodshed and an element of popular and institutional legitimacy. Cannon presents a wide-ranging perspective on the right in Latin America based on theories that go beyond the political realm to include the ideological, economic, military and transnational domains, he argues that right-leaning elites dominate in each of these areas, ensuring minimum deviation from neoliberalism, and hence limiting the possibilities for left governments to implement deep structural change in a progressive, more democratic direction. This can include the removal of such governments when sufficiently threatening to elite power, which is the case of Dilma Rousseff’s removal. As Argentinean sociologists Lorena Soler and Florencia Prego note, neogolpismo would not be successful without support from the national (and/or transnational) bourgeoisie. Neoliberalism today is being recreated from the action of right-wing political parties, from the circulation of right-wing ideas (conveyed by intellectuals and/or conglomerates of media) and fundamentally from the direct action of the bourgeoisies, which give new meanings to democracy. Latin America is undergoing a process of conservative restoration that merits reviewing the characteristics of a “new Right.” Observing new formats of arbitrary overthrow of heads of state in the region in the beginning of the 21st century, they seek to analyze the characteristics assumed by these episodes. Pedro Luiz Lima and Jorge Chaloub analyze the process of de-democratization from the perspective of neoliberalism. They emphasize the incompatibility between capitalism and democracy and examine neo-golpismo as a means to neutralize election results (rather than through their cancellation, as explained earlier). They write about the neoliberalism-neoconservatism relationship, and address the peculiar Erscheinungsform of neoliberalism, embodied in an instrumentalization of the institute of impeachment, which took place against Rousseff. The authors sustain that the concept of “coup” is crucial for an accurate interpretation of President Rousseff’s impeachment process in 2016. In order to contribute to such an interpretation, they first establish a theoretical connection between the concept of “coup” and certain notions of the legitimacy of political orders. Second, they approach the discursive structure and patterns of two groups that were directly engaged in the impeachment process: the justice system (comprising the judiciary, “Ministério Público,” and Federal Police) and a majoritarian segment of the political party system. In the same vein, but focusing on a macro-analysis, Rômulo Lima states that addressing the Brazilian crisis requires moving beyond problems of the corruption of individuals or political parties. Such a complex situation must be placed and analyzed in its most relevant contexts, that is, the political and economic ones. In his analysis, Lima considers elements of global capitalism and geopolitics, associating the process of de-democratization with Brazilian traits

10  Bernardo Bianchi et al. of a peripheric, ex-colonial, and ex-slavocratic economy. His aim is to give an account of the current crisis in Brazil in the light of its internal history, on the one hand, and of the development of global capitalism since the crisis of the 1960s, on the other. The idea behind his argument is that only the identification of historical continuities at both local and global levels can shed light on what is at stake in the current stage of the Brazilian historical social crisis. Finally, some authors address the big picture and the issue of the political conjuncture, providing comprehensive chronologies of the process of de-democratization, and tracking back some pre-conditions for the process – especially, the 2013 demonstrations, stressing the fascist tendencies resulting from them, as Arthur Bueno does. He discerns two general perspectives: a normativist approach (which grasps June  2013 in terms of the pursuance of more or less defined normative aims, either single or plural, either class-related or juridical-political) and the multitudinous approach (which understands June 2013 in terms of a suspension of established normative grammars, with the alleged emergence of a de-subjectivized multitude open to the “common”).

Part II Social Regression As mentioned earlier, the impeachment of Rousseff opened the door for a series of institutional changes that have weakened democracy by impairing the most vulnerable strands of the population (Indigenous people, African Brazilians, women, LGBTQIs, quilombolas, and agrarian workers). Retirement, tax regime, and labor reforms broke up labor rights, and Constitutional Amendment No. 95 precluded any real increase of the public expenses for 20 years. Part II of this book is dedicated to examining these issues, focusing on specific social groups and policies, especially setbacks for the most marginalized ones. The authors examine the political interests of conservative actors who played a major role in the de-democratization process (agribusiness/agricultural elite, media, evangelical Christian leaders, conservative parties). They explore a very important dimension of all of neo-golpismo in Latin America: propaganda and oligarchical media. Bernardo Bianchi analyzes the ideological battle in Brazil, taking Paulo Freire’s legacy as a case study. Declared “patron of Brazilian education” by Rousseff in 2012 (and by the Law No. 12,612), Freire’s work has been considered the paramount adversary of neoconservative groups in parliament and civil society ever since the 2016 impeachment. Drawing from the analysis of the ultraconservative Olavo de Carvalho, these groups overestimate the impact of Freire’s influence in Brazil, believing that the entire national educational system is enthralled by Freire’s doctrine, which they associate with cultural Marxism. In 2017, after Rousseff’s impeachment, sectors of the Brazilian Congress tried to repeal this law. Despite the evident complexity of the Brazilian educational system, there is, at present, a surprising insistence on the role of the Freirean legacy. The author argues that this insistence is indicative of which field Brazilian conservatism believes the struggle for power is

De-democratization in Contemporary Brazil 11 being played out on, as it is seen as a fundamentally ideological and cultural battle. Ermínia Maricato and Paolo Colosso discuss the impacts of the process of de-democratization over urban everyday life. They argue that the relationship between the rise of an authoritarian neoliberal right-wing and setbacks in urban politics have been intensified since the mid-2000s, when there was still a period of economic growth. The authors deal with the context following the institutional rupture that took place in 2016 and point to the profile of urban politics of the new Right. Its central elements include justifying austerity and the “diminution of the size of the state,” the sale of public patrimonies in order to unlock businesses that generate profits, and interest and income to the players of the real estate circuit. In the cities of semi-peripheral capitalism, this opening for business does not take place without hygienist policies, removing undesirable populations from the central areas, which can then be “revitalized.” Another important point is an ostensible militarization of daily life, whose greatest example is the army on the streets of Rio de Janeiro. Patricia Rangel, Eneida Vinhaes Dultra, and David McCoy focus on setbacks regarding gender equality and women’s rights. They examine the impacts of the conservative tide on women’s substantive and descriptive representation, and how Brazil’s puzzle of unusual patterns of women’s representation interact with the de-democratization process. They argue that the complexity of political representation and inevitable heterogeneity of group interests often requires one to move beyond discrete instances of representation, such as a single policy change or alternation of actors. Ana Guggenheim Coutinho turns our attention to another crucial topic: the Indigenous peoples’ relationship with the state. According to the author, Bolsonaro’s election in 2018 represents the apex of a de-democratization process that deeply affected the struggles of Indigenous peoples and environmentalists in contemporary Brazil. She presents some aspects of the dramatic situation of Indigenous people and of the destructive deadlock imposed on them in the era of agribusiness’ large-scale development in Brazil. Additionally, she provides examples of a political intensification of counter-developmentalist movements led by Indigenous, riverside people and agrarian workers, which were determinant for the right-wing reaction in Brazil. Finally, she explains how the agricultural elite have amplified their power and destructive capacity since the impeachment of Rousseff, placing an environmental and human calamity in Bolsonaro’s first year in office. Magali do Nascimento Cunha analyzes the interplay between politics, media, and religion in the Brazilian context, observing how this relationship favored the increasing importance of neoconservative discourses in the country. She argues that evangelical and mainstream media go hand in hand to create a new conservative discourse in Brazil. The chapter is based on approaches in communication studies focusing on the intersection of media and religion and also of media and politics. While the evangelical conservatism can be characterized by its reaction to the progressive movements coming from gender debates,

12  Bernardo Bianchi et al. feminist questions, and reproductive rights, media conservatism becomes visible in the way the mainstream news rejects topics related to social movements and reacts to the granting of rights to the underprivileged classes. Ernesto Perini-Santos argues that the current process of de-democratization in Brazil cannot be understood without reference to the phenomenon commonly referred to as “post-truth,” i.e. the rapid dissolution of a widely shared, fact- and science-based political discourse. In Brazil, the strategies of fake news and science skepticism have been applied more radically and more successfully than in any other Western democracy. According to him, the impeachment of Rousseff, as well as the success of Bolsonaro’s presidential campaign would have been impossible without the massive and concerted manipulation of political discourse by means of social media. The chapter aims to understand the phenomenon of post-truth less in terms of its historical genesis or psychological functioning, and more as a symptom of the overall economic and social situation of the country. Despite the 13 years of the left-leaning government of the Workers’ PT, the period since the end of the last dictatorship was marked by a strong neoliberal agenda and media ownership concentration (O Globo, Folha de São Paulo, and Estado de São Paulo), which created the conditions for the emergence of subjectivities that are highly receptive to post-truth. Marlon Miguel writes about changes in Brazilian psychiatric models after the impeachment. He explains that following the re-democratization process marked by the 1988 Constitution, the psychiatric reform aimed to treat mentally ill persons as subjects and citizens, in a reaction against the psychiatric model executed during the Brazilian dictatorship (1964–85) based on the principles of private care, isolation, and segregation of the “mad.” However, since December  2017, a transformation of the politics on mental health started to take place, with new policies by the Counsel for National Health (CNS) based again on the old asylum model and on isolation. The chapter analyzes several policy shifts and examines the importance of an alternative model anchored on “geo-psychiatry” and the social integration of “abnormal” subjects in a period particularly marked by a massive increase in mental illness. In Chapter 16, Frieder Otto Wolf takes up Brazil as an exemplary case of de-democratization, as well as the emergence and the failure of “21st century socialism” in Latin America. He proposes to understand the emergence of the PT as a new political subject in its underlying ambiguity between left-wing patronage and a politics of transformation. The global economic crisis of 2007 has not shaken the hegemony of the neoliberal model of politics – and, in contradiction to the years after 1910, no promising Left alternative has emerged, let alone consolidated. The neoliberal model has only changed its main thrust: instead of concentrating on “marketization” alone, it now consciously makes ample use of state power and state resources (turning more to the ordo-liberal variants, and away from the excessive trust in the Chicago school of sheer market radicalism). At the same time, the global crisis has provoked a rise and

De-democratization in Contemporary Brazil 13 consolidation of new right-wing forces, capable of winning popular support in social categories which the left-wing forces seem to have lost. Their central strategic proposal is a retreat to the nation state, while giving priority to the “nationals,” with racist and male-chauvinist overtones. The Brexit campaign has specifically exemplified this successful strategic turn in Europe. Brazil, therefore, is an exemplary case which deserves to be studied not only in its real specificity, but also – and maybe even more so – in order to better understand the global crisis of the Left – as a first, hopeful step towards overcoming it. The author sustains it is necessary to inquire into the structural determinants of the historical defeat of the Left, and not only the Brazilian Left, in the beginning of this century, as well as a positive entry towards renewing a more radical debate around left-wing strategies of transformation in Brazil and beyond. The authors of Part I  and Part II argue that de-democratization reflects a crisis of representation and is part of a broader phenomenon: the rise of rightwing and ultra-right forces not only in Latin America, but also in Europe and in the USA. It proves the dangers and setbacks to which historically outcast populations are subjected when the state falls into the hands of conservative sectors. In this context, it is necessary to rethink the state and its democratic possibilities. So, what is to be done? The following pages will, hopefully, provide a few answers and several new questions.

Notes 1. For a discussion around the concept of de-democratization, we refer to Tilly (2003); Brown (2006). 2. We employ the term historicization in view of the argument that tends to understand the present as the teleological unfolding of the past. 3. Drawing on the recurrence of the term “depletion,” Safatle’s perspective has also been criticized under the name of “depletion thesis” (tese do esgotamento) (Chaloub et al. 2018, 15). 4. The reading defended by Safatle has a long history in the interpretation of the Brazilian society, dating back to Francisco de Oliveira’s critique of dualist reason (razão dualista), which denounces the reconciliatory nature of Brazil’s insertion into modernity, in which its backwardness plays a fundamental role for the affirmation of its modern features. 5. Discourse of enactment of the 1988 Federal Constitution. “Como o caramujo, guardará para sempre o bramido das ondas de sofrimento, esperança e reivindicações de onde proveio.” 6. A quilombola is a resident of a quilombo in Brazil, that is, the communities founded by Afro-Brazilian slaves that escaped from slave plantations. 7. It must be said, however, that on 16 March 2016, the same Rousseff signed the Antiterrorism Law (No. 13, 260/2016), a sound defeat of social movements, which can eventually be framed under this law. 8. About the impeachment of Collor, cf. Sallum Jr. 2015. 9. Neoconservatism is here understood as a “political rationality,” in a sense close to Wendy Brown’s works (2006, 2015) and to others’ research that analyzes contemporary politics inspired by some concepts developed by Foucault (2004) in his lessons on neoliberalism. Authors like Justin Vaisse follow a different path, one that

14  Bernardo Bianchi et al. identifies neoconservatism with determined thinkers, political groups, and specific historical moments. 10. https://oglobo.globo.com/mundo/antes-de-construir-preciso-desconstruirmuitacoisa-no-brasil-diz-bolsonaro-nos-eua-235307’2 11. It should be noted, however, that, unlike Paraguay and Brazil, in Honduras and Haiti the army took part in the process (Soler, 2015).

References Arantes, Paulo. 2014. O Novo Tempo do Mundo. E Outros Estudos Sobre a Era da Emergência – Coleção Coleção Estado de Sítio. São Paulo: Boitempo. Brown, Wendy. 2006. “American Nightmare: Neoliberalism, Neoconservatism, and De-Democratization.” Political Theory 34 (6): 690–714. Brown, Wendy. 2015. Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Carvalho, Olavo de. 2013. O mínimo que você precisa saber para não ser um idiota. Rio de Janeiro: Record. Chaloub, Jorge, Pedro Lima, and Fernando Perlatto. 2018. “Apresentação Ao Dossiê ‘Direitas No Brasil Contemporâneo.’ ” Teoria e Cultura 13 (2): 9–21. Cittadino, Gisele. 2009. Pluralismo, Direito e Justiça Distributiva: elementos da filosofia constitucional contemporânea. Rio de Janeiro: Lumen Juris. Foucault, Michel. 2004. Naissance de la Biopolitique: cours au College de France (1978–1979). Paris: Seuil. Fraser, Nancy. 2016. “Progressive Neoliberalism versus Reactionary Populism: A Choice That Feminists Should Refuse.” NORA – Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research 24 (4): 281–284. Guimarães, Ulysses. 2016. Ulysses Guimarães: Edição Comemorativa. Brasilia: Edições Câmara. Habermas, Jürgen. 1991. The New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and the Historians’ Debate. Edited by Shierry Weber Nicholsen. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Levitsky, Steven, and Daniel Ziblatt. 2018. How Democracies Die. New York: Crown. Löwy, Michel. 2016. “Da tragédia à farsa: o golpe de 2016 no Brasil.” In Por que gritamos golpe? Para entender o impeachment e a crise política no Brasil, edited by I. Jinkings, K. Doria and M. Cleto, 61–68. São Paulo: Boitempo. Mudde, Cas. 2017. “Introduction to the Populist Radical Right.” In The Populist Radical Right: A Reader, edited by Cas Mudde. London: Routledge. Ranciere, Jacques. 2014. Hatred of Democracy. Translated by Steve Corcoran. Reprint edition. London New York: Verso. Ricupero, Bernardo. 2010. “O conservadorismo difícil.” In Revisão do pensamento conservador, edited by Gabriela Nunes Ferreira and André. Botelho. São Paulo: HUCITEC. Runciman, David. 2018. How Democracy Ends. New York: Basic Books. Safatle, Vladimir. 2017. Só Mais Um Esforço. São Paulo: Três Estrelas. Sallum Jr., Brasilio. 2015. O Impeachment de Fernando Collor. Sociologia de Uma Crise. São Paulo, Brasil: Editora, 34. Santos, Wanderley Guilherme dos. 2016. A democracia impedida: o Brasil no século XXI. Rio de Janeiro: FGV. Soler, Lorena. 2015. “Golpes de Estado en el Siglo XXI. Un Ejercicio comparado Haití (2004), Honduras (2009) y Paraguay (2012).” Cadernos PROLAM/USP 14 (26): 77.

De-democratization in Contemporary Brazil 15 Stanley, Jason. 2018. How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. New York City: Random House Publishing Group. Streeck, Wolfgang. 2014. Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism. Translation edition. Brooklyn: Verso. ———. 2016. How Will Capitalism End? Essays on a Failing System. London: Verso. Tilly, Charles. 2003. “Inequality, Democratization, and De-Democratization.” Sociological Theory 21 (1): 37–43.

Part I

Political Collapse

2 Initial Observations on the Brazilian Disaster Antonio Negri1

1. The Democratic Road to Fascism It has become commonplace to observe that every power (potere) is the “power of exception.” Unfortunately, this assertion does not explain the difference between a fascist regime and a constitutional regime. And, indeed, there is no difference, or so those who affirm the normality of the “exception” would reply. If this is the case, tell that to those Brazilian citizens living through the Bolsonaro regime, who will instinctively reply: “You have completely lost it!” The analogy between a democratic regime and a fascist regime is rejected in the Marxist revolutionary tradition. When the Third International imposed this resemblance in the 1920s (which soon became an identity), we know how it ended. I think we need to examine the concept of “constituent power” with equal attention and discernment: it cannot be confused or even adulterated with the “political exception,” with its exercise, as is claimed by those enthusiasts of the autonomy of the political who follow in the footsteps of Carl Schmitt – for whom constituent power is nothing but a figure of the exception. Turning our attention to what happened in Brazil, it should first of all be noted that fascism has arrived not through a classic coup d’état (from outside democratic institutions), nor through the exception (which is more or less what happened for the Latin American fascisms up to Pinochet and the Argentine military), but rather from within the constitutional process itself. Fascism has arrived not through a breach of constitutional legality, but through the constitutional construction of a new legitimacy. Second, I am increasingly convinced that the fascicizing Brazilian government will not exercise power through an external and violent change of the constitutional regime but rather through a weakening of civil liberties (except against black populations) and a governance of the Brazilian current Constitution. Or else by setting in motion a sort of functional constituent power, within its governance  – absorbed within it and capable of making deep changes to the constitutional fabric. This perverse path of democracy, now successful in Brazil, but already experienced in part or whole elsewhere (Turkey, Egypt, for example, without mentioning former socialist countries) must be submitted to critique. We must ask ourselves not only what representative democracy still means today, but also what

20  Antonio Negri democracy in general means. We must ask ourselves how, in what forms, and with what objectives should those people act who are committed to building and defending a Constitution that respects freedom, builds equality, and projects (proposes) the conditions for this. And finally, we should ask if it is even possible to pose these questions at all, or if rather the entire fabric of questioning must be renewed.

2. Institutional Coup D’état “Constitutional coup d’état” and/or “democratic coup d’état”: what happened in Brazil can be referred to in this way, and practically placed within a new figure in constitutional law. The overthrow of a legitimately existing power and its substitution with a power not legitimated by universal suffrage but by a state organ, the Congress, carried out behind a constitutional mask. It began with the impeachment of the president, and continued with her replacement, a simple action by Congress which excluded a new general election, even after the presidential mandate had been recently electorally renewed. The coup d’état then continued (which is not an irrelevant point) with the immediate approval by Congress of several laws, characteristic of a neoliberal regime (such as the establishment of a ban on increased public spending for a long period of time) which, immediately and treacherously, reversed the “material” paradigms of the existing Constitution. The link between the impeachment of Dilma for politico-moral reasons (corruption) and the liquidation of the political orientation of her government through the constitutional affirmation of a neoliberal principle, reveals that the defenestration had a partisan political qualification, namely the characteristic of a coup d’état – followed by a radical modification of the political orientation of her government or, put otherwise, of the “material constitution.” In this way the path was opened for the construction of counter-efforts which, even in the case of a new election, would avoid what a different presidential majority (which the polls attributed to Lula) could reestablish (because it was now constitutionally forbidden): non-liberal proposals of income redistribution, or in any case alternative economic apparatuses to the recently determined economic legitimacy. In support of the continuation of a liberal policy, and therefore on the line of a renewal of state policies outside (and in any case prior to) a popular legitimation, the magistrate then moved through the condemnation and incarceration of Lula, and subsequently, through his exclusion from the “passive vote” (even the possibility of being voted for). Not by chance, this magistrate was immediately co-opted into Bolsonaro’s government. Finally, the elections were held under the threat – this time also not “external” to the institutional process – of an intervention by the national army, in the event that the Left triumphed in the elections. It is at this point that the new president, a “21st-century fascist,” was elected, thus restoring the democratic legitimation of power a posteriori. A very doubtful restoration, but an effective one. In the government that took office at the end of 2018, in addition to Judge Sérgio Moro, from the Operation Car Wash (an operation

Initial Observations on Brazilian Disaster 21 that, as explicitly declared by Judge Francesco Greco,2 has nothing to do with Mani Pulite), Paulo Guedes – a Chicago Boy – will run Finance and Economy; Ernesto Araújo, a man linked to Trump and the alt-right will sit in the Foreign Office; while the army will be assigned the functions of the Ministry of the Interior, of a Ministry of Order. This perverse path, from democracy to fascism, a linear path, organized not by external movements but by the very institutions of constitutional power, by means of conforming the organs of control (particularly the magistrate) to the political lines of the extreme-right, the unveiling of a coherent design that runs through the institutions, destroying every link and influencing new conformations of the formal figures of the Constitution and the materiality of its political orientation, guaranteed by the process of electoral legitimation, and therefore dispelling every ethical characteristic of democratic principle – all of this imposes, when and if the indignation has subsided, a reflection on the very theme of democracy. But that is not all. The fasco-populism of Trump-Bolsonaro commits a further violation of democracy. In fact, these fascist leaderships accept “direct democracy” in a massified and mystified way, insofar as direct democracy is overturned from a mode of governing to simply a figure of legitimation for the government. Trump’s tweets interpret this overturning. Social media and institutional media now willingly bend to this function of legitimation. It can also be added (and the literature on this topic is disproportionate) that they produce it – or in any case make it possible. When the indignation has subsided, we will still have to pose for ourselves the problem of “free expression” subjugated to power. It is the first of the problems that a resistance movement, under the sign of books, not weapons (as is beginning today in Brazil), must ask, because it first of all must liberate “free expression.” Of course, the contradiction between free expression (constitutionally protected) and money (= property = corruption = criminal use of misinformation on the part of major media . . .) seems insoluble. But it is so only for those who continue to consider it as a Gordian knot and do not trust a sword that can cut it. A political force that wants to exit from the slime that, embedded, democracy and fascism represent, must pose this as the first problem to be solved.

3. A General Problem An analogous process to the Brazilian situation is underway in the USA. The democratic solidarity and value of the Constitution in that country for now prevent the transformation process from having the perverse and sometimes grotesque aspects of what is happening in Brazil. In the United States, the presence of opposition forces can still block (and in any case render uncertain) the realization of a tendency such as that in Brazil. This does not alter the fact, however, that a consolidation process of reactionary power is underway. It can be observed in the heavy displacement of the Republican Party towards the Trumpian hardcore (and, behind this, to the supremacist alt-right), the 20-year

22  Antonio Negri alignment of the Supreme Court around ultra-conservative positions, the production of colossal financial operations of media control of the vote, etc. In a much more fragile way, but with sometimes fierce accelerations, analogous processes are also taking place in Italy. In any case the populist horizon widens in Europe and Latin America. This extension dramatically deepens the problem posed previously: how does fascism establish itself within and through democratic institutions? And, second, what is this fascicizing insurgency? In what follows, we will try, if not to give an answer, at least to introduce this question more extensively. For now, let’s be content in defining this strange fascism that appears here in deep conjugation with neoliberalism. Better, we will try to define the difficulties of fulfilment that, to us, a new radical experiment of the Chicago theories must encounter in its development. The current fascicizing conversions of the capitalist ruling class (not all of it, for the moment) seem indeed determined by the necessity of supporting with more strength, with all of the means of the state, constructively, a neoliberal more of development in profound crisis. It is important to emphasize this customary dissimilarity: the force of authoritarianism is called in support of liberalism in its present crisis. From this perspective, fascism seems to present itself (even if it is not only this) as the tough face of neoliberalism. It presents itself as the difficult reprisal of sovereignty, as an inversion of the slogan “first the market and then the state,” in various figures, on the points of the utmost difficulty of development, or of the rupture of its apparatuses, or, better, in the face of the strong resistance that will eventually emerge. What characterizes this fascism is a reactionary reflection. This distinguishes it from those fascisms of the 1920s and 1930s, which were certainly reactionary on the political terrain, but on the economic terrain could be relatively progressive, pseudo-Keynesian. This reaction is thus probably a symptom of weakness, more the effect of a response than of an attack. This is borne out by the fact that these fascist demands, rather than totalitarian techniques, seem to intend to use flexible mechanisms for the authoritarian transformation of the state, calibrating governance as a sort of perverse new “constituent power.” But these are projections which only the intensity of the coming class struggle will be able to confirm or deny. However, the question remains: what is this 21st-century fascism? The fascism of the 20th century wanted to destroy the Soviets, in Russia and wherever else they were to be found in the world. Where are the “Bolsheviks” today? They are clearly conjured up. But the effort of neoliberalism to consolidate itself, the political crises that are added to the economic crises, resurrect the fear of the “Bolsheviks.” This insistence is astonishing. In order to try and rationalize it, let’s advance a hypothesis which allows us to qualify these fascist tendencies in an era in which the development of the mode of production has placed the multitude at the center of class struggle. The multitude is a set of singularities, connected by social cooperation. For the multitude (especially in metropolitan areas), the element of cooperation is the central point of its class existence. In productive terms, this cooperative

Initial Observations on Brazilian Disaster 23 power pushes the multitude towards the common. However, when strong tensions that act on the singularities (which make up the multitude) intervene, in terms such as economic or environmental insecurity and the fear of the future, then the multitudinous cooperation can implode into the terms of identitarian defense. Twenty-first century fascism seems to sustain itself on these accidents of the cooperative nature of the multitude.

4. Fascism and Neoliberalism If in Plato’s time, democratic constitutions proved inadequate to block the crisis of democracy, in the current situation they favor the rise of fascism, generating corruption. The modern democratic constitutions were organized over a dynamic confrontation of interests, eventually coalescing into Right and Left around a model of enmity and peace, with the regulated solution of this in the hypothesis of a balanced composition of conflicting interests. Today, globalization has pushed towards the homogenization of governance at a global level (we could even say towards its standardization), so that to govern in globalization today requires composing the relation between formal and material constitution through inserting into the former rules developed by multinational monetary relations of corporations on the global market – and therefore of substantially eliding the confrontation/conflict, within the Constitution itself. “Centrist extremism,” or the “GroKo” (Grand Coalition), was, in this sense, fundamental moments in recomposing, through governance, constitutional profiles now expanded to a global level. But this phase has ended and the accentuation of conflicts in globalization pushes the traditional formulas of liberal-democratic governance to a deep crisis. These are thus followed by experiments of rupture: America first, Brexit and now Brazil first, Italy first. . . . It is here that governances (i.e., that set of apparatuses that have singularly configured the horizon of national and global government) are experiencing more and more frequent constitutional accidents which above all have the effect of obliterating those aspects of “progressive democracy” that the Constitutions had inherited from the Second World War and from the end of the Cold War. In such a way the physiognomies of states are transformed in contempt of democracy. The long crisis of 2007 has made things worse. Governing the crisis has always meant that the crisis imposes its needs onto democracy. Today, we make a full measurement of the consequences of these incidents. More and more the dialectical constitutional dynamics are disregarded, the oppositions integrated into governance, Keynesianism destroyed with the help of Keynesians. The possible operations of “exception” are given directly within democratic governance, almost like the hidden joints of “constituent power,” rather than through controllable options and mechanisms. I mean to say that the transformations that these movements hint at is now commanded by a destructive power of democracy. With the crisis and weakening of American power that had so far determined a certain global equilibrium, even though tinged by its rule, these processes

24  Antonio Negri have accelerated, bringing chaos everywhere. The new fascism installs itself in this chaos. Armed with neoliberalism as a project for dominating, will it find lasting conditions of development? It will be very difficult. In these conditions, neoliberalism finds itself in a desperate situation, if it wants to restore the equilibrium. Having dislocated or rejected the old democratic constitutional equilibrium, it is now exposed to the void. It needs something new, to respond to new difficulties, and only finds forms of authoritarianism, of renewed fascism. To survive this passage through the void, it must resort to media and ideological instruments, and it must defame and destroy the forces that have opposed it (often timidly or even anticipating its destructive directions – this crisis is long and deep, and the responsibilities are still to be defined). They were socialdemocratic, Keynesian forces. Now, the neoliberals who construct the new formulas of fascicizing government in Brazil, call them “communists” and “Bolivarians,” supporters of chaos. In the USA they recognize them as bobo metropolitans and subverters of the national identity. This fascism founded on the ideological void is thus qualified as a falsifier of memory and reactionary restorer of past identities. Be it a past slavery, as in the USA, it should be noted; that it is a present slavery, as in Brazil, is even more worrying.

5. Do Not Be Afraid My Brazilian friends are wondering how Bolsonaro’s victory was possible, because their fellow citizens voted in such large numbers. The answer is simple: they did not vote for fascism, they voted rather for the end of corruption and insecurity, in that critical conjuncture for their life that, in fact, a part of the population imputed to the Workers’ Party (PT). It is thus not difficult to think that the racist motive and the defense of the family (see the disproportionate polemic about gender) have built the fascist clot of this unease. It is easy to prophesy thinking that, as we have already said, Bolsonaro will not be able to establish his government as a regime. For him, specific internal difficulties can be added, in addition to what we mentioned earlier as obstacles to the marriage of fascism and liberalism: it will be necessary in fact (in the face of the tactical impediments that the dispersal of the vote creates in Congress) to continue to purchase parliamentary majorities from evangelicals or other mercenaries; the price to be paid to agriculture for electoral support, for the support of the government, and in the bargaining of ecological limits to the expansion of their own interests will be even higher; the extreme proposals of privatization of public assets will find the hostility of the army in the name of the nation, etc. It will not be easy for him to advance. And, also, the consolidation of this victory will be difficult, very difficult, and will clash with the same constants of the Brazilian economy (open to international markets of food and energy, closed to ecological limits of enormous importance, urged to a strong productive dynamic from the widening of the labor market . . .). We are – it seems – on a margin over which the promises of Bolsonaro’s victory clash with the intentions of its neoliberal supporters. How will they balance themselves? We are

Initial Observations on Brazilian Disaster 25 not in the 1930s, when fascism organized itself through the planning of large industry (for war) and large banking capital – with redundancies, however, of immediate social advantages for the proletariat. What makes one tremble, after Bolsonaro’s victory, is predicting the disasters that this government will in any case produce, incapable of developing a political plan that deviates from a terrain of raids against the poor, against blacks, and in general from an antisocial proposal  – as his ultraliberal plan demonstrates. Militaristic, homophobe, machismo, pressed by the hatred of a population now majority non-white (we are now far from the 54% whites in the 2000 census), Bolsonaro will be exposed to the non-white demographic thrust that incessantly increases. The disaster that awaits him is enormous, but the consequences will be long in the years to come. Today, what is to be done? It is necessary to stop weeping and to get to work, comforted by the awareness that the fascist framework is still weak. In what sense, with what spirit to get to work? Already the provocations are measured and in the future they will multiply. In the universities, gangs appear that provoke, right-wing groups are working on lists of “communists,” school programs begin to be filled with references to a past slavery, etc. It is necessary not to be afraid. Not being afraid becomes the central element of building a resistance. Fascism supports itself through fear. Here it arouses and cultivates the fear of the black and the communist. But this couple is a symbol of life and its struggle is a sign of liberation. The parties of the Left, starting from the irrecuperable Workers’ Party, are in crisis. It is within the relation and political recomposition of blacks and communists that a radically antifascist Left can be built. This passage is fundamental. There is no antifascism in Brazil without a political recomposition of white communists and the non-white population. It is unnecessary to add that for this recomposition, the women’s movements are already the spark today. These are majoritarian movements and the majority is not afraid.

Note 1 . The editors thank Dave Messing for translating this chapter. 2. Francesco Greco was one of the judges responsible for the judicial investigation Mani Pulite in the beginning of the 1990’s (Editors’ note).

3 Cycles of Democracy and the Racial Issue in Brazil (1978–2019) Flavia Rios1

1. Introduction: When and How Did Claims Against Racism Enter the Public Agenda? In the last quarter of the 20th century, Brazil has built its democracy by extending political, civil, and social rights crystallized in the constitutional reform of 1988. At the end of the military dictatorship in 1985, the country had an authoritarian legacy marked by strong hierarchies of gender, race, and class, which sustained enormous and persistent social and political inequalities. In addition to these lasting and categorical inequalities, the authoritarian regime would leave to the new government a strong repressive apparatus capable of promoting serious human rights violations and perpetuating inequalities, both territorial and racial in nature. Even so, the confrontation with the military regime left a legacy of powerful connected networks and a myriad of collective actors, strongly active in civil society. Under different banners, these movements and collective organizations were unified within an encompassing campaign – the return to democracy – a system interrupted in 1964 by the coup d’état. During the military period, racial democracy became the dominant national ideology, the foundation of which sat atop a type of nationalism that denied the existence of racism and racial inequality in the country. The struggle for the distribution of political and symbolic power within the state in the rising democracy took place in roughly two ways: on the one hand, by party pluralism, which ensured that both the interests of capital and the interests of workers could be represented (Singer 2012); on the other, by the strong interaction between civil society agents and the state, guaranteeing a representative participation or a pluralism of participation (Lavalle et al. 2006), making it a strong feature of the democratic politics that was established in Brazil. The return to democracy did not put political actors on an equal footing, but allowed underrepresented groups in parliamentary politics to create new mechanisms and forms of interaction with the state. Through these mechanisms  – such as councils, secretariats, commissions, and other bodies of control or public policy formulation – agents from social movements, associations, and non-governmental organizations established agreements and

Cycles of Democracy  27 pacts with democratic governments, making the state a true arena of interest conflicts that went beyond the traditional mechanics of the capital-labor relationship. Broadly speaking, an expressive part of these struggles in the state area involved disputes over conceptions of life, over the recognition of historically stigmatized social groups (such as Indigenous peoples and descendants of enslaved people), as well as social and civil rights. In fact, the state became a battlefield among political actors seeking greater democratization and expansion of rights as a way to reverse the country’s gigantic inequalities, while seeking to deepen democratic values in a nation with a strong history of authoritarianism based on latifundia and economic hierarchies, whose foundations can be located in the patriarchal and colonial system, in the reproduction of these mechanisms in the free market society that succeeded it. On the party and electoral policy side, the great novelty of the democratic cycle marked by this re-democratization was the emergence of two political organizations, each in its own way, that presented the innovation of national party politics: the Workers’ Party (PT) and the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB), created in 1980 and 1988 respectively. In general terms, the two party associations were responsible for the democratic stability that lasted 20 years, that is, from the election of sociologist Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1994) until the end of Dilma Rousseff’s first mandate (last day of 2013). Both parties were founded in the largest industrial center of Brazil, São Paulo,2 a territory marked by large population concentration and urban conflicts (such as living costs, housing, struggles against police violence, access to public health, etc.). From this context of great clamor for citizenship and basic social rights, these two parties emerged (Sader 2001). During this period, the Workers’ Party identified as having distinct characteristics from traditional political parties. The strong interlocution with a wide range of social movements, the foundation of trade unionism, in addition to the link with the basic nuclei of the Catholic Church, were the most expressive indications of the popular base of the young PT. In a public declaration of 13 October 1979, when it was not yet a legally established party, the Black movement was presented together with the other social movements (landless workers, women, urban movements, Indigenous, among others) as one of the bases of social mobilization and legitimation that supported the idea of a party association marked by class heterogeneity and political pluralism. PSDB  – founded by liberal professionals and middle-class intellectuals, with little acquiescence to civil agents and the demands of the popular classes and Black Brazilians – was created roughly a decade later, in 1988, under the still-unfolding developments of the constitutional construction. The few Black people linked to this party were associated with Fernando Henrique Cardoso, mediated by his experience at the University of São Paulo (USP), which had an intellectual tradition of empirical research focused on racial relations, studies which sought to confront the ideology of racial democracy. The constitutional reform was decisive in building an intense relationship between social movements and political parties, as well as highly relevant for

28  Flavia Rios the establishment of a hybrid dynamic within the state, in which civil society actors entered the political sphere through participatory mechanisms. From the point of view of antiracism in Brazilian legislation, it is important to note that, in the Constitution of 1988, the reservation of land to quilombolas (Arruti 2000) and the criminalization of racism were codified and ensured. In the quilombola case, due to the strong mobilization of the Black movement, the quilombola question became part of Brazilian public policies. Article 68 of the Transitory Constitutional Provisions Act (ADCT) states: “To the remaining communities of the quilombos that are occupying their lands, definitive ownership is recognized, and the State must issue the titles to these ethnic groups.” According to information from Fundação Cultural Palmares, the state agency responsible for certifying quilombola communities, there are now 3,386 territories in Brazil recognized by the state.3 According to the constitutional principles of the 1988 Charter, the Brazilian state will “promote the good of all without prejudice of origin, race, sex, color, age or any other form of discrimination” (Art. 3, VI). In addition, legislation designates legal action and punitive sentencing for people who are found guilty of crimes of racism (Machado et al. 2015). The objective of this chapter is to analyze the three cycles of democracy in Brazil, namely: democratization (already presented in its dominant features in this introduction of the chapter), democratic establishment (second section) and de-democratization (third section). The first corresponds to the period from 1978 to 1989; the second from 1994 to 2014,4 and the third period refers to 2015 to 2020. This investigation seeks to examine the relationship between social movements, political parties, and the state, with the issue of race as its central consideration. This is a longitudinal sociological approach that seeks to understand the trajectory, types, and quality of socio-state interactions. The main hypothesis is that the social movements experienced three moments, that of contesting inequalities; the institutionalization of mediation spaces with the state; and, finally, de-democratization defined as the de-institutionalization of the agenda that marks the weakening of a structured relationship between social movements and public institutions, through the redefinition of the political ties, the expulsion of agents representing civil society, and the breakdown of work routines in agencies within the state, on the one hand; on the other, through the delegitimization of the demands and interests of groups underrepresented in institutional policy.

2. The Institutionalization of Racial Equality in the Brazilian Public Agenda The modern language adopted to refer to the racial equality agenda in Brazil is affirmative action. Affirmative action policies gained prominence within the public agenda right after the 3rd International Conference Against Racism, Xenophobia and Related Intolerances in South Africa, 2001. While

Cycles of Democracy  29 under the Fernando Henrique Cardoso administration, diplomacy agents, antiracist organizations, and intellectuals and leaders formed an expressive and articulated delegation at the world meeting. From this great international event on, Black activists returned to Brazil with an agenda for racial equality based on policies of positive discrimination in order to reduce the strong historical legacies and modern manifestations of racial inequalities, especially in the education system and in the labor market (Telles, 2016). During this period, the debate grew especially strong in higher education, where there were notable inequalities between white students and Black students (Lima and Pretes 2018). The Brazilian sociologist Antonio Sérgio Guimarães (2008, 84–85) presents the educational structure against which the popular and Black social movements struggled significantly. In his analysis, the university expansion of private higher education, associated with the relative stagnation of public universities and the precariousness of basic education, limited educational opportunities, and, consequently, the expectation of upward mobility of young Brazilians whose income bracket did not allow them to pay for a place in private third-degree establishments. This came as a direct result of the incredible competition for places in public universities, recognized for greater prestige, overwhelmingly occupied by the children of the middle classes, whose financial conditions allowed them to pay for secondary schools with a higher approval rate in the public universities. This socioeconomic structure determined an absolutely peculiar bias in the Brazilian educational system: roughly speaking, positively privileged students paid for basic education and enjoyed free public higher education, while the negatively privileged, graduates of public schools, were pushed into the private system through the restricted educational credits, funded by government loans which require repayment, or even discouraged from attending this type of education completely. Within this context characterized by social injustice, agents of both popular movements and social movements, as well as community entities took advantage of this reality to build their discourses and political platforms with few economic resources in defense of a more inclusive system envisioned through changes in public policy. Due to these strong distortions in the education sector and because schooling is a determining factor for social mobility, Brazilian public universities have become the focal point of affirmative action (Feres Jr. et al. 2018). Although these higher education institutions did not reflect the totality of Brazil’s thirdgrade education system, they are internationally recognized for their quality of education and their research contribution. Moreover, the substantial racial inequalities within these institutions had turned them into the destination for the nation’s middle class and white elites, being almost impenetrable to the poor and Black Brazilians from public high schools. Given this problem of racial inequality and social injustice, quotas were adopted for public school students in the country, and within this, a percentage was allocated to Black, brown, and Indigenous people.5

30  Flavia Rios The result of these quota policies in higher education has been extremely positive (Cicalo 2012). Almost 20 years of affirmative action in Brazil have shown that confronting the nation’s severe and persistent racial inequalities within education only became feasible once the country began to produce and disseminate institutional data on color and race in a transparent, periodic, and systematic manner. Not by chance, it has been one of the political strategies of the Black movements, antiracist intellectuals and academics to collect information about color/race in various Brazilian institutions. Once in possession of this information, it became possible to demonstrate – both qualitatively, as well as quantitatively – the nature and size of inequalities in various sectors, such as the labor market, income distribution and housing conditions, education, violence, and political representation. The most recent data have shown a significant transformation in the profile of the student population, represented by more Black Brazilians, more women, and more Brazilians from popular classes (BRASIL 2019). Despite advances made in recent decades in relation to the introduction of the color/race question in official state documents (for example, registration of the health system, the educational system, the justice system, monthly labor market surveys, among others) and the dissemination of this collected information, it is still possible to find great gaps that impede the struggle against systemic racism, and this is particularly notable when considering and analyzing the career prospects within higher education institutions. In terms of institutional labor policy, Brazil has not adopted quotas for Black and Indigenous people, only for women. Regarding elections and political representation, only very recently did the Superior Electoral Court insert a question considering color and race into its own registration forms, thereby generating a certain amount of academic production on the subject of political inequalities. The most recent data have shown how underrepresented Afrodescendants, Indigenous peoples, and women are in institutional politics, especially in parliament, despite the balanced number of candidates from these social groups. Research shows that the financial and educational conditions of Black candidates are signifiers of this underrepresentation; however, political parties also present significant barriers to the mobility of this profile of these candidates in the electoral competition, as they are dominated and controlled by white men with greater economic power (Rios et al. 2017). This broader picture of social and political transformations in Brazil during this cycle of democratic institutionalization saw a great swell of Black political activism in relation to the issue of racial equality in the public sphere. One of the achievements of this period was under Lula’s administration, beginning in 2003, when the Secretariat for Policies to Promote Racial Equality (SEPPIR) was created, with administrative and political autonomy from a ministry, but with few economic resources. Since then, the country has witnessed a series of measures aimed at reducing racial inequalities, which have come to exist at the federal level. Promoted by SEPPIR, municipal and state agencies also began to

Cycles of Democracy 31 develop policies to combat racism. The implementation of affirmative actions was one of SEPPIR’s main goals. In the Ministry of Education, important actions were also developed, both at the executive and council levels. From the political point of view, there were great advances in legislation that impacted the lives of Afro-Brazilians, such as Law No. 10,639/2003 and Law No. 11,645/08, sanctioned by the federal executive power, in strong interaction with civil society, mediated by state agencies created during the Lula government to promote racial equality. The two laws deal with the introduction of teaching Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous cultures and histories, respectively. Both were fundamental to guarantee the revision of the didactic material distributed in schools, considered inadequate within the new parameters that sought to present the contributions of Black and Indigenous populations to the Brazilian social formation in a positive way. Furthermore, the two laws provided for training for teachers and other education professionals in which they learned new pedagogical forms to combat stereotyping, prejudice, and racial discrimination in the school environment.6 These legal gains also demonstrate the ways in which Black mobilization played an important role in the changes made to the Brazilian higher education system, substantially changing the profile of its students. Another legislative success within the executive branch, a joint effort by Black congresspeople and civil organizations, was PEC No. 66/12, also known as the domestic workers’ Constitutional Amendment Proposal, which was sanctioned by then-President Dilma Rousseff. As a result, domestic workers, the majority of which being Black women,7 won legal right to a regulated, eight-hour working day and, consequently, the right to overtime pay. Domestic workers also became entitled to the Severance Premium Reserve Fund (FGTS), unemployment insurance, and an additional rate for night shifts. This was an incredible struggle and thus, an historic win. Over the decades, domestic work had been incredibly precarious work, with characteristics resembling those of enslavement, as workers were hyper-exploited, oftentimes having to sleep in the homes of the families for whom they worked, and even being required to work entire weekends. Domestic work within Brazil spoke to a very specific class dialogue: domestic workers were typically from a working subclass, constantly and consistently targeted by social humiliation, while employers were usually from the middle classes, where having a domestic worker served as an indicator of social distinction. This legal success – and legislative guarantee – of the labor rights of domestic workers also speaks very directly to gains and protection of Black women, as they are the dominant group represented within this professional occupation in Brazil. Finally, it is essential to highlight the legislation that guaranteed the quotas for Black Brazilians in public sector employment. Ratified until 2024, Law No.  12,990/2014 reserves 20% of the vacancies in federal public service employment for self-declared Black candidates, aiming to reduce the strong racial inequalities in public sector careers. This antiracist educational

32  Flavia Rios legislation resulted from a set of actions and interactions involving civil society, Black parliamentarians, the secretariat for racial equality (SEPPIR), and the federal executive, under Rousseff’s management at that time. During the entire cycle of democratic establishment, there have been strong advances in some crucial areas for Brazilian society. Even though there are racial inequalities in parliamentary politics, the Black movements have acted strongly, with the state bureaucracy and in the executive arenas of the state, guaranteeing legislation and institutional spaces, and this activity has been pursued in strong interaction with the federal executive, especially during PT governments (Rios 2019a). In addition to policies focused on racial equality, there have been improvements in the living conditions of Black Brazilians, guaranteed by public policies on income transfer, which have especially affected poor populations within which Black Brazilians are in the majority. In addition to this, there was a real increase in the minimum wage, especially impacting the working classes.

3. De-democratization: Delegitimization of the Racial Equality Agenda and Retraction of Spaces and Measures to Ensure Rights Since the so-called Jornadas de Junho in 2013, when a great cycle of protest began in Brazil (see Chapter 6, by Pedro Luiz Lima and Jorge Chaloub, this volume), many political transformations have rapidly presented themselves within the public scene. Although the political agendas of June were diffuse and plural, using agents from multiple ideological spectra, it cannot be denied that those great political manifestations gave impetus to the strengthening of conservative and liberal movements, which appeared more often in the streets (Alonso and Mische 2016). Multiple factors have converged in the formation of these protests, which ran in cycles from June 2013 to the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff in 2016. These factors have been synthesized by urban planner Omena de Melo (2019): the widespread use of new communication technologies (Internet, live broadband transmission, social media); the production of alternative narratives, temporarily out of the control of traditional media intermediaries; the partial and temporary delegitimization of large institutions (politicians, police, media, FIFA); claims directly related to urban problems (transportation, public investment priorities in infrastructure, health and education), as discussed by Maricato and Colosso in this book (Chapter 10), and their connections with the impacts of mega sporting events; groups linked to autonomist and anarchist traditions and the intensified use of direct action, i.e. political acts guided by criticism of political parties, traditional associations such as trade unions. Since the democratization and impeachment of President Collor (1992), Brazil had never seen such numerous and expressive movements as those in June of 2013. The great mobilizations brought novelties and with it political forces capable of changing the political scenario, as long as it was well used by political actors well positioned in the sphere of power.

Cycles of Democracy 33 With the impeachment of President Rousseff moved by politicians from parliament and the Senate – supported by economic forces, like the Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo (FIESP) – the articulation between the judiciary (through the operation Lava Jato) and the mainstream media, Brazil under Michel Temer (President Rousseff’s vice-president who took power following her impeachment) experienced tense moments and great political instability. The Temer government took a conservative turn, especially with regard to the pension reform. Its illegitimate position on account of the parliamentary coup against Dilma Rousseff left him in a relatively fragile position, especially as his political decisions were not supported by popular vote. Similarly, he had very low popularity among Brazilians. In regard to the issue of race, the Temer government was marked by the exit of technical profiles from the government, which had been developing policies aimed at improving racial equality. In general terms, the Temer administration feared substantive proposals to tackle racism and did not change the measures that were already underway. It should be noted that his government made no progress on the issue of racial equality. This crisis of political representation expressed in the impeachment of President Rousseff and the low popularity of the subsequent President Temer, in addition to the loss of credibility of the major parties that alternated power – PT and PSDB – provided enough instability for the extreme-right-wing movement to take advantage under the leadership of Jair Bolsonaro, who presented himself as a candidate in this period. Throughout the presidential campaign, Bolsonaro continuously made racist statements against Black Brazilians, quilombolas, and Indigenous peoples. In a speech at the Jewish Association, he said that Afro-descendants of rural communities do nothing, in addition to using terms referencing slavery when referring to quilombolas. In derogatory statements made about the daughter of musician and former Minister of Justice Gilberto Gil, Bolsonaro declared that he would never let his son marry a woman like her, because she was Black.8 On several occasions, the then precandidate said that if he were elected president of the republic, he would not make land demarcations for Indigenous and quilombolas. After elected, the extreme-right government put at risk Brazilian democracy and all of the social, political, labor, civil, cultural, and land rights won since the re-democratization of the nation in the 1980s. Bolsonaro’s mode of government rests on two pillars: the first being the delegitimization of the demands of underrepresented and socially marginalized social groups. All critical debate in regard to issues of gender, race, and class inequalities in the country is now interpreted and declared as victimization by Bolsonaro and his followers (see Chapter 11, by Rangel, Dultra, and McCoy, this volume). With rhetoric based on denying the victim, Bolsonaro provokes and promotes the significant corrosion of democratic values based on the rule of law in Brazil. The second strategy of the Bolsonaro government effectively involves the withdrawal of rights or the weakening of state mechanisms and agencies aimed at confronting social and racial problems. In the case of the rights of the quilombola population, the president has fulfilled his campaign promises. In 2019,

34  Flavia Rios according to the Palmares Cultural Foundation, only 11 quilombola communities were recognized, compared to 166 communities recognized by the state in the previous year. Land conflicts have increased and human rights analysts see in presidential declarations incentives to increase agrarian conflicts, especially since the president openly declares his support in favor of economic exploitation of Indigenous lands by private agents, as explained by Ana Guggenheim Coutinho in Chapter 12 (this volume). These conflicts have increased tension throughout the nation’s countryside. The pastoral care of land has registered at least seven murders of Indigenous people in agrarian conflicts in 2019, in comparison to two deaths the year before.9 The increase of political conservatism and the emergence of politicians openly opposed to the policies of affirmative action, to the demarcation of quilombola lands, and to policies contrary to gender equality have placed women and Black Brazilians in quite different institutional, cultural, and political contexts. It was an experience of civil reaction, in the form of organized protests, which questioned the meaning of state public policies, social transformations, and moral values in a strong transformation of the country. These protests were generated in part by the great strength of progressive social movements as heirs of the democratization process, which brought about the cultural transformation in daily life and in the non-state public sphere, seen through public policies in the areas of education and health, which guaranteed the production of data on inequalities and by the design of policies with a view to overcoming disparities found in research conducted by both the academy and government agencies. The course of such transformations, however, has been called into question by the great democratic crisis in Brazil. With the dismissal of the first female president in Brazilian republican history, with the accusations brought against her having little legal basis, the spaces for the management of racial and gender equality became smaller, with a low presence of feminist and antiracist movements in government. In addition, conservative civil movements began to question the public policies implemented by the previous governments. In this context of a strong regressive state engagement, traditional feminist and Black movements are mixed with movements formed by younger generations who work in civil society exercising control and public denunciations, in addition to street mobilization against state violence, as the most important case in the country today, which is the fight against lethal state violence, referred to as the genocide of the Black population. This campaign has now moved to the public scene by both young Black men and women engaged in Black feminist mobilization. In the 2018 presidential elections, the issue of race appeared in public debate, especially with the derogatory statements of candidate Jair Bolsonaro, calling for the destruction of quilombola communities, the use of pejorative language that associated them with slaves and openly presenting himself for the titling of quilombola lands. Bolsonaro’s statements led these social movements to

Cycles of Democracy 35 accuse him in the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) of racism, but the Supreme Court ruled at this time that it was not a crime of racism. With reactions and campaigns from social movements – women, Black Brazilians, Black women, and other movements in the context of r­e-democratization and that had links with the state during the democratic cycle – Bolsonaro adopted a strategy of keeping Black figures at his side, in particular the candidate Hélio Bolsonaro (also known as Hélio Fernando Barbosa Lopes), who is now a member of the president’s political party, the Social Liberal Party (PSL). To him, Jair Bolsonaro lent his surname, ensuring that he was elected through a loan of both social name and party support (financial and campaign structure). Congressman Hélio Bolsonaro was responsible, for example, for signing an article opposing affirmative action in Brazil, on the grounds that the speeches of Black activists were victimists. According to him, “Cota racial,10 just like various actions taken by the ‘black movement,’ are mere partisan programs.”11 In this new turn to the extreme-right, several negative effects can already be seen on the democratic agenda in general and on the racial equality agenda in particular. The most notable actions are those aimed at de-legalizing and delegitimizing the agenda in favor of equality between Blacks and whites in the country. The most widely used strategy is the emptying of portfolios, bodies, and councils focused on the issue of civil rights. Two recent cases deserve highlighting. The first was the appointment of the president of the Palmares Cultural Foundation, an institution created in the context of the democratization of Brazil and which aims to combat racism; more specifically, this body is responsible for identifying the quilombola communities. In November of 2019, the Month of Black Consciousness, a symbolic period in Brazil since the 1970s, a Black person was appointed to the highest office of this organization who openly defended the non-existence of racism in Brazil and who was explicitly opposed to the very existence of Black social movements and affirmative action policies. In other words, there is a deliberate attempt by the Bolsonaro government to delegitimize the claims and symbolic forms of confronting racism in Brazil. Unlike previous governments, the Bolsonaro government appointed a person who was not technically prepared to his position. In addition, there was no compatibility between his ideas and the institutional mission of the state agency. He lacked support from Black social movements and civil organizations. This is a break with the democratic strategies and routines established since re-democratization, when social movement collectives were consulted and formed their own representation within state spaces. Second, the case of the Racial Equality Council deserves reflection, as it is also one of the spaces where attacks by the Bolsonaro government have been observed. The National Council for Policies on Racial Equality (CNPIR) is a collegial advisory body and part of the basic structure of the Ministry of Human Rights/National Secretariat for Policies on the Promotion of Racial Equality (MDH/SEPPIR). Its main mission is to propose policies to promote racial equality, with emphasis on the Black population and other racial and ethnic segments

36  Flavia Rios of the Brazilian population. In addition to combating racism, CNPIR’s mission is to offer alternatives for overcoming racial inequalities, from an economic approach, as well as from a social, political, and cultural point of view, thus expanding the processes of social deliberation within these policies. Various historic organizations from the Black movement, like ­Educafro – a fundamental association in the implementation of affirmative action in Brazilian ­universities – as well as the historic organization of the Unified Black Movement (MNU), created in 1978 to denounce racism in a nation still under a military regime, were expelled from the Presidential Council by presidential decree.12 Today, many Black leaders have diagnosed that the current attacks on public institutions are especially harmful to Black students who enter university institutions in a fragile economic situation, and therefore depend on grants and other forms of financial aid, which have been affected by cuts made by the Ministry of Education. Additionally, there are several proposed bills aimed at ending quotas for Black Brazilians and Indigenous people in public universities. Two draft laws are currently being processed in the legislature: Bill No. 1,531 and Bill No. 5,303, both presented by representatives from the party that elected Jair Bolsonaro. In this new scenario, social movements have again become oppositional to the government. Activists have reorganized themselves within the sphere of civil society and have started to oppose government declarations, to struggle against its regressive policies and denounce the boycotts by the Bolsonaro government to public policies for racial equality. In particular, the most important agenda item in this context has been the fight against police violence. With very high murder rates, the current positions and public policies of the federal government systematically weaken human rights organizations and foster violent actions by the state. In this moment of democratic crisis, political violence has also been escalating, especially against Indigenous and quilombola leaders in Brazil’s rural regions. This scenario of de-democratization, therefore, is marked by a rhetoric that denies the egalitarian values and collective, social, labor, and affirmative actions that have been consolidated in Brazil since the process of democratization itself.

4. Final Considerations The institutionalization of the racial equality agenda in Brazil depends strategically on executive and participatory bodies (politically created within the state) and their capacity to promote public policies – maintained through social and state interaction between public agents and social movement activists, especially in establishing a process of broad democratization. During the political crisis, that institutional path was broken by the Bolsonaro government. Social movements for racial equality rights lost access and legitimacy to the spheres of power, especially in the federal executive arena. From the ideological point of view, during the democratization cycle, Brazil was built as a multi-racial and multi-ethnic nation, which had been questioning

Cycles of Democracy  37 the myth of racial democracy based on data analyzing racial discrimination and inequality. During the period of democratic stability, a political consensus was formed that there was racism in Brazil, that racial democracy was an ideological farce – a myth, rather than fact – and that the country needed focused policies to combat racial discrimination. Under Bolsonaro, the colorblind ideology (re)emerges. This is the period in which the country’s de-democratization (Tilly, 2007) has become most evident. According to this ideology assumed by the extreme-right, above all is the nation itself, above everything and everyone, perpetuating a rhetoric of homogenous national identity. Above the nation, only the Christian god. All speeches about racism, discrimination, and racial inequalities would be forms of victimism invented by the political Left. According to this view – which is not based on scientific literature or on statistics produced by respected institutes nationally or globally –, even Atlantic slavery should be questioned. The combination of these discourses that delegitimize demands, social actors, and entire groups that struggle to ensure social, political, and civil rights – in addition to the practices of emptying state agencies and implementing measures to weaken institutions and ministries that are dedicated to the expansion of the state of rights to the neediest population with fewer resources, where Black people, Indigenous people, and women are found  – reveal a regressive scenario marked by policies of austerity I  have called de-democratization. Against all these official and governmental speeches, new civil actors, a new Black generation – especially of Black feminists – use social networks as important spaces for political action, where they guide changes in values and conceptions of life, while denouncing cases of racism, machismo, and lesbophobia among other symbolic and physical violences that target the civil rights of Black Brazilians and women. These women work in the squares, on public transportation, in the peripheral areas doing cultural and political performances. An example can be found in Slam, a form of collective action that involves performance and poetry in public spaces. Collectives organized in universities to combat racial discrimination in the academic environment, to monitor the application of affirmative action and to welcome young Black people entering higher education are the hallmarks of this new generation of activists. Finally, it is worth mentioning its strong performance in social networks, where they guide the public debate against racism, reporting experiences of discrimination while spreading experiences of overwhelming racial violence. This new generation seems to act with more intensity for the interactions between social movements and legislative power. To a certain extent, in the 2018 elections, despite the expansion of political conservatism in the legislative and executive spaces, women and Black Brazilians achieved political representation in the legislative space, with qualitative prominence for Black women, constituting expressive minorities engaged with social movements. Perhaps this is the new, though tenuous, political direction of a democratic alternative in Brazil.

38  Flavia Rios

Notes 1. This work is the result of the research ‘Socio-state interactions and institutionalization processes at the federal level: a post-2016 balance sheet,’ financed by the CNPQ Universal call for proposals. A version of this chapter was presented at the Summer School of Harare, Zimbabwe in January 2020. I thank Paris Yeros, Givania Silva and Marcelo Rosa for their critical comments. This chapter received English language technical reviews from Carlyn Rodgers (University of Cambridge), to whom I am immensely grateful. I also thank Professor Frieder Otto Wolf for his valuable suggestions. 2. Located in the south-central region of the country. 3. Quilombolas is the term used for particular Black populations, especially in rural areas. The origins of these communities can be traced back to slavery. Their presence in the Constitution of 1988 arose from debates regarding their origins as marginalized and disenfranchised peoples, thus resulting in the constitutional guarantee of their cultural and land rights. In the 2020 demographic census, the quilombola communities in Brazil will be included for the first time in the database of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). From this data, it will become possible to know the size of this population and its living conditions. 4. The first democratic elections after the military dictatorship elected an outsider from a small party with no parliamentary base. This period from 1989 to 1994 was characterized by great political instability, leading to the impeachment of the thenPresident Fernando Collor. For more information see Sallum Jr. (2015). 5. Preto (Black) and pardo (brown) are official categories that refer to all Brazilians of African descent. These categories are both officially recognized through censuses, as well as acknowledged as socially acceptable within Brazil. According to data from PNAD Continuous (2018) the Black population (“pretos” + “pardos”) in Brazil is 55.8%; in contrast, 43.1% declared themselves whites. 6. For more information, see Silva (2010); Rios (2019b). 7. According to a household sample survey, domestic employment represents 18% of the total workforce of Black women, while for white women it represents 10% (BRASIL, 2016). According to IBGE, in 2016, Brazil had 6.158 million domestic workers, 92% of whom were women. Based on 2010 data, the ILO, when comparing the number of people who were domestic workers in the world, identified that Brazil topped the list with more than a hundred countries as the country with the most absolute numbers of domestic workers. See: www.ilo.org/brasilia/temas/trabalhodomestico/lang--pt/index.htm. For more information, see Lima and Prates (2019). 8. This case was taken to the Superior Electoral Court, but Bolsonaro was acquitted for lack of substantive evidence, for ambiguity in the interpretation (sexual or racial discrimination) and for the fact that he had parliamentary immunity. See http://g1.globo.com/politica/noticia/2015/05/stf-arquiva-inquerito-contra-bolso naro-por-falas-sobre-preta-gil.html, accessed on 7 February 2020. 9. See Human Rights Watch Word Report 2009 in www.hrw.org/world-report/2019, accessed on 6 February 2020. 10. The quota program for Blacks was approved in 2012. That law has a term of ten years. It is important to say that there are no quotas exclusively for Blacks in Brazil. The model adopted in the country requires that applicants for quotas have attended high school in the public system. Blacks who studied in private schools are not allowed to compete for quotas, according to the law. 11. This opinion article was published in an important Brazilian newspaper in the month of Black Consciousness. See Bolsonaro, Hélio (2019). Nossa Cor é o Brasil. Folha de São Paulo. In https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/opiniao/2019/11/nossacor-e-o-brasil.shtml, accessed on 8 December 2019.

Cycles of Democracy  39 12. Several other important Black and quilombola organizations have been prevented from remaining on the council, such as Educafro, Unegro, Apn’s, MNU, Enegrecer, Conaq, Abpn, Fepal. Besides these, the National Union of Students and the Central única dos Trabalhadores (CUT) were also left out of participation in this institutional arena. It has become common in Bolsonaro’s management to empty state control agencies. By decree, the president extinguishes the participation of civil society in the councils, following the example of the Council for the Protection of Child Rights in 2019 and the Environment Council in 2020.

References Alonso, Angela and Ann Mische. 2016. “Changing Repertoires and Partisan Ambivalence in the New Brazilian Protests.” Bulletin of Latin American Research 1, p. n/a-n/a. Arruti, José. 2000. “Direitos étnicos no brasil e na colômbia: notas comparativas sobre hibridização, segmentação e mobilização política de índios e negros.” Horizontes antropológicos, Porto Alegre, ano 6 (14) (November): 93–123. BRASIL. 2016. Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada “Retrato das Desigualdades por gênero e raça – 1995–2005”. Brasília: IPEA. 1–5. Available at: https://www.josepi mentel.com.br/sites/default/files/notas-tecnicas/ipea-retrato-das-desigualdades-degenero-e-raca.pdf. BRASIL. 2019. “Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais Anísio Teixeira (Inep).” Censo da Educação Superior 2018 – Divulgação dos Resultados. Disponível em: http://download.inep.gov.br/educacao_superior/censo_superior/docu mentos/2019/apresentacao_censo_superior2018.pdf. Cicalo André. 2012. “Nerds and Barbarians: Race and Class Encounters through Affirmative Action in a Brazilian University.” Journal of Latin American Studies. Cambridge University Press 44 (2): 235–260. Feres Junior, João, Luis Augusto Campos, Verônica Daflon, and Anna Carolina Venturini. 2018. Ação Afirmativa: Conceito, História e Debates. Rio de Janeiro: Eduerj. Guimarães, Antônio Sérgio. 2008. Preconceito racial: modos, temas e tempos. São Paulo: Cortez, 144. Lavalle, Adrián Gurza, Peter P. Houtzager, and Graziela Castello. 2006. “Democracia, pluralização da representação e sociedade civil.” Lua Nova [Online] 67: 49–103. Lima, Márcia, and Ian Prates. 2018. “Racial Inequalities in Brazil; a Persistent Challenge.” In Paths of Inequalities in Brazil – a Half-Century of Changes, edited by Marta Arretche, Vol. 1, 113–134. 1st edition. Switzerland: Spring. ———. 2019. “Emprego doméstico e mudança social: reprodução e heterogeneidade na base da estrutura ocupacional brasileira.” Tempo Social [Online] 31: 149–171. Lopes. Helio 2019. Nossa cor é o Brasil. São Paulo. Folha de São Paulo. Available at: https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/opiniao/2019/11/nossa-cor-e-o-brasil.shtml. Accessed on 6 June 2020. Machado, Marta, Natália Neris, and Carolina Ferreira. 2015. “Legislação antirracista punitiva no brasil: uma aproximação à aplicação do direito pelos Tribunais de Justiça brasileiros.” Revista de Estudos Empíricos em Direito Brazilian Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 2 (1) (January): 60–92.

40  Flavia Rios Omena de Melo, Erick. 2019. “Just because of 20 cents? For a genealogy of the Brazilian ‘demonstrations cup?’ ” International Journal of Urban Sustainable Development: 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/19463138.2019.1666853. Rios, Flavia. 2019a. “Antirracismo, movimentos sociais e Estado.” In Movimentos sociais e Institucionalização: políticas sociais, raça e gênero no Brasil pós-­transição, edited by Adrian Lavalle, Euzeneia Carlos, Monika Dowbor, e José Szwako, 255– 283. 1st edition. Rio de Janeiro: Eduerj. ———. 2019b. “Igualdade e diversidade étnico-raciais como política pública.” Cadernos Adenauer (São Paulo) 4: 6–96. Rios, Flavia, C. Ana Pereira, and Patrícia D. Rangel. 2017. “Paradoxo da Igualdade: gênero, raça e democracia.” Ciência e Cultura 69: 39–44. Sader, Eder. 2001. Quando novos personagens entraram em cena: experiências, falas e lutas dos trabalhadores da Grande São Paulo, 1970–80. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 4ª edição. Sallum Jr., Brasilio. 2015. O Impeachment de Fernando Collor – Sociologia de uma Crise. 1ª edition, Vol. 1, 34, 412. São Paulo: Editora. Silva, Rafael. 2010. Educando pela diferença para a igualdade. Dissertação de mestrado. São Paulo: Universidade de São Paulo. Singer, André. 2012. Os sentidos do Lulismo: reforma gradual e pacto conservador. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. Telles, Edward. 2016. Race in Another America. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Tilly, Charles. 2007. Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

4 Democratization and De-democratization in Left-Led Brazil From “Low-Conflict Progressivism” to “Hyper-Reactionary Neoliberalism” Barry Cannon 1. Introduction In this chapter, I  offer a complex, layered, and comprehensive view of the interaction between the contemporary Latin American Right and Left, relating it directly to processes of democratization and de-democratization. First, I identify, following Bobbio (1996), the central role of inequality, particularly class, but also gender, race, and sexual inequalities, in Left/Right differentiation. I then relate this discussion to democratization and de-democratization viewing these from a long-range, wide-angled perspective. Second, I advance Michael Mann’s concept of social power as an analytical framework from which to examine Left/Right differentiation, with its focus on elite power networks in the economic, ideological, political, military, and transnational domains. Third, I illustrate the key position of neoliberalism in Latin American right-wing policy and discourse. Moreover, I argue that the ultimate aim of neoliberalism’s centrality to contemporary right-wing ideology, is to form what I call right-oriented state/society complexes, in which neoliberal forms of governance are deeply anchored in Latin American power structures at the national, regional, and transnational level. Ultimately, the totalizing reach of such governance makes it much more difficult for ideological alternatives to prosper, as it is supported not just by central state actors, but also by powerful sub- and supra-state ones as well. This helps preserve and even extend existing social hierarchies along class, race, gender, and/or sexual lines. Fourth, I argue that the success of this project was threatened, to greater or lesser degrees by “pink tide” government democratizing programs in at least one if not more of the power domains specified, provoking a multilevel strategic response from the Right at the institutional, mobilizational, and extra-institutional levels, all aimed at the removal of Left-led governments. I then illustrate this theoretical framework by examining the case of Brazil, showing how all these different elements came into play in the run-up to the removal from power by impeachment of the Workers’ Party (PT) President Dilma Rousseff (2010–16) on 31 August 2016, eventually resulting in a hyper-­ reactionary neoliberal restoration project under the ultra-right government of Jair Bolsonaro, elected on 28 October 2018.

42  Barry Cannon

2. Left/Right Differentiation in Theory The Left/Right dichotomy can be viewed from three perspectives: political, economic, and sociological (Burton 2011). The political perspective views the Left as embracing change as progress, while the Right normally accepts change which maintains or deepens existing social hierarchies. In the economic perspective the Left supports increased state intervention in the economy to help ensure relatively equitable social outcomes, which the Right rejects, favoring state intervention that facilitates “the quarantining of democratic social power from any substantive intrusion over ‘market sovereignty’ ” (Kiely and Saull 2017, 822). Finally, the sociological perspective, following Bobbio (1996), places issues of inequality as essential to the Left/Right cleavage, both over time and across space; policy solutions may change but this central concern is constant. It recognizes that each policy option has implicit and explicit outcomes favoring some classes over others, and class – further crossed with inequalities on gender, race, and sexuality – should be central to any discussion of the differentiation between Right and Left. Indeed, as class is central to the analysis of this dichotomy, so the role of elites is central to such analysis. Here the term elites refer to both a social phenomenon and an ideological construction (Bottomore 1993). As a social phenomenon, these can include, following Fischer (2017), varied groups involved in the construction of a dominant social class, through a complex, conflictual, relational, historical, and dynamic process, eventually allowing them to act collectively as a class in itself and for itself. In the present context, this class may, but does not necessarily, include the governing elite (Fischer 2017, 26); the bourgeoisie, that is those who “possess, lend, invest in and grow capital, employ workers and who do not themselves work manually or for a salary” (Fischer 2017, 25); “merchants and shopkeepers, owners of real estate, business people, bankers, rentiers and speculators” (Fischer 2017); “high-level managers” (Fischer 2017, 26); and, importantly, certain groups of intellectuals whose work is to discursively validate the power of these social groups as a class. In other words, these final groups can themselves make use of elite theory to help realize Bottomore’s (1993) second sense of the concept as an ideological justification for rule by such elites due to their technical superiority. Hence, in this chapter by elites I generally mean the dominant “power bloc” in its Gramscian sense, straddling the economy, and the spheres of politics and civil society (ideological apparatuses), whose function is to secure and perpetuate elite dominance. In the present historical conjuncture the main ideological-political force to secure this is neoliberalism. Fourth, debates around inequality between Left and Right, and the class formation projects linked to them do not remain within nation-state boundaries, but also structure international and global policy making, giving them an important transnational aspect (Nöel and Thérien 2008; Silva 2009). Finally, the Left/Right debate takes place within a wider struggle for hegemony between the fundamental worldviews of these tendencies. While certain consensuses

Democratization and De-democratization  43 between them may emerge at particular junctures, these are rarely fixed and can and will be challenged. In light of this discussion the core meaning of the Left/Right distinction can be conceived as “whether one supports or opposes social change in an egalitarian direction” (Ronald Inglehart cited in Noël and Thérien 2008, 10). This means not just greater equality in the areas identified, but also an overturning of traditional hierarchies which underpin and benefit from such inequalities. As neoliberalism is recognized by many as leading to increased socioeconomic inequality (Harvey 2005; Stiglitz 2012; Piketty 2014), it can be argued that ideologically speaking (although not necessarily in terms of party identification), those who support and actively promote neoliberalism are on the Right side of the political spectrum while those who oppose them, or at least question them, are to the Left. There is also, it must be noted, an important social conservative ideological position which can cut across party identification but with an extreme anti-egalitarian thrust. In effect, this discourse rarely disturbs, and often complements, the centrality of neoliberalism to the Right’s overall class project (Brown 2019). Moreover, the Left/Right distinction can be further mapped onto processes of democratization and de-democratization. Here, in line with the editors’ conceptualization as set out in the introduction to this volume, democratization is viewed within a wide-angle, long-term analytical perspective, in which polities can experience periods of democratization and de-democratization, that is the “expansion and contraction of popular rule” (Nef and Reiter 2009, 3). In this conceptualization, therefore, “it may be more appropriate to speak of democratization as an ongoing, dynamic process than of democracy as a final end state” (Barrett et al. 2008, 29). At the heart of these processes of democratization and de-democratization are struggles over what Balibar (2009) identifies as equaliberty denoting the tension between the two ideals of modern democracy: equality (social rights and political representation) and liberty (the freedom citizens have to contest the social contract). Within that, Balibar identifies three domains of struggle: internal exclusion of those who are entitled to but denied access to rights within states, such as ethnic minority citizen groups; external exclusion of non-citizen migrants; and, struggles for social rights by citizens denied social rights or who have had them withdrawn (ibid.). Such struggles aim to overturn existing social hierarchies to achieve greater equality and freedom for those denied them. As, according to Robin (2018, 7), “conservatism is the animus against the agency of the subordinate classes,” so the dynamic of the Right can be viewed in this light as de-democratizing while that of the Left as seeking, in principle at least, greater democratization.

3. Mann, Social Power, and Contemporary Left/Right Interaction in Latin America Here I  contend that Michael Mann’s concept of social power provides a useful framework from which to view the strategic interaction between the

44  Barry Cannon contemporary Latin American Left and Right in the context of (de)democratization struggles. Mann identifies four primary domains of power – ideological, economic, military, and political (IEMP) – which are then intersected by a possible fifth  – the transnational (Silva 2009), and which are each dominated by their specified elites. Ideological power is “when meaning, norms and aesthetic and ritual practices are monopolised by a distinctive group [which must be] highly plausible in the conditions of the time” (Mann 1986, 23). In this chapter, this is operationalized by referring to ideological norms around inequalities, and ideological transmission belts such as media and education. Economic power “derives from the satisfaction of subsistence needs through the social organisation of the extraction, transformation, distribution, and consumption of the objects of nature” (Mann 1986, 23). This process causes the formation of social classes, with the dominant class monopolizing control over these processes. The main question considered here is the balance between private and public control of the economic apparatus, and the resultant impact this has on social inequalities particularly around class, but also on gender, race, and/or sexual lines. Military power “derives from the necessity of organised physical defence and its usefulness for aggression” (Mann 1986, 26). Ideally, in democracies, military power should be subservient to political power, but this is not always the case as the long history of involvement of Latin American militaries in politics amply demonstrates. Political power “derives from the usefulness of centralised, institutionalised, territorialised regulation on many aspects of social relations,” in other words “state power” (Mann 1986, 23). Political power can take despotic or infrastructural forms, the first when elites “take decisions without negotiation with groups in civil society” (Mann 2002, p. 2); the second when states “possess infrastructures penetrating universally throughout civil society, through which political elites can extract resources from, and provide services to all its subjects” (Mann 2002, 2). In most advanced democracies, state power is despotically weak but infrastructurally strong, and can also have a strong transnational element, usually organized along imperial or multi-state lines (Mann 1986, 27). A major question considered here is the level of conformity of political power around neoliberalism and the extent to which this facilitates the dominance of despotic or infrastructural power. Mann (2002) argues that the central issue for Latin American states to develop democratically is the lessening of distributive inequalities, which in turn requires the reduction of oligarchical power with an increase in state power (i.e. increasing infrastructural power). Yet, here it is argued that Latin American elites possess sufficient collective power across each of the four power networks, crossed by transnational power, to successfully resist any move towards greater social equalization, which would by necessity involve a lessening of their own (white, masculine) oligarchical power. Moreover, Fairfield (2015) shows that neoliberalism has increased rather than lessened the business elite’s structural and instrumental power, using it to reinforce that ideology, both nationally and transnationally, across each of the power

Democratization and De-democratization  45 domains. Hence, neoliberalism is central to the maintenance and extension of elite power in the post-Cold War/early 21st-century historical conjuncture in Latin America. This is not to say that challenges to neoliberalism have not taken place in Latin America or will not do so in the future. Grugel and Riggirozzi (2012), Wylde (2012), and Riggirozzi and Wylde (2017) among others have argued that left-wing governments instituted what they call post-neoliberal forms of governance which sought to challenge neoliberalism, strengthening the role of the state in order to reinforce popular citizenship, both in the economic and at the political levels. The extent to which these actions seriously confronted neoliberalism’s core principles is questioned by some analysts (Webber and Carr 2012; Zibechi 2010), but here it is argued that elite social power was at least threatened, symbolically or practically, in some or all of the identified power domains in a number of Left-led states, either on a distributive basis or on a recognition basis, and sometimes on both, to a sufficient degree to alarm those self-same elites. This suggests a direct link between right-wing strategies and the intensity of change to the neoliberal model effected by left-wing governments in the region. In this light, the so-called “pink tide” of left-wing governments which emerged at the turn of the millennium presented the greatest threat to elite power in the region since the 20th-century guerrilla insurgencies, and even at times to the more salient aspects of neoliberalism itself. This prompted a fierce counter-reaction from elites along three strategic lines, institutional, mobilizational, and semi- or extra-constitutional, with different emphasis placed on each depending on the particular conjunctural dynamic. Coups, in particular, be they military or “constitutional,” emerge in national spaces where the elites felt the neoliberal project was particularly threatened in a context of weak democratic institutionality. These strategies have two objectives, which while not inseparable can be complementary in their ultimate aim. The first and shared objective, is to institute a restoration and extension of neoliberal systems of governance at the national level, which have the potential to link in to those at the regional, transnational, and inter-continental levels. This objective most definitely limits class equalization measures, but may be tolerant of limited gender, sexual, and even racial equalization measures, in what Nancy Fraser (2017) has called “progressive neoliberalism.” The second, much more radical objective, seeks to restore traditionally dominant systems of social hierarchy by rolling back not just class equalization measures but also progressive advances on racial, gender, and sexual inequalities. This objective, termed “reactionary” or even “hyperreactionary” neoliberalism by Fraser (ibid.), is often executed in alliance with conservative church groups, both Catholic and increasingly Evangelical, and supported by powerful US individuals and groups (Encarnación 2018; Fischer 2017; Ramiréz 2018; Fang 2017). It has the additional beneficial effect for the Right of putting the Left on the defensive, hence limiting its ability to challenge neoliberalism itself. Nevertheless, both objectives seek to achieve

46  Barry Cannon the same overall aim: the installation of what I have termed elsewhere rightoriented state/society complexes (Cannon 2016). Such neoliberalized systems are so named due to their deeply embedded and mutually enmeshed nature at a national, regional, and transnational level across the identified power domains, making it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to unravel by any future Left administration.

4. Right-Wing Neoliberal Practice and Discourse in Latin America A brief examination of the policy options of the four original members of the Pacific Alliance (PA) regional alliance can provide empirical examples of such societies dominated by neoliberalism. Established in 2011 by Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru, “countries with alike views on development that are free trade promoters” (Pacific Alliance 2020), neoliberalism is so deeply embedded in these countries’ power networks that alternative non-neoliberal policy options become almost unthinkable. Economically, these countries are characterized by few state-controlled enterprises and low levels of market-controlling state intervention. Instead, they present high levels of market freedom, with a concentration of ownership of the means of production and of the market in the hands of a few powerful corporations (corporatization), many of these transnationalized. They also have highly open trading regimes, with a large number of free trade agreements (FTAs), most notably with the US, but also with European and Asian countries. FTAs are particularly important as they usually contain legal clauses which inhibit policy change liable to prejudice profit, regardless of its social or environmental benefits. Equally importantly, these rules are usually governed by courts outside national jurisdictions, often located in the United States. Ideological regimes are controlled through highly concentrated, oligopolized, and sometimes transnationalized media ownership structures which are characterized by heavy editorial biases in favor of maintaining and deepening the neoliberal status quo. Moreover, networks of often transnationally funded, liberal, and right-wing think tanks, espousing, supporting, and disseminating neoliberal principles, and indeed in some cases conservative viewpoints, are found in each of these countries. Additionally, education systems are highly privatized, directly linking this model’s continuance to neoliberalism. Political regimes show remarkable levels of ideological uniformity in favor of neoliberalism, and even when this is not the case, policy deviance from neoliberal principles is highly controlled due to the embeddedness of neoliberalism in the other power networks. Militarily these regimes usually maintain alliances with the United States, cooperating with that country in the region, and sometimes, beyond, including facilitating US intervention under the banners of the so-called wars “on drugs” and “on terror.” As can be seen by this account, high levels of transnational influence traverse most of these power networks, mostly from the US, but also from Europe, and increasingly from China.

Democratization and De-democratization  47 The PA itself, established in 2012 is an example of such transnationalization, grouping these neoliberalized states together, with Costa Rica and Panama as future candidates for membership. Moreover, the PA provides the potential to further embed this model at the transnational level, linking it up to the key centers of neoliberalism in North America and Europe and then across to the economies of East Asia, as well as projecting itself as an alternative to existing regional groupings such as Mercosur (or the Market of the South). Furthermore, with the accession of Chile to the OECD and with Colombia also on its way to becoming a member, such agreements will make it even more difficult to deviate from neoliberal prescriptions, opening up the possibility for their extended application across the region. This suggests a longer-term transnational project with the potential to impose and homogenize this political economy model throughout the Latin American region. In each of these countries, then, neoliberalism possesses a formidable collective power – in the sense that neoliberal advocates have horizontal linkages across all of the power domains examined here. Confluences of interests can also aggregate around social conservatism and law-and-order issues, but these do not often conflict with neoliberal policy preferences and indeed can often enhance them. These regimes I therefore suggest are right-oriented state/­ society complexes due to the deep embeddedness of neoliberal governance at the sub-state, state, and supra-state levels. This makes it extremely difficult for left-leaning alternatives to effect structural change, even if such alternatives appear, as was the case, for example, in Peru under Ollanta Humala (2011–16) (Adrianzén 2014) or the second administration of Michelle Bachelet in Chile (2014–18) (Heiss 2017; Arana Araya 2017). Moreover, Cannon (2016) finds that in two of those neoliberalized ­countries – Chile and Colombia – and even in two which had been dominated by Left-led governments for quite some time – Argentina and Venezuela – neoliberalism continued to hegemonize thinking in right-wing or liberal-leaning civil society groups and political parties. Interviews among liberal or right-wing elites held in these countries in 2011/2012 found that there was a pronounced adherence to neoliberal market-based principles with a firm consensus around the subsidiarity of the state to the market. Moreover, the existence of inequalities of class, race, or gender are for the most part unacknowledged by subjects, with instead an emphasis on unproblematized meritocracy. In this narrative, any individual, with the right guidance, support, and personal effort, regardless of race, class, gender, or sexuality can participate in national life and achieve success to any level. Neoliberal dominance was however, powerfully challenged in at least one, if not more, of the five domains of power discussed, from the beginning of the millennium, by “pink tide” governments in the region, seeking to control the excesses of the market and institutionalize new forms of political participation for marginalized groups. By “pink tide” I mean the series of left-leaning or post-neoliberal governments which emerged in Latin America after the election of Hugo Chávez as president of Venezuela in late 1998, until

48  Barry Cannon the impeachment of PT President Dilma Rousseff in Brazil in 2016. While the depth and range of such challenges varied widely among the “pink tide” countries, with the Bolivarian countries of Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador being the most radical, along with Argentina led by Nestor and then Cristina Kirchner (see Cannon 2016), in the rest of the chapter we will examine the case of PT-led Brazil as a case study for such processes of democratization and de-democratization.

5. Democratization and De-democratization Processes in Left-Led Brazil Brazil provides an interesting example of such processes of democratization and de-democratization as described previously. As is well known, it has one of the highest levels of socioeconomic inequality in the world, and Reis (2011) finds that its elites display similarly dismissive attitudes to class, race, gender, and sexual inequalities as those in the countries discussed earlier. The Workers’ Party (PT) first came to power under President Luiz Inácio da Silva (“Lula”), in 2002, and began to implement what Friedmann and Puty (2020) have termed a “low-conflict progressive” agenda, seeking to democratize some of the identified domains of power. Ideologically, the PT began to challenge many of the traditional social hierarchies considered fundamental to conservative ideology, in the areas of gender, racial, and sexual inequalities. For example, Blofield et al. (2017, 350) find that the PT was “more likely to respond to women’s mobilization” than the Right; its social policies “indirectly supported women’s economic autonomy” despite doing “little to transform the division of household labour,” (ibid., 357), and PT governments improved women’s political representation, including providing Brazil’s first female president, as well as strengthening violence against women (VAW) legislation (ibid., 359–360). In terms of racial equality, PT governments made the teaching of African and Afro-Brazilian histories and cultures mandatory in public and private schools in Brazil and introduced racial quotas to help increase attendance of Afro-Brazilian students in Brazil’s public universities. Due to such measures, Lula, according to Johnson and Heringer (2015, 20), “did more than any president before him in showing a sensitivity to and support for historic demands of the black movement,” a path followed by his successor Dilma Rousseff. In terms of sexual equality, Corrales (2017) finds that in the period 1999– 2013, mostly dominated by PT governments, Brazil was one of only three countries in the region (along with Argentina and Uruguay) that become a “super achiever” (ibid., 8) in extending LGBT rights in the domains of decriminalization; anti-discrimination statutes and the right to serve in the military; protections for gender identity; hate crime laws; rights and protections for civil unions, and same-sex marriage. Despite these advances, however, the ideological apparatuses, such as the media, remained unregulated and highly oligopolized, and powerful US-funded think tanks continued to establish themselves

Democratization and De-democratization  49 in the country. Churches, also, including the Catholic and increasingly Evangelical churches remained powerful (Friedmann and Puty 2020, 86), often promoting a conservative anti-feminist and anti-LGBT discourse. Economically, the Workers’ Party adhered to overall neoliberal macroeconomic principles, “seeking solutions (to poverty and inequality) that caused the least friction with the ruling class” (Friedmann and Puty 2020, 86), to the extent that some qualify it as a neoliberal government (see Saad Filho 2020). Nevertheless, the successive PT governments stalled privatization and increased state intervention in the economy, especially during Rousseff’s first presidential term (2010–15). PT-led governments introduced a variety of social policies, which along with its economic policies, had a notably democratizing social impact by increasing employment, raising wages and access to credit and hence reducing poverty and even inequality, thereby benefiting the popular sectors (Friedmann and Puty 2020, 86). In the domain of the military, however, the PT effected little change. Brazil remained the only South American country which “experienced dictatorship during the second half of the 20th century . . . that never punished a public servant” (Canofre 2016, 96). A 1979 Amnesty Law granted “unrestricted and unconditional” amnesty to everyone involved in the dictatorship, and in 2010 the Supreme Court found that the law could bar investigations into past human rights abuses (ibid., 98). The PT did recognize the need for an examination of this past, when in 2011, PT President Dilma Rousseff created the National Truth Commission. This found, after two years of investigations, that the dictatorship was responsible for “at least 434 dead and disappeared” (ibid., 99). Nevertheless, despite herself having been tortured during the dictatorship, Rousseff “never tried to alter the Amnesty Law, saying she didn’t want revenge” (ibid., 99). Additionally, many state personnel in the bureaucracy and in the justice system retained strong ties to the military and the state military police (Friedmann and Puty 2020, 87). Equally, in the political domain, the PT conformed to rather than disrupted existing state institutionally in Brazil. The PT itself regarded the 1988 Brazilian Constitution as “a restricted and conservative re-democratization” (Friedmann and Puty 2020, 84), yet they never contemplated a thorough revision of its bases, through for example a Constitutional Convention. As a result PT governments were subject to what Friedmann and Puty (2020, 87) term a “siege of the government by the state.” This meant that the majority of state personnel in the high bureaucracies, and in the judiciary, were often “resolute opponents by origin or class position of any left-wing projects” (ibid., 87). Additionally, as all PT governments were minority administrations, they relied on the centerright PMDB (Brazilian Democratic Movement Party) party to secure governability. Both these factors would be key elements in the PT’s eventual undoing. On the other hand, however, the PT did comprehensively redirect Brazilian state policy at the transnational level. Brazil forged an independent foreign policy, supporting Venezuela, Cuba, and other left-wing governments in the region and leading efforts to increase Latin American autonomy from

50  Barry Cannon US-dominated regional fora, most notably through its leadership roles in the formation of UNASUR (Union of South American Nations) and CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean State) and its strengthening of Mercosur ((Friedmann and Puty 2020, 91). This regional leadership by Brazil “was fundamental for burying the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas [at Mar de la Plata, Argentina in 2005], the main US strategy for the region since 1994” (Friedmann and Puty 2020, 91). Further afield, its membership of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) inter-governmental forum, and its relations with Iran, among other features, diverged from US dominated neoliberalism and foreign policy objectives. Cumulatively, the PT’s foreign policy gave Brazil “a global role unprecedented in its history” (ibid.). In sum then, it could be said that the PT did threaten established hierarchical and class patterns in a number of key areas in at least three of the identified power domains: ideology, in terms of gender, race, and sexual inequalities; economics, in terms of increased state intervention in the economy, reducing class inequalities; and transnationally, in terms of a non-US oriented foreign policy, addressing geopolitical inequality. Nevertheless, as Friedmann and Puty (2020, 87) note, the PT were constrained from the beginning by its “center-left/ left congressional minority, broadly hegemonic financial capital, a media oligopoly by private groups, and a state commitment to anti-­redistributive logic,” constraints which remained largely unchallenged by successive PT governments. These strategic failures on the part of the PT in the various domains of power identified were then capitalized on by the Right, leading to the PT’s spectacular fall in 2016.

6. Brazilian Right-Wing Counter-Offensives Across the Power Domains The recession beginning in 2013 presented an opportunity for Right elites to restore their full-spectrum dominance of all four main power networks, using the considerable structural power available to them both inside and outside Brazil’s institutions. This process began over a two-month period in June– July 2013, on the eve of the Confederations Cup, with the country seeing the largest popular mobilizations since its return to democracy in 1985. Started by a small, Left grouping protesting modestly against public transport fare rises in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, these rapidly escalated into mass events, encompassing a whole range of issues and groups and drawing crowds of a million or more in the grand avenues of São Paulo. Initially the demonstrations were dismissed by right-wing politicians and corporatist media, with Gerardo Alckmin, right-wing PSDB governor of São Paulo state, branding demonstrators “vandals” and “troublemakers,” and right-wing journalists labelling them “terrorists” (Conde and Jazeel 2013, 441). Yet this attitude changed sharply as military police brutally attacked demonstrators, injuring a number of journalists in the process, and the right-wing media sensed a perfect opportunity to attack the PT-led federal government

Democratization and De-democratization 51 (Conde and Jazeel 2013, 442; Sader 2013; Saad-Filho 2013, 659). From thence on they offered blanket coverage of the protests, emptying these of their radical content and framing them as against the more generic “state inefficiency and corruption” (Saad-Filho 2013, 659). Participation in the marches exploded, with some marches in July  2013 reaching over 1  million people (ibid.). According to Winters and Weitz-Shapiro (2016, 138) by this stage all Brazil was aware of the marches, with only 3% in polls not having heard of them. Moreover, the themes of the original marches became subsumed in a cacophony of demands, from same-sex marriage to the return of the military government. Most marchers were young and middle class, organizing through social media, although local community groups and workers were often integrated into the multitude, these pursuing their own demands (Saad-Filho 2013, 660). Demonstrators rejected party politics in general but particularly the PTled administrations of “Lula” and Dilma Rousseff. This rejection of the PT and the directionless, leaderless nature of the demonstrations allowed the Right to co-opt and manipulate the demonstrations “in order to assert their own agenda” (Conde and Jazeel 2013, 443). This consisted primarily of undermining and delegitimizing the Rousseff administration while promoting the “neoliberal globalising project” (Saad-Filho 2013, 662). Indeed, the media and business elites saw this latest mobilization as an opportunity to remove the PT from power altogether in the upcoming elections in 2014. With the economy in decline, the demonstrations helped push President Dilma Rousseff’s approval ratings in polls down from a high of 80% before March 2013 (ibid.) to 30% in mid-July of the same year (ibid., 663). The government did attempt to win back the initiative: fare increases were rescinded, a new participative Public Transport Council was promised, and more money was pledged for public transport and for health (Conde and Jazeel 2013, 445). Moreover, new laws against corruption were introduced and the government proposed a referendum on political reform. Yet, most of these initiatives were stopped in their tracks by the existing unreformed institutionality, with Congress, for example, rejecting the referendum proposal as “unfeasible,” and instead announcing cuts in education and health (ibid.). Ideological colonization of emerging parties can also be observed in the Brazilian case. In the 2014 elections, for example, there was a rush on the part of elites to endorse Socialist Party candidate Marina Silva in her challenge to Rousseff. Silva enjoyed considerable support among Brazil’s highly oligopolized private media, and each time she surged in the polls, corresponding surges were felt in the Brazilian stock exchange, suggesting endorsement from the country’s financial and business elite, despite her strong background in environmental politics (Grandin 2014). Once Silva lost in the first round, however, elites support swiftly moved to Aécio Neves, the PSDB challenger. The Right’s gamble almost paid off in the elections, with Rousseff barely winning against Neves by a mere 3.28% of the vote and the PT losing seats in Congress. This, however, emboldened the same sectors to organize more demonstrations in 2015 with similar demands, in which calls for Rousseff’s

52  Barry Cannon impeachment, and even for the return of the military government, began to be heard (Jimenez-Barca, 2015). Instrumental in the genesis of these protests were the corruption scandals involving the giant, mostly state-owned oil company Petrobras, providing kickbacks to politicians in return for favors, brought to light by a judicial inquiry known as Lava Jato (Car Wash). While the media and elites projected these scandals as being entirely the responsibility of Rousseff, despite her not having been accused of any crime, many of the accused were in fact from the Right, including the Speakers of the Chamber of Deputies, Eduardo Cunha, and of the Senate, Renan Calheiros, both from the PMDB; the chief opposition leader, and Rousseff’s presidential challenger in the 2014 elections, Aécio Neves, of the PSDB; and, Michel Temer, Rousseff’s then-vice-president also of the PMDB (Saad-Filho 2015). Of these only Cunha lost his position, after having served his purpose as the spearhead of the process which led to Rousseff’s impeachment. Temer, of course, ultimately replaced Dilma Rousseff as president on 31 August 2016, despite the accusations of corruption against him, in a similar process to that previously executed in Paraguay against President Lugo in 2012 (see Lambert 2012). After a tortuous and highly questioned impeachment process, the Senate convicted Rousseff of using the pedalada, a commonly used accounting technique to temporarily reduce the deficit, despite a Senate committee previously declaring that this was not an impeachable offense (Watts 2016). While some suggested that this act was in order to stall the Lava Jato process (see Miranda 2016), it also became clear that a key objective was not just to restore neoliberalism but to embed it more deeply in Brazil’s governance structures. We can see then in this process the use of electoral, mobilizational, and semi-constitutional strategies to remove Rousseff, and indeed to destroy the PT in order to re-establish the country’s neoliberal path. Once Rousseff’s removal was achieved, the neoliberal restoration project was swift to establish itself. Rousseff’s erstwhile vice president, Michel Temer, on assuming the presidency in August 2016, first led this neoliberal restoration project in post-PT Brazil. He immediately announced standard neoliberal policies such as a fire sale privatization of state assets, possibly including parts of Petrobras, the state-owned oil giant (Robinson 2012) and areas of the defense industry (Adghirni 2016), a wide-ranging labor law eliminating many historical workers’ rights (Goldstein 2019), as well as cuts in public spending on social programs, and increased autonomy for the Central Bank (Leahy and Pearson 2016). He also introduced a new law to set constitutional limits on spending for the next 20  years (Robinson 2012), hence institutionalizing austerity for the foreseeable future, eliminating the minimum allocation for education and health, reducing access for the poor to these social goods, and making it much more difficult for any future (Left) government to increase social spending. Moreover, Temer was consistently criticized for a negative attitude to gender and other cultural rights. Jair Bolsonaro, who assumed the presidency in Brazil on 1 January 2019, winning over 55% of the vote, further radicalized the Temer agenda (Rangel 2018). Using the IEMP structure derived from Mann earlier to examine

Democratization and De-democratization 53 Bolsonaro’s initial measures on assuming power indicate the installation of a type of hype-reactionary neoliberalism. Ideologically there is a pronounced rejection of previously instituted measures aimed at reducing class, gender, or racial inequalities, directly relating these to “communism” (Berron 2018). This is evidenced by Bolsonaro’s pledge in his inaugural address to fight “nefarious ideologies” that destroy Brazil’s “values and traditions,” including “gender ideology” (Smyth and Lloyd 2018). Bolosonaro’s election was heavily supported by evangelical leaders, a support rewarded by his appointment of Damares Alves, an evangelical pastor and adviser to the evangelical parliamentary caucus, as Minister of Women, Family and Human Rights. This latter appointment ensured the removal of LGBT concerns from consideration by this ministry, building on Bolsonaro’s notoriously negative attitude to LGBT rights (Associated Press 2019). A major part of this conservative agenda is in education, with Bolsonaro promising that he will ensure that schools prepare their children “for the job market and not for political militancy” (BBC News 2019), with his Minister for Education, conservative philosopher Ricardo Velez Rodriguez, shutting down the agency responsible for diversity in the Education Ministry (Lopes and Faiola 2019), and hence jeopardizing the aforementioned affirmative action policies in favor of Afro-Brazilian and poor students. A further interesting characteristic of Bolsonaro is his rejection of the media establishment in Brazil (Demori et al. 2018) and his successful use of social media, especially WhatsApp in his election (Nemer 2018). However, such animosity to mainstream media is less concerned with the high ownership concentration of Brazil’s media, and its unequal outcomes, than his desire to hegemonize public discourse. Bolsonaro instead favors those media who support him, such as Record TV, owned by billionaire Evangelical bishop, Edir Macedo (Greenwald 2018) as indicated by his promise to review the distribution of funds for official publicity (Latin American Herald Tribune 2019), rather than interfere with property rights of non-Bolsonarista media. Economically, Bolsonaro looks to radically deepen neoliberalism as evidenced by his choice of Paulo Guedes, ex Chicago School professor and acolyte of Milton Friedman (1912–2006), giving him free rein to choose his team (Latin American Herald Tribune 2019). A key part of this program will be to deepen privatizations with promises to privatize or liquidate 100 state run companies (Fonseca, Mano and Baum 2019), including Electrobras, the state electricity giant, and many airports and seaports (Conley 2019). Equally, Bolsonaro has shown his anti-state animus by closing the Labour Ministry (and hence undermining state regulation of employment conditions), installing a federal hiring freeze on state employment, and promising to reduce state employment by 30% (Lopes and Faiola 2019). Moreover, Guedes has promised to slash taxes for the rich, aiming at halving the tax take in GDP terms from 36% to 20% (Conley 2019). Bolsonaro has never made any secret of his admiration for the military and the military dictatorship which ruled Brazil from 1964–85. Bolsonaro himself is an ex-army captain, his vice-president Hamilton Mourao is a retired army general, and by 2018 Bolsonaro had appointed seven former military

54  Barry Cannon personnel to his 22 member cabinet, more than any administration since the dictatorship (Tsavkko Garcia 2018). Bolsonaro has moved Brazil closer to the US militarily, pledging to open a US military base in Brazil (Brooks and Paraguassu 2019), although this has been questioned by some members of the Brazilian military (Viga Gaier 2019). He has also made clear his intention to fully embrace the US-led “war on drugs,” adopting “iron fist” policies on drugs and crime, relaxing gun ownership laws and citizen legal protection against shootto-kill policies on the part of security forces. Politically, Bolsonaro has signaled his intention to “rid Brazil of socialism.” Immediately on assuming office he launched a purge of left-wing government officials with approximately 300 people expected to be dismissed, in order to “do away with the Socialist and Communist ideas that during 30 years have led us to the chaos in which we live” (Kahn, 2012). Furthermore, the new Congress is primarily dominated by like-minded Congress members, signaling the mainstreaming of such discourse (Costa 2018). This increased presence of radical right ideology in Congress, along with moves to privilege such sectors in the media, all point to greater ideological homogeneity in Brazilian politics and state around market freedoms and elite, male, privilege. Finally, transnationally, there is an abandonment of the PT’s carefully constructed foreign policy. Bolsonaro, along with his conspiracy theory peddling foreign minister, Ernesto Araujó (Tsavkko Garcia 2018), has expressed support for President Trump, who has returned the favor. Bolsonaro has rapidly moved to follow the White House lead regionally, by increasing criticism of Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua among other leftist governments, instead pledging support for US policy on these countries. He is seeking Brazil’s abandonment of UNASUR, promising a new regional forum PROSUL (Forum for the Progress of South America), closer to the Pacific Alliance ideologically and in terms of membership (Europa Press 2019) and “has no clear policy vis-àvis Mercosur” (Stuenkel 2019). Further afield, he has pivoted Brazil towards the radical right Israeli government, followed the US lead in casting doubt on multilateralism, expressing criticism of “globalism” and arguing in favor of reform of multilateral bodies such as the WTO (Paraguassu and Brito 2019). He announced Brazil’s withdrawal from negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, again following the United States’ lead (Lopes and Faiola 2019) and threatened to withdraw Brazil from the Paris Climate Accord (also following the US) but later retracted that threat (Leal 2018). Nevertheless, such moves are limited by other important relations such as that with China, Brazil’s foremost trading partner (Lopes and Faiola 2019) or Brazil’s Middle Eastern markets for its beef.

7. Conclusion: Hyper-Reactionary Neoliberalism in Post-“Pink Tide” Brazil To sum up, in this article I argue the following with regard to Left/Right relations in Latin America. First, these relationships are shaped and controlled to

Democratization and De-democratization 55 an extraordinary degree by the sources of social power. These sources of social power – economic, ideological, political, military, and transnational – are dominated by neoliberalism in the present conjuncture, both at a policy and at a discursive level, reducing space for alternative policy constellations to emerge. Additionally, I argue that democratization and de-democratization processes can be mapped on to such Left/Right interaction. In such a configuration, the regional Right’s aim to install systems of neoliberal governance at a national and transnational level, can be qualified as de-democratizing, as neoliberalism almost always ensures greater class inequality at the very least. On the other hand, the “pink tide” government policies were by and large aimed at reducing class inequalities, and often gender, race, and sexual inequalities as well. These efforts, while not eradicating and replacing neoliberalism, weakened elite social power in many of these power domains to a sufficient degree to alarm neoliberalized elites. These results unleashed right-wing counter-acting strategies at the institutional, mobilizational, and semi- or extra-constitutional levels, suggesting a direct link between Right strategies and the degree of threat felt by elites to the neoliberal model. The aim of these right-wing counter-offensives was to achieve national neoliberal restoration projects, eventually linking these into wider regional and transnational neoliberalized governance structures. I then used the case of the PT governments in Brazil to illustrate this theory, arguing that while the PT left some important areas within the identified power domains unreformed, they still disturbed settled social hierarchies in many of them, particularly in terms of class, gender, racial, and sexual hierarchies, and in terms of state intervention in the economy. The Right eventually responded by activating their remaining social power through the three identified strategies to successfully remove a sitting PT president, Dilma Rousseff, and to arrest and imprison her predecessor and mentor, Lula in 2018. With the PT electorally defeated and its historical leadership removed, this allowed free rein to the successor Temer and Bolsonaro administrations to reverse the democratizing gains implemented by the PT, leading a rapid neoliberal restoration project. Bolsonaro in particular has augmented this project with a hyper-reactionary discourse and actions designed to discombobulate, distract, and dismember the Left. This chapter seeks to offer a novel analytical framework with which to help understand such processes, and hopefully contribute to recomposing a unified response to the challenges they present.

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56  Barry Cannon Arana Araya, Ignacio. 2017. “Chile 2016: ¿El nadir de la legitimidad democrática?” Revista De Ciencia Política 37 (2): 305–333. http://dx.doi.org/10.4067/s0718-090x 2017000200305. Balibar, Etienne. 2009. “Historical Dilemmas of Democracy and Their Contemporary Relevance for Citizenship.” Rethinking Marxism 20 (4): 522–538. https://doi. org/10.1080/08935690802299363. Barrett, Patrick, Daniel Chavez, and César Rodríguez-Garavito. 2008. The New Latin American Left: Utopia Reborn. London, UK: Pluto. BBC News. 2019. “Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil’s New Far-Right President Urges Unity.” BBC News World: Latin America, 1 January. Available at: www.bbc.com/news/ world-latin-america-46720899. Berrón, Gonzalo. 2018. “Odio, frustración, y valores reaccionarios: Jair Bolsonaro y la regresión política en Brasil.” Nueva Sociedad, October. Available at: https://nuso. org/articulo/odio-frustracion-y-valores-reaccionarios/. Blofield, Merike, Christina Ewig, and Jennifer M. Piscopo. 2017. “The Reactive Left: Gender Equality and the Latin American Pink Tide.” Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society 24 (4): 345–369. https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/ jxx016. Bobbio, Norberto. 1996. Left and Right: The Significance of a Political Distinction. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Bottomore, Thomas. 1993. Élites and Society. London and New York: Routledge. Brooks, Brad, and Lisandra Paraguassu. 2019. “Brazil’s Bolsonaro says he is open to hosting a U.S. military base.” Reuters, 4 January. Available at: www.reuters.com/ article/us-brazil-politics/brazils-bolsonaro-says-he-is-open-to-hosting-a-u-s-mili tary-base-idUSKCN1OX1SR. Brown, Wendy. 2019. In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Anti-Democratic Politics in the West. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Burton, Guy. 2011. “The South American Right after the ‘End of History.’ ” In Right Wing Politics in the New Latin America: Reaction and Revolt, edited by Francisco Dominguez, Geraldine Lieveseley, and Steve Ludlum, 11–25. London, UK: Zed. Cannon, Barry. 2016. The Right in Latin America: Elite Power, Hegemony and the Struggle for the State. New York and London: Routledge. Canofre, Fernanda. 2016. “ ‘We have to Talk about it’: Why Brazil must Confront the Crimes of its Military Period.” World Policy Journal 33 (4): 96–100. Available at: www.muse.jhu.edu/article/645266. Conde, Maite, and Tariq Jazeel. 2013. “Kicking Off in Brazil: Manifesting Democracy.” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies: Travesia 22 (4): 437–450. doi: 10.1080/13569325.2013.840278. Conley, Julia. 2019. “Bolsonaro Unveils Mass Privatization Plan for Brazil While Slashing Taxes for Rich and Wages for Poor.” Common Dreams, 4 January. Available at: www.commondreams.org/news/2019/01/04/bolsonaro-unveils-mass-privati zation-plan-brazil-while-slashing-taxes-rich-and-wages. Corrales, Javier. 2017. “Understanding the Uneven Spread of LGBT Rights in Latin America and the Caribbean, 1999–2013.” Journal of Research in Gender Studies 7 (1): 52–82. Available at: https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein. journals/jogenst7&div=6&id=&page=. Costa, Breno. 2018. “Quién es quién en el ejército de Jair Messias Bolsonaro.” Nueva Sociedad, October. Available at: https://nuso.org/articulo/quien-es-quien-en-ejercitode-jair-messias-bolsonaro/.

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58  Barry Cannon Jimenez Barca, Antonio. 2015. “La oposición brasileña maniobra para ponerse al frente de la protesta social.” El País, 18 March. Available at: http://internacional.elpais. com/internacional/2015/03/17/actualidad/1426620385_776859.html. Johnson III, Ollie A., and Rosana Heringer. 2015. Race, Politics, and Education in Brazil: Affirmative Action in Higher Education. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan Publishers. Khan, Shamus R. 2012. “The Sociology of Elites.” Annual Review of Sociology 38: 361–377. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-071811-145542. Kiely, Ray, and Saull, Richard. 2017. “Neoliberalism and the Far-Right: An Introduction.” Critical Sociology 43 (6): 821–829. Lambert, Peter. 2012. “The Lightening Impeachment of Paraguay’s President Lugo.” E-International Relations, 9 August. Available at: www.e-ir.info/2012/08/09/thelightning-impeachment-of-paraguays-president-lugo/. Latin American Herald Tribune. 2019. “Brazil’s Bolsonaro Leaves Economy to FreeMarket Crusader.” Latin American Herald Tribune, 9 January. Available at: http:// laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=2472752&CategoryId=14090. Leahy, Joe, and Samantha Pearson. 2016. “Brazil to Formally Enshrine Central Bank’s Autonomy.” Financial Times, 13 July. Available at: www.ft.com/content/ ff464df6-4895-11e6-ab7c-840b4062e27c. Leal, Kariny. 2018. “Brazil’s Presidential Frontrunner Bolsonaro Says he won’t pull out of Paris Climate Agreement.” Time, 26 October. Available at: https://time. com/5435737/bolsonaro-brazil-paris-climate-agreement/. Lopes, Marina, and Anthony Faiola. 2019. “What the First Days of Bolsonaro’s Presidency Say about the Direction he Will Take Brazil.” The Washington Post, 5 January. Available at: www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/what-the-firstdays-of-bolsonaros-presidency-say-about-the-direction-hell-take-brazil/2019/01/04/ 89d59e72-0ed7-11e9-8f0c-6f878a26288a_story.html. Mann, Michael. 1986. The Sources of Social Power: Volume 1, A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2002. “The Crisis of the Latin American State.” Paper presented at the University of the Andes, Bogotá, Colombia, to the Conference “The Political Crisis and Internal Conflict in Colombia,” 10–13 April. Available at: www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/ faculty/mann/colombia.pdf. Miranda, David. 2016. “Globo’s  billionaire heir Joāo Roberto Marinho attacked me in the Guardian. Here’s My Response.” The Intercept, 25 April. Available at: https://theintercept.com/2016/04/25/globos-billionaire-heir-joao-roberto-marinhoattacked-me-in-the-guardian-heres-my-response/. Nef, Jorge, and Berndt Reiter. 2009. The Democratic Challenge: Rethinking Democracy and Democratization. Basingstoke, Hants, UK and New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Nemer, David. 2018. “The Three Types of WhatsApp Users Getting Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro Elected.” The Guardian, 25 October. Available at: www.theguardian.com/ world/2018/oct/25/brazil-president-jair-bolsonaro-whatsapp-fake-news. Nöel, Alain, and Jean Phillipe Thérien. 2008. Left and Right in Global Politics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Pacific Alliance. 2020. “What is the Pacific Alliance.” Pacific Alliance. Available at: https://alianzapacifico.net/en/what-is-the-pacific-alliance/. Paraguassu, Lisandro, and Ricardo Brito. 2019. “WRAPUP-Brazil Wants to Move Embassy to Jerusalem, Push Reform at WTO.” Thomson Reuters Foundation News,

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5 The Right and Neo-Golpismo in Latin America. A Comparative Reading of Honduras (2009), Paraguay (2012), and Brazil (2016) Lorena Soler and Florencia Prego1 1. Introduction As 21st-century populist and progressive governments continue to recede across the region, there is a need to look more closely at the “new” Latin American Right. Neoliberalism is being reshaped across the continent through the activity of political parties, in the ideas propagated by intellectuals and/ or media conglomerates, and, most importantly, through the direct action of a bourgeoisie bent on investing democracy with new meanings. In Haiti (2004), Honduras (2009), Paraguay (2012), and Brazil (2016) the Right has seized government by using a series of novel coup methods that suggest that Latin American democracy is at a turning point, and this reality belongs at the top of the intellectual agenda.2 These new “deconstituent” methods or “overthrow technologies” (Ramírez 2002) are taking place in the context of populist and/or progressive governance, targeting presidencies whose legitimacy emanates from sovereign will and formal democratic rule. Different from the coups during the 1960s and ’70s, which were carried out by National Armed Forces and overseen by the Doctrine of National Security, contemporary coup-agents arise primarily from civil society, employ legal tools as their primary putsch methods, and rely less on physical violence. At the same time, this development is taking place in a post-September 11 framework in which foreign policy is increasingly contained within a terrorist paradigm and no longer adheres to the intense bipolar disputes of the Cold War. Bearing in mind this characterization, the present work employs a historical sociology approach in order to perform a comparative analysis of 21st-century coups in Honduras, Paraguay, and Brazil, examining the intervening actors – political parties, legislatures, and judiciaries – as well as the types of putsch mechanisms employed. Attention will additionally, if secondarily, be placed on the role of the armed forces and mass media in the coups. Our initial hypothesis is that wherever populist and/or progressive governments are in crisis, the Right has been able to concentrate its strength in parliamentary spaces and create the necessary conditions of possibility to launch

62  Lorena Soler and Florencia Prego a coup against constitutional presidencies, using the legal and political tools of democratic rule. This “new” Right has appealed to legislature and the judiciary in order to carry out its coups and instate a new order. This study is organized into four parts. The first offers an overview of the diverse approaches and theoretical perspectives employed to define the new coup formats. The second analyzes national cases and the role of the intervening actors, using the following pairing: the role of political parties and the legislature, the judiciary and mass media, and, lastly, electoral processes and the types of governments that take office after the coup. Finally, by way of closure, we shall look at the relation between the diverse right-wing forces and neo-golpismo.

2. Conceptual Definitions: Political Instability? Rupture? Change? Coup? In its original formulation, presented for the first time in 1639 in Gabriel Naudé’s Considérations politiques sur les coups d’État, a coup is defined as an act carried out by the sovereign in order to remove his own officials, accused of conspiring against him. No matter the case, the factor of surprise and the coup’s secretive conception were keys to committing the act. However, by the 19th century, constitutionalism had constrained the meaning of the coup to signify a change in government instigated by those in power that violated the legal constitution of the state. That is, state officials would be responsible for committing the coup – be they the sovereign, the titular holder of legal political power, civilian or military officials – using the elements and institutions of the state apparatus itself in order to remove the sovereign. In his exhaustive study, Rafael Martínez (2014) maintains that the difference between Gabriel Naudé’s original definition is that while in the past the coup was an extraordinary instrument of absolutist power, used to preserve the prince’s dominion against external and internal threats to the state, the modern coup is not an act of defense or protection of the system, but rather one that interrupts democracy: “in contrast with the coup as a protection of (absolutist) power, there emerges the coup as an attack on (democratic) power” (Martínez 2014, 203).3 The coup does not always produce a dictatorship or instate an authoritarian or military order,4 no more than all dictatorships are the same in all times and places. For the Romans, dictatorship was an exceptional and necessary moment meant to guarantee order: the state is suspended during times of extreme external conflict, civil war, or internal turbulence. The Senate retained the ability to appoint a civilian as dictator (who could be a member of the Senate, a consul, or patrician) and granted him command for a period of six months until order could be restored (Leiras 2010, 27). Carl Schmitt (in Dictatorship, 1921, and Political Theology, 1922) provided a foundational theoretical contribution, later to be taken up in diverse intellectual and academic analyses, centered on his definition of the “commissary

The Right, Neo-Golpismo in Latin America  63 dictatorship” and the “sovereign dictatorship” as moments in which rights are suspended. Schmitt speaks in favor of using exceptional powers and certain prerogatives by the executive branch in order to govern in times of crisis. Thus, in the midst of extreme emergency, the sovereign decides on what must be done to eradicate the emergency situation and whether the constitutional order should be suspended in order to resolve the crisis. In other words, the sovereign considers the conjuncture and determines the state of exception. In legal theory, the coup, understood as a violation of prevailing legality, implies a shift in foundational rules and, subsequently, the validation process for all its laws (whether or not changes are instituted). It follows that for international law, a government emerging from a coup must request/receive recognition from other states. Despite the foregoing, overly extending the coup label, as Pérez Liñán (2008) has pointed out, can also run the risk of producing a “dead-end” in which every president’s removal can be brought before the Organization of American States (OAS) and, if followed by majority approval, become the instigating cause for arbitrary intervention. As Liñan suggests, a new pattern of political instability characterized by recurrent crises tends towards the removal or resignation of presidents, without in any way implying a break with democratic rule. Our intention is not to explain the coup as a problem of political instability. Quite the opposite, political instability can in fact be a decisive element allowing for the types of social change seen in the region during the 21st century. Coups against Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti (2004), Manuel Zelaya in Honduras (2009), Fernando Lugo in Paraguay (2012), and Dilma Rousseff in Brazil (2016), as well as attempted coups against Hugo Chávez Frías in Venezuela (2002),5 Evo Morales in Bolivia (2002), and Rafael Correa in Ecuador (2010) are substantially different from the removal of presidents at the end of the 1990s and early 2000s, occurring in the midst of neoliberalism’s crisis as the dominant mode of accumulation and domination. Between 2000 and 2005 there were at least six presidents who failed to serve a complete term: Jamil Mahuad (2000) and Lucio Gutiérrez (2005) in Ecuador, Alberto Fujimori in Peru (2000), Fernando de la Rúa in Argentina (2001), Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada (2003) and Carlos Mesa (2005) in Bolivia. These putsches were instigated by popular movements, mobilizations, and street-based insurrectional logics that, in conjunction with a rupture in the traditional political system, led to the fall of their respective presidents. Unlike the presidential instability of the 1980–90 period, 21st-century coups attempt to overrule, eliminate, or inhibit (depending on the given relation of forces, and the capacity to impose a new political will) the course of a process underway that generally emerges as a threat to the established order, what Perry Anderson has called “preventative counterrevolutions” in reference to the populist upswing of the 1950s. As Waldo Ansaldi points out, “when democracy is radicalized to such an extent that it seriously questions bourgeois hegemony, this class will not hesitate to employ violence of any kind” (2014, 28). What is being described here are actions designed to impose a substitutive social

64  Lorena Soler and Florencia Prego order and thus prevent the kind of radicalization of democracy as took place in constituent processes throughout the 21st century. Neo-golpismo can thus be defined as a phenomenon primarily spearheaded by civic actors who, at the same time that they generate unstable conditions or scenarios, nevertheless invoke the idea of a constitutional, legal, or institutional resolution that keeps them from breaking with democratic rule, even in cases where they are violating popular sovereignty (Tokatlian 2009, 2012), and often times with implicit or explicit support from the armed forces. Formally speaking, this is a less virulent and more gradual type of coup. One of the main arguments cited by coup instigators is that they are intervening in the name of preserving democratic order. Institutional military dictatorships used a similar invocation against the threat of communism in the Southern Cone in the 1970s. More commonly today, coup leaders concentrate less on a posteriori legitimations for their actions – an approach they themselves would acknowledge as illegal  – and instead seek to demonstrate the legality of the acts and processes employed in order to supplant the executive. Hence the legislature and the judiciary have assumed a special prominence for their role as guarantors of legitimacy in the new coups. Neo-golpismo is thus paradoxical: it recognizes as democratically elected the same governments it is deposing while maintaining that they do not govern democratically. It follows that several authors prefer to denominate these new putsch methods as constitutional coups (Roitman Rosenmann 2013), since they employ legal mechanisms and avail themselves of the participation of democratically elected authorities. In that sense, it can be said that while coups in Latin America [still] follow the agenda of the dominant classes, [the] exclusively military coups, perpetrated with the ample autonomy granted to the armed forces during the Cold War, are disappearing and giving way to constitutional coups, which are cleaner and more effective. (Roitman Rosenmann 2013, 200)

3. Actors and Methods of Intervention in 21st-Century Coups As we have earlier suggested, there is a dialectical relation between processes of social change in 21st-century Latin America and the specific coup methods pursued. This shift in the correlation of forces has imposed determinate conditions on the strategies and interventions of the region’s right-wing forces (political parties, corporations, political elites, and the military) as they have attempted to recover control of the state and restore a new social order. Using a comparative framework to analyze the coups against Zelaya in Honduras (2009), Lugo in Paraguay (2012), and Rousseff in Brazil (2016), it is clear that the modes and methods for removing presidents were not identical. The degree to which political processes were consolidated in one or another government varied significantly and, therefore, the correlation of forces or party

The Right, Neo-Golpismo in Latin America  65 alliances proved to be a variable factor. In the case of Brazil, the coup process that culminated in the impeachment of Rousseff (2016) was much longer and more complex than was the case with Zelaya in Honduras (2009) and Lugo in Paraguay (2012). The Workers’ Party (PT) managed to establish a hegemony in Brazil with no parallel in the other two national cases: “impeachment undid the Lulist6 social pact, bringing to an end a political cycle begun in 2003 with a coalition overseen by a PT hegemony” (Goldstein 2016, 91). In each of the three cases studied here, the deposed government had previously suffered from waning support within the dominant force and the conditions of governmentality had come to rest on ever more fragile party alliances. Zelaya, representing the Liberal Party that triumphed in the 2006 election, demonstrated an unexpected shift in terms of his own personal and political trajectory when he assumed the executive office. By promoting heterodox, pragmatic policies in support of public investment and state administration (De Gori 2014, 53), frictions with the dominant bloc soon came to the fore: Zelaya promoted accords with “Petrocaribe,” gained admission for Honduras to the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America,7 increased the minimum wage, and began a program of agrarian reform granting land titles to peasants. These measures led to conflicts with the political class (the National Party and his own), as well as the economic and military elites who denounced the government’s “Chavista turn.” The electoral victory of Lugo in Paraguay represented a sea change in the political history of that country: it broke with 61 uninterrupted years of the National Republican Association – Colorado Party hegemony in government – a party with historic connections to the authoritarian regime of Alfredo Stroessner (1954–1989) – as well as the democratic regime instated after his fall. The Patriotic Alliance for Change (APC) comprised of social movements, leftwing parties and the traditional Liberal Party,8 enabled Lugo’s presidential victory and that of liberal Federico Franco as vice president. Nevertheless, the origins of Lugo’s victory were also at the root of his weakness, and his unifying profile, overcoming partisan lines, was also reflected in the weakness of left-wing forces in the legislature: the same political process that made Fernando Lugo possible also granted broad powers to Congress and left the executive in a weak position. (Soler 2011, 43) In Brazil, Rousseff began her second term in the midst of an increasingly severe economic crisis, made worse by an international arena that offered few of the advantages she had enjoyed in her first term. In that context, cutbacks in social spending and a series of orthodox economic measures resulted in a reduction of the government’s support. The impeachment of Rousseff thus took place in the midst of a “perfect storm” in which different crises converged: the economic crisis (based on a declining national-developmentalist cycle, made worse by the international crisis); a political crisis (whose counterpart was the

66  Lorena Soler and Florencia Prego ascent of the Brazilian Democratic Movement, PMDB); and a social crisis (based on growing discontent towards the government’s economic policies) (Goldstein 2016). It was against this general background  – racked by political weaknesses, facing institutional, economic, and social crises, with right-wing forces gathering strength in parliament as the executive branch was simultaneously weakened by opposition parties (as well as its own coalition partners)  – that the conditions for Latin America’s coups became possible. However, the causes and arguments in favor of the respective coups varied from one case to another. In Honduras, the coup against Zelaya (2009) was triggered by an opinion poll concerning the possibility of a Constituent Assembly. This was quickly rebuffed by the Honduran legislature and judiciary and, finally, led to the intervention of the armed forces. The main argument against the Constitution’s modification was that it would allow for the president’s re-election. The Supreme Court of Justice, the Superior Electoral Court, and Congress branded the poll as illegal, and the election materials employed in the poll were confiscated by the armed forces. The president of the republic however ignored the decision and decided to advance with the electoral process and depose the Joint Chief of Staff, General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez. In Paraguay, the massacre of Curuguaty (15 June 2012) led to calls for a political trial against Lugo. The massacre occurred when an eviction on the property of Blas Riquelme (the National Republican Association – Colorado Party) led to the murder of 12 peasants and five police officers. The real cause, however, is significantly more complicated, involving powerful economic interests connected to agro-business with representation in Congress and the media (Escobar 2012, 88). There had previously been 23 attempts to subject the president to political trial, although the necessary majority was never attained. In Brazil, the specific accusation levelled against Rousseff (2016) was that she had rubberstamped decrees allowing for supplementary credits and delayed transfer of payments from the National Treasury to the Bank of Brazil.9 In what follows, we will analyze how, while for impeachment to be possible it was necessary to demonstrate that an act of “criminal responsibility” had taken place, none of the accusations appeared capable of substantiating said crime. Who were the actors that made the coups possible? What forms did neogolpismo assume? In what follows, we will explore these explanatory variables. 3.1 Political Parties and Legislative Powers Wherever populist and/or progressive governments have come to power in the early 21st century in Latin America, parliament has become a place of institutional refuge for the reorganization of right-wing opposition and a site where a parliamentary ideology could be constructed. This phenomenon, overseen by the combined forces of elite conservatives and the mass media, has sought to undermine the legitimacy of the executive branch (Salas Oroño 2010).

The Right, Neo-Golpismo in Latin America  67 In Honduras, Paraguay, and Brazil, as an organ of partisan representation the legislative branch would become a central actor in keeping with the specific way that the coup processes unfolded. Right-wing forces with links to traditional parties gathered principally around the Liberal Party (PL) and National Party in Honduras, the ANR-Colorado Party and the Authentic Liberal Radical Party (PLRA) in Paraguay, and the Democratic Movement of Brazil Party (PMDB). Nevertheless, the PL (Honduras), the PLRA (Paraguay), and the PMDB (Brazil) were part of a governing coalition. Neo-golpismo in Honduras employed a mixed format involving both the armed forces and the legislature. Unlike other coups, the armed forces did not follow their own initiative, nor did they use direct physical violence or take the government by force. Nevertheless, they were responsible for arresting Zelaya and deporting him to Costa Rica on 28 June  2009. Hours later, the National Congress read a letter of resignation, attributed to the president, and then approved a legislative decree (No. 141/2009) ordering his removal from office and naming Robert Micheletti (PL) as his replacement, to serve as constitutional president until the end of Zelaya’s term. There were three factors informing the accusation levelled in parliament against Zelaya: the refusal to submit to Congress the General Budget of Revenue and Expenses for the Republic during the 2009 fiscal year; the collection of materials for the opinion poll on the Constituent Assembly, which, by court order was to be confiscated by the Air Force; the dismissal of General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez as Joint Chief of Staff (Gómez 2014, 61).10 Thus, the Honduran Congress declared Zelaya guilty without having carried out any trial, violating due process and the right of defense, preventing the possibility of the acts in question being tried before a judge (Gómez 2014, 65). The coup, sanctioned by Congress and the Supreme Court, was also supported by the armed forces in a clear demonstration that the military was an ideological and geopolitical buttress of bipartisan consensus. Parliament, representing traditional parties and the economic Right, had meanwhile become a force capable of deposing the president and a laboratory more generally for the undermining of presidential powers (De Gori 2014, 59). The coup thus laid bare the economic and political elites’ domination and control, as well as the resistance they would pose to any other group’s attempt to dispute their hegemony and control of the political system (Cuadra Lira 2014, 47). In Paraguay (2012) and Brazil (2016), coups were carried out as political trials and impeachments, as provisioned by the constitution of each country. Political trials in Paraguay were modified through the 1992 reform to the National Constitution (Article 255).11 Its main objective was to obtain greater balance between the branches of the state, and above all, to impose limits on the executive after 35 years of dictatorship (1954–89). Political trial thus became the preferred mechanism for limiting attempts to perpetuate presidential rule. Nevertheless, that period saw an increase in parliamentary powers (in detriment to the executive), exacerbating a hegemonic deficit characteristic of Paraguayan politics since the fall of Stroessner (Escobar 2012, 86). In the case

68  Lorena Soler and Florencia Prego of Brazil, the Federal Constitution of 1988 allows for impeachment proceedings (Articles 85 and 86), as well as Law No. 1,079/1950 pertaining to “criminal responsibility.” It followed from those precedents that for a president to be removed from office, there must be proof of criminal responsibility. Political trials and impeachments had been put in practice before Lugo and Rousseff. In Paraguay, the first precedent can be found when Raúl Cubas Grau was nearly deposed after the assassination of then-Vice-President Luis María Argaña (on 23 March 1999), an event that produced a wave of protests known as the “March massacre in Paraguay.” The resulting repression and deaths over the course of those days led the Chamber of Deputies to present a motion before the Chamber of Senators calling for a political trial against President Cubas Grau, accused of “acts that constitute malfeasance and that furthermore could constitute crimes committed while exercising duties.” Nevertheless, the president tendered his resignation before trial proceedings could commence. Another case, involving Luis González Macchi, in 2001, was unsuccessful due to an inability to obtain the necessary majority in the Chamber of Senators. Brazil’s Fernando Collor de Mello, accused of corruption, money laundering, and influence peddling, was subject to impeachment proceedings in 1992.12 In addition to massive street protests, the then-president gradually lost support among the country’s main economic groups, media, and parliament. The lack of support from the legislature in Paraguay – if not outright opposition – and the predominance of the ANR-Colorado Party in the same legislative branch proved to be a major obstacle to Paraguay’s Alliance government. Lugo was struck down by mouthpieces who, in the words of José Carlos Rodríguez, “accused the government of being leftist in order to keep it from becoming so,” while the government itself demolished its own social and electoral support, expressed days prior to the coup in the figures of indignant citizens on social media and in the murder of peasants (Soler 2012, 29). Right-wing forces in parliament, represented primarily through the ANR-Colorado Party and the Authentic Radical Liberal Party (PLRA), sanctioned the request and ultimate approval of the political trial. The swiftness with which Lugo’s trial was processed is without precedent. This was a televised coup: the Chamber of Deputies lodged their claim and issued a request (approved in a short few hours), and the Chamber of Senators executed the request in just over 24 hours. Seventy-nine deputies voted in favor of the political trial and 39 members of parliament deposed him and named Federico Franco as president, the latter swearing in the very same day. Lugo’s indictment was based on malfeasance, resting on his alleged “ineffectiveness, negligence, ineptitude and unpreparedness” in relation to the Curuguaty massacre. To that accusation were added others related to a political event held at the Engineering Corps of the armed forces (2009), the Ñacunday case,13 the overall insecurity of the country, and the fact that he was a signature of Mercosur’s Ushuaia II Protocol. Lugo’s “express trial” consisted in the violation of virtually every constitutional guarantee:14 the right to a defense trial, the principle of legality,

The Right, Neo-Golpismo in Latin America  69 procedural law, the right to reasonable notification, the right to the production of evidence, the principle of consistency,15 among others. However, most objectionable of all was the issue of proof for the alleged crimes, since there was effectively none provided. The criminal complaint presented by the prosecution maintained that “the aforementioned grounds are public knowledge and therefore do not require proof, according to the current legal framework.” This appeal was carried out by giving recourse to the primary clause for all dictatorial repression: “political crimes do not require proof, being ‘public knowledge.’ ” That accusation, in plain defiance of the republican and democratic contract of 1992, was publicly approved by almost the entire Chamber, thus sanctioning a return to the earlier dictatorial contract (Rivarola 2012, 46). The accusation levelled against Rousseff in Brazil could not be justified on the grounds of “criminal responsibility.” However, her impeachment was successfully carried out all the same. The alignment of a “putschist political class” in parliament (Salas Oroño 2016), comprised not just of deputies aligned with PMBD but also the PP, PSD, the PTB, and other “medium-sized and minor parties,” made possible a joint indictment. Fewer than 5% of all the intervening deputies mentioned the alleged budget irregularities,16 laying bare the fact that the arguments brought against the president were simply a pretext to refute popular sovereignty (Gentili 2016, 29). Instead, they appealed to accusatory narratives against the Workers’ Party in general and Rousseff in particular, claiming they were “mafiosos,” corrupt, unfit for governing, that the government did not respect the law of God, that it was supported by communists, that it did not pursue a policy of growth and adopted anti-business measures. There were also calls to put an end to Chavismo, Bolivarianism, socialism, homosexuals, and human rights. Similar calls could be heard in the Paraguayan parliament, where “there was a soft return of the ‘democracy without communism’ discourse, an authoritarian ideology characteristic of the defeated dictatorship from twenty-three years earlier” (Rodríguez 2012, 49). 3.2 Judiciary and the Mass Media Political parties and legislatures are not the only important players in 21stcentury coups. The judiciary and mass media provide coups with a cover of legitimacy and disseminate the type of ideology that can sanction the coup. In Honduras, the judiciary intervened in both the period before and after the coup. First, the Supreme Court ordered the capture and deportation of Zelaya for the following crimes: “crimes against the state, the fatherland, abuses of authority and usurpation of duties.” Second, it declared the armed forces were acting in defense of the rule of law and characterized the coup as constitutional. In the words of the Supreme Court: [the Supreme Court] affirms that the origin of the actions taken today are based on a legal order issued by a competent judge, that its execution is

70  Lorena Soler and Florencia Prego in keeping with legal precepts and should be carried out against any who should impede the commission of the law of the Honduran state. In Paraguay the Supreme Court intervened similarly, in the context of Lugo’s attempt to have ruled as unconstitutional (Sentence No.  1323/20 September  2012), and the Chamber of Senators’ resolution to remove him from office (Resolution No.  881/22 June  2012). According to the ruling of the Supreme Court, the resolution finding him guilty and stripping him of office was in keeping with the law. The Supreme Court also ruled that it was beyond its competency and that of penal law to adjudicate on a political trial for which the Chamber of Senators is responsible. Thus, the Supreme Court denied Lugo’s claim of unconstitutionality and, with it, his defense, opting to legitimize the measure in constitutional terms or simply insisting that the Court does not have authority to intervene in prerogatives belonging to other branches of the state. The judiciary in Brazil not only took an active role at the time of the coup; for some time running it had maintained an active presence in the political arena. One of its first acts in that respect involved the Mensalão scandal (the “monthly pay-out” scandal) in which three important precedents were established for the subsequent arrest of Lula da Silva: “[R]ewarding for delation” – was introduced in Brazil; indefinite preventive imprisonment, prisão cautelar, long a judicial power used to cram the country’s jails with its underclass, became for the first time an acceptable instrument for breaking those above that level; and sentences in a first court of appeal could no longer be deferred pending confirmation by a higher court. (Anderson 2016, 46) In 2014, Operation Car Wash began one of the major political and legal events in Brazil’s modern history. Based on recordings from a carwash, a smuggler was arrested and revealed a plot of corruption and money laundering that implicated the board of directors of the main construction firms and contractors with Petrobras, as well as deputies, senators, and governors. Two central figures quickly rose to prominence in the context of the investigation: the judge Sergio Moro17 and the prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol. The judiciary in Brazil had already sowed the conditions for the coup prior to its realization. At the heart of that operation were a series of corruption claims, backed by a media campaign that would have great impact on society. As suggested here, reactionary physical violence plays only an auxiliary role in the methodology of neo-golpismo, particularly compared to the type of mediatized violence that Gene Sharp has studied (1988). The media has shown itself capable of creating crisis narratives in which a scenario of social and political instability would justify intervention. The power of the mass media thus reflects the ability of the dominant classes to wage an ideological battle

The Right, Neo-Golpismo in Latin America  71 in order to delegitimize populist and/or progressive governments and policies (Prego 2016, 12). In their study of mass media in Paraguay, Soler and Nikolajczuk (2017) analyze the relation between economic and media groups (the Vierci and Zuccolillo Groups) with regard to Lugo, focusing on three cycles. In the last of these cycles, discourses developed and disseminated by media conglomerates are subsequently taken up in the argumentation of criminal indictment. In each of the three cases, the mass media and social networks have played a central part in establishing a coup ideology. As shown in Ariel Goldstein’s studies, among the narratives created there are several standouts: the narrative of an “isolated government”; the need to “put an end to conflict and confrontation between citizens of the same nationality”; the “inability” of those in power to effectively govern; the excessive ambitions of social movements. Paradoxically, while labelling governments with a strong executive as authoritarian and accusing them of seeking to perpetuate their hold on office, the media simultaneously attempts to uncover a “power vacuum” and a climate of “political ungovernability.” The media began to assume a central role in Brazil when, in 2013, the media itself, along with social networks and large street demonstrations combined to great effect. The demonstrations and protests, we hasten to add, represented a broad political and ideological spectrum, becoming truly massive in 2013 and continuing on into 2016. This period saw deepened political radicalization and polarization (Bringel 2016), with palpable effects in the political-institutional and political-electoral spheres. As Salas Oroño indicates (2016), one of the main organizers of these street demonstrations was the Free Brazil Movement (MBL) whose members would become candidates of the “putschist political class” in the October 2016 elections. Corruption was one of the preferred narratives used for the purposes of eroding political legitimacy. These types of accounts have become common sense for vast sectors of the population, particularly among an upper-middle class that is also responsible for establishing public opinion, so that the putsch itself becomes the culminating phenomenon in a drawn-out process of undermining presidential legitimacy (Goldstein 2012, 02). 3.3  Coups, Elections, and the Right in Office Considering the historical processes analyzed here, we can conclude that these coups allowed for the return of the right-wing to government and state leadership, and with it, the return of the neoliberal agenda: by first appointing provisional presidents to see out constitutional terms  – without interrupting institutional continuity  – and, subsequently, calling for elections that would restore the right-wing to the executive. In Honduras, the call for elections was intended to calm the country’s political crisis and provide positive signs to the same international community that had repudiated the coup and refused to recognize Roberto Micheletti’s

72  Lorena Soler and Florencia Prego provisional government. Rather than mollifying the political crisis, it instead grew worse, leading to a split within the Liberal Party and the Honduran bipartisan political structure. Porfirio Lobo, candidate for the National Party that lost against Zelaya in 2005, took the elections in an electoral process with 65% abstention. Voting took place at the same time as the former president sought refuge in the Brazilian Embassy and the country was expelled from the OAS.18 Porfirio Lobo and his successor Orlando Hernández implemented reforms leading to increased poverty, the loss of rights, and an increase in violence. With Federico Franco’s swearing-in, the liberals took office in Paraguay for the first time in 72  years and the ANR-Colorado Party was able to separate itself from the political crisis it had largely created. In an attempt to demonstrate a return to institutional normality and differentiate itself from Lugo’s government, Franco implemented an agrarian policy in line with the interests of transnational firms and large agricultural corporations. The ANR-Colorado Party returned to power in the 2013 elections, with businessman Horacio Cartes assuming the executive office. That victory represented an attempt to put to rest the crisis that had first upset the hegemonic system with the end of Stroessner’s regime: it was, in other words, a fresh attempt by the bourgeoisie to establish a new order based on the neoliberal project (Quevedo 2015, 52). Cartes trimmed the social role of the state and established an alliance with both the transnational and local bourgeoisie: his government is the expression of a renewed local right-wing configuration linked to a new rentier class (Soler 2014, 81). In Brazil, Rousseff’s replacement, Michel Temer, had very low approval and legitimacy ratings. His first measures in office were to eliminate entire Ministries (including those for Women, Culture, Development, Agriculture, Racial Equality, and Human Rights), scale back the intervention of the state into economic matters (cuts to social policies and programs), create a reform bill affecting retirement and pensions law, and generally court private investment. However, the climax to Brazil’s political drama was yet to come: the arrest of Lula da Silva in April 2018, followed by the denial of his candidacy by resolution of the Supreme Electoral Court. Following the impeachment, persecution of the PT and, especially, Lula da Silva was intensified, culminating in a disproportionate sentence against the former president. With Lula da Silva imprisoned and unable to compete in the presidential race, the 2018 elections were the scene of a momentous political shift for both Brazil and Latin America: the victory of former military captain Jair Bolsonaro. In each of these cases, the rightward turn was enshrined by elections.

4. The Right-Wing and Neo-Golpismo. Characteristics of a New Order Populist and/or progressive governments of the early 21st century carried out profound transformations, placing a check on neoliberal hegemony, advancing substantially in terms of redistributive policies and greatly expanding the

The Right, Neo-Golpismo in Latin America  73 domain of social rights. These alterations had a direct impact on the “new Right,” affecting their strategies for recovering control of government and the state. One novel element rises to the surface: right-wing political participation has evolved through the direct institutionalization of the bourgeoisie in power. Perhaps the most eloquent examples of this have been Sebastian Piñera in Chile, Horacio Cartes in Paraguay, Mauricio Macri in Argentina, and Pedro Kuczynski in Peru. This same phenomenon saw the incorporation of local business and/or corporate bureaucracy into ministries and strategic sectors of governments, achieving direct rather than mediated control of their class interests (Nikolajczuk and Prego 2017). Right-wing forces have appealed to two mechanisms on this front: electoral strategies, as in the case of Mauricio Macri in Argentina (2015), Jimmy Morales in Guatemala (2016), Lenin Moreno in Ecuador (2017), Sebastián Piñera in Chile (2010, 2018), and Iván Duque in Colombia (2018). The other cases, analyzed here, rely on coups. However, with the victory of Donald Trump in the United States (2016) and the rise of right-wing and far-right forces in Europe,19 the phenomenon we are here describing should be situated within a broader geopolitical framework. Enzo Traverso (2018) has defined this emerging right-wing tendency as post-fascist, highlighting certain novel elements such as the new Right’s embrace of institutionality and republican values, its preference for proselytizing strategies in order to build an electoral consensus. Thus, while seeking to distance itself from fascism’s radical violence, the new Right has settled on a double discourse: on the one hand, a defense of popular rights, and on the other, an appeal to the notion of the “nation-under-threat” by immigrants and the Islamic community (Traverso 2018). Jair Bolsonaro’s victory in Brazil is in that sense the regional expression of an extreme-right force previously restricted to Europe and the United States. As we have had the chance to observe here, neo-golpismo is different from 20th-century coups. This difference is most palpable in the new Right’s limited use of violence and its relation to democracy: the new coup methodologies have interrupted democratically mandated terms through mechanisms that remain within the legal and political order. They violate the state’s constitution while preserving a degree of institutionality. The main agents of this new Right are political parties and the legislature, understood as spaces where right-wing opposition forces can cohere. The judiciary also plays a leading role, as does the mass media, whose joint objective is to confer legitimacy and consensus on the coup. These putsch mechanisms can thus be understood as attempting to obstruct the radicalization of democracy (or at least its threat) through the intervention of civic agents whose priority is to justify the legality and legitimacy of their actions: “where once the coup was a necessarily illegal and legitimate act, we are now faced with a coup that enjoys ‘the force of law’ ” (Martínez 2014, 204). Twenty-first-century coups reveal the limits and mitigating elements that Latin American democracies face. One can plainly see how the framework

74  Lorena Soler and Florencia Prego of political democracy (liberal and capitalist) also allows for fragmentary, divided, and discontinuous forms of governance, an arrangement where normality can coexist with its exception, (Crespo 2017), and where neo-golpismo is becoming the most extreme case of this type of coexistence. Some prefer to call it the Right, others the new Right. What is at stake, in any case, is recognizing that these political actors have adapted to the epochal changes ushered in by populist and/or progressive forces in the 21st century: this Right has called on new actors and employed new methodologies to carry out coups that seek to establish a new, more unequal and less democratic social order.

Notes 1. This chapter was translated by Nicolas Allen. We thank Enzo Scargiali and Barry Cannon for revising the text. 2. This work revisits a previous discussion on neo-golpismo, explored in the work of Lorena Soler (2015) “Golpes de Estado en el siglo XXI. Un ejercicio comparado, Haití (2004), Honduras (2009) y Paraguay (2012)”. Cadernos Prolam/USP 14 (26), p. 79–92. 3. Rafael Martínez (2014) proposes seven variable properties that interact in the basic definition of a (constant) coup, with eight possible theoretical subcategories of a coup. There, the author is interested in identifying the differences in the “new generation” of coups, that is, from the 1970s onward. We have followed a different route here, based on the approach identifying actors, mechanisms, and sociohistorical contexts, allowing us to isolate a common problem so as to characterize a minimum concept of the 21st-century coup. 4. Another extensive debate in the social sciences concerns whether the coup can become a revolution. Following the work of Theda Skocpol (1984), one can argue that coups, unlike revolutionary processes, have obstructed mass mobilization or revolts from below. However, the authors also allow for exceptions, such the overthrow of Salazar in Portugal and the Ethiopian revolution, which began as coups when rebel military officials joined mass mobilization against aristocratic landowners. 5. At the time this article was nearing completion, the government of Nicolás Maduro was entering a critical conjuncture. On 23 January, Juan Guaidó, president of the National Assembly, proclaimed himself president under a provision of the 1999 Constitution. Guaidó belongs to the Voluntad Popular (Popular Will) party, a political force led by Leopoldo López, who is currently under house arrest. The acting president enjoys the military, political, and economic support of President Donald Trump (who imposed a blockade) and the governments of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Colombia. 6. The term Lulism was coined by André Singer (see Singer 2009). 7. He also maintained free-trade agreements with the United States and other member countries of the DR-CAFTA (Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement). 8. The Patriotic Alliance for Change is comprised of the Democratic Christian Party, the Democratic Progressive Party, the National Encounter Party, the Broad Front Party, the Authentic Radical Liberal Party, the Movement towards Socialism, the Party for a Country of Solidarity, the Revolutionary Febrerista Party, the Social Democratic Party, the Socialist Commoners Party, the Ñembyaty Guasú Movement, the Social Popular Bloc, Colo ́oApytere, ERES, Women for the Alliance, and the Tekojojá Movement.

The Right, Neo-Golpismo in Latin America  75 9. The operations for additional credit, decreed on July and August  2015, were intended to cover certain expenses without encroaching on other competencies or transgressing established fiscal goals, which were in all fact achieved. On the other hand, delays in fund transfers from the National Treasury to the Bank of Brazil, meant to cover the equalization of rates for certain subsidies under Plan Safra, were authorized by the Budget Law. Thus, nothing could be justified under the concept of “criminal responsibility” (Salas Oroño 2016). 10. The Public Ministry appealed the Supreme Court and obtained a favorable ruling ordering the restoration of general Romeo Vásquez Velásquez as Joint Chief of Staff. 11. Art. 255 of the National Constitution (1992): The President of the Republic, the Vice president, the Ministers of the Executive Branch, the Ministers of the Supreme Court of Justice, the State Attorney General, the Ombudsman, the Comptroller General of the Republic, the Subcomptroller and the members of the Higher Court of Electoral Justice, can only be subject to political trial for malfeasance, for crimes committed in the commission of their charge or for common offences. 12. Similar tactics were used, albeit unsuccessfully, as a means to profit from political crisis: Getulio Vargas and Joao Goulart are chief examples. 13. President Fernando Lugo is accused of “instigating” and “facilitating” land occupations in the area. 14. This was raised before the Supreme Court in the presentation “Action of Unconstitutionality of Fernando Lugo Méndez.” There were outlined the constitutional guarantees that had been violated during Lugo’s removal and, in particular, during the trial. 15. This concerns the consistency that must exist between what must be proven and the right applicable to the case. 16. Particularly noteworthy was the fact that 60% of the legislative representatives in favor of impeachment were also facing legal trials, often for corruption. Hence, 36 of the 65 members of the Commission overseeing impeachment also faced legal action of some type (Gentili 2016, 28). 17. Judge Moro tried and condemned ex-President Lula da Silva. There is not enough space here to discuss the trial leading to the ex-president’s imprisonment, but it is important to highlight that irregularities were committed all throughout the trial and numerous guarantees backed by the rule of law were violated. As soon as Jair Bolsonaro took office he named Moro as Justice Minister. 18. Lula da Silva, then president of Brazil, played a central role. After twice attempting unsuccessfully to return to Honduras, Manuel Zelaya managed to enter Tegucigalpa and sought refuge in the Brazilian Embassy. 19. Former member countries of the USSR have become privileged sites for the emergence and expansion of these new right-wing forces.

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76  Lorena Soler and Florencia Prego Crespo, María Victoria. 2017. Dictadura en América Latina. Nuevas aproximaciones teóricas y conceptuales. Cuernavaca: Centro de Investigación en Ciencias Sociales y Estudios Regionales/Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos. Cuadra Lira, Elvira. 2014. “La reconfiguración del sistema político en Honduras: aprendizajes para Centroamérica.” In Honduras 2013: golpe de estado, elecciones y tensiones del orden político, edited by E. De Gori. Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires: Sans Soleil Ediciones Argentina. De Gori, Esteban. 2014. “Zelaya: del Palacio a la plaza.” In Honduras 2013: golpe de estado, elecciones y tensiones del orden político, edited by E. De Gori. Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires: Sans Soleil Ediciones Argentina. Escobar, Ticio. 2012. “Los Golpes. Algunas consideraciones sobre la reciente ruptura del orden democrático.” In Franquismo en Paraguay. El golpe, edited by R. Carbone and L. Soler. Buenos Aires: El 8vo Loco. Gentili, Pablo. 2016. “Brasil: estado de excepción.” In Golpe en Brasil. Genealogía de una farsa, edited by P. Gentili. Buenos Aires: Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales, Editorial Octubre, UMET y Editorial La Página S.A. Goldstein, Ariel. 2012. “Una aproximada periodización de los procesos destituyentes.” Rebelión. Available at: www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=153079. ———. 2016. “La tormenta perfecta: crisis e impeachment en el segundo mandato de Dilma Rousseff.” Revista Análisis Político 88: 90–104. Available at: www.academia. edu/32256240/La_tormenta_perfecta_crisis_e_impeachment_en_el_segundo_man dato_de_Dilma_Rousseff. Gómez, Mauricio Valladares. 2014. Honduras 2009: Consulta popular y golpe de Estado. El proyecto de participación ciudadana frente al consenso hegemónico de poder. Unpublished Masters’ Thesis. Universidad Nacional de San Martín. Leiras, Santiago César. 2010. Estado de excepción y democracia en América Latina: Argentina, Brasil, Perú y Venezuela en perspectiva comparada. 1st edition. Rosario: Homo Sapiens Ediciones. Martínez, Rafael. 2014. “Subtipos de golpe de Estado: trasformaciones recientes de un concepto del siglo XVII.” Revista CIDOB d’Afers Internacionals 108: 191–212. Nikolajczuk, Monica, and Florencia Prego. 2017. “Las ciencias sociales frente al avance de las ‘nuevas’ derechas en América Latina en el siglo XXI.” Leviathan. Cuadernos de Investigación Política. Dossiê Direitas latino-americanas no século XXI 14: 1–25. Pérez Liñán, Aníbal. 2008. “Instituciones, coaliciones callejeras e inestabilidad política: perspectivas teóricas sobre las crisis presidenciales.” América Latina Hoy 49. Prego, Florencia. 2016. “Los intelectuales de derecha en América Latina: los usos sociales del conocimiento y su vinculación con la política.” Question 1 (50): 414–427. Quevedo, Charles. 2015. “La construcción del (des)orden neoliberal.” In Des-Cartes. Estampas de las derechas en Paraguay, edited by R. Carbone and L. Soler. Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires: Ed. Punto de Encuentro. Ramírez, Franklin. 2002. “¿Hegemonías emergentes? Golpismo, política y resignificación democrática. Un contrapunto ecuatoriano-venezolano.” In Las FF.AA en la región andina: ¿actores deliberantes o subordinados? Peru: Comisión Andina de Juristas and Finnish Embassy. Rivarola, Milda. 2012. “La rescisión del contrato social.” In Franquismo en Paraguay. El Golpe, edited by R. Carbone and L. Soler. Buenos Aires: El 8vo loco Ediciones.

The Right, Neo-Golpismo in Latin America  77 Rodríguez, José Carlos. 2012. “Los motivos del lobo. O el Golpe Parlamentario.” In Franquismo en Paraguay. El golpe, edited by R. Carbone and L. Soler. Buenos Aires: El 8vo Loco. Roitman Rosenmann, Marcos. 2013. Tiempos de oscuridad. Historia de los golpes de Estado en América Latina. Madrid: Akal. Salas Oroño, Amilcar. 2010. “La ‘parlamentarización’ de la política en América Latina.” Valencia: Centro de Estudios Políticos y Sociales. ———. 2016. “La democracia brasileña en entredicho: el golpe institucional a Dilma Rousseff.” Revista Paraguaya de Sociología, año 52 (147): 51–66. Sharp, Geme. 1988. La lucha política no violenta. Criterios y métodos. Santiago: Ediciones Chile América. Singer, André. 2009. “Raízes sociais e ideológicas do lulismo.” Novos estudos CEBRAP 85: 83–102. Skocpol, Theda. 1984. La explicación de las revoluciones sociales: otras teorías. Los Estados y las revoluciones sociales. Ciudad de México: Fondo de Cultura Economía. Soler, Lorena. 2011. “Paraguay: cuando la novedad no es el resultado. El proceso político que construyó Fernando Lugo.” Nueva Sociedad 231: 28–44. ———. 2012. “Lugo: el palacio y la plaza.” In Franquismo en Paraguay. El Golpe, edited by R. Carbone and L. Soler, 23–29. Buenos Aires: El 8vo loco Ediciones. ———. 2014. “Golpe de Estado y derechas en Paraguay: Transiciones circulares y restauración conservadora.” Nueva Sociedad 254: 73. Soler, Lorena, and María Nikolajczuk. 2017. “Actores económicos y medios de comunicación. El golpe parlamentario a Fernando Lugo (2012).” Revista Chasqui. Revista latinoamericana de comunicación 136, December 2017–March 2018. Available at: http://revistachasqui.org/index.php/chasqui/article/view/3263. Tokatlian, Juan Gabriel. 2009. “Neogolpismo.” Página/12, 13 July. Available at: www. pagina12.com.ar/diario/elmundo/subnotas/128159-41146-2009-07-13.html. ———. 2012. “El auge del neogolpismo.” La Nación, 24 June. Available at: www. lanacion.com.ar/1484794-el-auge-del-neogolpismo. Traverso, Enzo. 2018. Las nuevas caras de la derecha. Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno Editores.

6 Corruption and Neoliberalism in Contemporary Brazil Pedro Luiz Lima and Jorge Chaloub1

1. Introduction Corruption is a central issue in Brazilian public debate. Since the dawn of the Republic, concern with the corruption of order has played a prominent role in political discourse – be it with movements seeking to break with the existing political system, be it as a ploy used in electoral campaigns. Countless actors have embraced the “fight against corruption” as a core element of their public policy and political identity. That this narrative has proven so enduring, however, does not mean that the corruption discourse is a constant repetition of the same argument. In recent years, the de-democratization of Brazilian politics has gone hand in hand with an upsurge in anti-corruption discourses. The latest interruption of Brazilian democracy has indeed been shaped in large part by the question of corruption, an issue around which the national business class, the traditional middle class, the media oligopoly, and legal actors have tended to converge. The ouster of a legitimately elected government was framed as part of such an anti-corruption struggle, as was the arrest of former President Lula – just months prior to a presidential election in which he was the frontrunner in the polls. Nor can we understand Jair Bolsonaro’s victory in 2018 without also addressing how a very harsh conception of corruption gained acceptance among large segments of the Brazilian population. Throughout the mass demonstrations calling for the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff in 2015 and 2016, or in the electoral rallies for Bolsonaro in 2018, corruption became a central issue. Protest symbols suggested there was a fundamental connection between the neoliberal agenda and a specific approach to the fight against corruption. Three examples serve to illustrate this point. One, the opposition movement calling for the impeachment of Rousseff adopted a yellow duck as their symbol. This giant, yellow inflatable duck was installed at the door of the Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo (FIESP). The duck, marking a gathering spot for anti-Rousseff protesters, also symbolized the refusal of protesters and industrial businessmen to pay the high taxes that would, in their view, ultimately serve to fund corruption and embezzlement schemes. The fight against corruption was, thus from the outset, a challenge

Corruption and Neoliberalism in Brazil  79 to supposedly abusive taxes. Protestors often carried miniature yellow ducks recalling the FIESP’s stationary totem. As anti-corruption rose to the top of the public agenda, so too did neoliberal assumptions regarding the state. This particular phenomenon is especially clear from our second example. Throughout the impeachment campaign and the demonstrations in favor of Operation Car Wash (Lava Jato), it became customary practice to inflate a giant doll symbolizing former President Lula wearing a prison uniform. The doll’s name, “Pixuleco,” soon became synonymous with bribery associated with Operation Car Wash. The collective desire for the arrest of the political leader of the Workers’ Party (PT) also crystallized a conception of the state in which its primary role should be to arrest criminals, thus ensuring the safety of “good citizens” – even if accomplishing this goal meant suppressing individual rights and reasserting longstanding prejudices of a justice system prone to imprisoning the poor, workers, and black people. The emphasis on criminal law as a solution to the nation’s maladies is a conspicuous trait of contemporary Brazilian politics, and “Pixuleco” has become one of its symbols. The third and final example illustrates a seemingly schizophrenic trait of the Brazilian political process, symptomatic of the prevailing bias in the country’s hegemonic discourse on corruption. When anti-corruption demonstrators took to the streets against the alleged corruption of Rousseff, Lula, and the Workers’ Party (PT), they did so dressed in the Brazilian football team’s traditional yellow jersey. What could be seen as a mere display of patriotism (Alonso and Mische 2016) in fact represented a deep-seated contradiction: those who took to the streets against corruption wore the insignia of the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF), one of the country’s most notoriously corrupt institutions. The demonstrators’ endorsement of the CBF, a private entity, typifies this selective view of corruption, wherein the state and professional politicians are considered the locus of all vice and the private sphere is safeguarded from any scrutiny – despite the fact that most glaring cases of embezzlement and immoral behavior can be found there. Yellow ducks, inflatable dummies in prison uniforms, and Brazilian soccer jerseys served to disseminate and consolidate a specific perception of corruption. But how to characterize the specificity of that perception? The profoundly relational and open nature of the concept of corruption, determined by the notion of order to which it refers, invites us to look closer at its history and in doing so reconstruct relevant aspects of Brazilian history. If, on the one hand, the recurrence of the concept points to continuities on the national political scene, on the other hand, its diverse narratives suggest different types of perceived and desired social orders. Focusing on continuities, we find a striking relationship between the use of this concept and periods of democratization, i.e., an expansion of the political space allowing for greater inclusion of actors previously excluded from the political-institutional setting. The 1920s, the Republic of 1946, and the New Republic of 1988 are examples of this relation between democratization and the growth of an anti-corruption discourse.

80  Pedro Luiz Lima and Jorge Chaloub As far as discontinuities are concerned, our interest lies mainly with the conceptual transformations taking place as soon as a particularly fierce strain of neoliberal discourse began to make its presence felt in public debate, and the ramifications this brought for the Brazilian democratic order after 1988. To that end, this chapter opens with a brief overview of particularly sensitive moments in which the discourse on corruption affected national political history. There, our focus lies on the emergence of an anti-corruption discourse in the media, along with a corresponding figure of the anti-­corruption intellectual. In that way, we set out to comprehend the shifting fortunes of Brazil’s political scene through the notion of corruption, with particular emphasis on a certain type of ultra-right discourse that would assume great centrality during the period in question. We conclude by analyzing one of the central figures in this history and the preponderant role corruption has played in shaping their discourse – a figure that has been cast as a savior, a hero, or an intellectual capable of absorbing and reformulating the leading slogans of the new ultra-right: the political jurist. For this particular case, we center our analysis on the recent discourse of Operation Car Wash task force leader Deltan Dallagnol.2

2. The Long Trajectory of a Narrative Rui Barbosa,3 a central character in the construction of the Brazilian Republic, alleged that elite corruption was the greatest evil of the First Republic. To overcome this problem, Barbosa proposed that the middle classes assume a more prominent role in society – a substitute for the liberal concept of civil society, which proved unsuccessful in presidential campaigns. Tenentism, a political movement comprised of young military members critical of the republican status quo in the early 1920s, was based on a similar criticism. However, it proposed a more top-down solution in which the renewal of the state would serve as the guiding – and corruption-free – project, for national renewal. The 1920s saw the increased use of corruption discourses among “bacharéis,”4 journalists, the military, and other public figures, where corruption was often portrayed as a constraint to building a modern Brazil. Their criticisms, often directed at individuals rather than institutions, established a narrative that laid the blame at the feet of what they considered Brazil’s substandard national elites, whom they held responsible for the barriers that kept the nation from entering modernity. Years later, the National Democratic Union (UDN), the main liberal party of the 1946 Republic, would inherit and champion the legacies of Rui Barbosa and Tenentism. The “udenistas,” as they were known, led an anti-corruption campaign similar to the one embraced by the lieutenants and other opponents of Getulio Vargas, albeit with new elements. Amongst party leaders, the “bacharéis” were the main proponents of this rhetorical strategy, as well as Carlos Lacerda, an individual whose namesake, “lacerdismo,” became synonymous with a discourse grounded in histrionics and fierce moralisms.

Corruption and Neoliberalism in Brazil 81 Lacerda represented a modernizing voice in Brazilian journalism, not only due to his more colloquial and direct style, but also for his use of humor and irony. The politician Lacerda realized that the emergence of a mass culture in Brazilian society brought with it profound consequences for politics and the media. Not only did he renew the longstanding Brazilian tradition of political pamphlets, he also consolidated corruption as a central part of the political agenda. Lacerda conveyed his corruption discourse on two different fronts: asserting the illegitimacy of the country’s leaders and the excesses of the state. Both types of corruption were framed by a moral perspective in which the world is divided between absolute opposites  – good and bad  – without any possibility for compromise (Chaloub 2018). Jânio Quadros, candidate in the 1960 election, personified the most successful use of corruption on the election trail. As the symbol for his victorious presidential campaign, Quadros used a broom – promising to “sweep up” the government and the country. His tragicomic persona, successful in fashioning himself as an enemy of corruption, proved less successful in office, and he resigned in August 1961, less than seven months after becoming president. His short-lived government, however, would not diminish the future influence of the anti-corruption discourse. The authoritarian regime instituted after the 1964 coup sought to legitimize itself using the corruption discourse. The 1960s anti-communist mentality was vital for the coup orchestrators (Motta 2002), combining corruption and subversion into a single public enemy, described as communism. Under authoritarian regimes, corruption always centers on the other, a figure external to the government and respectable citizens. Corruption thus emerged as a criterion for distinguishing between “acceptable” and “unacceptable” political actors. During the re-democratization period of the 1980s, the corruption discourse returned to the center of Brazilian public debate. The concept played a pivotal role for the PT as it sought to brand itself as a “new left,” different from the other “populist” traditions of the national Left, such as the labor and communist Left.5 The topic would assume new contours at the end of the decade, as the economic issue became central for reshaping the concept of corruption. While the economic focus of the corruption discourse had predecessors in figures such as Eugenio Gudin and Roberto Campos, it undoubtedly gained traction with a new global climate, characterized by the emergence of neoliberal governments like Ronald Reagan in the United States, Margaret Thatcher in England, and Pinochet’s Chile. Although the argument correlating corruption with the state was not without precedent, it assumed a hegemonic role during the New Republic. Two events are particularly representative of this shift. The first was marked when the progressive sector of the PMDB shifted its economic orientation, leading in 1988 to its split and the creation of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB). Mário Covas, a center-left leader in the 1988 Constituent Assembly and a prominent participant in the construction of the most progressive aspects

82  Pedro Luiz Lima and Jorge Chaloub of the Constitution, was emblematic of this inflection. In 1989, delivering a famous speech in the Senate, he spoke of a “capitalist shock” (Covas 1989) as the solution to the country’s difficulties. According to this narrative, Brazil’s problems stemmed from a feeble “civil society” and an excessively prominent interventionist state, instituted during the Vargas Era. The “capitalist shock” advocates a doctrine that strips away the state’s capacity to decisively influence society and idealizes a notion of civil society closely associated with the free market. The second, and most conspicuous event, was Fernando Collor’s victorious presidential campaign in 1989. Much like Jânio Quadros, Collor chose corruption as his central campaign motto, in which he claimed the title “maharajas hunter.”6 Alongside the corruption issue and old anti-communist themes, Collor embraced a neoliberal discourse, then internationally in vogue. Thus, following the talking points provided by the literature of American Political Science (Filgueiras 2006), Collor established a direct relationship between the expansion of state intervention in the economy and corruption. Ironically, corruption was vital to Collor’s ascension as much as his downfall. As for the latter, the Left played a central role and amassed a wide coalition of political forces, garnering the support of the mainstream press towards the creation of a mass movement, “Fora Collor” (“Collor Out”), which called for the impeachment of the first directly elected president in the post-­dictatorship period. He resigned in 1992, charged with direct participation in embezzlement schemes. A movement spearheaded by students, which became known as “Caraspintadas” (“Painted Faces”), gave force and popular legitimacy to the accusations. A leftist-inclined youth movement espoused an anti-corruption rhetoric that had previously been associated with the Right. Throughout Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s presidential administration (1995–2002), the existing notion of “capitalist shock” provided the fuel for a broad constitutional reform process seeking to “end the Vargas Era” (Cardoso 1994), depicted as an era in which the state assumed a dominant role over civil society. The 1998 economic crisis had a strong negative impact on the PSDB’s prestige, which failed in every presidential election after FHC’s re-election and constantly had to contend with the political costs of its embrace of the free market. Following Lula’s 2002 victory, the PT administration (2002–16) would bring fresh airs to the national political stage. Without initially breaking with the macroeconomic policy of previous administrations, the party gradually sought to resume part of the developmentalist recipe, particularly during Guido Mantega’s term as Minister of Economy (2006–14). The state embraced a more active role in the definition of political policy, be that in regulating private activities or as a guiding hand in social transformation processes. That trend changed, however, after 2005, the year when the PT was hit by Legal Action 470, popularly known as “Mensalão.” On the one hand, corruption increasingly gained ground in the mainstream media and it became the center of public debate. A candidate’s interests, ideas, or commitments were

Corruption and Neoliberalism in Brazil 83 deemed irrelevant, and instead what mattered was maintaining an image of unwavering honesty. Corruption continued to be addressed according to specific “cases” (Bezerra 2018), and criminal law represented a form of cathartic treatment. Specific cases, akin to those from the bygone years of the 1946 Republic, seemed to be appearing everywhere, creating the impression of an endless crisis. And that impression was further intensified by social media, responsible for the constant flow and consumption of information. Meanwhile the Brazilian Right was reconciling extreme variants of economic liberalism with a renewed conservative tradition (Chaloub et al. 2018), employing a language reminiscent of the North American conservative tradition (Brown 2015; Cooper 2018). A new type of anti-corruption criticism was emerging.

3. The Market Consensus: Intellectuals and the Press Harsh criticism of the PT administrations was raised by a heterogeneous coalition, combining different beliefs and trajectories but all sharing a social vision opposed to any notion of common interests beyond the individual or the family. Criticism of PT administration was accompanied by a general hostility to anything identified with the party’s value, leading ultimately to an anti-PT political identity and a broader rejection of the Left. The point of convergence within this field was a belief in the centrality of the market, grounded on the assumption that state stewardship is inherently inefficient and corrupt. While there existed differences regarding the government’s “cultural wars” (Hunter 1991), the defense of the free market became almost unanimous outside the Left, an undisputable truth. There were, of course, different formulations of that belief. Some advocated a restricted regulatory state, acting solely to correct excesses through moderate social policies, similar to FHC’s economic policies. Others, followers of the ultraliberal approach championed by present-day Minister of Economy Paulo Guedes,7 advocated that the state should be limited to its punitive function, a perspective in which the state is restricted in its capacity to influence the economy and regards the most damaging social inequalities as natural or even positive. Voices calling for the overthrow of Dilma Rousseff provide a clear portrait of the base comprising that coalition. That the grounds for her impeachment were based on “fiscal pedaling” was no accident: it demonstrated the prevailing economic perspective, which associated excessive spending and a strong interventionist state with corruption. The impeachment for Rousseff’s “overall performance,”8 the “poor management of the economy,” or “corruption” comprised a discourse seeking to criminalize certain economic choices, even if done legally.9 For our purposes, it is not relevant to engage in the technical issues around Dilma’s economic policy, but rather to understand how this policy became a justification for her ouster. Dilma’s impeachment proceeded regardless of several constitutional mechanisms, compelling different authors

84  Pedro Luiz Lima and Jorge Chaloub to employ the term coup d’état, albeit with different meanings (Singer 2016; Santos 2017; Migue 2016; Avritzer 2019). In their chapter  for this volume, Lorena Soler and Florencia Prego discuss the range of meanings behind the term “coup.” The anti-corruption discourse underlying the coup presumes there is an economic legitimacy that precedes democracy itself and that poses limits to democratic decisions. If constitutionalism removes certain issues from democratic deliberation as a way of safeguarding rights, neoliberalism attempts to expand this dimension in order to remove economic policy decisions from the political realm. The mere guarantee of the right to private property would appear to be trumped by the demand for autonomy in all economic decisions. In addition to fundamental constitutional clauses seeking to preserve important institutions and rights, economic clauses would emerge seeking to be shielded from the “irrationality” of the political world. Friedrich Hayek developed a sophisticated version of this argument by counterposing the concept of democracy to one of demarchy (1979). Liberalism, the theory of limited government, and democracy, a form of government that since Rousseau has been characterized by unlimited popular sovereignty, are two traditions destined to inevitably clash. Hayek explicitly advocated for the predominance of liberalism, since democracy, in its purest form, would naturally lead to the suppression of freedom due to the constructivist optimism that the author attributes to reason. Hayek thus suggested replacing democracy with a regime where the fundamental pillars of economic liberalism would supersede the democratic game. Hayekian ideas exist, under different forms, within the Brazilian public sphere. Alluded to since the 1989 election and only narrowly circumvented in 2002 after explicit negotiations with the “market,” those declaiming the Lula threat is a clear expression of a veto to alternative economic paths. The justification for this line of thought is an allegedly pragmatic approach, grounded in the notion, albeit lacking empirical evidence, that this is the only prescription that “works” and follows the most advanced economic science. The same standards are not present in other terrains, such as public security policy, where reiterated failed experiments responsible for countless deaths are accounted as minor “divergences of opinion.” Major newspapers, as well as the most influential television networks, are staunch supporters of this discourse. An analysis of editorials on the eve of Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment, on 17 April 2016 in three of the most prominent national newspapers (Folha de São Paulo, Estado de São Paulo, and O Globo) share a very similar narrative. Along with the concern to validate the legality and legitimacy of the impeachment proceedings, a common diagnosis argued that there were two justifications for ousting Rousseff from office, in addition to the formal issues: “poor management of economic policy” and “endemic corruption.” These, and not the unfounded “crimes of responsibility” were the main reasons for the impeachment. Both approaches bear more similarities than are initially apparent. It is also not by chance that they overlap

Corruption and Neoliberalism in Brazil 85 with two central narratives behind Jair Bolsonaro’s victorious discourse, represented by Paulo Guedes and the “vigilante” Sergio Moro.10 To understand the leading role played by ultra-right intellectuals in their challenge to the established post-1945 liberal-democratic consensus – respect for human rights, and so on – we must recall that behind that discourse is an attempt to discredit the public sphere and institutional politics in general. This intellectual hodge-podge created an auspicious climate for the emergence of self-fashioned outsiders situating themselves to the right of the political spectrum. This new sector drew on a radical critique of the 1988 Republic, founded after the military dictatorship. And it was above all the corruption discourse, inveighing against the Brazilian political order, that laid the groundwork for that scenario. For this ultra-right phenomenon to blossom, several rhetorical strategies were deployed. First, the Brazilian political and intellectual scene was portrayed as widely dominated by the Left. The looming legacy of the military dictatorship meant that actors on the right of the political spectrum could not politically capitalize by openly embracing a right-wing political identity. This in turn led to the perception that there was no such thing as a Right in Brazil. In that scenario, the PSDB came to be portrayed as “communists” and the PT regarded as a proponent of the extreme Left. The second rhetorical strategy was to establish a direct association between the Left and corruption. This discourse took two lines of attack. According to neoconservative and reactionary authors such as Olavo de Carvalho and Luiz Felipe Pondé, the Left is defined by its intrinsic immorality, stemming from its relativism. Other authors in the camp of neoliberalism and ultraliberalism, allude to an inevitable tendency of state interventionism to default to corrupt practices. This discourse presupposes a close affinity between the state and corruption. With these two arguments in place, the diagnosis that the country was entirely dominated by the Left began to gain ground. If the growing influence of the ultra-right is a global phenomenon that precedes and exceeds the Brazilian case, two particularities of the national scenario are noteworthy: the influence of ultraliberalism and the wide prominence of ultra-right intellectuals in the traditional media. As mentioned in the introduction to this volume, the Bolsonaro government combines a discourse critical of cultural modernity that is something akin to the American neoconservative tradition11 (Vaisse 2010; Brown 2015), and an ultraliberal economic policy, which not only seeks to eliminate the interventionist state but, in a manner different from the reform program of the Washington Consensus, also seeks to undermine the state’s regulatory capacity. This combination of factors distinguishes Bolsonaro from other governments that rely on superficially similar rhetorical strategies and draw support from similar social forces, such as those led by Donald Trump, Viktor Orbán, and Matteo Salvini. In Brazil, culture wars (Hunter 1991) have not favored an expansionist economic policy targeting the domestic market and benefiting an impoverished national working class, but instead have served the interests of a fierce

86  Pedro Luiz Lima and Jorge Chaloub ultraliberal agenda. The anti-globalist discourse common to these governments and espoused by Steve Bannon (Alexander 2018) finds a clear counterpart in the Bolsonarist coalition: on the one hand, Chancellor Ernesto Araújo’s nationalist discourse, on the other hand, the economic policy led by Paulo Guedes. There are at least two reasonable hypotheses for the distinction being offered here. The first has to do with prior administration, led by the PT. The PT administrations have always faced resistance from the business community. Tensions increased when the developmentalist tendencies of the first Rousseff administration (2011–14) (Singer 2018) triggered a widespread rejection of any ideas remotely related to the Left, which in turn were immediately labeled as corrupt and inept. The notion of a radical dismantling of the state began to gain traction, justified on the grounds that there was a need to purge the country of corruption, which allegedly had reached unprecedented levels and sophistication during the PT era. The industrial business community, traditionally dependent on the state, gambled on an ultraliberal project, seduced by the promise – thus far fulfilled – of reduced labor costs and a profound dismantling of labor rights established during the First Republic and consolidated during the Vargas Era (Gomes 2005). With a significant electoral base among lower-income sectors and the capacity to mobilize around certain social issues that speak to the country’s urban peripheries  – advocating for private executions, for example  – Bolsonarism nevertheless gained its initial impulse from national elites and has always maintained strong voting intentions among that sector, just as it currently shows stronger approval ratings among the higher income strata of the population.12 It is therefore essential to understand the role played by the media, and the market consensus it forged that would prove detrimental to the PT administrations. Here, we arrive at a second peculiarity of the Brazilian case: the presence of ultra-right discourse and intellectuals in the traditional media. Highly concentrated and mostly undiversified,13 the traditional Brazilian media opened the doors for an ultra-right discourse. While a few leading figures in the field, such as Olavo de Carvalho, were already a household name in the mainstream media, during PT administrations there was an increased media receptivity for discourses identifying the Left with corruption, questioning the validity of human rights, and promoting conspiracy theories, such as an imminent communist revolution in Brazil. Several radical figures, united in their rejection of the Left, began to publish columns in the country’s major print newspapers. Most of these columnists lacked traditional credentials to access such an environment, as is the case of Kim Kataguri and Rodrigo Constantino. Paulo Guedes, one of the most important champions of the Bolsonaro administration and a figure cherished by the economic elite, wrote a weekly column in O Globo for over 11 years, ceasing his collaboration in mid-2018, just before assuming his new office. Different from the USA, where media vehicles such as Fox News have the lion’s share of the most extreme “neocons,” the traditional Brazilian media gave free reign for radical intellectuals to express their ideas. In that sense, the mainstream

Corruption and Neoliberalism in Brazil  87 Brazilian media played a leading role in normalizing a certain type of radical narrative advocating for a full rupture with the democratic order established after the 1988 Constitution. While several studies have addressed the types of intellectuals who made their way into the mainstream Brazilian media (Velasco et al. 2015; Chaloub and Perlatto 2016; Messenberg 2017; Rodrigues 2018; Chaloub et  al. 2018; Cerboncini and Moraes 2019; Rocha 2019), further research is necessary to understand how the political and intellectual ascent of the ultra-right is connected to the judiciary, particularly members involved in Operation Car Wash.14 Drawing out this connection is particularly important for two reasons. First, the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the judiciary not only provided the institutional conditions for the emergence of the ultra-right, but they also took part in the construction of this movement, providing it with intellectual raw material. On the other hand, the Public Prosecutor’s Office played a major role in connecting mass demonstrations, the media, and anti-corruption discourses in Brazil. Since the June 2013 protests in Brazil, when the media cast an unprecedented spotlight on protests against Constitutional Amendment Project 37 (which limited the investigative powers of the Public Prosecutor’s Office), the institution has issued a self-proclaimed mandate to serve as the representative of civil society, entrusted with the mission of liberating society from the evils of corruption entrenched within the state.15 Here, affinities with certain elements of neoliberal discourse are evident. The media too is one of the key instruments for advancing this agenda, leading the present authors to coin the concept political jurist (Chaloub and Lima 2018): a legal professional that grounds their legitimacy through intervention in mainstream media rather than the legal arena. To address the role of the Public Prosecutor’s Office in developing a neoliberal discourse, where the concept of corruption is central, we shall analyze the public activity of Deltan Dallagnol, leader of the Operation Car Wash task force.

4. Punishment, Efficiency, and Competition: Core Principles in the Fight Against Corruption Behind the recent reemergence of corruption in Brazilian political life, there are widespread assumptions anchored in a conceptual web in which the state is tied to notions of impunity, inefficiency, and dysfunctionality. Furthermore, those underlying assumptions attribute efficiency, competitiveness, and moral purity to the market. The road leading to a general perception that corrupt politicians are largely responsible for all the country’s troubles has been a long one. If corruption drains the nation’s resources, and if this perspective reduces corruption to the actions of corrupt individuals (mostly located within the state), it follows on this same account that the solution to corruption is to identify actors capable of bringing about a nationwide ethical rehabilitation. Judges, prosecutors, police chiefs, military and ex-military personnel all play their part in this narrative.

88  Pedro Luiz Lima and Jorge Chaloub In order to understand how law enforcement agents became protagonists in a messianic fight against corruption, we turn our attention to some excerpts from an exemplary book in which the figure  of the self-anointed anti-corruption warrior was fashioned. Dallagnol, the leading prosecutor in the so-called “task force” of Operation Car Wash, published a book in 2017 that simultaneously served as an overture to expand his roster of supporters, as well as a summary of the foundations behind the anti-corruption discourse that would be reproduced by the media and eventually accepted by a considerable portion of the Brazilian population. Dallagnol’s book, The Fight Against Corruption, serves our analytical purposes foremost for its power of synthesis, rather than the originality of its formulations. Precisely because it lacks any trace of originality, it offers a privileged viewpoint for us to understand the discursive elements grounding anti-corruption politics. In short, the book offers no political discourse or platform; it merely repeats a few central topics, allowing us to understand how a neoliberal instrumentalization of the corruption agenda took hold in Brazil. Other political jurists, Dallagnol included, have addressed many of these issues in recent years, and we reproduce them here merely as a supplement to our analysis of Dallagnol’s emblematic book. To begin, one of the consequences of the anti-corruption crusade has been push the issue of inequality down the agenda. In Brazil, one of the most unequal countries in the world, this displacement becomes even more evident when the need to eradicate the remarkably unjust regressive tax system is crowded out by a discourse insisting that the state’s inefficiency is the result of corruption. Linking taxes and corruption thus pushes inequality to the background and foregrounds inefficiency as the main cause for the poor quality of the state public services. At this point, Dallagnol not only managed to impose an AngloSaxon conception of taxation, which understands citizens as “taxpayers,” but also aligned himself with the anti-tax campaigns permanently financed by the entrepreneurial class in the country: We pay high taxes trusting that the state will take care of things, but that is not the case. I would understand if these troubles emerged from a lack of money. But the solutions never come as most of the money becomes lost along the way, going down the drain of corruption. (Dallagnol 2017a, 40–41) The political use of a depoliticized conception of corruption is not a novel creation unique to the aforementioned prosecutor, but it does further underline the depoliticizing effects of the argument that “solutions never come” since the taxpayers’ money is allegedly diverted by corrupt agents. The state would thus be responsible, in this context, to provide supposedly undisputed “solutions,” i.e. technical solutions, to the problems faced by society. In Dallagnol’s view, the problems, as well as the solutions, should not be the subject of political disputes.

Corruption and Neoliberalism in Brazil  89 The prosecutor certainly acknowledges the differences between governments and rulers when it comes to corruption. Nonetheless, he translates these differences into the seemingly tautological language of administrative efficiency, according to which “the level of corruption in the country relates to the efficiency of its administration, that is, less corrupt governments are more efficient” (Dallagnol 2017a, 44). This leads us to an essentially political question: in what way exactly are they efficient? Efficient in doing what? The scale of efficiency only acquires meaning when the government clearly defines its goals. Lacking any definition of efficiency, Dallagnol compares governments based on their greater or lesser lenience to corrupt embezzlement practices. The fact that his comparative assessment is always skewed by prior political preferences (or purely bad faith) is of little importance to our argument. Our point here is not to understand the ideological content of Dallagnol’s work as merely being an a posteriori rationalization that justifies the defense or attack on any given government or party. Instead, his work matters to us insofar as he articulates a worldview that has become widespread in the country – or at least among broad segments of the economic elite. The celebration of efficiency as a value in itself first appears alongside a hierarchy of corrupt governments. Overcoming a decadent status quo and fighting against corruption would thus call for a double strategy. On the one hand, harsher punishment for those who are corrupt, i.e., an efficient state would need to exemplarily punish those who divert its resources. On the other hand, the state would be regarded as inherently inefficient for certain tasks. For this reason, the efficient state becomes one that refrains from intervening in economic matters while expanding its scope of action to ensure security for economic actors. Impunity lies at the core of a belief shared among several segments of Brazilian society. Our interest in Dallagnol lies precisely in how he reproduces this belief: To fight corruption, we must fight impunity. Brazil is a country that lives off the impunity of white-collar criminals. There are many contributing factors to this impunity, one of which being the delay in prosecuting criminal cases. If I say to my son “You made a mistake. Dad will punish you 12 years from now,” not only will I ruin my son and turn him into a professional troublemaker, but I’ll also create an atmosphere of impunity in my home. White collar lawsuits in Brazil may take up to 10, 15, 20 years to reach a conclusion. And when they do conclude, due to the delay itself there is something we call a prescription, which is the annulment of the final case. (Dallagnol 2015) This excerpt illustrates a common argumentative strategy in neoliberal economic discourse: a spurious parallel between the public and the domestic dimension to affirm supposed self-evident truths. One of the most widespread

90  Pedro Luiz Lima and Jorge Chaloub arguments claims that managing a state economy is the equivalent of managing a house, and just as the housewife cannot spend more than the domestic budget, so does the government need to be financially responsible. The multiple forms of revenue that a state may use, and the political choices necessary to increase or reduce its revenues, become obscured when the public budget is compared to domestic accounting – which additionally infantilizes the general public with analogies that impoverish the debate. Likewise, Dallagnol reduces the complex dynamics of criminal law, in one of the countries with the most rapid growth of prison populations, to children’s tricks. In his eagerness to garner support for the legal measures – otherwise unconstitutional – that he has called “10 measures against corruption,” the prosecutor ends up providing yet another example of how this punitivist ideology finds its way into the discursive logic of neoliberalism. The prosecutor promptly ignores any comparison between the incarceration rate of black and poor people, and rich white people – an important characteristic of a selective Brazilian penal system. In one of his many participations on national TV in recent years, Dallagnol has stated with total clarity that his reformist goal aims at what he considers the excessive rights afforded by the Federal Constitution. His idea of the state is far from a simple, minimal one. Reiterating in practice what the extensive bibliography on neoliberalism had already identified, as early as Foucault (2004) (Brown 2015; Dardot and Laval 2010), Dallagnol wants a state strong enough to discipline and punish any deviancy: We find conflicting viewpoints across different generations. The generation who lived under the dictatorship saw in our Constitution a series of guarantees for fear that the dictatorial regime would return. These people are afraid of the excess of the State, that the State may exceed its purpose. My generation, who grew up in a democracy and did not experience the dictatorship, has the opposite fear: the fear that the State will not act. What we have seen happening is authority and abuses, corruption across decades, without an effective action against these crimes. What we are afraid of is inertia, of inefficiency. (Dallagnol 2017b) Always at pains to avoid revealing his true face, the face of a political agent with projects and intentions that situate him clearly at one extreme of the political spectrum, the prosecutor chooses to interpret a political dispute as if it were a mere generational difference. Furthermore, he tacitly endorses the interpretation, shared by political figures associated with the dictatorship, that widespread corruption results from the country’s democratic period and its constitutional charter, which is seen as overly generous with respect to citizens’ rights to legal defense. In stating that he is not afraid of the dictatorship and its excesses, but rather of the “inefficiency” of the state, Dallagnol situates his fight against corruption in the midst of a swampy terrain where democratic

Corruption and Neoliberalism in Brazil  91 assurances are regarded as relative. When it comes to punitivism, dictatorship on this account will always be more efficient than democracy – and thus we see how this supposed ode to efficiency is increasingly associated, consciously or otherwise, with the antidemocratic trends of contemporary national politics. And that trend opened the path to Bolsonaro winning the Presidency of the Republic in 2018 – not by mere coincidence. Beyond Dallagnol’s anti-corruption discourse, the efficiency of the punitive state was made evident by the composition of Bolsonaro’s cabinet. The punitive state-model is the reverse side of the assertion that the market is the fundamental motor for efficient resource allocation. It is not by accident that the fight against corruption, symbolized by former judge and current Minister of Justice Sergio Moro, and the privatization agenda led by Minister of Economy Paulo Guedes, make for comfortable bedmates in the current administration. Within the discursive field that this chapter  is concerned with, the emphasis on the inefficiency of corrupt governments (and a corrupt state) is always accompanied by the assumption that free market competition ensures greater efficiency and greater justice: “while free competition promotes a ‘natural selection’ that favors the most efficient enterprises, corruption promotes an ‘artificial selection’ that eliminates the most honest and concedes a long life to those who accept to partake in disreputable businesses” (Dallagnol 2017a, 45). “Free competition” is thus construed as the opposite of “corruption,” where the former is associated with notions of purity and moral superiority. Moreover, the effect of the comparison is to foreclose any dissenting opinion about the free market – if its opposite is “corruption,” we find ourselves with no other alternative. The idea that a certain brand of “crony capitalism” had developed in Brazil began to spread in the wake of the fight against corruption. Dallagnol and Rodrigo Janot, former Attorney General of the Republic, made explicit references to the term (Dallagnol 2017a, 211; Janot 2017). Luís Roberto Barroso, Minister of the Supreme Federal Court, spoke in similar terms and introduces his own variations: “shameless capitalism” (Barroso 2014). Sergio Moro once said that another detrimental effect of systemic corruption is that it chases away local and foreign investors. If the market is not clean and trustworthy, if bribes and cheating are the rules, a responsible investor will not have confidence in that market and he will not put his money in it. (Moro 2017) All of the aforementioned individuals, leaders in the fight against corruption in Brazil, adopt the premise that corruption and capitalism are “strictly speaking” in a zero-sum game. All of them, without exception, consciously or unconsciously reproduce a political platform that, as we have seen, began to gain in popularity 30  years ago, when the country first witnessed the emerging discourse of “capitalist shock.”

92  Pedro Luiz Lima and Jorge Chaloub

5. Final Conclusions Contrary to what some have argued (Barros 2019), it is no accident that the contemporary fight against corruption emerged in Brazil amidst an economic crisis. Nor is it fortuitous that this convergence between economic and political crisis has disseminated a perception of corruption grounded in punitivism, denouncing the state as the locus of ethical deviations, and elevating the private sphere based on a specific ideology of entrepreneurship. Amidst this cultural potpourri, forged affinities ultimately allowed an ultra-right figure such as Jair Bolsonaro to reach the Presidency of the Republic. And while we must interpret this electoral result by following its complex web of causalities, we must also acknowledge that it would not have easily come to fruition without the corruption issue weighing so heavily on the national public sphere. The discourse on corruption is therefore a necessary, albeit insufficient, condition. One should also recall that the main actors spearheading the latest of anti-corruption agenda were by no means anticipating Bolsonaro’s victory. The complexity of the country’s political situation stems, to a large extent, from this fact: Bolsonaro is a non-deliberate effect of several more or less divergent movements, comprised of numerous actors more or less unconnected to one another, which culminated in his election. Nor does this mean that his victory was a sudden bolt of lightning in a clear blue sky. On the contrary, it is an effect of the complex process of de-democratization, expedited when the then-defeated political forces questioned the results of the 2014 presidential election. A process that, as we have seen in this chapter, gained steam by rallying around a neoliberal version of the anti-corruption discourse, which swiftly adapted itself to the longstanding roots of anti-corruption discourse in Brazilian political history. The country’s main media conglomerates – active forces in the parliamentary coup against Rousseff and also willing collaborators in the Operation Car Wash’s hunt against PT and Lula – did not deliberately forge Bolsonaro’s candidacy, nor did they directly support it. As for intellectuals, while there is a greater array of positions, there is no evidence of a conscious and progressive intellectual movement leading to the Bolsonaro administration – even some of the most ferocious critics of “left-wing corruption,” those directly responsible for the emergence of the culture of de-democratization in which Brazil finds itself submerged, would later become severe critics of Operation Car Wash and the current government (as is the case, for example, of Reinaldo Azevedo). The same can be said of the political jurists, and while the presence of Sergio Moro in the Ministry of Justice is glaring evidence of the continuity between Operation Car Wash and the Bolsonaro administration, the link between the group of prosecutors in Curitiba, led by Dallagnol, and the rise of the former captain is not immediate or pre-conceived. At this point, hopes of staunching the inexorable march towards the dissolution of the country’s democratic institutions cannot hinge on the actions of the actors mentioned here. Political jurists and ultra-right intellectuals find

Corruption and Neoliberalism in Brazil  93 themselves comfortably accommodated in a climate defined by degraded democratic relations, while the media oligopoly insists on anchoring any criticism of the Bolsonaro administration in false equivalences with the PT administration. Thus, denouncements of “populism” and accusations of “polarization” abound in the national public sphere – claims that could eventually affect Bolsonaro but seem to prefer to target the PT and the Left in general. Within this context, the resumption of democratization implies politically overcoming the authoritarian-neoliberal coalition. To that end, we must understand that this coalition is not accidental. Brazil is currently a privileged case for observing the contradictions between democracy and neoliberalism (Santos 2017; Brown 2015). As we have tried to show, amidst this entanglement, the anti-corruption discourse played a central role in a far-reaching agenda to criminalize politics, seeking to impede any attempt, however timid, to overcome (or even question) the dominant neoliberal credo. With political parties in ruins and democratic values severely depressed, even the most optimistic observer would likely conclude that things will become much worse before they can get better.

Notes 1. We thank Paulo Scarpa for the translation, and Patricia Ranger and Niclas Allen for revising the chapter. 2. Operation Car Wash was a criminal investigation led by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Federal Police, and the Federal Justice of Paraná. Explicitly inspired by Operation Clean Hands, in Italy, they subverted Brazilian procedural law practices in an attempt to radically renew the country. The operation significantly affected the 2018 presidential elections, with the illegal disclosure of information and the arrest of former President Lula. The judge responsible for the Operation, Sérgio Moro, would later become the Justice Minister in the Bolsonaro administration. 3. Rui Barbosa was a highly influential liberal politician in the early years of the Brazilian Republic, proclaimed after the fall of the monarchy in 1889. 4. “Bacharéis” are Brazilian politicians that use juridical speech for their self-­ fashioning and political disputes. The concept has been used since the 19th century to represent the powerful role of jurists in Brazilian politics. 5. Populism was a common object of Marxist interpretation in Brazil, led by Francisco Weffort and Octavio Ianni, among others. These authors criticized both communist and labor traditions for their excessive emphasis on a strong state, which have frustrated free development of the working class. After the 1990s, a great deal of research, particularly in the field of cultural history, has offered harsh criticism of that perspective. 6. In his speeches, and without any strong data to back his claim, Collor frequently compared public employees to “maharajas” – public employees that do not work and earn huge salaries. 7. Bolsonaro’s Minister of Economy, Paulo Guedes, is an enthusiastic advocate of ultraliberal policies and a veteran investment banker. 8. “Conjunto da obra” was the term used by politicians and media to advocate for the overthrow of Dilma Rousseff based on her mistakes, a charge without legal precedent. 9. For a more detailed narrative of Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment, see Rômulo Lima’s chapter in this book.

94  Pedro Luiz Lima and Jorge Chaloub 10. Sergio Moro is the judge who, as the leader of “Operation Car Wash,” convicted ex-President Lula and sent him to jail, in a judicial process full of formal problems, illegally released confidential audios of ex-President Dilma Rousseff. Months later he took office as Minister of Justice in Bolsonaro’s government. 11. Particularly the first and third age as described by Vaisse (2010). 12. In a Datafolha survey conducted in April  2016, Bolsonaro was leading solely among one fraction of the electorate: voters with a monthly family income of over ten minimum wages. Recently, another survey by the same institute on the approval of the Bolsonaro administration reveals that his highest approval ratings are within the same group.   (cf. http://media.folha.uol.com.br/datafolha/2016/04/11/intencao_de_voto_presi dente.pdf and https://especiais.gazetadopovo.com.br/wp-content/uploads/sites/ 24/2019/12/09171708/datafolha-aprovacao-bolsonaro-dez-2019.pdf ). 13. According to a 2017 report by Media Ownership Monitor, an initiative of the Reporters Without Borders, the four main media groups in the country concentrate over 70% of the television viewership and Grupo Globo, in particular, has a higher viewership than all other major groups combined. When comparing risk indicators endangering media pluralism across ten different developing countries, the report concludes that the Brazilian media landscape was the worst. 14. Most of the studies of Operation Car Wash, such as the works of Kerche in 2018 and Almeida in 2016, focus on the institutional changes of the Brazilian Public Prosecutor’s Office and the careers of its members. We began to develop this line of research in Chaloub, Lima (2018). 15. Arantes (2002) conducted empirical research during the 1990s and identified these trends in the institution.

References Alexander, Jeffrey A. 2018. “Vociferando contra o iluminismo: a ideologia de Steve Bannon.” Sociologia & Antropologia 8 (3): 1009–1023. Almeida, Frederico de. 2016. “Justiça, combate à corrupção e política: uma análise a partir da operação Lava Jato.” Revista Pensata 5 (2): 69–82. Alonso, Angela, and Ann Mische. 2016. “Changing Repertoires and Partisan Ambivalence in the New Brazilian Protests.” Bulletin of Latin American Research 36 (2): 144–159. Arantes, Rogério Bastos. 2002. Ministério Público e política no Brasil. São Paulo: Fapesp. Avritzer, Leonardo. 2019. O pêndulo da democracia. São Paulo: Todavia. Barros, Celso Rocha de. 2019. “Uma história de dois azares e um impeachment.” In Democracia em risco: 22 ensaios sobre o Brasil hoje, edited by Sergio Abranches et al., 56–65. São Paulo: Cia das Letras. Barroso, Luís Roberto. 2014. Estado, sociedade e direito: diagnósticos e propostas para o Brasil. Available at: www.luisrobertobarroso.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/ Conferencia-da-OAB_20out2014.pdf. Accessed on 1 December 2019. Bezerra, Marcos Octávio. 2018. Corrupção: um estudo sobre poder público e relações pessoais no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Papéis Selvagens. Brown, Wendy. 2015. Undoing the demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Cardoso, Fernando Henrique. 1994. Discurso de Despedida do Senado Federal: Filosofia e Diretrizes de Governo. Available at: www.biblioteca.presidencia.gov.br/ publicacoes-oficiais/catalogo/fhc/discurso-de-despedida-do-senado-federal-1994. Accessed on 1 November 2019.

Corruption and Neoliberalism in Brazil  95 Cepeda, Vera Alves. 2018. “A Nova Direita no Brasil: contexto e matrizes conceituais.” Mediações: Revista de Ciências Sociais 23 (2): 75–122. Chaloub, Jorge. 2018. “O liberalismo de Carlos Lacerda.” DADOS – Revista de Ciências Sociais 61 (4): 385–428. Chaloub, Jorge, and Fernando Perlatto. 2016. “A nova direita brasileira: ideias, retórica e prática política.” Insight Inteligência 72: 24–41. Chaloub, Jorge, and Pedro Lima. 2018. “Os juristas políticos e suas convicções: para uma anatomia do componente jurídico do golpe de 2016 no Brasil.” Revista de Ciências Sociais 49 (1): 202–252. Chaloub, Jorge, Pedro Lima, and Fernando Perlatto. 2018. “Direitas no Brasil contemporâneo.” Revista Teoria & Cultura 13 (2): 9–21. Cooper, Melinda. 2018. Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism. Cambridge: Zone Books. Covas, Mario. 1989. Choque de capitalismo. Available at: https://tucano.org.br/choquedo-capitalismo. Accessed on 15 November 2019. Cruz, Sebastião Velasco, André Kaysel, and Gustavo Codas. 2015. Direita Volver! O retorno da direita e o ciclo político brasileiro. São Paulo: Perseu Abramo. Dallagnol, Deltan. 2015. “Precisamos conhecer melhor nosso inimigo que, hoje, no Brasil, se chama corrupção.” O Jornal Batista, 9 August. Available at: www.batistas. com/OJB_PDF/2015/OJB_32.pdf. Accessed on 1 December 2019. ———. 2017a. A luta contra a corrupção. Rio de Janeiro: Sextante. ———. 2017b. Entrevista concedida à TV RECORD. Available at: www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Ixw0zyAQMqs. Accessed on 10 October 2019. Dardot, Pierre, and Christian Laval. 2010. La nouvelle raison du monde: Essai sur la société néolibérale. Paris: La Découverte. Fernandes, Dmitri Cerboncini, and Allana Meirelles Vieira. 2019. “A  direita mora do mesmo lado da cidade: Especialistas, polemistas e jornalistas.” Novos estudos CEBRAP 38 (1): 157–182. Filgueiras, Fernando. 2006. Corrupção, democracia e legitimidade. UFMG: Belo Horizonte. Foucault, Michel. 2004. Naissance de la biopolitique: Cours au collège de France 1978–1979. Paris: Gallimard-Seuil. Gomes, Ângela de Castro. 2005. A invenção do trabalhismo. Rio de Janeiro: FGV. Hayek, F. A. 1979. Law, Legislation and Liberty: A New Statement of the Liberal Principles of Justice and Political Economy. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Hunter, James D. 1991. Culture Wars: The Struggle to Control the Family, Art, Education, Law, And Politics in America. New York: Basic Books. Janot, Rodrigo. 2017. “Janot: Combate à corrupção melhora o ambiente para investimentos no Brasil.” O Globo, 18 January. Available at: https://oglobo.globo.com/ economia/janot-combate-corrupcao-melhora-ambiente-para-investimentos-no-bra sil-20790358. Accessed on 1 January 2019. Kerche, Fábio. 2018. “Ministério Público, Lava Jato e Mãos Limpas: uma abordagem institucional.” Lua Nova: Revista de Cultura e Política 105 (1): 255–286. Messenberg, Debora. 2017. “A  direita que saiu do armário: a cosmovisão dos formadores de opinião dos manifestantes de direita brasileiros.” Revista Sociedade e Estado 32 (3): 621–648. Migue, Luis Felipe. 2016. “Para entender o Golpe”. Blog da Boitempo 01 September. Available at: https://blogdaboitempo.com.br/2016/09/01/para-entender-o-golpe/. Accessed on 1 January 2019.

96  Pedro Luiz Lima and Jorge Chaloub Moro, Sergio. 2017. Discurso na Universidade de Columbia. Available at: www.you tube.com/watch?v=LpCMTsf2Aj8. Accessed on 1 October 2019. Motta, Rodrigo Patto Sá. 2002. Em guarda contra o ‘perigo vermelho’: o anticomunismo no Brasil(1917–1964). São Paulo: Perspectiva. Rocha, Camila. 2019. “ ‘Imposto é roubo’. A formação de um contrapúblico ultraliberal e os protestos pró-impeachment de Dilma Rousseff.” DADOS – Revista de Ciências Sociais 62 (3). Rodrigues, Lidiane Soares. 2018. “Uma revolução conservadora dos intelectuais (Brasil/2002–2016).” Política & Sociedade 39 (17): 277–312. Santos, Wanderley Guilherme dos. 2017. A democracia impedida. Rio de Janeiro: FGV. Singer, Andre. 2018. O Lulismo em Crise: Um quebra-cabeça do período Dilma (2011– 2016). São Paulo: Cia das Letras. Vaisse, Justin. 2010. Neoconservatism: The Biography of a Movement. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

7 Bolsonaro and the Current Stage of the Brazilian Social Crisis Historical Continuities as a Backdrop for the Present Situation Rômulo Lima1 1. Introduction Within the last few years and in a very short period of time, the world has witnessed a dramatic shift in expectations concerning Brazil. Whilst in early 2013 the country was still being praised for its ability to combine significant growth rates with income distribution, current events have revealed a scorched landscape. In contrast to the previous image of an awakening giant successfully guided by left-wing pragmatism, Brazil has now an extreme-right-wing government and undergoes deep neoliberal and austerity measures. Within attempts to explain this unexpected change, critical analyses often run the risk of summarizing the current neoliberal turn as a product of a successful ambush conducted by a cunning opposition at the crossroads of an economic recession and high-profile corruption scandals. However, if the “perfect storm approach” may well elucidate the convergence of different factors that undermined the previous popularity of the Brazilian center-left Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party, PT), it does not exhaust the need for addressing the socioeconomic and historical structures underpinning this crisis. My idea is that Brazil’s recent course synthesizes – with specific traces of a peripheral, ex-colonial, and ex-slavery society  – the contemporary dilemmas of the post-2008 world. As such, this development cannot be understood without considering the country’s historical model of socialization, on the one hand, and the way the transformations of global capitalism after the crisis of the 1960s affect the country’s regime of accumulation on the other. In this sense, the identification of historical continuities in the formation of the Brazilian society can help us to elucidate what is at stake in the current situation. What is here referred to as the current stage of the Brazilian social crisis covers the broad group of political, economic, and social events that were set in motion during the mass protests of June  2013, then fueled the impeachment process against President Dilma Rousseff in 2016, continued under the unstable presidency of Michel Temer (2016–2018), and finally culminated in the election of a right-wing government led by President Jair Bolsonaro, who took office in 2019. This is examined as well in the forthcoming chapters.

98  Rômulo Lima As argued, this ensemble is the last unfoldment of the centuries-old social crisis in Brazil, which stems from the combination of three mutually reinforcing factors: (1) a highly concentrated pattern of wealth accumulation; (2) the reluctance of local elites in accepting the popular masses as true democratic actors in Brazilian politics; and (3) the limits imposed by the country’s role in the international division of labor. Notwithstanding the conjunctural aspects involved in the present context, Bolsonaro’s election is directly or indirectly associated to these three elements and appears as a critical manifestation of Brazil’s structural crisis, now evolving under the aegis of economic neoliberalism and political conservatism. That is why the present state of the Brazilian politics only becomes adequately intelligible when analyzed against its historical background. In this sense, the idea of de-democratization and its meaning to the Brazilian context will be assessed through an enlarged historical dimension. In spite of the advancements brought about by the 1988 Federal Constitution, as mentioned in the introduction of this volume, Brazil could never overcome the structures responsible for the existence of a social abyss separating a relatively small group of well-off Brazilians entitled to social recognition, on the one hand, and the economically, politically, and culturally marginalized groups and classes that form the majority of its population, on the other. For this reason, even if the country achieved some institutional consistency over the past decades, it has never been a substantive democracy, at least not for the major part of its citizens. The continual postponing of the struggle to overcome these structures is one reason why regressive aspects of Brazilian sociality keeps emerging from time to time on the surface of national politics – not as an unavoidable consequence of some “original sin,” as referred to in Chapter 1, but as the eternal return of unsolved dilemmas in a context of unbearable social tensions. Inscribing the series of critical events that started in June  2013 within a broader framework offers two advantages. First, it offers us clues to understand the limits of the recently defeated left-wing model of post-Fordist reformism in Brazil. Second, it allows us to perceive the country as a concentration of tendencies that, at a more general level, can put to test the very stability of liberal democracy. For Brazil, with its current form of neoliberal conservatism, is once again in the vanguard of capitalist savagery.

2. Inequality as a Distinctive Feature If one was to pick a single defining characteristic of the Brazilian society across its history, a broad consensus would point to its tremendous levels of inequality. For inequality is probably the social feature that best connects Brazil’s present to its past. Although it is perfectly admissible that each moment of the country’s history is marked by a different form of inequality, based on different specific causes, it is also evident that old inequalities often lay the foundations for upcoming ones. In other words, in the absence of a substantive political

Bolsonaro and Brazilian Social Crisis  99 and economic rupture, the pattern of wealth and income concentration that has characterized Brazil’s long-term history can still be seen as a strong influence on the current stage of the country’s development. If not, how does one explain that, according to some estimations, the Gini coefficient of income inequality for Brazil measured 0.56 in 1872, approximately the same value for the mid1960s and for 2006?2 This suggests the existence of a kind of structural rigidity that in many aspects relates to present-day problems in Brazil, to the pattern of development assumed by its evolving sociality. If this is correct, contemporary problems may be seen as the development of basic forms of interaction inscribed in the foundations of modern Brazil. In other words, the present crisis can be understood as a particular stage of the broader, long-term Brazilian social crisis. As much as the colonial form of capitalism that prevailed during the first three centuries of Portuguese rule determined the development of the Brazilian economy following its political independence, the political and psychosocial structures of a former slavery society with extreme levels of wealth and income concentration can still exert a powerful influence over the country’s present standards of sociality. In this sense, it is worth considering how the idea of social question and the initiatives aimed at mitigating inequality have developed in Brazil’s history. Initially, with slavery officially running until 1888, it would seem anachronic to speak of a social question up to this point. Until the end of the 19th century, in fact, the social question was only indirectly addressed through the campaigns for slavery abolition. But precisely this anachronism makes explicit how extreme the deficit of social inclusion during that time was. In the debates concerning the strategies to replace captives by free workers in the Brazilian economy, slaves and ex-slaves were usually treated by the Brazilian ruling class as a dead weight for the national society: a mass of useless people that, due to intrinsic psychological impairments, would never fit into a regular form of waged labor. Such a perception was connected to an extremely negative attitude towards labor, which, for centuries, had been intrinsically associated with the curse of compulsive work and, as a consequence, with a state of degradation, abnormality, and inhumanity. This prejudice, culturally transferred to manual workers and to poor people in general, did not disappear with the official end of slavery, neither institutionally, nor affectively. Instead it laid down a set of cognitive and moral standards that determined the later assimilation of the working classes in modern Brazilian society (Cardoso 2008). After the abolishment of slavery and the subsequent proclamation of the Republic, economic liberalism was in fashion among the landlords who concentrated the country’s wealth and power. This materialized in the first Brazilian republican Constitution of 1891, according to which labor relations were merely – and conveniently – interpreted as free contracts between equal parties. The result was that the labor relations were put out of reach of any effective form of social regulation. This model of economic liberalism, selectively adopted by what was for the rest a very anti-liberal society, prolonged the emptiness in the areas of welfare regulation and social security. Estimations show

100  Rômulo Lima that in 1907 only 12.5% of school age children received formal education. In 1920 around 65% of the total population older than 15 was still illiterate (Cardoso 2010, 132). After Getúlio Vargas seized power in 1930 in a coup against some of the traditional landlord oligarchies, the new government introduced the first minimally effective social security laws, while booting the process of national industrialization. However, the incorporation of the social question through these laws was still marked by a great deficit. The social security norms implemented under Vargas were officially restricted to urban workers in a country which was by far still predominantly rural. Furthermore, this partial incorporation of the social question in the public agenda was conditioned by the necessity of workers formally belonging to the official labor market, further driving the presence of great inequalities. The truth was that a large part of the active, urban population could barely achieve the status of a formal worker. Despite being very limited, the political and symbolical weight of Vargas’s initiatives in the social field helped him, after an uninterrupted period of 15  years in office, to be democratically elected for a new term in 1951.3 The tragic death of Vargas in 1954, who, in the midst of an escalating political crisis, took his own life while still holding the president’s sash, helped to shape the mythic image of him as a great popular leader. However, Vargas’s economic nationalism, aiming at a higher level of economic autonomy for the country, had made powerful enemies. The main sources of discontent among the Brazilian most conservative forces – aligned with foreign interests – were the president’s defense of a state-owned oil company (finally created in 1952 and named Petrobras) and the taxation of the remittance of profits sent by the Brazilian subsidiaries to their international headquarters. Many of Vargas’s industrialization plans would be pursued by his first elected successor, the centrist Juscelino Kubitschek (1956–61). Shortly after, however, the following President João Goulart (1961–64), a former minister of Vargas, could not resist the upheaval of the conservative forces. In 1964, he was ejected from the presidential chair by a military coup orchestrated against his moderate left-wing government. Goulart’s proposition of a set of social and economic measures, the so-called Basic Reforms, included a project of agrarian reform and, as a continuation of Vargas’s economic nationalism, aimed at achieving a superior level of autonomy for the Brazilian industry. This would constitute the basis for a more inclusive model of capitalist development in the country. However, even this could not be tolerated by the Brazilian conservative elites in the context of the Cold War. With the 1964 coup, the political possibilities for an inclusive project of social development would be lost for decades. Despite growth years of the so-called “Brazilian economic miracle” (1968–73), the 21  years of a civilmilitary dictatorship was marked by a sustained increase in inequality levels. Wages were squeezed, union leaderships were persecuted, and productivity gains were retained by capital owners. The Gini coefficient, estimated 0.53 in 1960, grew steadily until 1990, when it achieved 0.60 (Neri 2014). Thus, the

Bolsonaro and Brazilian Social Crisis 101 formation of a relatively robust industrial structure advanced at the political and economic expense of the working class. After a period of economic stagnation during the 1980s and the return to a democratic system, with direct presidential elections taking place again in 1989, a long-lasting inflationary process inherited from the military regime was finally tamed in 1994. Agreements with international creditors and new liberalization reforms allowed Brazil the return to the international financial system, whose global character had then further increased. By this time, the economic window for an autonomous and more inclusive form of capitalist development in Brazil had become much narrower. The historical project of the PT must be understood against this historical background. The party’s broad political project was less industrialist than those of Vargas and Goulart, but still carried a similar aim of achieving a more inclusive model of capitalist development. In this respect, the differences regarding the Vargas model of social inclusion should not be ignored. While Vargas represents for many the archetype of populism  – and it is not by chance that Vargas became known as the Father of the Poor – the PT has always envisaged representing a form of active self-government of the working class. Still, both movements have important convergences when considered as political attempts at mitigating the persistent inequalities of the country. It is important however to understand the particular context in which the much-celebrated redistributive policies of the Lula years took place. Many indicators of living conditions clearly improved under the PT administration. Yet most Brazilians remained poorly assisted in matters of housing, education, public transportation, basic sanitation, security, and more. If Brazil reached the same level of annual GDP as the United Kingdom in 2007, the per capita income of the country was around five times lower in the same year: US$ 8,300 in Brazil against US$ 43,700 in the UK.4 In 2012 around 40% of the dwellings in Brazil were still considered inadequate regarding minimum standards of living (IBGE 2015). In this same year, almost half of the youth of Brazil could not complete the basic school education at the due age (IBGE 2013). Regarding job creation, 95% of the positions generated during the 2010s paid up to one and a half minimum wages (Pochmann 2012, 19), which roughly corresponded to US$ 290 per month in January 2010. These figures show that the deficit of social policies for most Brazilians was  – and still continues to be  – enormous. As such, the positive results of the 2000s would have to be maintained at the same pace for at least another two decades to put Brazil at a comparable level regarding social inclusion in Western Europe (Singer 2012). The mass protests of June 2013, gathering literally millions of people in the streets across the whole country, can arguably be regarded as a sudden explosion of the accumulated unease with the general state of affairs. In sum, even if the living standards in Brazil have improved over the last few years, they were still largely unsatisfactory for the majority Brazilians. As a truly structural redistributional reform could never be attempted in the country,5 it should have been clear that the political consensus

102  Rômulo Lima formed around the recent social-democratic administrations of the PT would only last if the latent contradictions of this problematic model of social inclusion could be circumvented by an increasing level of household consumption. With the economic slowdown of 2014 and the deep recession that started in 2015, the then only precariously pacified distributive struggle grew again in tension. As the economic instabilities contaminated the political sphere, the Brazilian historical social crisis accelerated to a decisive breaking point. When long-term structural problems combined with conjunctural tensions, the result was the emergence of a multi-level crisis, evolving simultaneously at the political, economic, and social levels.

3. Social Rigidity and Capitalist Accumulation From a historical perspective, it appears that the recent fall of the PT’s model of reformism should be associated with the structural rigidity of the Brazilian elites when it comes to the question of accepting a more inclusive model of capitalist regulation. As argued by Singer (2018, 296), despite the conciliatory character of the PT, the simple attempt to mitigate the severity of the social question in Brazil “has touched the nerve of the national question.” For inequality, as inherited from the slavery and colonial systems, is not simply part of Brazilian sociality. The truth is that capitalist relations in Brazil are profoundly shaped by inequality and, in the way that these relations have developed hitherto, they actually depend on it. Economic relations in Brazil have been shaped by inequality since the country’s origins. The very meaning of the colonization, as referred by Prado Jr. (1967), pursued by the Portuguese Crown in the dawn of the 16th century could not be more clear: the establishment of a commercially profitable enterprise in the tropics. After the first decades of settlement, it became evident for the colonizers that their commercial success could not rely on the simple extraction of natural products that were already available in the new territory. Instead, they would need to produce on site. And who was to work for this enterprise? The Portuguese noblemen holding royal permissions to exploit the country surely never considered to plow the lands with their own hands. The use of enslaved Indigenous at first and then of captive Africans and their descendants for over three centuries formed the basis for the colonial economy, which continued operating under the same model until the end of slavery in 1888, that is, much after Brazil’s political independence in 1822. The profitability of this economic enterprise literally depended on the extreme levels of exploitation of the workforce – slaves in this case. The poor and miserable conditions under which a significant proportion of Brazilians had to live after the official end of slavery demonstrated that this same logic would still persist for many decades. Even the industrialization process, started in the 1930s under Vargas, could not dismiss the strategic use of cheap a workforce to achieve the expected level of productivity and profitability. As argued by Brazilian sociologist Francisco de Oliveira, Brazil started

Bolsonaro and Brazilian Social Crisis 103 its industrialization under the worst possible conditions: during the world crisis of the 1930s and with no direct support of any of the central economies. By that time, Brazil’s rural economy was broken and, as one can imagine, only had limited resources to ignite an alternative industrial sector. The industrial accumulation was based on the horizontal exploitation of a virtually infinite labor supply (Oliveira 2003). The interruption by the end of the 1970s of the late industrialization process attempted in the post-War period in Brazil destined the country to the periodic repetition of short spasms of growth amidst long periods of economic stagnation. Lacking the material basis to operate with a greater degree of autonomy, the economy mostly fluctuates according to external conditions, with Brazilians suffering the consequences of this instability. Capital accumulation in Brazil still depends on cheap labor and, given the economic conditions under which it takes place, continuously produces its precondition. That is why poverty is not exactly an obstacle for the development of Brazilian capitalism. In fact, poverty is integrated into this regime of accumulation, since it represents the social limbo from which the peripheral capitalists constantly pull out one of their most basic resources: cheap labor. Dependent as they are on cheap labor, the dynamic sectors have relatively little room for maneuver regarding redistribution projects. As Singer (2018, 21) comments, in such a context “some poor may cease to be poor, but poverty cannot cease to exist.” Brazil’s incomplete modernization, thus, makes the country a fertile ground for a deep-seated form of under-citizenship. The development of peripheral capitalism, by combining distinct phases of the historical process, typically produces a kind of hybrid system (Oliveira 2007), one that simultaneously contains elements of the most advanced forms of material production and of the most backward standards of human sociality. Such a coexistence of the modern with the archaic is not a trait that can simply be overcome by the spontaneous development of the peripheral societies. On the contrary, this is a characteristic that keeps being updated with new elements and variations at each new phase of global capitalist development. By no accident, racism, violence, militarism, and anti-republicanism remain as structural elements of a society that, in various aspects, could not accomplish a satisfactory transition into modernity. These are some of the authoritarian elements that emerge from the conservative management of a social crisis that has never been structurally addressed, because addressing it would imply nothing less than refounding the country’s socioeconomic structure – something that the Brazilian elites seem to have no intention of doing. Breaking with structural inequality in Brazil would thus require breaking with the country’s peripheral condition (Sampaio Jr. 2007). However, the national bourgeoisie seems to be in a beneficial position, given that it compensates its peripheral condition through a higher level of exploitation of the working class. In other words: low wages as means of compensation for technological backwardness and low productivity.6 This helps to explains why Brazil is among the ten biggest economies on the planet, while at the same time

104  Rômulo Lima the country figures as one of most unequal places in the world. The wealthiest Brazilians (top 1%) receive the highest share of national income in the world, while the top 10% stay only behind the Middle East’s top 10% with regards to their participation in the national income. At the same time, Brazil, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East have the lowest income share for the bottom 50% of the population (WID 2018, 43–45).7 The combination of low productivity, high GDP, and extreme inequality indicates that a relevant basis for growth in Brazil remains to be the extensive exploitation of its working class.8 Far from the technological frontier in sectors with higher added value, Brazilian capitalism incorporates the high technology predominantly through consumption, and not in the production domain. The weakness of such a condition would in any case slow down the political project started by the PT in 2003. The social crisis management implemented by Lula and Dilma mitigated some of its most harmful effects but did not achieve the necessary quality leap to overcome structural inequality. The crisis that began in 2013 triggered a process of rapid dismantling of the party’s achievements. The political pendulum moved once again to favor those willing to reduce all social protection for workers, throwing the latter, free as birds, into the satanic mills of the deregulated free market. Thus, it seems as if there was an invisible line beyond which it starts to be problematic to the Brazilian capitalists to accept any further measure of redistribution. This line was crossed somewhere between the end of the 2000s and the beginning of the 2010s. And the economic downturn which hit Brazil in the second half of Dilma’s9 first term rang the alarm for the Brazilian bourgeoisie. By this time, the objective condition of a virtually infinite supply of cheap labor, a structural characteristic of peripheral economies, was under pressure. On the one hand, real wages had been raised above inflation for almost a decade then, on the other hand, Brazilian productivity remained stagnated. In the meanwhile, the critical fall in the prices of the commodities exported by Brazil had already eliminated the last cushion against instabilities, hindering the state’s ability to pursue redistribution without affecting the profitability of national capitalists. The impeachment against Dilma was made, after all, to restore the balance by reducing the costs of labor in Brazil. The election of Bolsonaro represented to the bourgeoisie an extension of this same goal. As Bolsonaro clearly stated during the presidential run, Brazilians must choose between two options: either rights or jobs. As much as Brazilian capitalists have problems with income and wealth redistribution, the Brazilian bourgeoisie has problems with the redistribution of political power, i.e. with democracy. The entrance of masses of voters in the Brazilian democracy can only be accepted up to the point in which it does not threat business. These two rigidities, one political and one economic, are of course two sides of the same coin. It is true that there have been changes and reorientations, but the fact remains that Brazil could never completely break with the limitations given by its peripheral position in the international division

Bolsonaro and Brazilian Social Crisis 105 of labor, nor with the historical ballast that defines the country as a profoundly unequal society.

4. Social Rigidity and Political Conservatism Much has been said about the conservative nature of the Brazilian upper classes and their role as catalysts in the political crisis which followed the mass protests in June 2013. In this sense, the uneasiness of parts of the Brazilian elites with redistributive programs and other social-democratic policies are often presented as evidence of a consciously discriminatory character of these groups, as if they were openly and decidedly taking part in a struggle of the rich against the poor. To a certain extent, this may indeed be the case. But clearcut episodes of hatred of social policies, however disturbing, seem to indicate the existence of a more pervasive political affect, one that goes rather diffuse and underground. This affect can be described as a psychological rigidity of the Brazilian upper classes regarding any political project of social inclusion. Reflecting the standards of sociality that have prevailed in Brazilian history, this rigidity takes the form of a political conservatism that – as much as the material constraints depicted in the last section – keeps holding back a consistent increase in the quality of life of the Brazilian working classes. For its size and political importance, the traditional middle class plays a critical role in this story.10 The transformation of the original discontent regarding the general standards of living in the country, which first motivated broad sectors of the middle classes to take part in the 2013 mass protests, into a crusade against corruption, at the beginning, and then against PT, was built upon the historical unease of the Brazilian elites towards the kind of political project embodied by this party. From a cultural perspective, centuries of normalized inequality can make any serious redistribution attempt look like a law against nature, for breaking with deeply rooted standards inevitably triggers some misunderstanding or incomprehension. Further, implicitly bearing the idea of an existing social injustice that should be solved, redistribution policies compromise the very notion of merit, which is an important element of selfjustification for upper-class individuals living in an extremely unequal society such as Brazil. Furthermore, if redistribution goes on and affects unavowed privileges of well-off Brazilians, then it becomes truly unacceptable for a great part of them. In this case, the psychosocial reluctance in accepting minimally embracing social-democratic ideas was also reinforced by concrete outcomes of the PT administrations. One objective reason for parts of the middle class to be anti-PT resulted from the indirect effects of the economic growth and the redistribution policies implemented by this party. Despite the average increase of 18% in incomes between 2001 and 2015, there are differences regarding the relative participation of each social group in these positive results. In this period, the wealthiest 10% increased their participation in the national income from 54% to 55%. The participation of the poorest 50% increased from 11% to 12%. The 40% in

106  Rômulo Lima between, the statistical middle class, experienced a decrease in their participation, from 34% to 32% – thus justifying the expression “squeezed middle.” It is also worth noting, however, that the top 1% increased its share from 25% to 28%. This means that the 9% below the top 1%, a reasonable proxy for the traditional middle class in Brazil, experienced a decrease from 29% to 27% in its share of national income (Morgan 2017). In the Brazilian context, this phenomenon could be dubbed the “squeezed traditional middle.” Thus, the set of policies promoted under the presidencies of Lula and Dilma caused relative losses to the urban middle classes. The slow, but remarkable improvements for those living at the bottom of the Brazilian social pyramid indirectly squeezed some historical benefits that the traditional middle classes have always enjoyed. The rapid inclusion of larger groups in the consumer market, together with the increase in the minimum wage, favored increases in the prices of conventional services and household goods. As a result, general costs of living increased for the groups whose wages had risen below the national average. To illustrate the ambiguous effects of the social improvements under PT, one can look at the example of the public transport system, the catalyst of the 2013 protests. Brought about by the emerging poor, the arrival of thousands of new cars and motorcycles in the Brazilian streets appeared as a sign of the economic dynamism of the country. However, it also put an additional pressure on the already strained transportation systems of many urban centers of Brazil. The growing discontent regarding increasing bus fares and the decreasing quality of urban mobility grew unbearable. Comparable effects could also be observed in the fields of housing, security, healthcare, and education, all lacking proper investments and hence noticeable improvements. The middle classes, both the statistical and the traditional, were particularly exposed to the contradictions brought about by the years of economic growth. The other major source of discomfort for the Brazilian elites when confronted by the PT’s redistributive policies was a direct one. In Brazil, the high level of inequality has always produced a convenient situation for the bourgeoisie and the traditional middle class, groups that have historically profited from the low wages paid for unskilled labor. A great part of domestic workers, almost all black women that, until very recently, used to inhabit windowless tiny rooms in the back of middle-class apartments is only the most evident reminiscence of the Brazilian economic system that separated the landlord’s house from the slave hut. In essence, the picture originally described by Oliveira in 1972 still remains valid: Even certain types of strictly personal services, provided directly to the consumer and within families, can reveal a disguised form of exploitation that reinforces accumulation. Such services, in order to be provided outside the family, would require an infrastructure that cities do not have and, of course, a base of capital accumulation that does not exist. The washing of clothes at home can only be replaced in terms of costs by commercial

Bolsonaro and Brazilian Social Crisis  107 washing that competes with the low wages paid to domestic workers; the private driver who takes the children to school can only be replaced by an efficient public transport system that does not exist. Compared to an average American, a Brazilian of the [traditional] middle class, with equivalent monetary incomes, enjoys a higher real standard of living, including all kinds of personal services at the family level, basically supported by the exploitation of labor, especially female labor. (2003, 58) These cheap services can only be afforded by the traditional middle class because the service workers, earning low wages, are kept in poverty. This corresponds to the dependency on low wages that characterizes the Brazilian accumulation regime, a standard which further affects the average wages at all income levels. The PT, with all its flaws, symbolized an attempt to re-balance this situation. As the minimum wage rose in the form of a deliberate state policy, conventional services and cheap, unskilled labor became relatively expensive for those who had historically benefited the most from it. These two mentioned forms of distributive struggle – one indirect and concerning the relative benefits of growth or its side effects, the other direct and relating to the costs of cheap labor for the elites  – have thus reinforced the subjective challenge felt by the traditional middle class in Brazil. At the bottom of the issue lies a question of alterity, one that has been haunting the Brazilian upper classes for decades now. In Brazil, the poor have never enjoyed quality education, efficient hospitals, good housing, or urban security. Substantive citizenship was never extended to the broader Brazilian population, but instead only to a small part of it. An invisible line has always separated those who had access to this citizenship, which I refer here to as the “elites,” from the majority, that is, the Brazilian poor. In a widespread form of social conscience, as the “true” citizens (i.e. those deserving social respect and enjoying a minimum of material comfort) are never poor, then the poor are not regarded as true citizens. That is why a typical citizen of the traditional middle class would only accept the incorporation of the poor into his or her own space of social dignity if the poor became a peer. The Brazilian poor are not only materially, but also culturally deemed to a form of sub-citizenship. The social policies implemented by the PT, even if very limited, went against this logic. The traditional middle class, which usually see the poor as being part of a qualitatively different social dimension – one deserving less attention and care – felt disfavored. In the present-day political debate, our typical middle-class individual would possibly voice his or her discomfort by saying that it is not fair to give money to poor people (as with the well-known social welfare program Bolsa Família), because it would encourage them to work less. Such resources, he or she would instinctively think, could be put to a “better use.” That is, to improve the living standards that a middle-class citizen feels entitled to have: one allowing for more consumption and for moving as far as possible from the

108  Rômulo Lima world of social exclusion. If poverty is to end, then it should happen spontaneously, through the benefits of capitalist development and the personal merits of those involved, and not through public policies and higher taxes. An example of how social rigidity feeds a conservative political stance. As the disappointment with the PT grew, the most conservative fringes of the elites skillfully managed to form a new consensus around the flaws of Lula and Dilma. The ensuing corruption scandals, some of them real, others inflated or distorted, affected high-ranking members of the party, serving as the perfect instrument for the freshly revived right-wing forces. The moral crusade against corruption continuously provided important parts of the Brazilian elites with a perfect excuse for being anti-Left, one that they could translate into slogans and political actions. Thus, to a certain extent, the corruption scandals only gave the upper classes a perfect excuse for supporting the impeachment of Dilma.11 The economic downturn during Dilma’s second term, followed by daily critiques in the media against the country’s stalling performance, galvanized masses around the idea that the state in itself is a permanent source of corruption and inefficiency. This paved the way for an extreme variant of neoliberalism. In fact, the anti-PT feeling has been pervasively instigated in the Brazilian population for many years, much before the ascension of Bolsonaro. This has been encouraged by representatives from neoliberal and conservative ideologies operating in different fields: mass media,12 the judiciary,13 think tanks,14 business associations,15 etc. With the party finally weakened after years of organized attacks, the dispute for being its Other was open. After the Temer interregnum (2016–18), Bolsonaro was not the first choice for the Brazilian bourgeoisie. At first, the Brazilian upper classes wanted a more palatable version of neoliberalism. But something went wrong with their plans: neoliberalism per se would not so easily catch on amongst the Brazilian lower classes. Further, the traditional pro-market party, the center-right Partido da Social-Democracia Brasileira (PSDB, the Brazilian Social Democracy Party), was considered too much an establishment party. Skillfully conjugating the critiques of the PT’s role in corruption scandals on the one hand, and a strong (not to say authoritarian) stance in security matters, on the other, Bolsonaro grew in appeal and displaced the conventional center-right forces. The marriage was arranged when Bolsonaro gave up his life-long nationalist and corporatist positions while the neoliberal forces gave up their appearance of enlightenment. Thus, to win the elections, neoliberalism carried the torch of far-right conservatism. After all, neoliberalism requires subjectivities in order to put forward its agenda. That was how conservative and neoliberal forces formed a new power bloc in Brazilian politics. Bolsonaro is the rude personality that is prepared to do the dirty work for the Brazilian neoliberal elite. But he is also more than that. In the words of Cunha (2019, 5), the strength of Bolsonarism as [an] ideology seems to rely on the fact that it combines the needs of contemporary crisis capitalism, both in what refers to accumulation itself

Bolsonaro and Brazilian Social Crisis  109 as well as to ideological processes, with deep-seated, constitutive elements of the social character and the constitution of the subject in Brazilian . . . truncated modernization. The conclusion is that Brazil’s inequalities are historically so resilient that even moderate attempts to improve the situation of the socially less fortunate invariably raise important resistances, especially due to the rigid class structures and the relatively unstable living standards of both the low and the middle segments of the Brazilian population. The PT, maybe anticipating these difficulties, did not dare to openly challenge the traditional forces that have historically blocked the much-needed structural changes in the country. Still, finding that the PT’s social policies had become too costly for their own interests, the conservative forces showed no mercy and moved to literally destroy not only the party itself, but also some of its main actions of mitigation of the Brazilian social crisis. Worst of all, the very ideas of economic regulation and public policies have been increasingly demonized since the beginning of the current crisis.

5. Concluding Remarks If the structural character of inequalities in Brazil is a continual source of resistance against inclusive projects of capitalist development in the country, neoliberalism constitutes the specific drive behind the current stage of this social crisis. Indeed, it is only possible to fully understand why the impeachment of Dilma, despite the formal observation of all legal requirements, should be described as a soft coup d’état if we consider the neoliberal plot behind it. For the Brazilian capitalists, the direct benefit of the impeachment was the possibility to replace, without elections, a moderate social-democratic administration with an assumed pro-market one. For such capitalists, the impeachment was thus a way to impose a political platform that had been repeatedly defeated in the previous four presidential elections. The executors of the coup made use of controversial budgetary irregularities allegedly incurred by Dilma as a convenient excuse to oust a democratically elected president with a centerleft background. Regarding the debate about the legal aspects of the whole process, one cannot avoid the feeling that, no matter what Dilma actually did or would eventually have done, her government had no chance against the impeachment plot. After the impeachment of Dilma, the pressures to reduce labor costs and increase market flexibility were greatly reinforced in Brazil. The first postcoup phase of neoliberalism under Temer had a grand goal: tying the hands of the state by making balanced budgets a mandatory constitutional requirement. This was imposed by the so-called Ceiling Amendment in 2016, which freezes discretionary public expenditures for a period of 20 years. The true meaning of this amendment, however, is to ensure that the Brazilian state will assume the payment of its debt as a top priority. In sum, the coup in Brazil was carried out

110  Rômulo Lima in order to impose austerity plans and flexibilization measures on an unreliable electorate. Under Bolsonaro, however, the commitment to the neoliberal principles is even more radical. His Minister of the Economy is the liberal Paulo Guedes, a Brazilian Chicago Boy16 who shows no qualms in announcing his dream of privatizing all possible state-owned companies and other providers of public services. Guedes’ team have already managed to pass a pension reform that substantially reduces public pensions and associated social benefits. The minister also plans to remove constitutional norms that ensure a minimum of public expenditure in the sectors of education and healthcare. He overtly speaks of ceasing to hire new civil servants for the next years, without replacing those who are going to retire (between 40% and 50% of current positions, he says). This will literally shrink the state and strongly compromise the quality of services in a country where the poor population is already feebly assisted. The present rise of an extremely conservative political discourse in the country suggests that the movement around the values defended by Bolsonaro may become a permanent force in the country’s political landscape, no matter how disastrous his own administration will be. Bolsonaro has already shown his ability of using the smoke screen of the moral combat against “cultural Marxism” to mobilize support for the reforms proposed by his government. Unfortunately, the accumulated level of discontent regarding living conditions in the country, on the one hand, and the scale of misinformation produced either by supporters of neoliberalism or by those of conservatism, on the other, may allow for Bolsonarism to establish itself as long-term force in the country’s politics. In Brazil, a peripheric economy with a colonial past and great social inequalities, the social fabric is being torn apart. Nevertheless, the current conservative and neoliberal power bloc is pursuing goals that will contribute to further increasing the already enormous social problems of the country. Following the impeachment in 2016, the first outcomes can already be seen; namely, an increase in poverty, the collapse of public institutions and the explicit lack of confidence in politics. The Bolsonaro administration has managed to put the country in the vanguard of the backwardness.17 The self-contented retrieving of a neo-colonial position in the world economy, the progressive weakening of the already precarious social protection system and the emergence of an authoritarian state corresponding to the failure of the liberal democracy are the products of this crisis, which brings large portions of Brazilian society to the brink of social collapse. If the previous administrations of the PT were often rightfully accused of covertly implementing neoliberal policies, the situation has now changed. Under Bolsonaro, both the neoliberal and the most conservative forces have lost their discretion and are given free reign. If the results in the short term can be catastrophic for all Brazilians lacking effective means of social protection, the country’s history is unfortunately a living testimony of how poor standards of social inclusion can be indefinitely prolonged. The Brazilian society is not

Bolsonaro and Brazilian Social Crisis 111 only a prisoner of the things that it cannot change alone, such as the world economic order, it is also a prisoner of things that, in other circumstances, could eventually be altered. But even a more inclusive form of capitalist development, one simply aiming at being profitable for a larger amount of people, proves to be too radical an idea for those who have traditionally controlled the country’s fate. Conservatism and neoliberalism, although seemingly disparate in their rhetoric, can perfectly match in reason of each one’s refusal of taking otherness into consideration. Whereas the neoliberal reason reduces humanity – and thus the human difference  – into a matter of economic calculation, conservatism rejects all values that do not correspond to its own image. The crisis and common interests just united them in Brazil. In a country where, a little over a century ago, the economic liberal discourse existed together with a slavery system, this is actually no big surprise. Either way, the fact remains that the existence of a power bloc uniting neoliberals and conservatives is one of the biggest challenges for the progressive forces in the Brazilian history. This, precisely when capital accumulation at the global level seems to enter a delicate phase, with the deceleration of China’s economy, increasing productive automation, growing precarity, and the outcomes of climate change. Brazil, not so long ago an aspirant “global player,” is now far from being up to these challenges.

Notes 1. I thank Alex Jacobson for his careful reading and suggestions. 2. For the Gini coefficient of 1872, see Bertola et al. (2012). For the Gini coefficient of the 1960s, see Neri (2014). The most recent statistics can be found at http:// ipeadata.gov.br. 3. After seizing power in 1930, Vargas led a provisional government until 1934. In this year, he was indirectly elected president by the Constituent Assembly for a four-year term. In 1937, however, Vargas dissolved the Brazilian Parliament and installed a dictatorial regime that lasted until 1945. Following the presidency of Eurico Dutra (1946–51), Vargas was elected president for the first time through a direct election. 4. See Word Bank Open Data: https://data.worldbank.org. 5. An example of how Brazil’s wealth and income concentration is institutionalized appears in the gentle tax structure that prevails in the country – gentle for the richest, of course. While the mean participation of income and profit taxes in the total taxation reaches 33.7% in the OECD countries, Brazil has only 20.9% of its tax revenues coming from these two sources, what favors those with big revenues or capital earnings (OECD 2017, 154). In this regard, Brazil has the lowest rate in South America, except for Paraguay (15.2%) and Argentina (20.5%). 6. In 2016, Brazil’s GDP per worker, a usual measure of labor productivity, corresponded to only 25% of the value for the USA. See Machado (2018). 7. According to the World Inequality Report 2018, “Brazil, the Middle East and South Africa are the world’s most unequal regions” (WID 2018, 67). 8. Oliveira (2003) points to a strange coincidence by the fact that the highest rates of growth during the 1950s and 1960s happened when real wages were reduced even in the most dynamic sectors of the Brazilian economy. The fact that the economic boom of the Lula years happened when 95% of the new job positions created in the country paid up to 1.5 minimum wages is likewise remarkable.

112  Rômulo Lima 9. From now on, I will drop the surname (Rousseff ) and refer to the former president simply as Dilma, as Brazilians generally do. 10. The sociological notion of “traditional” middle class is used here to describe the Brazilian social group whose members’ occupations usually require higher education degrees, such as doctors, lawyers, engineers, managers, and company executives, for example. Statistically, it corresponds roughly to the upper-middle class. Sociologically, it could be also dubbed petty bourgeoisie. In turn, the “statistical” middle class (as referred to later) merely describes the intermediary income group between the richest and the poorest. Thus, in Brazil, regarding the level of income, the statistical middle class stays below the traditional middle class. In this sense, the traditional middle class comprises about 10% of the Brazilian population, placed just below the wealthiest 1% or 2%. 11. A typical example of the middle classes’ selective indignation against corruption could be seen as President Temer was indicted for corruption while still in office. In a disconcerting contrast to what had happened under Dilma, any important mass protest was seen against the new president. 12. See https://t1p.de/mny2. 13. See https://t1p.de/dnps. 14. See https://t1p.de/0obl. 15. See https://t1p.de/9qwz. 16. Paulo Guedes received his PhD in economics at the University of Chicago and worked as professor at the University of Chile during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. 17. The liberalization shock under implementation since the Temer administration is impressive: it touches upon labor laws (suppression of directives against slaverysimilar working conditions and a labor law reform that, through flexibilization, brings the very informality to the core of the formal relations of labor); environmental rules (extinction of protection areas in the Amazon Rainforest); privatization of state companies (including the strategic fields of sanitation, water supply, energy production, and oil); the drastic reduction of public funding for education and research, etc. With Bolsonaro, however, this may just be the beginning.

References Bertola, Luís, Cecilia Castelnovo, and Henry Willebald. 2012. “Income distribution in Brazil, 1870–1920.” XXVII Jornadas Anuales de Economía. Banco Central del Uruguay, Montevideo. Available at: www.bcu.gub.uy/Comunicaciones/Jornadas%20 de%20Economa/iees03j3551112.pdf. Cardoso, Adalberto. 2008. “Slavery and Capitalist Sociality: An Essay on Social Inertia.” Novos Estudos CEBRAP (Special Edition in English) 4: 1–21. ———. 2010. A construção da sociedade do trabalho no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: FGV. Cunha, Daniel. 2019. “Bolsonarism and Frontier Capitalism.” The Brooklyn Rail, February 2019. Available at: https://brooklynrail.org/2019/02/field-notes/Bolsona rism-and-Frontier-Capitalism. IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics). 2013. PNAD (Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios). Available at: https://biblioteca.ibge.gov.br/ visualizacao/livros/liv94414.pdf. ———. 2015. Indicadores de Desenvolvimento Sustentável. Available at: https://biblio teca.ibge.gov.br/visualizacao/livros/liv94254.pdf. Machado, Flávio. 2018. Renda e produtividade nas últimas duas décadas. Série Panorama Brasil. São Paulo: Insper/Oliver Wyman. Available at: www.oliverwyman. com/content/dam/oliver-wyman/v2/publications/2017/apr/panorama-brasil-paper1pt.pdf.

Bolsonaro and Brazilian Social Crisis 113 Morgan, Marc. 2017. Extreme and Persistent Inequality: New Evidence for Brazil combining National Accounts, Survey and Fiscal Data, 2001–2015. WID. World Working Paper Series 2017/12. Neri, Marcelo. 2014. “Poverty Reduction and Wellbeing: Lula’s Real.” In Brazil under the Workers’ Party, edited by F. Castro, K. Koonings, and M. Wiesebron, 102–125. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). 2017. Revenue Statistics in Latin America and the Caribbean 1990–2015. Available at: https:// publications.iadb.org/publications/english/document/Revenue-Statistics-in-LatinAmerica-and-the-Caribbean-1990-2015.pdf. Oliveira, Francisco de. 2003. Crítica da razão dualista. São Paulo: Boitempo. ———. 2007. “O momento Lênin.” In A era da indeterminação, edited by Francisco de Oliveira and Cibele Risek, 257–288. São Paulo: Boitempo. Pochmann, Márcio. 2012. Nova classe média? São Paulo: Boitempo. Prado Jr., Caio. 1967. The Colonial Background of Modern Brazil. Berkeley Los Angeles: University of California Press. Sampaio Jr., Plinio. 2007. “Globalização e reversão neocolonial: o impasse brasileiro.” In Filosofía y teorías políticas entre la crítica y la utopía, edited by Guillermo H. Vásquez, 143–155. Buenos Aires: CLACSO. Singer, André. 2012. Os sentidos do lulismo. São Paulo: Cia. das Letras. ———. 2018. O lulismo em crise. Rio de Janeiro: Cia. das Letras. WID (World Inequality Database). 2018. World Inequality Report 2018. Available at: https://wir2018.wid.world/files/download/wir2018-full-report-english.pdf.

8 The Post-Depressive Constellation From Political Effervescence to the Rise of Right-Wing Authoritarianism in Brazil Arthur Bueno1 1. Introduction At this point, few if any observers would consider it exaggerated to characterize Brazil’s recent political life as marked by permanent turmoil. An undeniable milestone in this process were the demonstrations of June  2013: in the wake of the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street, and in anticipation of a series of protests that would later surface in other parts of the world, the “Journeys of June” signaled a decisive political shift in the country. A striking feature of this event – also shared by many of these other protests, despite their differences – was its initial political indeterminacy. Millions of people from a variety of social and political backgrounds went out to the streets and took part in a widespread, intense and diffuse revolt against the political system as a whole. What had begun as a local protest organized by a small autonomist group against the rising prices of public transportation progressively gained momentum until it turned, in rapid escalation, into a generalized revolt featuring a wide variety of political claims. At their peak, the 2013 demonstrations were marked by the pervasive feeling  – well captured by one of the placards which became famous at the time – that “There are so many things wrong that they don’t fit one placard.” Yet in the months and years that followed, this rather vague political force came to take on progressively consolidated forms in the course of an oscillating dynamic in which moments of polarized struggle between different social groups were intertwined by situations of distention or new indeterminacy. It suffices to list some of these moments to give an idea of the intensity of Brazil’s political life after June 2013. Since then a federal investigation against corruption, Operation Car Wash, came to target powerful economic and political actors – in particular leading figures of Lula’s and Dilma Rousseff’s governments – and became a source of permanent struggle and legal instability. In 2014 President Rousseff (PT) was re-elected amid questioning of the election’s legitimacy by her opponent in the second round, Aécio Neves (PSDB), and only two years later, after a long series of mass demonstrations from both sides, removed from office by the National Congress. The government of her former vice-president, Michel Temer (PMDB)  – supported by a plethora of

The Post-Depressive Constellation 115 political forces comprising both earlier supporters and oppositionists of Rousseff’s administration – then came to experience the lowest rates of popularity of recent decades amidst an economic crisis deepened by the enforcement of fiscal austerity policies and ongoing corruption scandals prompted by Operation Car Wash. The country later saw former President Lula be charged by the same criminal investigation and taken to prison in 2018, what prevented him from running for office at a moment when polls indicated his possible victory. It witnessed in the same year the assassination of the politician and human rights activist Marielle Franco (PSOL), who had successfully made her way from the favelas to city councilor of Rio de Janeiro. Finally, it watched the political rise and presidential election of Jair Bolsonaro (PSC), a congressman historically linked to the defense of the military dictatorship (1964–85) and – as it would only recently become widely recognized – associated with members of paramilitary forces (known as “militia”) suspected of involvement in the murder of Marielle Franco. Few days after the election, Bolsonaro nominated Sérgio Moro, the federal judge who sentenced Lula to prison and rose to prominence with Operation Car Wash, as Minister of Justice. In half a decade, Brazil’s political life thus oscillated from the diffuse and quite ambivalent enthusiasm of June 2013 to an increasing ideological polarization which culminated in the election of Jair Bolsonaro. It was in the midst of this process that a “new Right” was seen to emerge and assumed a hitherto unprecedented role in the country’s political struggles. While right-wing discourses and practices have deep roots in Brazilian society, not ceasing to be present with the transition from the military dictatorship to the “New Republic” established by the 1988 Constitution (Pierucci 1987, 1989), from 2013 on they took center stage and came to be explicitly encamped by a plethora of social movements, assuming more ideologically marked as well as more combative forms. A neoconservatism emerged, then, that no longer manifested itself predominantly in taken-for-granted practices  – as those carried out by state apparatuses such as the police and the army, both still largely structured along the authoritarian directives of the dictatorship period  – and a diffuse depoliticization, but rather through the articulation of relatively coherent ideological discourses (Chaloub and Perlatto 2016; Fernandes and Vieira 2019) and a variety of organized struggles for hegemony: against communism and “cultural Marxism,” against feminism and “gender ideology,” against quotabased distributive policies and in favor of meritocracy, for nationalism but also for the radicalization of neoliberal economic policies, for more permissive gun laws and even for a novel “military intervention” (Cruz et  al. 2015; Telles 2015; Messenberg 2017; Solano 2018; Rocha 2019a). This was certainly not the outcome of an unambiguous development. While one of the striking features of the 2013 protests was the unequivocal return of the (far) right to the streets, the “Journeys of June” also gave new impetus to a variety of left-wing movements: feminist, antiracist, LGBTQI, for public education and the right to the city, among others (Maricato et al. 2013; Facchini and Rodrigues 2017; Medeiros and Fanti 2019; Medeiros et al. 2019). These

116  Arthur Bueno diverging tendencies can, however, be meaningfully grasped as part of one and same process insofar as they are considered against the backdrop of a general crisis that has taken Brazilian democracy and given new forms to its social struggles. Such a crisis has certainly many dimensions: it can be analyzed as an outcome of distributive conflicts between different social classes and groups (Braga 2017; Singer 2018), as well as in terms of a progressive delegitimization of the political system in relation to the demands of society (Nobre 2013b). Yet some of its aspects cannot be sufficiently understood, I contend, without taking into account the social psychological structure on which the previous political order was based and which can also be seen as having entered into crisis. The political events of the past years, including the rise of the new Right, may then come to appear as manifold reactions to the subjective tensions inherent to the institutional arrangement in force before the 2013 protests. From such a perspective, what we are dealing with is not only the crisis of a social-political order but also of a corresponding form of subjectivity: one, as I will argue in this essay, for which experiences of psychological malaise came to be predominantly conceived of in terms of depression.

2. From Depression to Post-Depression? The turn to the 21st century took place largely under the sign of depression. The “noonday demon,” as Andrew Solomon referred to it in his 2001 best seller, appeared not only to afflict ever larger portions of the population but also to symbolize some of the most pressing problems of contemporary life. More than to just mark the spread of an individual illness, the rapid rise in the rates of depression was seen to constitute an index of major social transformations occurring after the Second World War and especially since the 1960s. Psychological suffering seemed, then, no longer to be predominantly displayed in the classical neurotic symptoms of Freud’s time, but rather in feelings of exhaustion, emptiness, and an inability to act (Ehrenberg 2010 [1998]). While Freudian neurosis consisted in an illness of guilt in which the subject felt torn between the allowed and the forbidden, the authority of the law and the force of repressed drives, depression can be described as an illness of inadequacy in which everything is apparently allowed but one feels nevertheless unable to measure up to the full range of available possibilities. “If, as Freud thought, ‘a person becomes neurotic because he cannot tolerate the amount of frustration which society imposes on him,’ he becomes depressed because he must tolerate the illusion that everything is possible for him” (ibid., 232). Split between the possible and the impossible, the endlessly available and what one is actually able to accomplish, the depressed individual is a person “out of gas”: “Tired and empty, restless and violent – in short, nervous – we feel the weight of our individual sovereignty” (ibid., 9). This shift from neurosis to depression in clinical diagnoses was considered by many the sign of a new social order: one in which individuals came to be faced with ever stronger requirements of self-responsibility and authentic

The Post-Depressive Constellation  117 self-realization – the demand of “being oneself” or, as suggested by a popular self-help book, one’s Best Self: Be You, Only Better – in a context of declining social support and escalating inequality, competition, and precarity (Boltanski and Chiapello 2017 [1998]; Sennett 1998). As a result of an “elective affinity” between the development of a financialized, post-Fordist regime of accumulation and the diffusion of Romantic and aesthetic ideals of personal authenticity, a “new individualism” (Honneth 2004 [2002]) was seen to emerge in which disciplinary obedience gave way to entrepreneurial initiative (Bröckling 2016 [2007]; Dardot and Laval 2014 [2010]). Rather than guided (and constrained) by universal and relatively fixed patterns of rationality, this new subject would be driven by the possibility (and demand) of continuously sustaining a singular, authentic life (Reckwitz 2017): one that is both self-discovered and experimentally created, emotionally communicative and flexibly adapted to ever-changing market conditions. If the role model of such a society is represented by the neoliberal “entrepreneur of the self” in search for both authenticity and success, its antitype is nothing other than the depressive subject. When the enterprise becomes a life-form  – a Lebensführung, as Weber would have put it – the multiplicity of choices to be made on a daily basis, the incitement to continual risk-taking, and the constant encouragement of personal capitalisation are liable to entail a “weariness of the self” in the long run. (Dardot and Laval 2014 [2010], 292) The depressive individual marks the point at which the requirement of being an entrepreneur of the self becomes subjectively problematic: when the prospect of authentic self-realization turns into emptiness and exhaustion, when the search for self-determination ends up in a sense of alienation (Rosa 2016; Jaeggi 2016). Moving between the entrepreneur of the self and its depressive counterpoint, social experience then takes the form of a “frantic stagnation”: the perception that one must keep moving forward and trying harder – at ever faster rates, preferably faster than the others – without actually feeling one is going anywhere (Rosa 2013 [2005], 2011). More than just a clinical diagnosis, depression has thus become a keyword for various kinds of subjective failure with regard to normative expectations institutionalized in the last decades of the 20th century. As a result of the shift of emphasis from discipline and norm-conformity to individual initiative and self-discovered identity, two central problems of modernity – the interrelated perils of lack of autonomy and lack of authenticity – have come to take on specific forms. Instead of proving themselves as autonomous beings by asserting capacities they possess as general members of the human species, individuals have increasingly attempted to do so by employing creative forces that make them appear as singular with regard to others (Reckwitz 2017). It is in this respect that depression represents, as Ehrenberg (2003) emphasized, a “disease

118  Arthur Bueno of autonomy.” Now by virtue of the same process, depression can also be interpreted as a “disease of authenticity.” Whereas subjects would once seek selfrealization by referring to a core personality conceived of as intimate, even unfathomable, and as such largely held apart from public scrutiny, they have come to do so more and more by the success-oriented mobilization of personal, affective capacities viewed as both open to transformation and permeable to external evaluation: they are “invented” as much as “discovered” (Honneth 2004 [2002]). This social configuration – which we may designate metonymically as the depressive society – is pervaded by escalating tensions, and yet it managed to maintain a considerable degree of stability in the past decades. So much so that, at the turn of the 21st century, such institutional arrangement seemed by its very logic to hinder the articulation of depressive symptoms and associated forms of psychological malaise in terms of explicit political claims and organized struggles (cf. Honneth 2000, 2009 [2004]). Today, however, we reached a point at which the pressures of this order have intensified to such an extent that its persistence appears to be seriously compromised: it does not seem possible to remain for much longer in a state of frantic stagnation. From the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street, from June 2013 in Brazil to the gilets jaunes in France, from Brexit to the elections of Trump and Bolsonaro, many political events of our time suggest an exhaustion of the social configuration which had been stabilized in recent decades. They equally seem to indicate an exhaustion of the forms of subjectivity which came to prevail in that order. It is in this regard that I suggest we speak of a post-depressive constellation: a situation in which the social psychological tensions of the depressive order have reached a peak, leading to a variety of reactions and struggles but not yet to the establishment of a new consensus and a stable institutional framework. The prefix “post” thus does not designate here an overcoming of the depressive society and its prevailing forms of subjectivity; it rather indicates the persistence and transformation of that order’s conflicts in the context of its crisis. It is on the basis of, and in reaction to, the exacerbation of tensions linked to the institutionalization of an entrepreneurial-depressive subjectivity that a constellation of varied, and oftentimes opposing, forms of social psychological experience as well as a diversity of conflicting political horizons can be seen to have surfaced.

3. Depressive Brazil While the emergence of this configuration can be taken to consist in a global phenomenon, it has assumed a specific form in Brazilian society. As mentioned earlier, since 2013 the country’s political life has been marked by intense social struggles and ongoing institutional disruptions in a context marked by a deepening economic crisis. This situation contrasts sharply with the decade that preceded it: during Lula’s two presidential mandates (2003–10) and the first two years of Rousseff’s government (2011–12), Brazil experienced a period of

The Post-Depressive Constellation  119 economic growth, mitigation of extreme poverty, and relative social ascension by the lower classes to such a degree that for many a “new middle class” (Neri 2011) or, more accurately, a “new working class” (Pochmann 2012; Singer 2012) had emerged. This was a time of rising expectations, and one then had the impression that, as stated in the cover of a 2009 edition of The Economist, Brazil was “taking off.” Yet those incipient forms of social progress not only relied on specific economic conditions (e.g., the 2000s “commodities boom” and the expansion of microcredit [cf. Carvalho 2018]) but were also bounded by a political configuration characteristic of the country’s New Republic: one in which demands for social inclusion were counteracted by, and had to be constantly negotiated with, the interests of well-established actors. Particularly significant in this regard was a bundle of powerful yet ideologically loose political parties, epitomized by the PMDB and largely symbiotic to the state apparatus, as well as an economic elite whose financial profits increasingly depended on the enforcement of neoliberal policies. It is on this basis that one can describe such a period in terms of an “immobility in motion” (Nobre 2013a): i.e., an ongoing and conflictual adjustment between a “social developmental” consensus welcoming the expansion of rights, on the one hand, and a political-economic core functioning as a veto system and imposing ever-renewed barriers to those demands, on the other. This conflictual arrangement also explains other important features of that period. As a new working class gained strength and voice, labor conditions turned increasingly precarious and social ascension came to be predominantly understood in terms of a competition for individual self-realization and success (Braga 2012). Such a tendency was equally expressed in the dissemination of forms of conspicuous consumption framed by discourses of personal authenticity emphasizing not only inter-class but also, and perhaps most significantly, intra-class competition (Pinheiro-Machado and Scalco 2014; Caldeira 2014). Something similar applies to the role played by evangelical neo-Pentecostal churches, whose cultural importance grew steadily in that period: here again, the path to social ascension and improvement of one’s life was largely understood as relying on a charismatic connection to God conceived as both leading to and being attested by the individual’s entrepreneurial effort and success in the world (Côrtes 2018). A new subjectivity was thus formed in this period: one that presents considerable similarities – if also important differences – with the type of subject highlighted by those analyses of depression formulated in the context of the richer countries of the West and, for the most part, of their middle classes (Ehrenberg 2010 [1998]; Honneth 2004 [2002]; Dardot and Laval 2014 [2010]; Rosa 2011). The precarious worker, the ascending consumer, the enthusiastic believer, the threatened member of the middle class, even the rich wary of its social standing  – all these can be seen to constitute different versions of an “entrepreneur of the self” eager to explore the full range of available possibilities to affirm their autonomy through individual initiative as well as to find

120  Arthur Bueno authenticity in the creation of a successful “best self.” And yet, as the Brazilian case also shows, such attempts cannot but face limitations intrinsic to the order in which they emerge: namely, those manifested in a sense of intensified individual competition as well as in the perception that one’s attempts to succeed come to be blocked, again and again, by apparently insurmountable powers “from above.” It is precisely to those limits that many political processes and movements of the past years, despite their differences, can be seen to have responded. And it is in such regard that they may be grasped as particular moments of a broader “post-depressive constellation.”

4. The Politics of Exhaustion Yet on what conceptual grounds can one argue that our social and political present, in particular as it has taken shape in Brazil, may be seen to consist in a post-depressive situation? The pertinence of such an account can be founded, I contend, on the fact that the forms of social struggle and political action which have become prominent in the past years may be meaningfully interpreted as reactions to two central features of the depressive order, two interconnected sources of its frantic stagnation. It is clear, on the one hand, that recent political movements build on the widespread dissatisfaction with a social order that has largely presented itself as unavoidable. The dictum “There Is No Alternative” not only served to legitimize neoliberal economic policies adopted to varying degrees by governments on the Right and the Left, but also presented an eloquent expression of the way in which subjects came to relate to social institutions in general, many of which were reshaped in the image and likeness of the “laws of the market.” One of its political consequences was a significant limitation of popular participation and a widespread sense of closure of the political system in relation to society – a perception that could only become more acute in a context of rising inequality and failed responses to economic crises. It does not come as a surprise, then, that several movements of our time manifest a certain resentment towards the ruling elites and claims for more participation: they can, indeed, be seen to constitute a reaction to the fatalism of the prevailing forms of social regulation.2 But contemporary political processes can also be viewed as reactions to another feature of the depressive order: i.e., the structuration of social life as a market-like competition between atomized individuals, each of whom is held responsible for his or her own success and self-realization (a notion that was, again, synthetized by one of Thatcher’s mottos: “There is no such thing as a society”). However, the demand that each person should be a self-sufficient individual has resulted in growing feelings of isolation and social fragmentation. The fact that the neoliberal homo economicus incorporated aspects of the Romantic ideal of authentic self-discovery did not mitigate those negative effects. Rather, it raised the stakes and was bound to increase the frustration of those who cannot fulfil the demands of achieving success and “being oneself.” Such a feeling could only become more acute as social benefits were gradually

The Post-Depressive Constellation 121 removed and larger parts of the population found themselves in a situation of precarity and uncertainty. It does not come as a surprise, then, that several political movements of our time manifest a desire for experiences of affective communion: they can be seen to constitute, in this regard, a reaction to the prevailing forms of social disintegration. Typical of the post-depressive situation are hence forms of political struggle which respond to the tensions of the depressive society in ways that point, at least potentially, towards the constitution of a different social order. But even if (or precisely because) they can be seen as reactions to the central problems of the depressive configuration – in particular its normative fatalism and its affective fragmentation – it would be misleading to conceive of these movements as simply external to that institutional order. Rather, in both these regards the political struggles of the present can be seen to build upon tensions and potentials inherent to the depressive society. The self-responsible and authentic “entrepreneur of the self” already consists in an internally conflicted ideal. It implies, on the one hand, the promise that by experimentally discovering one’s own singularity one would be able to establish a meaningful connection, a sense of communion with others and the world. Such an ideal also points, on the other hand, to the notion that market-like forms of regulation would allow for a legitimate balance between personal activity and normative cohesion, individual autonomy and collective self-determination. So much so that, if these potentials are not fulfilled – when the emphasis on self-sufficient singularity results in social disintegration and the enforcement of market-like regulations leads to a sense of normative closure – they may bring forth, again and again, precisely those demands for affective communion and normative self-determination. What seems to characterize our current situation is, however, that the realization of these unfulfilled promises is to a great extent no longer sought in the framework of the depressive order, but rather by attempts of moving beyond it. Depressive exhaustion has itself, so to speak, come to a point of exhaustion. And yet, the post-depressive situation is not characterized by a single cohesive form of political action or organization. What connects its many and often contradictory expressions is rather the fact that they can all be seen as responses to the escalating tensions of the depressive society. We are dealing not so much with a new order as with a new constellation, a set of different reactions and political stances. Two of the latter have become prominent in the past years and are crucial to understand recent political processes in Brazil. The first consists in what I suggest designating as “post-depressive effervescence.”

5. Post-Depressive Effervescence The 2013 demonstrations in Brazil, as many of the political uprisings of the 2010s, were marked in their decisive moments by experiences of affective immersion in a vaguely structured collectivity as well as by the absence of clearly defined goals. These two features are crucial to understand why they

122  Arthur Bueno can be seen as expressions of a post-depressive situation: it was due to, and not in spite of, their normative and affective vagueness that those uprisings could be perceived as powerful contestations of the predominant social order. The political indeterminacy of these movements, for which they were so often criticized, was also the basis of their attraction: it allowed for a sense of togetherness based on the participation in a shared affective atmosphere, an experience that could appear as a counterpoint to the competitive atomization of the depressive order. A decisive moment in the 2013 demonstrations in Brazil occurred when, on 17 June, a protest initially prompted by the high cost of public transportation and propelled by an autonomist group  – the Free Fare Movement (MPL) – was joined by millions of people who, coming from multiple social and political backgrounds, protested for an equally wide diversity of political aims (Nobre 2013b; Alonso and Mische 2016). As if from one moment to the next, everything that drew these multiple actors apart no longer seemed to hold. In the words of one of the protesters: On that day I saw a lot of people arriving with the Brazilian flag, some organised groups distributing Brazilian flags, anarchists, black blocs, people from PSOL, from the Workers’ Party . . . I thought: “There are a lot of people here that hate each other, and they are all together.” During the demonstration, I felt that that was really beautiful. When I came home, I saw that some people were worried, writing on Facebook: “let’s get out of the streets,” “the right is trying to co-opt,” “we’re losing focus.” But actually, I came home feeling delighted.3 These statements capture well the general atmosphere of that day: an excited feeling of togetherness, a sense that social and political differences were no longer irreconcilable but rather could give rise to a sort of affective unity established in and out of diversity (Moraes et al. 2014). This is crucial to understand the thrust of that movement as well as why it could be felt as a reaction to the prevailing forms of social fragmentation. In contrast to the selfsufficiency of the “entrepreneur of the self” and the isolation of the depressive subject, the experience of finding oneself on the streets with a multitude of people was felt by many as an affectively liberating or “cathartic” one (Bringel and Pleyers 2015, 8). Now, it is clear that this (rather indeterminate) sense of affective togetherness arose in connection with, and was premised on, the confrontation with a common (yet also quite roughly defined) antagonist: the political system, prevailing institutions, tudo isso que está aí (“all that is there”). The experience of collective effervescence was made possible as well as intensified by its conjunction with radical, if momentary, challenges to established norms and corresponding claims for more direct or substantive political participation (Mendonça 2018). Confrontations with the police, blockages of the streets, occupations of public institutions: from one moment to the next, life no longer seemed to be constrained by a set of immutable, fatal laws. One rather felt that the collectivity would from then on establish its own

The Post-Depressive Constellation 123 norms, that the population would exert its constituent power. As expressed by one of the protesters: Someone called us and said: “They are invading the National Congress.” I felt a very high adrenaline, as if a Bastille would fall down on that day. That is why I went to the Palace of Bandeirantes [head office of the São Paulo state government]. I thought: “If they are going to remove the governor by force, I want at least to see that.”4 In contrast to the self-entrepreneur’s adaptation to pre-given norms and the depressive subject’s feeling of impotence, the experience of challenging the established order could give one the sense that they regained the capacity for effective collective self-determination, the possibility of actively participating in the construction of social institutions. Such moments have proven to be, however, inherently unstable. Soon the perception arose that this sense of togetherness is made of heterogeneous elements which are not easily reconcilable; soon those involved realized that their normative standpoints can lead to radically different political arrangements. A new set of tensions derived precisely from the normative vagueness and affective indeterminacy of these movements. They marked the beginning of struggles concerning the political meaning and institutional articulation of that intense yet quite ambivalent collective experience. In the early stages of the Journey of June one could, indeed, already notice the emergence of conflicting stances regarding the political significance of the protests. Each of these positions can be discerned as a specific response to the practical challenges posed by such a disrupting event. There were those, for instance, who claimed that the demonstrations should be further pursued precisely in the shape in which they had initially presented themselves: as an overall rupture with prevailing norms in tandem with the sustenance of a vague and affectively charged “common.” Such was the position defended by several of those associated with the autonomist movements that had taken the front line of the demonstrations (cf. Pelbart 2013; Moraes et  al. 2014). For their part, many sectors of the center-left closer to the Workers’ Party considered the political indeterminacy of the Journeys of June – which had not only paved the way for an insurgence against PT administrations but also for a return of the (far) right to the streets – as a risk to democratic institutions and the social achievements of the Lula and Rousseff governments (cf. Souza 2016). In doing so, however, they could not avoid appearing as advocates of a political-social order whose normative fatalism and affective disintegration were precisely being challenged. Other political groups equally criticized the institutional rupture caused by the protests and advocated a return to the previous social configuration, yet not so much with a view to expanding social rights but rather to intensifying market-friendly policies already underway. This was the position assumed by center-right parties such as the PSDB and the PMDB (later made explicit in the proposal of a “Bridge to the Future” presented in the first

124  Arthur Bueno days of Temer’s government) as well as by new right-wing movements that emerged in the wake of the protests, e.g., the Free Brazil Movement (MBL) (cf. Rocha 2019b). Others still, while seeking to retain the affective intensity and sense of togetherness which irrupted in the Journeys of June, claimed that such a state could only be secured and stabilized within a novel institutional order: one supposed to guarantee social and normative cohesion by repressive means and which would represent, in many regards, a rupture with the New Republic founded by the 1988 Constitution (cf. Messenberg 2017). This is a crucial feature of the far-right that gained traction in the wake of the 2013 demonstrations and came to assume over the years a leading role in the country’s politics.

6. Post-Depressive Authoritarianism Brazil’s political history since 2013 may, then, be understood in terms of an ongoing struggle between the normative-affective horizons projected by these stances as well as their combinations. While Rousseff’s re-election in 2014 represented a momentary victory for the center-left proposal of gradual expansion of social inclusion as had been pursued in previous years (even if, at this point, implying an even greater commitment to the neoliberal program of fiscal austerity), during her government a series of mass protests followed which were no longer marked by the political indeterminacy of the Journeys of June but rather by a stronger polarization between the Right and the Left or, more specifically, between those against and for Rousseff’s impeachment. With her removal from office in 2016, a new administration led by President Michel Temer (PMDB) ensued which explicitly aimed at the enforcement of a radicalized program of neoliberal austerity reforms. Yet far from taming the politicaleconomic crisis that had developed in previous years, this process rather led to its intensification. The sense of growing affective disintegration – manifested most visibly in the polarization between political claims which appeared as ultimately irreconcilable – then came to be accompanied by a significant loss of legitimacy of the institutional order, with the increasing perception that the latter would no more than express the particular interests of powerful actors and their interplay. It is in this context that far-right movements which had surfaced in the Journeys of June – if then only with a marginal role – gained momentum until they culminated in the election of Bolsonaro in 2018. If one can interpret the recent rise of the far-right as part of a post-depressive constellation, it is to the extent that this process may be interpreted as a reaction to the intensification of the democratic crisis in the aftermath of Rousseff’s impeachment and during Temer’s government: a crisis characterized by a feeling of affective disintegration and radicalization of social conflict, on the one hand, and an acute delegitimization of the normative-institutional order, on the other. While the rise of the (far) right and the election of Bolsonaro should not be seen as unavoidable outcomes of such a double-edged crisis, they certainly cannot be understood without reference to it. The growing perception of social

The Post-Depressive Constellation 125 fragmentation may explain why, similarly to what had occurred in the Journeys of June, the upsurge of the new Right has been characterized by intense expectations of affective communion. The 2015 and 2016 protests against Rousseff’s government which led to her impeachment were, in fact, marked by states of collective excitement reminiscent of those of the 2013 demonstrations. Yet they also differed in important regards. Even while bringing together a variety of positions across the political spectrum, the protests against Rousseff took place in a context of intensifying ideological polarization and were more clearly manifestations of the Right. They hence not only helped to create some form of unified action on such a camp but also consolidated the far-right as a relevant political actor: amidst the millions of people who rallied against corruption wearing the colors of the national flag, one could hear not only warnings against the alleged “communism” of the Workers’ Party and the threat posed by “gender ideology” for the preservation of traditional family values, but also acclamations of the military dictatorship (1964–85) and demands for a novel “military intervention.” In a sense, then, the experience of being immersed in a heterogeneous multitude gave way here to more uniform and exclusionary conceptions of (national) communion. Rather than constituting the political expression of a multiple and indeterminate “common,” as it was at least momentarily the case in the Journeys of June, these protests largely vocalized the moral defense of a socially homogeneous community. Such a view would later play a crucial role in the 2018 election of Jair Bolsonaro, whose main slogan – “Brazil Above Everything, God Above Everyone”  – not only evocated Trump’s “Make America Great Again” but also literally, if not admittedly, Hitler’s “Deutschland über alles.” This political view can, thus, be seen to respond to social disintegration in a particularly defensive manner: it takes affective togetherness to be possible only by way of an exclusion or even elimination of extraneous and corrupting elements, be they “communists” or “cultural Marxists” (associated with the Workers’ Party and the Left), “scroungers” or “criminals” (associated with the racialized poor), “enemies of the family” or “pedophilia advocates” (associated with feminist and LGBTQI movements), or other deviant figures from the perspective of moral conservatism. Yet the new far-right has not only reacted to the perception of affective fragmentation by advancing a moral crusade against sexual minorities, political opponents and sectors of the “dangerous classes” in the hopes of achieving a rather homogeneous form of social cohesion. It has also responded in a particular way to the growing sense of normative delegitimization which achieved its peak during the Temer administration. In the context of failed attempts to mitigate a deepening economic crisis (via the radicalization of market-friendly policies) and the emergence of ever-new corruption scandals (resulting from Operation Car Wash), what came to be felt by many as problematic about social institutions is not so much that they seem to embody seemingly inexorable “laws of nature” – as it was the case in the depressive order – but rather that we apparently live in a world in which “natural” norms have lost their efficacy.

126  Arthur Bueno In this regard, the authoritarian subject reacts less to a state of fatalism than to a perceived situation of anomie, i.e. a sense that forms of regulation no longer hold which would be able to provide social relations with order and stability. This explains why such a political view is not oriented towards the suspension of prevailing norms, as in the collective effervescence of June 2013, but rather towards the establishment of a repressive order. In reaction to a society perceived as socially disintegrated and anomically deregulated, the authoritarian claims for a political community which could extirpate disintegrating elements and enforce norms coercive or violent enough to retain their effectiveness. Besides authoritarian, the new Brazilian far-right is also – and quite strikingly, in view of the features of the depressive order it responds to – characterized by claims for an even further radicalization of the neoliberal project. Bolsonaro’s presidential campaign was, indeed, explicitly marked by an alliance between the defense of moral conservatism and the repressive enforcement of norms, on the one hand, and a radically neoliberal economic program, on the other (Puzone and Miguel 2019). Such an alliance is certainly pervaded by tensions, yet not necessarily incongruent – both with regard to its historical emergence and its political form. Inasmuch as the roots of the crisis came to be largely associated with Workers’ Party administrations, the way was paved for an identification of the problems of the depressive order with the Left and everything connected to it. In this context, it became reasonable for many to envision a way out of the crisis in the implementation of a program of economic reforms which would reinforce, rather than contest, the notion that one must abide to the “laws of the market” as well as attempt to become a successful “entrepreneur of the self.” Specific to such a radicalized affirmation of neoliberalism, in contrast to other previous instantiations, is precisely its combination with an explicitly authoritarian stance that draws its impetus from the crisis of the depressive order. New authoritarianism and radical neoliberalism are mixed here in a peculiar – we may say: post-depressive – manner. Their political alliance leads, on the one hand, to the notion that an affective communion could be established that would be based on the exclusion or elimination of every heterogeneous element, i.e. each and every one who refuses or fails to comply to the ideal of a morally incorrupt entrepreneur of the self: “the good citizen” (an expression that became wide-spread in Brazil as the new Right rose to prominence). It also leads, on the other hand, to the idea that a sufficiently cohesive normative order could be achieved only by means of the undeterred, and unapologetically brutal if necessary, enforcement of the “laws of the market”: there shall not be an alternative.

7. Conclusion Such a political project is, as the previous ones addressed in this essay, pervaded by tensions. It is not only potentially explosive concerning its effects to social relations in general, and in particular to those groups that appear as its opponents. It is also internally conflicted by the very combination of new authoritarianism and radical neoliberalism  – and these have been, indeed, widely

The Post-Depressive Constellation  127 recognized at this point as two different poles of Bolsonaro’s government as well as two distinctive social movements on which it relies. And yet, the far-right feeds off that very instability: the production of an ever-renewed sense of social disintegration and normative disarray allows it to restate, once and once again, its promise that an integrated and regulated social order can only be achieved through the exclusion of extraneous or corrupting elements and the repressive enforcement of naturalized, market-friendly or market-like norms. Whether the conflicts it produces will conduce to the stabilization of a novel social order in line with that far-right project or rather lead to a different outcome is, at this point, an open question. It would be certainly misleading to consider such a project the only political horizon of a post-­depressive situation as it has emerged in Brazil since the Journeys of June. Still, whatever path we might take in this regard cannot but come from the unfolding tensions and struggles posed by such a constellation.

Notes 1. An initial version of this paper was presented at the workshop “The Brazilian Coup d’État and the Right-Wing Tide” (26-27 September 2017) at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Berlin. I would like to thank all the participants for their comments on that occasion, as well as Bernardo Bianchi, Jorge Chaloub, Mariana Teixeira and Ricardo Juozepavicius Gonçalves for their further suggestions. 2. The arguments developed here and in the following pages rely on a specific understanding of Durkheim’s account of the social pathologies of modernity. Crucial in this regard is a distinction between two dimensions of sociality: social regulation (which refers to normative orders) and social integration (which refers to affective or atmospheric conditions). Social regulation moves between two poles: high or excessive normative constraint (“fatalism”) and high or excessive normative pulverization (“anomie”). Social integration, for its part, moves between the two poles of high or excessive affective atomization (“egoism”) and high or excessive affective dissolution (“altruism”). Cf. Durkheim (2013 [1893], 2005 [1897]); Bueno (2018). 3. From the documentary “Junho: O Mês que Abalou o Brasil,” directed by João Wainer (2014), produced by TV Folha. Available at: https://arte.folha.uol.com.br/ tvfolha/2014/05/20/junho/. 4. From the documentary “Junho: O Mês que Abalou o Brasil,” directed by João Wainer (2014), produced by TV Folha. Available at: https://arte.folha.uol.com.br/ tvfolha/2014/05/20/junho/.

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128  Arthur Bueno Bueno, Arthur. 2018. “Critique of Social Pathologies: Suffering, Integration, Regulation.” Paper presented at the event 20th Anniversary of the Max-Weber-Kolleg. Unpublished manuscript. Caldeira, Teresa Pires do Rio. 2014. “Qual a novidade dos rolezinhos? Espaço público, desigualdade e mudança em São Paulo.” Novos Estudos Cebrap 98: 13–20. Carvalho, Laura. 2018. Valsa brasileira: do boom ao caos econômico. São Paulo: Todavia. Chaloub, Jorge, and Fernando Perlatto. 2016. “A nova direita brasileira: ideias, retórica e prática política.” Insight Inteligência 72: 24–41. Côrtes, Mariana. 2018. “O dispositivo pentecostal e a agência dos governados.” Em Debate 10 (1): 31–38. Cruz, Sebastião, André Kaysel, and Gustavo Codas, eds. 2015. Direita, volver! O retorno da direita e o ciclo político brasileiro. São Paulo: Fundação Perseu Abramo. Dardot, Pierre, and Christian Laval. 2014 [2010]. The New Way of the World: On Neoliberal Society. London: Verso. Durkheim, Émile. 2005 [1897]. Suicide: A Study in Sociology. London: Routledge. ———. 2013 [1893]. The Division of Labour in Society. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Ehrenberg, Alain. 2003. “La dépression, maladie de l’autonomie? Interview d’Alain Ehrenberg.” Nervure 16 (3): 35–40. ———. 2009 [1998]. The Weariness of the Self: Diagnosing the History of Depression in the Contemporary Age. Montreal: McGill Queen’s University Press. Facchini, Regina, and Julian Rodrigues. 2017. “Que onda é essa? ‘Guerras culturais’ e movimento LGBT no cenário brasileiro contemporâneo.” In A diversidade e a livre expressão sexual entre as ruas, as redes e as políticas públicas, edited by Frederico Viana Machado, Fabiano Barnart, and Renan de Mattos, 35–60. Porto Alegre: Rede Unida/Nuances. Fernandes, Dmitri Cerboncini, and Allana Meirelles Vieira. 2019. “A  direita mora do mesmo lado da cidade: especialistas, polemistas e jornalistas.” Novos Estudos Cebrap 38 (1): 157–182. Honneth, Axel. 2000. “Pathologien der individuellen Freiheit. Hegels Zeitdiagnose und die Gegenwart.” In Darstellung: Korrespondenz, edited by Hans Belting and Jörg Huber. Vienna/New York: Springer. ———. 2004 [2002]. “Organized Self-realization: Some Paradoxes of Contemporary Individualization.” European Journal of Social Theory 7 (4): 463–478. ———. 2009 [2004]. “A  Social Pathology of Reason: On the Intellectual Legacy of Critical Theory.” In Pathologies of Reason: On the Legacy of Critical Theory. New York: Columbia University Press. Jaeggi, Rahel. 2016. “Nachwort zu Taschenbuchausgabe.” In Entfremdung. Zur Aktualität eines sozialphilosophischen Problems, Vol. 2. Auflage. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Maricato, H., et al. 2013. Cidades rebeldes: passe livre e manifestações que tomaram as ruas do Brasil. São Paulo: Boitempo. Medeiros, Jonas, Adriano Januário, and Rúrion Melo, eds. 2019. Ocupar e resistir: movimentos de ocupação de escolas pelo Brasil (2015–2016). São Paulo: Editora, 34. Medeiros, Jonas, and Fabiola Fanti. 2019. “Recent Changes in the Brazilian Feminist Movement: The Emergence of New Collective Subjects.” In Socio-Political Dynamics within the Crisis of the Left Turn: Argentina and Brazil, edited by Juan Pablo Ferrero, Ana Natalucci, and Luciana Tatagiba, 221–241. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Mendonça, Ricardo Fabrino. 2018. “Dimensões democráticas nas Jornadas de Junho: reflexões sobre a compreensão de democracia entre manifestantes de 2013.” Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais 33 (98).

The Post-Depressive Constellation  129 Messenberg, Débora. 2017. “A direita que saiu do armário: a cosmovisão dos formadores de opinião dos manifestantes de direita brasileiros.” Sociedade e Estado 32 (3): 621–647. Moraes, Alana, Bernardo Gutiérrez, Henrique Parra, Hugo Albuquerque, Jean Tible, and Salvador Schavelzon. 2014. “Junho está sendo.” In Junho: potência das ruas e das redes, 10–21. São Paulo: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. Neri, Marcelo. 2011. A nova classe média: o lado brilhante da base da pirâmide. São Paulo: Saraiva. Nobre, Marcos. 2013a. Imobilismo em movimento: da redemocratização ao governo Dilma. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. ———. 2013b. Choque de democracia: razões da revolta. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. Pelbart, Peter Pál. 2013. “Anota aí: eu sou ninguém.” Folha de São Paulo, 19 July. Available at: https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/fsp/opiniao/119566-quotanota-ai-eusou-ninguemquot.shtml. Accessed on 5 December 2019. Pierucci, Antônio Flávio. 1987. “As bases da nova direita.” Novos Estudos Cebrap 19: 26–45. ———. 1989. “A direita mora do outro lado da cidade.” Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais 4 (10): 46–64. Pinheiro-Machado, Rosana, and Lucia Mury Scalco. 2014. “Rolezinhos: marcas, consumo e segregação no Brasil.” Revista Estudos Culturais 1 (1). Pochmann, Marcio. 2012. Nova classe média? O trabalho na base da pirâmide social. São Paulo: Boitempo. Puzone, Vladimir, and Luis Felipe Miguel. 2019. “A Brief Afterword: Brazilian Left Faces the Rise of Neofascism.” In The Brazilian Left in the 21st Century: Conflict and Conciliation in Peripheral Capitalism, 285–296. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Reckwitz, Andreas. 2017. Die Gesellschaft der Singularitäten: Zum Strukturwandel der Moderne. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Rocha, Camila. 2019a. “Menos Marx, mais Mises”: uma gênese da nova direita brasileira (2006–2018). PhD Dissertation in Political Science. University of São Paulo. ———. 2019b. “ ‘Imposto é roubo’. A formação de um contrapúblico ultraliberal e os protestos pró-impeachment de Dilma Rousseff.” Dados 62 (3). Rosa, Hartmut. 2011. “Beschleunigung und Depression. Überlegungen zum Zeitverhältnis der Moderne.” Psyche 65: 1041–1060. ———. 2013 [2005]. Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 2019 [2016]. Resonance: A Sociology of the Relationship to the World. Cambridge: Polity. Sennett, Richard. 1998. The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism. London and New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Singer, André. 2012. Os sentidos do lulismo: reforma gradual e pacto conservador. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. ———. 2018. O lulismo em crise: um quebra-cabeça do período Dilma (2011–2016). São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. Solano, Esther, ed. 2018. O ódio como política: a reinvenção das direitas no Brasil. São Paulo: Boitempo. Souza, Jessé. 2016. A radiografia do golpe: entenda como e por que você foi enganado. Rio de Janeiro: Leya. Telles, Helcimara. 2015. “O que os protestos trazem de novo para a política brasileira?” Em Debate 7 (2): 7–14. Wainer, João. 2014.“Junho: O Mês que Abalou o Brasil.” Documentary movie.

Part II

Social Regression

9 Paulo Freire’s Legacy and the Ideological Battle in Brazil Bernardo Bianchi1

1. Introduction In 2011, Congresswoman Luiza Erundina (PSB) sent Bill No. 50 to the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies: the bill in question would consecrate educator Paulo Freire as the patron of education in Brazil. Having received parliamentary approval, the bill was signed into law by President Dilma Rousseff the following year under No. 12,612. A year later, Freire’s literacy method celebrated its 50th anniversary. And yet, despite the bill’s passage, Law No. 12,612 would go largely ignored in the ensuing years. In 2016, Senator Magno Malta (PR-ES)2 presented Bill No. 193/2016 before the Senate, also known as the “Nonpartisan School” Bill (Escola Sem Partido). Although that initiative was fruitless, it paved the way for a proliferation of similar bills nationwide. In 2017, the Senate Commission of Human Rights rejected a request, backed by popular demand, to revoke law No. 12,612. Since the 2018 presidential election, Jair Bolsonaro has decried Freire’s influence in Brazil and made clear his intention of challenging Freire’s status as patron of national education. The honorary title conferred on Freire, Patron of Brazilian Education, represents a recognition of the author’s national importance. His writings have had significant repercussions in Brazil as well as internationally. In the late 1960s, having been exiled by the military dictatorship (1964–85), Freire began to receive widespread international acclaim and was eventually invited in the early 1970s to teach courses at Harvard University, and later still, serve as consultant for the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Geneva, Switzerland. During that same time period, his writings were published in English and began to attract the enthusiasm of educators and young people in the United States. This in turn led to a certain fetishistic admiration of his figure, since his method was prone to interpretations construing it as a panacea for any and all issues related to education. Freire received a number of honorary academic titles in the following years – from the University of Geneva (1979), the Complutense University of Madrid (1991), and the University of Chicago (1993), in addition to receiving awards like the 1986 UNESCO Prize for Peace Education. Gustavo Fischman noted in 2009 that “a decade after his death, all his books are still in print . . . in more than 60 languages; and his name has been used to

134  Bernardo Bianchi identify public and private schools, research centers, NGOs, and pre-schools in more than 45 countries” (Fischman 2009, 232). No doubt important, the “Patron” title had no real practical effect – it did not lead to new Freire-inspired public policies. Nor should the honorific be confused to mean that a Freirean pedagogy had been adopted as policy for the Brazilian educational system in the era of re-democratization (1975–85). In fact, the application of Freire’s method in contemporary Brazilian public education is limited. Following his return from exile in 1980, Freire worked as a university professor3 and served as Secretary of Education in São Paulo under the mayorship of Luiza Erundina (1989–91), at the time affiliated with the PT. That period was the only time that Freire was directly linked with fashioning public policy after 1964 in the area of education, and even then those initiatives were limited to the municipality of São Paulo. Notwithstanding the national importance of that city, the policies Freire formulated during the period did not extend to national educational policy. Despite its 13 years in the executive branch, the PT never managed to reform primary and secondary, non-university, education, which could have seen Freire’s methodology assume a level of national prominence. By no means does that mean that the PT did no prioritize education and its corresponding ministry, the latter being helmed by either technical appointments or important party cadres (Cristovam Buarque, 2003–4; Fernando Haddad, 2005–12; Renato Janine Ribeiro, 2015). Worth noting, the policies of inclusion implemented in the educational field, particularly strong during Haddad’s term as Education Minister, drew the ire of conservative and reactionary sectors of Brazilian society. These measures included both structural modifications, such as the National Minimum Professional Salary (PSPN)  – Law No.  11,738/2008  – as well as curricular modifications, such as obligatory instruction of Afro-­Brazilian and African culture and history in the schools – Law No. 11,645/2008. Whatever the case, it remains a rarity in Brazilian recent history that the PT did not realize any proper reform project – unlike other governments that did substantially alter national primary education. In 1971, the military regime approved sweeping educational reform through Law No. 5,692, which revised the Brazilian education system so that it would play a professionalizing and vocational role. In 1996, with the 1988 Constitution already in place, and during the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995–2002), Law No. 9,394 was enacted – the National Educational Bases and Guidelines Law. That law led to the creation of National Curricular Parameters (PCNs), issued by the Ministry of Education under Cardoso, between 1997 and 2000. Brazilian secondary, high-school level, education was reformed under Michel Temer’s (PMDB) government (2016–18) with the passage of Provisional Measure 746/2016, which would become Law No. 13,415/2017. That reform bore many similarities with the 1971 reform.4 Earlier, in 2012, Rousseff’s Ministry of Education had been studying the possibility of implementing a high-school reform bill, but that initiative was definitively buried with Temer’s 2016 reform (Oliveira 2017, 29). The latter reform established a National

Paulo Freire’s Legacy 135 Common Base Curriculum (BNCC), which, like the PCNs, sought to formulate guidelines for curricular content. In other words, Freirean methodology was largely absent from the main public documents  – the 1971 reform, the PCNs, and the 2017 reform – that have guided primary and secondary level education throughout the last 50 years. The demonstrable marginality of Freire in Brazilian educational policy serves to frame how the Brazilian ultra-right has developed its rhetorical strategy in recent years. In contemporary Brazilian political debate, the politicization of Freire’s work goes well beyond any sober assessment of his legacy as it relates to the national education system. Demonstrations calling for Rousseff’s impeachment in 2015 often attacked Freire’s figure, which in turn was identified with the PT. Banners reading “Enough Paulo Freire” showed that, despite all evidence to the contrary, the conservative camp had successfully convinced many people of a direct relationship between the PT government and the implementation of Freire-inspired educational policy, which in turn would come to be associated with “Marxist indoctrination.” This chapter seeks to extend the notion of de-democratization and its methodological concerns as they are developed in Chapter 1 of this edited volume. Specifically, my concern here is to emphasize the political dynamics culminating in the regression and collapse of Brazilian democracy. De-democratization is not understood here as the inevitable result or reconciliation with a “democratic illusion” underlying the implementation of the New Republic (1985), but rather as the effect of processes and political disputes. As Rômulo Lima points out in Chapter 7, the point here is not to deny the limits of re-democratization that were indeed intrinsic to the New Republic, but only to reject any analytic key that ignores the emergence of factors that would play a decisive role in determining the current Brazilian political situation. The present chapter is divided into three sections, focusing on: (1) the Nonpartisan School Movement (ESP); (2) the Brazilian political context in which Freire’s pedagogical project emerged; (3) the relation between politics and education in Paulo Freire.

2. The Nonpartisan School Movement The ESP movement emerged in 2004 but remained in the shadows of public debate for many years, until, finally, it started gaining political relevance in the 2010s. Its founding indictment was that Brazilian schools act as a privileged site for ideological manipulation. That initiative culminated in Bill No.  867/2015, which sought to have the nonpartisan program incorporated into the standards of national instruction. The project was shelved in 2019, but that did not prevent many other similar legal initiatives from being proposed. At present, the movement maintains an online platform where students and family members are encouraged to document professors’ in-class behavior, in order to prevent violations of “teacher neutrality.” According to Miguel Nagib, founder of ESP, practices considered to be in violation of neutrality are the following: “on the one hand, indoctrination, or ideological, political or partisan

136  Bernardo Bianchi propaganda in schools and universities; on the other hand, encroaching on parents’ right to provide religious and moral education for their children, by schools and professors” (2018). Even though the movement sought to present itself as ideologically neutral, documents issued by the ESP lead us to draw certain conclusions about its ideological slant: “the Left alone is responsible for instrumentalizing instruction for political and ideological ends; being opposed to this practice, we are seen as [their] ideological adversaries” (“FAQ – Escolasempartido.org: O ESP é de direita?” n.d.). This accusation, of left-wing indoctrination through educational establishments, has been a common practice in Brazil since the 1960s, particularly among law enforcement officials. Not only is the “indoctrination claim” an abiding feature of Brazilian history, it cannot be analyzed as if it were unique to the Brazilian ultra-right. Like its counterparts in the United States of America and Hungary, the Brazilian ultra-right views education and culture as playing a central role in the creation and consolidation of public consensus, and for laying the foundation of political communities. As defined by James Davison Hunter, the American culture wars refer to the emergence in the 1960s of polarized notions of political community, fundamentally different worldviews and moral systems (Hunter 1992, 42). These culture wars mark a shift in public debate away from economic policy or electoral contests, instead prioritizing struggles over worldviews (Hartman 2016, 6).5 The Brazilian ultra-right maintains that the Left has been successful in consolidating its grip over the cultural sphere, and thus, undermining the foundations of the prevailing moral order. On their account, this calls for a type of cultural action capable of countering the Left’s successful strategy. With that, the ultra-right has embraced a particular conception of political transformation based on the idea of intellectual revolution. That is, it is fundamentally by changing the way people think that political and social transformation will take place. This view, labeled as “metapolitics,” has proven a crucial idea for the ultra-right (Sedgwick 2019, xviii) and has included right-wing readings of Antonio Gramsci and other authors identified with the Left, such as Theodor Adorno.6 In France, proponents of the so-called Nouvelle Droite like Alain de Benoist and Guillaume Faye have been responsible for rereading Gramsci and defending the necessity of developing a right-wing Gramscian strategy (ibid., xviii). This reading concentrates on the Gramscian argument that state-oriented political action has limitations. Gramsci did indeed argue that the struggle for hegemony should include, above all, the dispute within civil society over a larger Weltanschaaungen and for cultural dominance.7 In 2018, during the Brazilian presidential elections, a WhatsApp driven campaign proclaimed “more military schools, less Frankfurt School.” There was, in other words, a similar operation applied to the Frankfurt School as there was with Gramsci. Adorno’s argument, developed in the 1960s, held that political action without a critique of ideology was useless  – a conclusion which was regarded as a call for a left-wing cultural strategy.8 The ultra-right understands this argument to mean

Paulo Freire’s Legacy  137 that there is a left-wing strategy of intellectual manipulation seeking to spread a Marxist worldview. Their indictment, specifically, is that by taking control of universities, schools, and cultural organizations, the Left has hegemonized opinion and effectively laid the groundwork for the seizure of power. The Brazilian ultra-right applies this same logic to its own actions. Interviewed by journalist Natália Portinari for O Globo in 2018, ultra-right ideologue and adviser of the Bolsonaro clan Olavo de Carvalho underscored his sympathies for the ESP leaders, while adding that he has his own criticisms of the movement’s strategy (Portinari 2018). In his book on Gramsci, O. de Carvalho maintains that “if Lenin was the theorist of the putsch, [Gramsci] was the strategist of a psychological revolution paving the way to the coup d’état” (O. de Carvalho 2019, Chapter 2, para. 3). O. de Carvalho thus equated Gramscian strategy with brainwashing and the undermining of Western values and traditions (O. de Carvalho 2019, Chapter 2, para. 15). In short, the accusations leveled against Gramsci were remarkably similar to those applied by the ultra-right to Freire. In order to prevent ideological meddling in schools, Nagib defends the place of the family in the educational process and appeals to arguments formulated in Armindo Moreira’s Professor não é educador (A Teacher Is Not an Educator) (Nagib 2018). The central thesis of that work, endorsed by Nagib, is that education and instruction should be separate affairs. While education is the purview of the family, the second is the responsibility of the school. On this account, Nagib repeats Moreira’s definition of instruction: “providing knowledge and skills that allow people to easily earn a living and their livelihood” (Nagib 2018). For Nagib, schools usurp a right that is the exclusive purview of parents and the family. The teacher should limit him- or herself to imparting neutral knowledge, avoiding the promotion of any type of value or perspective on the student’s reality and instead concentrate on preparing him or her for their professional future. This type of argument explains the links that the ESP movement has formed with several ultraliberal think tanks, such as the Instituto Mises Brasil9 and the Instituto Millenium, as well as Brasil 200, a group of prominent business leaders associated with the ultra-right, such as Luciano Hang and Flavio Rocha. Disseminating the idea that the Left  – via Freire  – had sealed its cultural hegemony through Brazilian educational institutions, the ESP movement and the Brazilian ultra-right look to position themselves as combatants in an ideological war. And Freire is their natural adversary. At the heart of Freire’s pedagogical project, there is an integral link between education and the need to adopt a critical stance. Worth recalling, that which Nagib calls “instruction” would be defined in Freirean terms as “banking education”: the simple transmission of knowledge. Freire’s position earned him a reputation by the Brazilian Right as political agitator, someone who confused education and politics. But this characterization overlooks the fact that education as a political problem was not something invented by Freire, but rather the result of contradictions inherent in the foundation of the very republican idea in Brazil.

138  Bernardo Bianchi

3. The Political Context: Education and Exclusion In his book Os Bestializados: o Rio de Janeiro e a República que não foi, (The Brutes: Rio de Janeiro and the Republic That Never Was), 1987, José Murilo de Carvalho weighs in against simplistic accounts of the early 1889 Republic, where it is commonly held that inhabitants of the capital were largely apathetic. Against that account, the author argues for the need to understand that the Brazilian state, marked as it was by its colonial past, was alienated from the people it regarded more as subjects than citizens (J. M. de Carvalho 1987, 141). Given that context, the brutes were not those who abstained from politics, instead “the brutes were those who took politics seriously, [and, therefore,] those who could be manipulated” (J. M. de Carvalho 1987, 160). Murilo de Carvalho’s historiographic work has the merit of shedding light on the Brazilian people’s lack of political interest. Idleness and knavery thus constituted a type of “hidden transcript,” similar to what James C. Scott claimed “represents a critique of power spoken behind the back of the dominant” (Scott 1992, X). What at first glance appears to be passivity is in fact activity: a form of political resistance. Therefore, it is an error to judge the population in terms of politicization or the lack of it, since their depoliticization has also political causes. The Brazilian Constitution of 1891, inspired by the French Constitution of 1791, established a distinction between active and passive citizens (Arts. 69 and 70). Emmanuel-Joseph de Sieyès, one of those responsible for drafting the French law of 22 December 1789,10 which would serve as the basis for a fundamental distinction enshrined in the French charter, declared on this matter that all can “enjoy the advantages afforded by society; but only those who contribute to the public establishment are . . . true, active citizens, the true members of this association” (Sieyès 1789, 21). Nor was this an unfortunate misstep that would be rectified in the republic. Commenting on a piece of propaganda dating from the Brazilian empire which stated that in 1887 only 1.5% of the Brazilian popular was eligible to vote, Sérgio Buarque de Holanda observes that “the situation would not change in the 40 years since the fall of the regime” (2005, 285). Brazil, for the time period, boasted one of the most restrictive systems of suffrage. The illiterate were barred from voting in Brazil. This represented a serious segmentation of the citizenry which would have dramatic repercussions on the formation of the public sphere under the First Republic,11 where the right to vote served a social function rather than a right:12 suffrage represented a concession on the part of the state to the citizens on whom it entrusted its conservation. Worth noting, the exclusion of the illiterate was implemented during the Empire, with the 1882 electoral reform, known as the Saraiva Law, but it would only become a constitutional rule nine years later, in the 1891 Constitution.13 According to Holanda, in the debates preceding the reform, in 1879, legislators “were more afraid of the illiterate than the constitutionalists of 1824” (Holanda 2005, 234).14 The parliamentary sensibility of the time felt that it was necessary to neutralize the threat of the “unconscious masses,” the

Paulo Freire’s Legacy  139 “ignorant rabble,” the “sovereignty of ignorance.” The “literary census,” as politician Ruy Barbosa called it, was not a Brazilian invention either, being a characteristic feature of Latin America, where, different from Europe, exclusion worked through “ignorance” rather than income or property (see Nicolau 2012). The 1891 Constitution eliminated pecuniary voting criteria that had been in place since 1824, but it simultaneously enshrined the “literary census.” It thus excluded an enormous contingent of the population. According to the 1890 census, this illiterate group represented 82.63% of the population, discounting those younger than five years old (see Paiva 1990, 10).15 The idea that the exercise of political citizenship could be tied to the attainment of a certain type of knowledge, a determinate capacity, is a debate rooted in the second half of the 19th century, occasioned by the establishment of universal suffrage in France. In that country, however, the numerical principle and that of intellect were reconciled via obligatory instruction, which would neutralize what was considered the danger of an immature national population. Countless times, republicans would evoke the tragedy of the number: examples of this were the presidential elections of 1848, which elected Louis Bonaparte, and the 1851 plebiscite legitimizing his coup d’état. In the eyes of many republicans, the ignorance of the people had passed from national shame to potential threat. According to Pierre Rosanvallon, that perception spurred the démopédie movement, which sought to raise the people to the standard set by the republicans through the greatest republican achievement: universal suffrage in France (Rosanvallon 1992, 353–371). Through their efforts, many came to support public instruction as a means to form conscientious political actors, although for many their primary goal was to create a secular morality that would guarantee social cohesion. In Brazil, illiteracy was neither exclusively a national shame nor just a matter of public instruction, but rather, and above all, a political question: in Brazil, politics is defined more by the imperatives of maintaining public order than any issue related to the public sphere. Whereas in France there was an attempt to eliminate the gap between the public sphere and the people, Brazil saw an effort to protect public order from the meddling of the “ignorant masses.” In the final instance, illiteracy was about much more than the individual lack of ability to read and write. It was intimately related to an effort to neutralize the presence in the public sphere of large contingents of the population seen as representing a threat to the elite-established social order. It would be overly simplistic though to suggest that the population was regarded as dangerous for their ignorance. In truth, it was because they represented a threat to the established order that they were regarded as incapable of political participation. This is why José Bonifácio the Younger, an imperial politician, could assert that the exclusions from suffrage aimed at creating and protecting an “electoral elite” (Holanda 2005, 264). Adding to that, the republican Constitution of 1891 removed the guarantee of primary-level instruction for all citizens (Art. 179, XXXII, from the Imperial Constitution of 1824). In that way, access to political citizenship was

140  Bernardo Bianchi virtually restricted to only those social segments that had the means to educate themselves. More than constituting and fortifying a true public sphere, this was an effort to protect public order in a context in which the agrarian elite, long-resenting the centralization of power under the empire, was consolidating its own power. Defining ignorance – illiteracy – as a limitation to the exercise of political citizenship is a cruel measure, as it cloaks insurmountable social inequalities in the appearance of transitory and reversible differences. In that sense, barring former slaves from exercising their right to vote, as envisaged by the 1824 Constitution (Art. 94, II), explicitly consecrated the racial character of relations of domination. The 1891 Constitution, on the other hand, used the artifice that social inequalities and racial exclusions could be legitimatized and dissimulated through the literary census. If on the one hand all individuals could be instructed and leave behind their condition of ignorance or incompetence, on the other hand, the state made no effort to expand social rights and solve social and ethnic inequalities that impeded large parts of the population from accessing education. The possibility of education disguised the fact of exclusion – it was an ideological artifice.

4. Education and Politics According to censuses conducted in Brazil, between 1890 and 1960 there was a continuous reduction of illiteracy in the country. Surveys showing 82.6% illiteracy in 1890 reported 46.7% in 1960 among people five years of age or more.16 During that period, Brazil had four different Constitutions (1891, 1934, 1937, and 1946). Under each Constitution there was a prevailing understanding that the vote could not be extended to the illiterate.17 In the 1960s, in Latin America, only Brazil, Chile, and Peru demanded that their citizens be able to read and write in order to vote. Brazil, which was the second country in the region to grant women the right to vote, in 1932,18 was the last to extend suffrage to the illiterate in 1985 (Nicolau 2002),19 under Constitutional Amendment No. 25. It is within this context that the work of Freire must be grasped. Education is not an issue restricted to issues of ignorance, backwardness, or barbarism. It is directly related to strategies of domination. It is through education that society’s internal divisions are instantiated, allowing some voices to be heard and form an electoral elite, while other are relegated to the margins of the polis, reduced to the condition of dehumanized noise. In 1962, Brazil witnessed an extended stretch of democratic rule. Then-­ president of the republic João Goulart was a progressive politician who engaged in political dialogue, albeit partially, with agrarian and urban social movements. But the literary census represented an obstacle to the expansion of political participation, excluding nearly half of citizens from the right to vote (Nicolau 2012). In 1961, the Grassroots Education Movement (MEB), based on an initiative of the National Brazilian Bishops Conference (CNBB), participated promoting adult literacy in marginalized regions. The National

Paulo Freire’s Legacy  141 Student Union (UNE) created an organization known as the Popular Center for Culture (CPC), which would be active in campaigns to raise consciousness among popular sectors. Calazans Fernandes, Secretary of Education for Rio Grande do Norte – one of the states with the highest illiteracy races – invited Freire to design a literacy project for Angicos. At that time, Angicos was a small and poor municipality situated at 178 kilometers from Natal, the capital of Rio Grande do Norte, in the Brazilian Northeast. The project was conducted in collaboration with the SUDENE (Superintendence for Development of the Northeast20) and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), through the Alliance for Progress. The project catered to 380 residents of Angicos and was conducted between January and April 1963, totaling 40 hours of classes. The final class was attended by President João Goulart, the economist Celso Furtado of the SUDENE, and General Humberto Castelo Branco, later to become the first military president after the 1964 coup,21 among other authorities and figures from the Alliance for Progress. According to accounts of the project, it managed to teach literacy to 300 participants (Lyra 1996). In July 1963, Ministerial Ordinance No. 195/6, issued by the MEC, instituted the Committee of Popular Culture “with the express purpose of implementing new, eminently popular educational systems on a national scale, in order to reach areas that have not enjoyed the benefits of education.” Under a subsequent Ministerial Ordinance, Freire was designated president of the commission and his literacy method became national policy. In early 1963, the adult literacy methods of Freire began to see application in the state of São Paulo – a pioneering project conducted by the São Paulo State Student Union. Also participating in that initiative was Celso Beisiegel, then connected to the Regional Center of Educational Research for São Paulo (CRPE). Similar projects spread across the country and on 21 January 1964, Presidential Decree No. 53,464 enacted a “National Literacy Program [PNA] based on the Paulo Freire System and implemented through the Ministry of Education and Culture.” Education Minister Júlio Sambaqui decided that Freire and other members of the Angicos Literacy Project should be included in a committee responsible for implementing the project. According to Carlos Alberto Torres, the project called for the creation of 60,870 culture circles throughout the country, each one lasting three months and attending to 1,834,200 illiterate individuals between the ages of 15 and 45 (see Torres 2014, 117–118). During that same time period, Freire’s methods were having powerful international repercussions and President John F. Kennedy had even scheduled a visit to Angicos in December  1963, cancelled after his assassination on November 1963. The PNA itself was scheduled to begin on 13 May 1964. However, the coup d’état in April 1964 brought those plans to an abrupt halt, as the armed forces ousted João Goulart. Presidential Decree No. 53,886/14 April 1964, struck down the PNE on the grounds that the program required restructuring. In June 1964, Freire was imprisoned for 70 days. Following his release, Freire went into exile.

142  Bernardo Bianchi 4.1 Freire’s Legacy Freire, author of numerous works spanning 40 years, incorporated a diverse range of influences that in turn led to transformations in his own thought. The present chapter does not intend to review the history of these modifications.22 For my purpose, it suffices to point to the continuities across his legacy that have been the object of the Brazilian ultra-right’s critique. In that sense, I seek here to demonstrate that Freire’s proposal to politicize education was a response to the historic exclusion of the masses based on their lack of access to formal education. Confronting that problem demanded an educational proposal centered on the principle of equality, a basic idea upon which Freire systematically insisted until his final days. Freire sought to reveal the contingent and artificial nature of domination over the oppressed  – disguised under the cloak of illiteracy. He likewise insisted on equality as a central principle to his pedagogical formulations and practices, the core of his political stance. Politics thus is the task “of enabling many of our comrades, especially in the countryside . . . to read and write, which they were prohibited from doing during the colonial regime. . . . The decision to teach literacy is a political act” (Freire 1980, 137). I refer here to Freire’s “political stance” in a sense that is diametrically different from what I have previously designated as the political treatment of illiteracy and access to formal education in Brazil. Freire’s perspective deserves to be classified as such and is understood best in light of how the concept of the political has been formulated by Jacques Rancière.23 For Rancière, politics is not to be confused with the discourse of domination, which involves the naturalization of power relations – as is the case with exclusion on the basis of illiteracy. The discourse of power produces a “distribution of the sensible,” that is, it prescribes what can and cannot appear, what word and what sound can be heard or ignored determining the place and function of each individual and social group in a given social organization. In short, at the same time as it produces a distribution of the sensible, power naturalizes its operation so that every form of contestation from the oppressed is regarded as illegitimate. The type of action typical of the discourse of power is to subordinate politics to public order. The Freire method meant, simultaneously, teaching literacy and politicization. Under the influence of the intellectual Álvaro Vieira Pinto, Freire rejected the naïve notion that the illiterate can be only understood as individuals, without also taking into account the social relations in which they are situated – that is, to use Murilo de Carvalho’s terminology, as brutish victims of backwardness. The alienated pedagogue will never understand that illiteracy is a degree in the educational process and not the absence of education. . . . The illiterate person is an individual that has been educated under the conditions that national reality has offered them. They know a number of things that serve for their subsistence, and that they do not know how to read and write is because under their working conditions these are not required for

Paulo Freire’s Legacy  143 their subsistence. The fundamental error of our official pedagogues and their erudite, simplistic pedagogy is in supposing that their object is the zero-degree individual with no education or knowledge. . . . In truth, these individuals possess sufficient education for the life conditions in which they exist, so that if we wish to alter their education, what we have to do is not simply infuse them with knowledge, but transform their general life circumstances. (Pinto 1960, 2:383) Freire’s work thus guarded itself against a naïve conception of the illiteracy problem, where the illiterate person is taken as substandard or a strictly passive or imperfect being. It is worth recalling here the manner in which Benedictus Spinoza rejected the Scholastic concept of perfection, and proposed in its place to equate that concept to the concept of reality – “by reality and perfection I understand the same thing” (Spinoza 1985a [1677], 447). Spinoza thus argues that no being is ever lacking in anything, just as the human being that does not see is not lacking anything in and of itself, but only in relation to the opinion that they lack vision (Spinoza 1985b [1665], 377). The same argument could easily be extended to the illiterate person, a category historically constructed under the sign of imperfection. Also worth recalling here is the distinction that one of Freire’s own students brought to his attention: one cannot say that an Indian is illiterate. The Indian comes from a reality that does not know writing. For someone to be considered illiterate, they must live in a context which knows writing and where they were deprived access to it (Freire 1981b [1968], 16). Illiteracy exists and is a problem only with regard to the social relations that surround it, which in Freire’s case meant oppression. Freire’s intervention thus meant a break not only with the Brazilian exclusionary tradition, but, beyond that, a naïve and elitist pedagogical perspective that takes the illiterate as the “zero-degree of knowledge,” the maximal expression of imperfection. This displacement in favor of a critical perspective was not lost on Henry A. Giroux, for whom both literacy and illiteracy are “ideological constructions,” forms of distinguishing and separating individuals and social groups within a given society while endowing them with different functions, so that some read and others do not – some vote and others do not. In that sense, the knowledge and experiences of the illiterate person are not to be taken as the “experience of the other” (Giroux 2005, 8). In Freire’s assessment, literacy campaigns only make sense if they are accompanied by a critique of the social conditions that produce illiteracy, a critique that must be developed between the educator and the educated, and not simply imposed in a top-down fashion. For Freire, domination is both intellectual and political. His project for emancipation through education thus requires that that which has been made invisible by dominant culture and common sense become visible – a struggle over the redefinition of the borders of the thinkable in politics. The Freirean educational project puts at its center the constantly negated capacity of the

144  Bernardo Bianchi oppressed to develop autonomous thought. Perhaps Freire never formulated a definitive stance on this question, for which reason I would situate him in a space of undecidability, somewhere between Pierre Bourdieu (where emphasis falls on the reproduction and domination running through the social field) and Jacques Rancière (postulating an irreducible power of the oppressed to challenge public order).24 Consciousness-raising (conscientização) precedes literacy teaching in Freirean pedagogy, or, as he expressly puts it, “reading the world comes before reading the word, so that the posterior reading of the latter cannot do without the reading of the former” (Freire 1989 [1981], 9). Freire’s approach thus opposes the elitist vanguardism of the Center for Popular Culture, expressed by that group in its 1963 Manifesto that appeared in the first issue of Arte em Revista. There, CPC members claim authority of educating the masses, who could only then enter the stage of history.25 In Freire’s pedagogy, his educational proposals are subordinated to a process of democratizing culture (see Brandão 2014, 66). Freire’s concern was to combat the private uses of culture that turn it into a privilege, a view expressed in the CPC’s Manifesto, which could be interpreted as a call for “cultural invasion.” In its place, Freire asserts the necessity of operating culturally on culture (Freire 1981a [1970], 69). Based on a connection between pedagogy and cultural action, Freire calls for a “cultural synthesis,” a concern that was especially present in his writing from 1968 (see Freire 1981c [1968], 29). In the 1970s, Freire challenged pedagogical models based on a “transmission of knowledge,” as if in the educational relation there was a pole that was active and neutral (the educators), and another that was passive and ideological (the educated). Instead, he defended a cultural synthesis like that mentioned previously, where “actors become integrated with the people, who are co-authors of the action that both perform upon the world” (Freire 2000, 180). This allows Freire to assert with respect to the educator-educated relation that “no one teaches another, nor is anyone self-taught. People teach each other, mediated by the world” (Freire 2000, 80). Dialogical pedagogy, beginning from the affirmation of ontological equality between individuals and social groups, means recognizing the oppressed as creators of culture. Effectively, it is necessary to emphasize that Freire nowhere states that the oppressed would be more afflicted by ideological domination than the dominant classes. Their difference consists solely in that the oppression of the dominated is to the benefit of the dominant. Following in the transformative spirit of 1968 and Chinese Cultural Revolution, Freire aimed to break down the barriers between high and popular culture, academic and popular knowledge, which are expressions of inequality in education and knowledge. The issue of culture is connected to ideology, a theme that appears most clearly in Freire’s texts from the 1990s. In texts like Pedagogy of the Heart, Freire announces that “ideologies can only be ideologically killed” (Freire 2007, 52). This evinces the argument that ideology can never be fully overcome, which in turn brings into clear view a number of critical issues that the

Paulo Freire’s Legacy  145 ultra-right would associate with the Freirean legacy. In the last instance, Freire does not believe that ideological permanence is the same as the absence of a critical effort to unmask ideological discourses. The issue then is not to defend an equivalence between antagonistic positions on the Left and the Right, as if in the impossibility of overcoming that conflict one could concede legitimacy to either side. The conception of ideology that Freire mounted at the heart of his pedagogical project is not a nihilistic one. Quite the contrary, it naturally stems from a hermeneutics of suspicion that, as Torres calls it, “attempts to ground social inquiry in the understanding of agents . . ., while also taking into account the social structural context of action” (Torres 2014, 104–105). What this means for Freire’s pedagogy is that all social relations are traversed by relations of power. That notion, however, does not suggest a cynical position, as if Freire ultimately were admitting that his educational project would merely be another expression of the power relations that he sees present all throughout the social body. By admitting the presence of domination in human relations, Freire’s principle educational task becomes one of critically examining social reality. It follows that pedagogical action must be critical, so as to denaturalize that which was naturalized by the dominant discourse: colonialism, racism, patriarchy, authoritarianism, etc. This means shedding light on those aspects of thought and behavior of which we are unaware, in order that we might think and act differently. The centrality of critique in Freire’s work thus represents a revival of an enlightenment perspective26 in the sense that Michel Foucault gave it: a permanent critique of our historical being (Foucault 1994, 571).

5. Final Conclusions The discourse associated with Bolsonaro, particularly that identified with O. de Carvalho, is intimately tied to a conception of democracy as the maintenance of public order. Thus, democracy is not measured by the strength of its institutions and the preservation of the rules of the game (Norberto Bobbio), nor is it the inclusion of the excluded (Rancière), or the empowerment of the multitude (Antonio Negri). When Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, Vice-President Hamilton Mourão, and Finance Minister Paulo Guedes argue that “Brazilian democracy has never been stronger,” they are employing a definition of democracy that is essentially restrictive. On the one hand, for the ultra-right, democracy only exists when public consensus is confronted by an antagonistic position, ignoring the content of the discourses involved in that opposition. The ultra-right envisions democracy as a rotating cast of empty, supercilious positions that ignore any given public consensus. On the other hand, this same type of discourse essentially imagines democracy as the expression of public order. Democracy would then consist in a way of life based on the fixation of individuals within the sites assigned to them by the social body. It would be nothing more than the externalization of the culture and the values of a “community of good men,” or of their ideology.

146  Bernardo Bianchi The ESP movement, proposing to eradicate ideology from schools, fits neatly into this logic that consecrates public order and its values. The movement represents an extension of the issues that emerged with the Saraiva Law: an exclusionary conception of citizenship based on a lack of access to formal education. Whereas before 1985 the illiterate were denied political participation, the ESP now seeks to prohibit teachers and students from engaging in any critical questioning of social reality, and in that way perpetuates privileges all around. This same exclusionary logic can also be found in the National Civic-Military Schools Program organized by the Ministry of Education together with the Ministry of Defense, whose express goal is to establish 216 military schools by 2023. This initiative would consecrate a paternalistic and hierarchical vision of public instruction, which is especially cause for concern since, as was discussed in the Chapter 1 of this volume, the Brazilian military and police to this day are trained and instructed under the lines used during the military dictatorship. It was not Freire, then, who politicized the issue of education. This “infection” of Freirean thought dates well before the Angicos literacy project: its roots are in the manner in which formal education became a tool for political exclusion in the early Brazilian republic. By announcing a political vision of education, Freire was suggesting an entirely different conception of politics, one that would not be identified with domination – racial, class-based, or gender domination. Instead, his project imagined politics as emancipation and the negation of privileges, against the fixation of individuals or social groups in determinate sites of society – a politics in favor of their demands finding a space in the public sphere. It should be emphasized that Freire was commonly invoked in the struggle to democratize education after the period of re-democratization, a time in which, additionally, Freire served the Secretary of Education in São Paulo. Along with other thinkers and militants identified with the field of education, like Anísio Teixeira, Florestan Fernandes, and Darcy Ribeiro, Freire’s name remained associated with the ideal of democratizing Brazilian society (and education), which, while it may have never led to a consistent process of transformation, continues to be an important part of the lexicon along the terrain of political struggles. Whether it be in highschool-led student occupations and demonstrations taking place between 2015 and 2016,27 or the protests unfolding between May and August 2019, Freire’s legacy continues to pose a threat to the ultra-right.

Notes 1. I would like to thank Nicolas Allen for proofreading my chapter. 2. PR (Party of the Republic), renamed as Liberal Party (PL) in 2019. 3. He was professor of the State University of Campinas (Universidade Estadual de Campinas [Unicamp]) and of the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP). 4. For a comparison between the two models, see Oliveira (2017). 5. In that same sense, an important book to consider in the field of American neoconservatism is God and Man at Yale, de William Buckley (2004).

Paulo Freire’s Legacy  147 6. For a discussion of Gramsci’s relevance for the Brazilian Right, see Puglia (2018). 7. For those concerned with exploring this aspect of Gramsci, they can consult his call for a “cultural revolution,” a “new” culture, and Weltanschauung (see Prison Notebooks VII and XI, 1992). 8. This argument can be traced back to Interventions: Nine Critical Models, 1963, and Catchwords: Critical Models II, 1969 (see Adorno 2005). 9. The Instituto Mises Brasil and its website Mises.org.br are particularly concerned with the Frankfurt School and what they call “cultural Marxism.” 10. This distinction was enshrined in the third article, section I, of the previously mentioned law. 11. I follow here the definition of public sphere provided by Gerard A. Hauser: “a discursive space in which individuals and groups associate to discuss matters of mutual interest and, where possible, to reach a common judgment about them” (1999, 61). 12. With respect to voting, the distinction between social function and rights is established by Murilo de Carvalho (see J. M. de Carvalho 1987, 42–65). 13. For an analysis of Brazilian parliamentary debates between 1878–81 where illiteracy first emerged as an issue, see Ferraro (2009, 53–84). 14. Against Holanda’s argument, one should note that the need to create a literate people only became a political issue at a very late stage, and this was not the exclusive case of Brazil. For more, see Cipolla (1969). 15. Of course, to know the precise meaning of that exclusion would mean ascertaining how many of those illiterate also fulfilled other criteria for exclusion. 16. One should still bear in mind that electoral rules established an age criterion, so that these numbers should be interpreted with caution. 17. Under the 1946 Republic, there were two Constitutional Amendment bills seeking to include the vote of the illiterate (Art. 132): (1) Bill No. 15/1957, proposed by Armando Falcão, and (2) Bill No. 27/1961, by Fernando Ferrari. In 1964, under the military regime, there was a new bill authored by the acting president General Castelo Branco. However, that same bill was limited to municipal elections. 18. The first country was Ecuador, in 1929. 19. This issue needs to be viewed in its proper perspective, since Brazil was the last country in the region to abolish slavery in 1888. 20. Superintendence for the Development of the Northeast. 21. According to Calazans Fernandes’s account, Castelo Branco approached him and said: “young man, you’re fattening up rattlesnakes here in these backlands [sertões]” (Lyra 1996, 18). 22. For an analysis of Freire’s intellectual influences and the ramifications they would have in different phases of his work, see Kress and Lake (2013). 23. I have in mind here concepts that are recurrent throughout the work of Rancière, but that are also summarized in Disagreement (Rancière 2004). 24. For an insightful analysis of the tensions between Bourdieu and Rancière, see Nordmann (2006). 25. For an analysis of the CPC and its campaigns during the period, see Ridenti (2005, Chap. 2). 26. More precisely, Foucault refers to the ethos of the Aufklärung and that this cannot be neatly assimilated to other currents of Enlightenment thought. 27. For more on this subject, see Medeiros et al. (2019).

References Adorno, Theodor W. 2005. Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords. Translated by Henry Pickford. New York: University Press Group.

148  Bernardo Bianchi Brandão, Carlos Rodrigues. 2014. “Paulo Freire: a educação, a cultura e a universidade. Memória de uma história de cinquenta anos atrás.” EJA em Debate 3 (4): 57–74. Buckley, William F. Jr. 2004. God and Man at Yale. South Bend, IN: ISI Conservative Classics. Carvalho, José Murilo de. 1987. Os Bestializados: O Rio de Janeiro e a República Que Não Foi. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. Carvalho, Olavo de. 2019. A Nova Era e a Revolução Cultural – Fritjof Capra & Antonio Gramsci. [Kindle book]. Vide Editorial. Cipolla, Carlo M. 1969. Literacy and Development in the West. First Edition ed. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd. “FAQ – Escolasempartido.org: O ESP é de direita?).” n.d. Escolasempartido.org. Available at: www.escolasempartido.org/faq/. Accessed on 28 February 2020. Ferraro, Alceu Ravanello. 2009. História Inacabada Do Analfabetismo No Brasil. São Paulo: Cortez. Fischman, Gustavo E. 2009. “Un/Taming Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed.” In The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Education, edited by Michael W. Apple, Wayne Au, and Luis Armando Gandin, 232–239. London: Routledge. Foucault, Michel. 1994. “Qu’est-Ce Que Les Lumières?” In Dits et Écrits (1954–1988), edited by Daniel Defert, François Ewald, and Jacques Lagrange, IV (1980–1988), 562–578. Paris: Gallimard. Freire, Paulo. 1980. “Quatro Cartas Aos Animadores de Círculos de Cultura de São Tomé e Príncipe.” In A Questão Política Da Educação Popular, edited by Carlos Rodrigues Brandão, 136–196. São Paulo: Brasiliense. ———. 1981a. “A Ação Cultural Para a Liberdade.” In Ação Cultural Para a Liberdade e Outros Escritos, 35–70. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra. ———. 1981b. “A Alfabetização de Adultos  – Crítica de Sua Visão Ingênua; Compreensão de Sua Visão Crítica.” In Ação Cultural Para a Liberdade e Outros Escritos, 11–19. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra. ———. 1981c. “Ação cultural e reforma agrária”. In: Ação Cultural Para a Liberdade e Outros Escritos, 26–30. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra. ———. 1989. “A Importância Do Ato de Ler.” In A Importância Do Ato de Ler Em Três Artigos Que Se Completam, 9–14. São Paulo: Cortez. ———. 2000. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum. ———. 2007. Pedagogy of the Heart. New York: Continuum. Giroux, Henry A. 2005. “Introduction: Literacy and the Pedagogy of Political Empowerment.” In Literacy: Reading the Word and the World, by Paulo Freire and Donaldo Macedo, 1–18. London: Routledge. Gramsci, Antonio. 1992. “The Philosophy of Praxis.” In Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsi, edited by Quentin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, 321–472. New York: International Publishers. Hartman, Andrew. 2016. A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars. Reprint edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hauser, Gerard A. 1999. Vernacular Voices: The Rhetoric of Publics and Public Spheres. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. Holanda, Sérgio Buarque de. 2005. O Brasil Monárquico: Do Império à República. 7th edition. História Geral da Civilização Brasileira, t. 2, v. 7. São Paulo: Bertrand Brasil. Hunter, James Davison. 1992. Culture Wars: The Struggle To Control The Family, Art, Education, Law, And Politics In America. Memphis: Basic Books.

Paulo Freire’s Legacy  149 Kress, Tricia M., and Robert Lake, eds. 2013. Paulo Freire’s Intellectual Roots: Toward Historicity in Praxis. London ; New York: Bloomsbury. Lyra, Carlos. 1996. As quarenta horas de Angicos: uma experiência pioneira de educação. São Paulo: Cortez. Medeiros, Jonas, Adriano Januário, and Rúrion Melo, eds. 2019. Ocupar e Resistir: Movimentos de Ocupação de Escolas Pelo Brasil (2015–2016). São Paulo: Editora 34. Nagib, Miguel. 2018. “Parecer Escola Sem Partido.” Escolasempartido.Org, 18 June 2018. Available at: www.escolasempartido.org/images/pfesp.pdf. Nicolau, Jairo. 2002. História do Voto no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar. ———. 2012. Eleições No Brasil – Do Império Aos Dias Atuais. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar. Nordmann, Charlotte. 2006. Bourdieu, Rancière: la politique entre sociologie et philosophie. Paris: Éditions Amsterdam. Oliveira, Fernando Bonadia de. 2017. “Entre Reformas: Tecnicismo, neotecnicismo e educação no Brasil.” Revista de Educação Técnica e Tecnológica em Ciências Agrícolas IX (16): 19–39. Paiva, Vanilda. 1990. “Um século de educação republicana.” Pró-Posições 1 (2): 7–21. Pinto, Álvaro Vieira. 1960. Consciência e realidade nacional: a consciência crítica. Vol. 2., 2 vols. Rio de Janeiro: ISEB. Portinari, Natália. 2018. “ ‘Sou Irresistível’, Diz Olavo de Carvalho Sobre Ter Indicado Dois Ministros  – Jornal O Globo.” Oglobo.Globo.Com, 23 November  2018. Available at: https://oglobo.globo.com/sociedade/educacao/sou-irresistivel-diz-olavode-carvalho-sobre-ter-indicado-dois-ministros-23254589. Puglia, Leonardo Seabra. 2018. “Gramsci e os intelectuais de direita no Brasil contemporâneo.” Teoria e Cultura 13 (2). https://doi.org/10.34019/2318-101X.2018. v13.12432. Rancière, Jacques. 2004. Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Ridenti, Marcelo. 2005. O Fantasma Da Revolução Brasileira. [Kindle book]. São Paulo: UNESP. Rosanvallon, Pierre. 1992. Le Sacre Du Citoyen. Histoire Du Suffrage Universel En France. Paris: Éditions Gallimard. Scott, James C. 1992. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven: Yale University Press. Sedgwick, Mark, ed. 2019. Key Thinkers of the Radical Right: Behind the New Threat to Liberal Democracy. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Sieyès, Emmanuel-Joseph. 1789. Reconnoissance et Exposition Raisonnée Des Droits de l’homme et Du Citoyen. Paris: Chez Baudouin. Spinoza, Benedictus de. 1985a. “Ethics.” In The Collected Works of Spinoza, 1:408– 617. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 1985b. “Letter 21 [to Blijenbergh].” In The Collected Works of Spinoza, 1:375– 382. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Torres, Carlos Alberto. 2014. First Freire: Early Writings in Social Justice Education. New York: Teachers College Press.

10 The Urban Crisis in Brazil From the Neodevelopmentalist Experiment to the Rise of Bolsonarismo Ermínia Maricato and Paolo Colosso1 1. Introduction After the institutional rupture of 2016, with the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff from the presidency, and the 2018 election of an extreme-right-wing president, the relaunched neoliberal project has paralyzed social policies and deepened an urban crisis marked by social and territorial segregation, environmental damage, and violence. However, for those who study cities and, in particular, the production of urban space, the unrest in society was already evident a few years earlier. The deficit of a spatial and urban analysis in the Brazilian democratic Left did not allow it to comprehend the deterioration in urban living conditions in a period of economic growth and income distribution. Between 2009 and 2015, we had an exponential increase in the cost of housing and rent, the reproduction of the peripheralization that condemn many city dwellers to long periods of time spent commuting, as well as insecure jobs and high rates of institutional violence for young, black people. This Left also did not perceive that other agents began to take control of the peripheries, where the working class resides, leaving them behind. A preoccupation with the institutional space and the electoral calendar, as well as widening alliances to ensure governability when faced with political crises, partly explain this gap. Hence the surprise when in 2013, an increase in public transport fares triggered protests, until today a misunderstood episode, drawing 1.5 million people onto the country’s streets; as well as the incomprehension at many other uprisings against the mega-event of the 2014 World Cup.2 In this way, this chapter has two goals: to understand the factors that culminated in the 2016 coup and the rise of a new Right, as well as the contradictions that had been appearing in the previous decade, always from the urban point of view. The process is divided into three steps. First, we briefly summarize the Workers’ Party’s (PT) legacy and in particular its successes in urban politics. This allows us to tackle a reality that in the aftermath of the coup was simply swallowed up by an anti-PT sentiment, in which all of society’s ills were supposedly the fruit of the party’s governments.

The Urban Crisis in Brazil 151 In the second part, the period previous to the coup d’état is retraced, from 2009 to 2015, when contradictions worsened. The focus is on an economic growth wrapped up in countercyclical measures to address the 2008 crisis, with heavy investments in infrastructure and housing as well as tax relief for the car industry. Such a combination propelled an unprecedented real estate boom and reproduced the pattern of urban sprawl marked by segregation and long distances between the center, the area where jobs are concentrated, and the periphery, where the class that sells its labor is forced to live. The third part deals with the resurgence of a more aggressive neoliberalism after 2016, just before Jair Bolsonaro’s rise to power, which from the urban point of view meant the complete disfigurement of the housing program, the scrapping of environmental and mobility policies, and the return of extreme poverty, as well as the employment of a rhetoric of modernization in order to justify business freedom, and, even, the militarization of everyday life. As this is a very recent moment, this last part is less an evaluation of public policies, than what in classical terms we call criticism of ideology, paying attention to the devices with which the so-called “way out of the crisis” is actually a democratic regression. Before moving on to the subject itself, it is valid to make some methodological considerations. Often times, the production of urban space is seen exclusively in the local scale, local government, and, in some cases, as a sectoral issue separately from political economy. Our approach, however, comprises the urban in its mediations between local, national, and global. In other words, the reciprocal impacts between such scales.

2. A Brief Review of the Popular-Democratic Governments’ Legacy The antipetismo3 that enabled the 2016 coup and set in place the conditions which made the rise of Bolsonaro’s “new Right” possible, demands that we restate some objective and non-debatable facts. It requires acknowledging the PT’s legacy under the command of an ex-factory worker and a former leftwing guerrilla in one of the world’s most unequal societies, so we can criticize what should be criticized. First, the PT governments’ (2003 to 2016) social and democratic advances are indisputable and some are unheard of in the country’s history. The country’s removal from the FAO’s hunger map was one of these achievements and was the result of two PT policies, Bolsa Família and a real increase in the minimum wage. Bolsa Família, an income distribution program, benefited 13.9 million families by 2015. It involved mandatory school attendance for the program’s 17 million children and adolescents. The minimum wage increased by 77% in 12 years, there was the expansion of the internal market and the creation of 23 million formal jobs. Formalization of the employment relationship went from 45.7% in 2003 to 57% in 2014, and all these measures led to the steepest

152  Ermínia Maricato and Paolo Colosso decline in income inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, ever seen in the country’s history. In all, 36 million people escaped extreme poverty and another 42 million people became upwardly mobile. The reduction in infant mortality that had already been happening under previous administrations, accelerated sharply under the PT, dropping by 50% between 2002 and 2015 (Mercadante 2018). In the governments of Lula and Dilma (2003–16), education’s budget was increased by 206%, with enrolments in primary education increasing by 84.7% and in secondary schools by 20%. In public universities there was an increase of 3.4 million enrolment, to 8 million due to the expansion of university campuses (Mercadante 2018, 26). But the main novelty was the increase of black and poor white students in higher education thanks to a quota policy and scholarships. Second, it is critical to recognize that the PT’s greatest achievement in relation to urban politics had occurred previous its federal electoral victory in 2003. Despite setting up the Ministry of Cities and a significant participatory structure in city, state, and federal government conferences,4 which culminated in directives for the Council of Cities, the federal government did not follow through on the local PT governments’ vibrant experiment with direct democracy. The “PT way of governing” became well known through programs such as the famous “Participatory Budget” set up by Olivio Dutra’s administration in the city of Porto Alegre. It was replicated in all leftist city governments in the country and indeed spread to many cities all over the world.

3. From Anti-Urban Neodevelopmentalism to the Institutional Rupture At the moment the US financial system suffered a breakdown which impacted on the whole world, Brazil was in an economically dynamic and sociopolitically stable period. During Lula’s governments, the economy grew and salaries rose above inflation. Nevertheless, the increase in the workforce’s income occurred in jobs paying up to 1.5 minimum salaries. This meant bringing 2.1 million workers per year to the formal employment market, of which only 100,000 were earning over 1.5 minimum salaries.5 Most of the positions with this basic salary had been filled by young people, about 60% of them by women and 80% black (Pochmann 2012, 34). This combination of economic growth, formalization of cheap labor jobs, popular credit for mass consumption, as well as the continuation of rules that guaranteed banks’ profits, built a “win-win” environment: favorable for capital and the workforce. With the onset of the 2008 international crisis, Brazil’s GDP suffered a shock. To face the decrease of economic growth and employment, the federal government launched Keynesian programs, especially through construction projects, social and economic infrastructure as well as housing, and tax exemption for durable goods.6 This new economic matrix was known in Brazil as a “developmentalist experiment,” or “neodevelopmentalism.”7

The Urban Crisis in Brazil 153 The increasing income as a result of wage rises and distributive policies does not necessarily imply an improvement in the urban living conditions. This is not to say that the increased consumption of household or communication devices, access to electricity, or improvement in the standard of food, education, and health did not have an important impact on the quality of life of the poorest. But these socioeconomic improvements did not substantially alter the historic urban problems of segregation, mobility, housing, sanitation, and violence in the ten largest metropolises where, according to IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) data for 2016, approximately one-third of the country’s population resides. In a society marked by such archaic practices regarding the production and appropriation of its built environments, a redistribution of income does not automatically result in a redistribution of the city. Electronic and digital goods, only accessible through the extension of credit for purchasing, found in precarious housing without sewage or garbage collection underlines the contradictions of this underdevelopment. Despite the PT’s success in local governments from the mid-’80s, the creation of the Ministry of Cities with a significant participatory structure, the ground gained by social movements, and the conquest of a significant legal framework related to urban management planning which includes the conquest of the “social function of property” in the 1988 Federal Constitution, life in cities has worsened, especially after the massive investments planned in what is called the antiurban neodevelopmentalist plan. The theoretical challenge for understanding the paradox is presented to those who are unfamiliar with the contradictions present in the capitalist production of space and, even more so, in peripheral capitalist societies. In 2009, the housing deficit in Brazil was 5,990,000. After building over 4 million houses, most of which were highly subsidized, the deficit increased to 6,350,000 houses in 2015. Excessive rent – defined in the housing deficit index as rent higher than 30 percent of household income – is the component that has grown the most since 2011. Even as we use these figures as measurements for the deficit, they seem to go unquestioned. Between 2009 and 2015, the fantastic sum of R$ 800  billion was invested by public sources (OGU, the Union’s General Budget), semi-public (FGTS, the Brazilian Government Severance Indemnity Fund for Employees, a type of unemployment fund administered in partnership by governments, employees, and employers), and banks (private funds from savings accounts mainly with the public bank CAIXA) in housing construction. These cheap sources of money are added to the investments of the stock market which, nevertheless, presented a much inferior performance, allowing the theses of the financialization/monetization of space production in countries on the periphery of capitalism to be questioned (UQBAR 2016). Unlike what happens in central capitalist countries, real estate loans in Brazil have historically had a reduced share in the GDP since the private market covers only a minority of the population. The two recent experiences of significant housing construction and real estate boom that changed the physiognomy of Brazilian cities happened between 1975–80 and 2009–15. Both were heavily driven

154  Ermínia Maricato and Paolo Colosso by the same public and private funds of cheap or inexpensive money, changing the patterns of horizontal sprawl and verticalization, producing millions of residences situated outside the continuous urban area, heavily feeding the financierled land/property speculation, which was partly related to traditional regional oligarchies. As a result both transformed the urban land market producing new conditions of segregation. The major contractors, developers, and landowners were deferred to on decisions about both what and where to build. Perversely, the constitutional guidance of legal decentralization that granted local governments control over urban soil, transport, and sanitation policies did not impede, but on the contrary, ended up facilitating, especially in medium-sized cities, local lobbies consisting of landowners, real estate agents, and builders involved with election campaign funding to run the large federal investments, which were part of the anti-cyclical developmentalist plan. The attack on the slums’ residents who stood in the way of the huge construction projects funded by the federal government was heavily documented, especially in Rio de Janeiro, where the construction related to the World Cup and Olympics was responsible for removing 122,000 families to public housing built in the distant city outskirts. In the real estate boom that preceded Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment, in addition to investment in housing there was a significant increase in investments in infrastructure linked to urban mobility. Between 2008 and 2016, according to the Federal Government’s Growth Acceleration Program (PAC) Portal, R$ 88 billion was invested. This investment included the construction of subways, trains, monorails, BRTs (Bus Rapid Transit), bike lanes, many of them in highly questionable locations from the point of view of urgent social needs (Pereira 2018). Federal investment in construction related to urban space had a higher initial impulse in 2007 after the expiry of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) restrictions on public investments in place since the beginning of the 1980s. With the creation of the PAC 1 (2007), the Lula government gave a new dimension to investments in (1) logistical infrastructure, (2) energy infrastructure, and (3) social and urban infrastructure. In 2009, the PAC 2 and the Minha Casa, Minha Vida (PMCMV) housing construction program were launched, with the second part of the latter being launched in 2011. It is important to underline subtle differences between PAC 1 and PAC 2. The first one still followed the local governments’ project guidelines. This is noticeable in the PAC-UAP (urbanization of precarious areas or urbanization of favelas). From 2009 onwards, in addition to expanding the scale of investments, large construction companies are evidently deciding on the type of construction, as well as real estate and land owners deciding on the location of construction projects. The traditional participation of social movements, along with the technical advice of professionals, architects, and engineers, in projects and housing construction, that had been the practice of democratic and popular local governments, had a reduced participation in the PMCMV. The category of the PMCMV, which enables this participation, received less than 2%

The Urban Crisis in Brazil 155 of the entire program’s budget, notwithstanding the PT’s prestige with social movements.8 The radical increase in the cost of construction per square meter in the real estate market, especially between 2009 and 2015, impacted city life. The largest increase in this period, 265% against an inflation rate of 55%,9 was recorded in the city of Rio de Janeiro. The Federal Government, in partnership with the state and local governments, invested in the subway, tramways, RTs, cable cars, the Olympic Village, a renovation of the Maracanã football stadium and, following the canons of “spectacular urbanism,” an urban “revitalization” of the old port area that included the Museum of Tomorrow, designed by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. A public-private partnership has enabled real estate entrepreneurs to take ownership of public lands and borrow public resources. A small portion of the poor residents from an area considered “deteriorated” remained; most were evicted. In São Paulo at its highest point, between 2008 and 2015, real estate prices rose by as much as 223.46%, far exceeding the returns in the stock market, inflation, and the increase in salaries during this period. With the economic crisis that followed in 2014/2015 prices stopped rising, but stayed relatively stable where they had peaked. All cities were affected, in a general way, as well as impacting rent. During that period rent rose 140% (followed by a slight decrease) in Rio de Janeiro and 100% in São Paulo. Millions of Brazilians were victims of what we might call an attack on cities by real estate speculation. But beyond the difficulties of the cost of housing, the working classes faced a new difficulty in the increased cost of transportation and time spent commuting. The cost of transport increased 38% during this period, 42% for individual transport and 24% for public transport. Travel time increased for all forms of transport but especially for public transport, not only due to the increased distances promoted by the urban sprawl already pointed out, but also because of more vehicles in circulation. The tax exemption given by the federal government to encourage vehicle purchase contributed massively to this. Studies carried out by the National Association of Public Transport (ANTP) in all Brazilian towns with over 60,000 inhabitants show that between 2002 and 2014, the increase of vehicles was five times greater than the increase in population and three times the increase in income (ANTP 2017). Research confirms the social, environmental, and economic flaws of mobility network based on individual motorized transport. The space required for infrastructure is eight times larger per inhabitant transported in an individual vehicle than in public transport, and energy consumption is three times greater. Unsurprisingly, between 2003 and 2014, CO2 emissions increased by 26%, that is from 23.1 to 29.3 million tons (ANTP 2017).10 According to data from the survey Living in São Paulo  – Urban Mobility (Nossa São Paulo/IBOPE 2018), the average time spent in 2018 on daily trips in the city was 2 hours and 43 minutes. This means that in São Paulo a greater part of people’s week or, indeed life, is spent in transport affecting everyone, but especially public transport users: 2 hours 57 minutes per day. If

156  Ermínia Maricato and Paolo Colosso we consider the 39 municipalities in the metropolitan region of São Paulo and that 70% of employment is located in the expanded city center of São Paulo, the time spent is much longer. It isn’t by chance that anxiety, depression, and stress disorders affecting 29.6% of the population in the metropolitan region of São Paulo are largely attributed to poor traffic conditions (Andrade 2012). In relation to health, it should also be remembered that in 2015, 700,000 traffic accidents resulting in injuries were recorded in 533 municipalities including 24,000 deaths, generating a cost to the public health system (SUS) of R$ 130.5 billion (ANTP 2017). To conclude this picture of negative impacts for the public interest and the environment, studies carried out by Vasconcellos on the amount of resources related to tax exemption for the automobile industry should be recalled. In 2012 individual transport received exemption and subsidies to the order of $16 billion per year, while public transport, in turn, received only $2 billion, a priority relationship of 8 to 1 (Vasconcellos 2014). Our central argument that it was possible to have economic growth and social regressions can be verified also by the violence in the black and peripheral population, that follows historic patterns. In the state of São Paulo, the number of homicides in the population considered white fell 12.2%, while among black people, it increased 18.2%. There are variations in other states, but the tendency is similar. In Brazil, black people have a 23% percent higher risk of being murdered; for every 100 people murdered, 71 are black.11 This combination of the reproduction of peripheralization, a rise in the cost of housing, an increase in time and cost of transportation, institutional violence, and, furthermore, an unstable job market for the young population,12 lit a powder keg for social unrest. At the end of the decade, with the conservative offensive gaining headway, all the street movements emerging from June 2013 are seen as steps that culminate in the rise of Bolsonaro. But such a perspective is reductionist, as it does not take into account the social contradictions that are evident when examining urban daily life. In our view, June 2013 should be analyzed as a “social opening,” a disruption of the consensus, in which the entire political spectrum descends on the streets, building new coalitions on the Right and Left. If June was the seed of the polarized environment and the 2018 conservative victory, it also grew into a cycle of protests against the increasingly precarious working and living conditions for the subordinate classes living on the periphery, predominantly young, black people. New social actors appeared among these movements in the progressive camp and their future roles are still to be seen. In 2014, it was the turn of housing movements to question the impact of mega-event urbanism, which evicted large numbers of residents from the areas involved in the construction. In São Paulo that year, homeless movements were also important for the approval of a more progressive Master Plan13 when they camped out in front of the city council. In 2015 and 2016 it was the turn of students in secondary education, when about a thousand schools throughout Brazil were occupied in the defense of quality public education.

The Urban Crisis in Brazil  157 This melting pot of political culture still crosses the collective experience and marks a good part of a young generation who took on the agendas of urban mobility, assigned new meanings to the “Right to the City,” and connected with other homeless movements. It is worth remembering the collective movements Rua (Street), Juntos (Together), and Levante Popular da Juventude (Youth Popular Uprising). No less important is the fact that these movements, in which young people and informal workers broke down walls and jumped turnstiles, forced onto the public agenda the wave of policies promoting public transport, active mobility, and the opening up of public spaces. In São Paulo, between 2013 and 2016, 55  km of bus corridors were built, in addition to 400 km of dedicated lanes and more than 400 km of bicycle lanes and paths. However, Fernando Haddad was not re-elected, and such policies were not only discontinued, but were reversed. To understand the parliamentary coup and the consolidation of the new Right, perhaps the policy shifts in cabinets and important corporations, including the mass media, are more important. As André Singer recalls, in 2012 economic policy was already not meeting the industrial part of the private sector’s expectations.14 Reports from large banks, research centers, and their organic media were demonstrating disappointment with what they considered “economic interventionism.” Even those who benefited the most from Dilma Rousseff’s “developmentalist experiment” due to stimulated production, swung to mistrust. Breaking the agreement established in 2011, industrial entrepreneurs returned to a strictly neoliberal agenda. The parts of the bourgeoisie, previously split into the industrial sector and the rentier financial sector, came together in a block. In this sense, “the capitalist unit was formed around cutting public spending, the decline in the value of work and the reduction in protection for workers.”15 Capital’s discontent with the countercyclical measures widened political polarization, but not enough to stop Dilma’s re-election in 2014. Rousseff won by a small margin and, immediately afterwards, within days, a movement rejecting the election’s outcome was formed. The venture was initially headed by the defeated opposition, the Social Democratic Party of Brazil (PSDB), and in particular the losing presidential candidate’s supporters, who demanded new elections.16 Another decisive actor in Rousseff’s fall was the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Eduardo Cunha. Since her first term, Dilma had been exchanging politically nominated members of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) in key posts (ministries, presidencies of large public companies) for figures with technical profiles, angering the party.17 Cunha began to gather together those discontented with this policy and in 2015, deliberately, broke the tacit pact of rotating the Chamber’s presidency with the PT becoming president himself. This gave him crucial leverage over Dilma and only he as the Chamber’s president, could accept or deny requests for impeachment. The movement to depose President Dilma was supported by sectors practicing cronyism in the legislature as she couldn’t staunch the torrent of accusations of corruption that penetrated the entire political system. Simultaneously,

158  Ermínia Maricato and Paolo Colosso the neoliberal narrative was gaining strength in the mass media. It was increasingly accepted that corruption and bad management were exclusive to the Workers’ Party and, if they were removed from government, the country would start growing again. The accusations of corruption mainly came from the judicial operation entitled “car wash,” conducted by a more activist wing of the Public Prosecution who, as well as being close to the press, had lived and studied in the United States. The cases involving the former President Lula and the public company, Petrobras, became public in key moments, which incited an atmosphere of antipetismo. This will be fundamental in socially legitimatizing the impeachment as well as central to Bolsonaro’s later election, which elevated antipetismo to hysteria and collective paranoia.18 Little by little the narrative of the fight against corruption, which although widespread throughout the political system, still tended to focus on the government, meets up with the PT’s accountability for the economic crisis, thus creating the necessary context for the president’s dismissal. As a result, people donned the national colors of yellow and green, and marched onto the streets again. The pro-impeachment rallies were generously televised, the police were much more respectful and in São Paulo, even subway turnstiles were opened (Valor 2015). As we said, June 2013 was a “social opening” to the Right and to the Left. In 2016, the victory was of the Right’s June. Supported by private equity, pork barrel cronyism in the legislature, as well as crowds on the streets and a consenting Supreme Court, produced all the necessary elements to create the political opportunity for a constitutional rupture masquerading as something else.

4. The Days Following the Coup: Worsening Inequality and Concealing the Urban Crisis The institutional rupture took the party most involved in cronyism in the New Republic to power. This party has participated in all governments since re-democratization and, in this sense, understood the institutional and extrainstitutional chicanery of the so-called coalition presidentialism. Appointing allies to strategic positions and buying votes in the legislature, they knew how to staunch the bleeding which put the political system at risk. And as they had come to power by exceptional methods, using democratic impasses and accumulation through spoliation, the government opts without hesitation for the latter. Brazil again aligned itself with neoliberalism in its strictest sense, which once again became dominant internationally in the ten years following the global economic crisis. With the rise of the Right, urban social policies, which once were pillars of the PT’s Urban Reform, not only regressed, but simply ceased to exist. The housing program was dismantled; environmental policies and the provision of basic sanitation, necessary for large sections of the population, were abandoned; rodoviarismo19 was reaffirmed and the need for another model of urban

The Urban Crisis in Brazil  159 mobility disappeared over the horizon. This did not mean that public authorities did not act on urban space; on the contrary, it quickly became evident that urban space could be used in the creation of a good business environment and in the militarized control of social life. In effect, Brazil’s cities concretized the sui generis marriage between economic neoliberalism and social conservatism. Official statements were structured around at least four pillars and these narratives became the accepted truth, as this governmental style became present in the cities, with São Paulo and Rio of Janeiro being paradigmatic, and reinforced at the state and federal levels, which became ideologically aligned. The first pillar is based on “fiscal responsibility,” calling for the need for “austerity” and for the “modernization” of the economy, which justifies relaxing labor relations, the privatization of public goods, and the handing over of strategic sectors – base industry, infrastructure, and aerial transport. President Temer, the “interim” president replacing Rousseff in 2016, took advantage of this discourse at the federal level, to approve the labor reform that permits casualized work, widespread outsourcing, direct negotiations between employees and employers and the disempowerment of trade unions, among many other such measures. Austerity was put into practice, particularly when it came to social rights for ordinary citizens; however, when it came to writing off large corporations’ debts owed to the state, the state was much more generous, a policy of double standards to be perfected by Bolsonaro. At the urban policy level, this first pillar is based on the presumption that private initiative is always more efficient. While this does not always stand up to closer scrutiny, it is useful to justify the handing over of oil exploration in the Presalt Basin and the intelligence sector of companies like Embraer to the private sector. This overlapping discourse also appeared in local governments. The João Dória Jr./Bruno Covas (PSDB) administration in the city of São Paulo strongly based itself in this mentality, proposing “the greatest privatization program in the world.” In São Paulo’s case, the “state denationalization,” concessions, partnerships, and privatizations themselves involved parks, cemeteries, stadiums, bus terminals, and ticketing services in stations. The assets put up for sale have a minute impact on the public budget, especially as some are even profitable, but their locations are strategic for urban business as they can create new market situations in their surrounding locations. Besides the policy chimed with the pro-business zeitgeist then in vogue. A second pillar of an urban policy which is economically liberal and socially conservative aims to return public investments to the areas and structures where the city is already historically valued. As the middle and elite classes tend to inhabit and utilize well-established areas of the territory, these are also easily closed off. In São Paulo, this decorative urbanism became known as the program “Beautiful City” and, although it was one of the flagship actions of the mayor’s daily performance on social media, in real terms the urban custodianship worsened.

160  Ermínia Maricato and Paolo Colosso The third pillar of this urban policy is the official mobilization of feelings of insecurity and fear so as to justify a new militarization of the urban daily life. Rio de Janeiro is the paradigmatic case here, with policing being reinforced by the armed forces, that is military troops without the training to deal with civil society. The intervention that legislates for the reinforcement of army troops in daily life was decreed in mid-February 2018. At that moment it was considered a positive move according to public opinion, because it gave the image of the state resuming control of a city at risk of chaos and widespread violence. Two months later a report revealed the ineffective exhibitionism at the heart of the policy: 70 operations, involving 40,000 men, only managed to seize 140 weapons. Moreover, the number of extra-judicial killings doubled in relation to the previous year. After six months, the number of operations involving the army and police without clear objectives and with negative effects multiplied. One of the most striking was the case involving the boy Marcos Vinícius who, while on his way to school and dressed in his school uniform, was shot and killed from a helicopter during an operation in the Maré favela. Despite such negative impacts of the policy, the number of such police killings continues to rise. An amount of about R$ 1.2 billion has been invested in this exhibitionist carnage, during ten months of intervention. One reason for its continued expansion, despite such negative impacts, is that it pleases the conservative feelings. It is no coincidence that in 2018 the number of military candidates elected to Congress increased significantly and the victorious president himself comes from this line. This militarization of urban daily life is only the most palpable incarnation of a social vision which in no way aims at democratic landmarks. Through distinct measures, be it the physical force of the state, or the passing of more legal instruments, the authoritarian impulses of conservatism tend to eliminate from the scene their opponents and the parts of the population considered deviant or merely undesirable. Although the official discourse is about turning the social processes on their heads, the real numbers leave no doubt. The hope that Brazil would return to economic growth never materialized, and, instead, there was an alternation between stagnation and minimal growth. What did return, however, was inequality and pauperization. A 2018 report using the Gini index shows that, for the first time in the last 15 years, the relationship between the average income of the poorest 40% and total average income was unfavorable to the bottom of the pyramid. It is also important to note the racial aspect. From 2011 to 2016 black people had an average income of 57% compared to the white population, but by 2017, this number regressed to 53% (OXFAM 2018). There is also a gender aspect, in that in 2016 women were earning about 72% of men’s income, with this proportion falling to 70% in 2017, the first reversal in 23 years. There is also a return of extreme poverty, with the country reappearing on the hunger map and tropical diseases once considered extinct also returning.20 And as the social security system in Brazil is still fragile, the negative effects of the austerity policies become visible in the cities. There is a growing number of street residents, camped under bridges and on public spaces.

The Urban Crisis in Brazil  161 Other symptoms appear in the urban space. In Rio, we watched as the imposing National Museum, part of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro’s structure, burnt down. Its collection was composed of over 20 million items, including the most important records of Brazilian natural and anthropological science. The numbers show that the resources allocated to the institution in 2018 were between 100% to 150% less than the average of the two previous years. The museum director had made the building’s bad conditions public a few months before and demanded the federal government take responsibility. As far as the urban structural policies are concerned, despite the difficulties and omissions outlined earlier, there were advances which have since regressed completely. The PMCMV lost its identity as a housing policy when the ceiling was raised and the most popular range cut. It reinforced its character as a program for accelerating the real estate and civil construction sectors. In turn, urban mobility is an irrelevant issue at any level of government with this economically liberal and socially conservative vision. From the federal point of view, the Urban Mobility Law No. 12.587/2012 is still empty words. In São Paulo, Mayor João Doria was elected with the proposal to increase the city’s speed limit again. The former mayor Fernando Haddad had taken the initiative of reducing the speed limit, resulting in a drop in the number of deaths. With the cancellation of the preventive measure of regulating the speed limit the number of deaths went back up. As a further sign of the return to the hegemony of the rodoviarismo, the Social Democratic Party of Brazil (PSDB) administration suppressed a series of bike lanes, cut more than 130 bus lines, reduced the student pass that had been achieved in 2015 and, furthermore, increased the fares for public transport above inflation. There were protests by young people against the dismantling, but the police had political backing to repress the unrest. Questions linked to urban sustainability follow in the same direction. It is completely anathema to conservatives to consider the need for denser and more compact cities, capable of providing full water and sewage treatment, with an urban mobility network centered around public transport, the use of clean energy sources and even the preservation of natural heritage as public property. The conservative tendency is to erase questions about such matters from public opinion, while others more favorable to the Right are kept in the spotlight, or to treat ecological questions as secondary and of little importance. It is no coincidence that the Ministry of Cities in the Bolsonaro government is simply extinct, while the Environment Ministry is headed by someone convicted of fraud in environmental bids, Mr. Ricardo Salles.

5. Conclusions The conquest of the democratic cycle that began in the early 1980s and ended with the coup that deposed President Dilma in 2016 had the vital support of urban social movements constituted in the ’70s with the help of the social communities of the Catholic Church. The period marked by the PT’s political

162  Ermínia Maricato and Paolo Colosso hegemony tended to drain the participation threaded into every city through local governments, so as to prioritize the institutional party policy related to elections, to executive positions, parliamentary mandates, and to the alliances necessary to stay in power. The “Popular Democratic Municipal Administrations,” which created a good impression of the PT in local governments and therefore in urban policies in the 1990s, tended to disappear in the 2010s  – with a few exceptions such as Fernando Haddad’s administration in São Paulo (2013–16). Urban studies can contribute to recent debates in some areas. By showing that the 2000s were characterized by economic growth and rising wages, but a relative worsening in living conditions in large cities, largely due to the high value of housing, the reproduction of the plundering peripheralization and the ethnic-racial stigmas, we posit two explanations. First, it was a unique historical experience to understand that economic growth, even being redistributive, is something distinct from urban development. Despite the importance of the federal social policies of the PT governments there was no significant impact on urban inequality and historical territorial segregation that mark Brazilian society. On the contrary, the attempt to tackle the international crisis of 2008 with a countercyclical developmental policy only accentuated urban inequality. The peripheries starved of the state’s presence (which is most often represented by a repressive and criminal police) were gradually taken over by strongly conservative evangelical churches, organized crime, and militias (parallel groups of police officers or ex-police officers who exploit urban services, such as water, energy, gas, public transport or offer plots of land for housing). Hence the classic debate: In contemporary society the struggle for wages (at the workplace) is as important as the urban struggle (in the residential areas). The contradictions of space sometimes go unnoticed, even in the more leftist governments, a fact that goes some way to explain why many on the Left did not capitalize on the urban demonstrations of 2013, losing the opportunity to take those movements in another direction. This leads on to the second epistemological advantage stemming from an urban studies approach to the coup, as it allows us to avoid a simplistic reading of the scenario after June  2013. That is, remembering the collective experiences put forward by these new social and political actors emerging from these urban demonstrations can wrest power from the narrative of weakening social movements as a harbinger of what was to come in 2018. It is a fact that we are not facing a closed situation but rather an open picture of effervescent contradictions, in which there are young and popular forces, still with the need for new syntheses. It is the duty of critical thinking committed to democratic advances to understand that even in regressive situations in institutional politics, it is the everyday policies along with the living forces that make society dynamic, experimenting with new forms of collective action and the declaration of living together. A critical urban studies perspective makes clear that the rise of the new Right implies a cover up of long-standing structural problems. The neoliberal agendas

The Urban Crisis in Brazil  163 currently in vogue aim to use public institutionality in the service of business by providing it with urban lands for development and controlling space through the use of the state’s physical force. With such methods, the new Right achieves power but does not provide any hope for “the other 99%” of the population. In the days after the coup, the big cities have become one of the main stages for the symptoms of the neoliberal offensive to come to light. They embody Dardot and Laval’s (2016) diagnosis after the global crisis, according to which the minimum state intervenes in society to rescue the conditions for the accumulation of capital. On the other hand, as the uprisings of the subordinate classes have an urban character and, as in cities, the administrative spaces and society come closer together, so local government can be the starting point for the reconstruction of the horizons of an effective democracy.

Notes 1. We would like to thank Aaron Dann for the translation of our text. 2. It is worth remembering some articles and books about the period, in which we reconstruct these processes in more depth. Ermínia Maricato, O impasse da política urbana (Petrópolis: Vozes, 2011); idem, “Copa del Mundo en Brasil: un tsunami de capitales que profundizan las desigualdades urbanas.” In Luchas urbanas al rededor del fútbol. In Fernando Carrion (Ed 5 Avenida: Equador, 2014). 3. T/N: The negative feeling that some Brazilian voters have towards the PT. 4. Conferences (municipal, state, and federal), as well as councils, were fundamental pillars of the participatory body structure advocated by PT governments and largely extinct in 2019. 5. Márcio Pochmann, Nova classe média? (São Paulo: ed. Boitempo, 2012), 19. The pagination follows the original digital version of the book. Cf. http://politicaedireito. org/br/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Nova-Classe-media_-Marcio-Pochmann.pdf 6. David Harvey points out that structural crises are addressed with investments especially in fixed capital in the built environment. Harvey, David 2017. Marx, Capital and the Madness of Economic Reason. London: Profile. 7. The first term is from Singer, André 2012. Sentidos do Lulismo. São Paulo, Boitempo. The second is from Boito, Armando. 2018. Reforma e Crise Política no Brasil – os conflitos de classe nos governos do PT. Campinas: ed Unicamp. 8. Cf. “Ministro garante continuidade do MCMV entidades em 2017.” www. dci.com.br/economia/ministro-garante-continuidade-do-mcmv-entidades-em2017-mesmo-apos-suspens-o-1.464754 9. Information taken from Fipezap, graphs available at http://fipezap.zapimoveis. com.br/ 10. The investigation comprises 438 municipalities over 60,000 inhabitants, in all states and regions. This universe is representative enough to be treated as national. 11. These numbers are available at: www.ipea.gov.br/portal/images/170609_atlas_da_ violencia_2017.pdf 12. Most of these positions were created in the tertiary sector, with salaries up to 1.5 minimum wage and with unstable conditions. They were filled by young people between 25 and 34; 77.2% by “non-whites” and 60% by women. Márcio Pochmann, op. cit., p. 38. 13. Master Plan is the name given to a body of laws and guidelines that direct urban development. 14. André Singer, O lulismo em crise: um quebra-cabeça do período Dilma (2011– 2016). São Paulo: Cia das Letras, 2018, 39-ss. In more accurate terms, Singer

164  Ermínia Maricato and Paolo Colosso understands the “financier coalition” as the financial sector and the traditional middle class, while the “industrial coalition” to be made up of industrial entrepreneurs associated with the organized part of the working class. These coalitions cease to be competitors from 2012 and 2013, when even the most benefited become dissatisfied with a certain “statism.” 15. André Singer, ibidem, p. 61. It is possible this argument has been made too succinctly. Singer, like Boito, understands that during the Lula governments and Dilma’s first term, there was distance between the parts of the bourgeois class, that is, the industrial sector, more based in production, and the financial sector. But at this moment of dissatisfaction and in the following polarization, the sectors realign. 16. The decisive moments in this process are explored in more detail in André Singer. O lulismo em crise, p. 161-ss. 17. It is interesting to remember, as Singer does, ex-President Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s statement that the PMDB’s political negotiations would be similar to “blackmail.” Singer referred to Dilma’s attempt as a “republican trial.” 18. We use the term collective paranoia as during the elections, Bolsonaro’s alt-right profited from a phantasmagoria, creating the image that the PT governments were communist. Such an interpretation is, to say the least, extravagant and shocks any remotely reasonable historian. 19. T/N: This is a state policy that prioritizes road transport as the preferred method of circulation for cargo and individuals and, due to this, invests in motorways instead of other forms of transport, such as railroads. 20. ONU-FAO, 2018. Brazil had been removed from the Hunger Map when less than 5% of the population were below the poverty line. In 2016, this number went up to 5.6%, which means 11.7 million Brazilians live on less than $1.90 per day. Infant mortality also started growing again.

References Andrade, Laura et al. 2012. “Mental Disorders in Megacities: Findings from the São Paulo Megacity Mental Health Survey.” PLOS ONE 7 (2). ANTP. 2017. Relatório geral – Sistema de Informações da Mobilidade Urbana da Sistema de Informações da Mobilidade Urbana da Associação Nacional de Transportes Público – Simob/ANTP. Available at: http://www.antp.org.br/sistema-de-informacoesda-mobilidade/apresentacao.html. Boito, Armando. 2018. “Reforma e crise política no Brasil: os conflitos de classe nos governos do PT.” Campinas, ed. UNICAMP BrCidades. 2017. Por uma frente ampla em defesa da construção social de um projeto para as cidades do Brasil. São Paulo: BrCidades. Available at: www.brcidades.org/documentos. Accessed on 10 November 2018. Dardot, Pierre, and Christian Laval. 2016. A Nova Razão do Mundo. São Paulo: ed. Boitempo. Harvey, David. 2017. Marx, Capital and the Madness of Economic Reason. London: Profile. INESC/OXFAM. 2018. “Monitoramento dos direitos humanos em tempos de austeridade no Brasil.” Available at: www.inesc.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Rel_ Dir_Hum_Temp_Aust-NOVO-1-_V3.pdf?x63825. Accessed on 10 February 2019. Mercadante, Aloizio et al., eds. 2018. O Legado dos governos do PT. São Paulo: Fundação Perseu Abramo. Nossa São Paulo/IBOPE. 2018. “Mapa da Desigualdade 2017.” São Paulo, Rede Nossa São Paulo Oxfam Brasil. 2018. Inequality report 2018. Available at: https://brazilian. report/money/2018/11/26/recession-brazil-poor-oxfam/.

The Urban Crisis in Brazil  165 Pereira, Rafael. 2018. “Transport Legacy of Mega-events and the Redistribution of Accessibility to Urban Destinations.” Cities 81: 45–60. Pochmann, Márcio. 2012. Nova classe média? São Paulo: ed. Boitempo. Singer, André. 2012. Os sentidos do lulismo: Reforma gradual e pacto conservador. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. UQBAR. 2016. Anuário Uqbar: securitização e financiamento imobiliário. Rio de Janeiro: Uqbar Publicações. Valor. 2015. “Metro de SP liberou catraca para manifestações em ato contra Dilma.” Available at: www.valor.com.br/politica/3963126/metro-de-sp-liberou-catraca-paramanifestantes-em-ato-contra-dilma. Accessed 10 February 2019. Vasconcellos, Eduardo. 2014. A Política de transporte no Brasil: a construção da mobilidade excludente. São Paulo: ed. Manole.

11 De-democratization in Brazil and the New Puzzle of Women’s Political Representation Patricia Rangel, Eneida Vinhaes Dultra, and David McCoy 1. Introduction In April of 2016, a few months before approximately half of a million Brazilians would formally declare their candidacy for mayor and city council elections across the country, Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies voted to impeach its first and only female president, Dilma Rousseff, on questionable auspices.1 Her leftist credentials include three decades of service as ministers and secretaries in the Workers’ Party (PT)2 at all levels of government. Before that, in her 20s, she was a resistance fighter against military dictatorship (1964–85), which eventually resulted in her imprisonment and brutal torture. Jair Bolsonaro, the bombastic, right-wing deputy from Rio de Janeiro dedicated his impeachment vote to the soldiers of ’64 and Colonel Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, the dread of Dilma.3 Bolsonaro televised a dedication to Ustra – who was the most infamous torturer of captured resistance fighters during the dictatorship – and was rewarded two years later with the presidency. In spite of the highly visible #EleNão (not him) movement against his candidacy in 2018 and his well-documented history of inflammatory comments toward women, Bolsonaro is estimated to have won 50% to 54% of the female vote.4 What if anything does this conspicuously gendered moment of de-democratization mean for women’s political representation in the country? Brazil is an outlying case for gender representation. Almost two decades ago, Mala Htun (2002) articulated the puzzle of women’s rights in the country: it held the lowest level of women’s representation in national politics in Latin America, yet it was known as a pioneer of policy advancing women’s rights and social progress. Brazil is oft cited as an exceptional case in one of the canonical debates in feminist political theory regarding the relationship between descriptive5 and substantive representation6 (Pitkin 1967), or the distinction between a politics of presence and a politics of ideas (Phillips 2001), despite having laws that guarantees sex quotas in PR party lists since 1995 (Laws No. 9,100/95; 9,504/97; 12,034/2009; and 13,487/2017). Proponents of descriptive representation maintain that political institutions should proportionally reproduce the social groups that constitute the social

De-democratization in Brazil  167 body, as a microcosm of the society (Tremblay 2007). Considering gender balance has been increasingly adopted as a baseline measure for democratic deficits (Paxton 2000), Brazil’s 15% female Lower Chamber should be a cause for concern. While descriptive representation remained weak, substantive representation of women in Brazil was exceptionally advanced. They have developed strong social movements that pushed for women’s rights in the Constitutional Assembly (1988); women are prominent in the workforce compared with other countries in the region; and the bancada feminina (women’s caucus) has been more successful in passing legislation than its small numbers could predict (Wyle 2018). Feminist literature typically maintains a strong, positive relationship between women’s descriptive representation (politics of presence) and substantive representation (politics of ideas). A  wealth of empirical literature backs up this mutually causal relationship (Celis et  al. 2008; Diaz 2002) through a range of mechanisms, including demonstrated differences in policy proposals from women (Bratton and Ray 2002) and changes in political discourses (Grey 2002). Authors, such as Drude Dahlerup (1988), argue that the inclusion of more women (more precisely, a female critical mass) makes a difference in politics, especially when preferences diverge between the sexes. Other authors, such as Magdalena León and Jimena Holguín (2005), radicalize the argument, claiming that the election of a number of legislators only is, in itself, transformative of political institutions assuming that they will advocate for themes related to needs, rights, and interests seldom addressed by male legislators. Wylie (2018) argues that Brazil’s puzzling, consistent exception in this relationship between descriptive and substantive representation can be explained through its peculiar institutions. Brazil’s non-programmatic party system stems from open list proportional representation in which elites have incentives to offer personalized platforms, compete to differentiate themselves from co-partisans, change from party to party and invest little in programmatic party discipline (Ames 2001). This lack of party institutionalization creates an additional barrier to establishing the critical psychological, organizational, and material support that is required to change patterns of representation within institutions (Wylie 2018, 20). The exclusionary tendencies that hinder descriptive representation result from undesirable but self-reinforcing, path-dependent mechanisms. However, the drastic changes in Brazilian politics in recent years (detailed in other chapters of this book) place the country at a critical juncture in which previously stable patterns of behavior suddenly give way to processes that allow for new trajectories (Collier and Collier 1991).7 The resulting political chaos and antisystem sentiments, in addition to the highly questionable, temporary jailing of Brazil’s most popular politician (Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva or simply Lula from the PT), cleared a path for Jair Bolsonaro (PSL) to win the presidency in 2018, with the support of the growing conservative evangelical population, as further explained by Magali do Nascimento Cunha in her chapter.

168  Patricia Rangel et al. Bolsonaro, a former army officer and open apologist for Brazil’s military dictatorship, has built his career as an ultra-right, anti-system elite whose presence in politics has been highly polarizing along gender lines. While his campaign worked to frame him as a political outsider, many of the established rightwing and Center parties that generated the political chaos of the impeachment now support his government. Both the impeachment and Bolsonaro’s ascent to power were marked by misogynistic expressions and followed by setbacks regarding gender equality policies/women’s rights. It was the critical juncture that initiated a series of regressions in social rights, criminalization of leftist activism,8 and increases in police violence. As a result, discourses of hate were legitimized, targeting historically marginalized social groups (women, African Brazilians, LGBTQI+, the working class, rural communities, and Indigenous populations). This recent critical juncture poses several questions: has women’s substantive and descriptive representation been altered? If so, how? And how would Brazil’s puzzle of unusual patterns of women’s representation interact with the de-democratization process? It is also essential to acknowledge how women’s decisions to declare candidacy or join a party is influenced by changes in a political environment (Kanthak and Woon 2015). The complexity of political representation and inevitable heterogeneity of group interests often requires one to move beyond discrete instances of representation, such as a single policy change or alternation of actors. To enrich analysis in this complex setting, Celis et al. (2008, 104) recommend focusing on changes in the processes and structures of gender representation: considering what might constitute conditions that are more conducive to [substantive representation]. Thus, in addition to highlighting how discrete rights or discrete numbers of individuals change over time, we focus on changes, the creation or demolition of locations of representation.

2. Women’s Political Representation After Rousseff’s Impeachment In this section, we examine women’s political representation in 2016 local elections (mayors and city councilors), which took place a few months after the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff. Brazilian politicians have been historically unwilling to respect the authority of women, a trend which comes into glaring clarity when one considers how the degradation of presidential-parliamentary relations jeopardized Rousseff’s ability to rule. With scarce support in Congress, the president struggled to pass her agenda, nor could she ultimately stay in power. The media have consistently contributed to the demonization of left-wing sectors and depreciation of Rousseff’s public image. Several magazine and newspaper covers pictured her as unstable, hysterical, and other adjectives often addressed to women as a delegitimization strategy.9 Sexist expressions

De-democratization in Brazil  169 were also common still during her electoral campaigns of 2010 and 2014, when she and presidential candidate Marina Silva were both judged through many aspects other than political proposals and background, i.e. outfit, hair, makeup, body, private life (Magalhaes 2017). During the finalization of Dilma’s impeachment hearing in 2016, each MP was given the floor to offer a brief justification of their vote, and misogyny and traditional gendered logic abounded. Congresspeople justified their votes mentioning their families, wives, and hometowns, as well as employing openly sexist attacks, such as lack of laundry to do and lack of a man. After the votes were cast and it was clear Dilma would be impeached, many of the supporters of impeachment engaged in mock-song and shouted “Bye-bye, darling!”10 which, in Brazilian Portuguese, cannot be understood without strong associations to gender hierarchy. Biroli (2016) understands this expression of violence and hate speech against the president not only as a politician but as a woman, specifically – a political violence against women as an effort to silence them, as well as to push them from public life back to the private realm. This gender-based symbolic violence would trigger two outcomes: (1) it reduces women’s ability as political actors; and (2) it weakens the gender agenda, reducing the legitimacy of feminist claims, as the next section displays. In post-impeachment Brazil, political leaders of right-wing parties, the media, and representatives of the judicial branch nourished a narrative that criminalized the political class and fostered judicial activism geared towards the fracturing of other governmental powers. As stated by Senra (2017), quite to the contrary to what had been foreseen by the media  – which has been aligned with conservative sectors of politics and business since democratization (Albuquerque 2019)  – the takeover by Dilma’s Vice-President, turned ouster, Michel Temer, did not solve the political/economic crisis. The crisis deepened and reinforced institutional instability, economic depression, and the weakening of democracy,11 as Rômulo Lima discusses in his chapter. 2.1 Substantive Representation/Politics of Ideas In the pre-impeachment context, equality had been advancing through gender mainstreaming and cross-cutting policies bolstered by the Secretary for Women’s Policies or Secretaria de Políticas para as Mulheres (SPM). After 2016, this state structure was diminished through ministerial reform carried out by the newly sworn-in Temer.12 The SPM had been an insider women’s policy agency (WPA),13 according to State Feminism categories,14 as it asserted women’s movements claims and succeeded in gendering the dominant frame of public debate. Through interaction with feminist movements, the SPM influenced institutional politics and persuaded decision-makers, deploying sustained efforts to push for national legislation aiming at increasing the women’s political representation (Rangel 2012 and 2018). The SPM’s dismantling, thus, caused a great loss of women’s political representation in descriptive, substantive, extra-parliamentary (Celis 2008), and procedural dimensions. After its

170  Patricia Rangel et al. dissolution, Temer created the Secretariat of Human Rights, subordinate to the Ministry of Justice, to host three secretariats: Women, Racial Equality, and Human Rights.15 Brazilian WPAs were historically coordinated by feminist or progressive women, until the new Secretariat of Women was assigned to conservative Fátima Pelaes, who is openly opposed to abortion in any circumstances (even rape) and upholds strong religious opinions in politics.16 As explained by Soler (2015), the 21st-century coup d’état tries to stop or eliminate a process of change in which the dominant sectors, when affected, deploy their capacity to impose their interests and overthrow the current government (Soler 2015, 87). By March 2017, government investment in gender equality reached the lowest level in a decade. A survey conducted by Poder 360 (2016) based on data from the Integrated Federal Financial Administration System (Siafi 2017; Siga Brasil 2017) showed that the budget for women, racial equality, and human rights, all together, was reduced by 35% that year. Symbolic representation of women was also impaired under Temer’s rule with his all male (and white) cabinet, the first one since the rule of Ernesto Geisel (1974–79) during the military dictatorship, garnering criticism from the international community. In 2017, the United Nations stated that his government had one of the lowest levels of female representation in the executive branch in the world. In a country where white men make up approximately 25% of the population (according to the 2010 census), Temer opted to include zero women and zero racial diversity. During International Women’s Day 2017, Temer’s choice of praise for women substantiated his exclusionary behaviors in the political arena: No one else is capable of indicating mismatches, for example, in supermarket prices than women. No one is better able to detect any economic fluctuations in the household budget than the woman. . . . I am convinced, by my upbringing, by Marcela [his wife], of how much women do for their households, for home, for the children. If society is doing well, if the children are brought up well, it is because they have adequate nurture in their homes, and, certainly, the person who does that is not the man, it is the woman.17 His statement reinforced a traditional perspective, which places women as ­second-class citizens and alienates them from public and productive life. This is a vastly different speech from the one Rousseff gave when she came to power in 2010 and promised to empower and prioritize women.18 Temer’s approach enabled a political scenario that neglected the foremost concerns of feminist and women’s movements. As noticed by Biroli (2016), a radically diminished presence of feminists in the state provided space for groups in parliament who have been acting against women’s and LGBTQI+ rights. One of the issues at stake was the debate on sexual and reproductive rights. Although over a million women undergo unsafe abortions each year, and despite the intense feminist struggle, the legislation forbids abortion in most

De-democratization in Brazil  171 cases (abortion is permitted only in case of rape, death risk, and when the child would not survive after birth – anencephaly for example), and new legislative proposals seek to toughen the prohibition. Figure 11.1 (Elite Survey Responses by Year and Gender: Opposition to Abortion) shows the distribution of support and opposition to the legalization of abortion among a representative sample of Lower Chamber MPs from 2014 and 2018 (PELA-USAL 2014, 2018). The question simply asks the degree to which each MP supports or opposes the legalization of abortion on a scale from one to ten (we display five bins for simplicity). We also performed a two-way ANOVA test of the differences in means between the years 2014 (mean = 4.0) and 2018 (mean = 6.9) by male and female representatives. The result shows that the difference between the legislatures over time is highly significant [F(1, 220) = 47.6, p < 0.001]; however, the difference by sex of the MP did not approach significance nor the interaction between sex and legislature. These findings show that there was a drastic shift in how the legislature viewed abortion rights from 2014 to 2018 but that male and female MPs were not significantly different from each other, nor was the change over time driven more by male nor female MPs. In light of our findings in the next section that women in the Lower Chamber in 2018 saw the single greatest increase in representation (from 9.9% in 2014 to 15% in 2018) this represents an inversion of Mala Htun’s puzzle of low descriptive but high substantive representation of women in Brazil. A second issue concerns changes to retirement (social security). Parliament passed a Retirement Reform (Reforma da Previdência)19 that broke up many labor rights and benefits. Women were not the only ones affected by that action; although, the original proposal arguing that it would put an end to progressive distortions by establishing the same retirement age for men and women, disregarded women’s second shift. The former distinction was a measure designed to

Figure 11.1 Elite Survey Responses by Year and Gender: Opposition to Abortion

172  Patricia Rangel et al. compensate women for their double work day that results from the sexual division of labor, as well as the countless other injustices suffered during their professional life.20 In the end, the approved text increased the retirement age for women from the current 60 years to 62 years, keeping at 65 years the age for men. As stated in the book’s introduction, the ultimate achievement of this process came through in the form of Constitutional Amendment No. 95, which precluded any real increase of public expenses for the next 20 years. According to a public opinion survey published by Datafolha in December 2016, only 24% of the population approved of this. Similar to the Retirement Reform, the result is likely to disproportionately affect marginalized groups, including women. 2.2 Descriptive Representation/Politics of Presence Have the aforementioned misogynistic narratives surrounding Dilma’s impeachment and the subsequent decline in women’s substantive and symbolic representation affected the descriptive dimension of representation? It is important to remember that these changes emerged due to a critical juncture created, in part, by intense anti-system sentiment. While one might expect to see a decline in women’s descriptive representation in this scenario as women perceive greater barriers to entry or success in politics, there is also evidence that female candidates, as natural political outsiders, benefit electorally from anti-system moments. This section explores how the political arena for women changed, beginning with the first election after Dilma was removed from office: the 2016 mayoral and city council elections. Several works empirically demonstrate that culture and social relations related to gender have a major influence on women’s access to politics (Inglehart and Norris 2003; Inglehart et al. 2002). The prevalence of conservative attitudes regarding traditional gender roles in economic, political, and social spheres directly impact women’s preparation to hold office and decision to emerge as candidates, as well as how voters perceive them as candidates (Norris 1985; Nowacki 2003; Paxton 1995, among others). For Fraser (1985, 1997), the destructive capacity of androcentric values rely in the daily exercise and basic socialization processes, placing women in inferior positions and directly impacting the distribution of power resources between men and women, as well as in the ways in which both groups are represented. This literature suggests the impeachment and the misogynistic political moment that accompanied it could have a negative impact on the ability of women to enter races and attain office in contemporary Brazil. A distinct line of research has found that moments of political discontent or anti-system sentiment tend to favor female candidates, who are more easily framed as new faces or outside candidates (Funk et al. 2019). Women are seen as generally less corrupt than men (Barnes and Beaulieu 2018), and voters prefer female candidates when system trust is low, as long as they are not already specifically viewed as being an insider (Morgan and Buice 2013). These

De-democratization in Brazil  173 findings seem especially appropriate for Brazil, given the sustained dominance of men in politics  – making a given female even more likely to be seen as an outsider. Thus, while the misogyny and intentional dismantling of sites of representation for women should present a barrier for female candidates, the anti-system component of this critical juncture should open a door for them. In the remainder of this section we review recent changes that accompanied the 2016 mayor and city council elections, and we analyze this data to test whether women in 2016 performed better or worse and whether those changes can be attributed to anti-system voting. A trend analysis of women elected as city councilors pre- and post-­ impeachment using TSE (Superior Electoral Tribunal) data indicates a slight increase in the number of female candidates in 2016, which did not cause an equivalent increase in the number of women elected (similar to 2012). In 2016, 7,786 women were elected (13.5% of the total City Councilors – 57,592). In 2012, 7,634 women had been elected (13.4% of the 57,172 representatives elected). The advance (0.1  percentage point) was much smaller than that observed in the previous election: the percentage growth of women elected between 2008 and 2018 was 0.9  percentage point.21 Figure 11.2 shows less than a one-point rise of the percentage of women in over a decade. Women running for mayor in 2016 represented 13% of candidacies (2,150 out of 16,568 candidates) and 11.6% of elected people (641 women). In 2012, women represented 12.6% of the 15,438 candidates and 11.8% of the mayors elected (659 women). In 2016, therefore, there was a decrease in the number of female mayors. This is a reversal of the large gains made by women in 2008

Figure 11.2 Female Councilors and Mayors Elected (2004–16)

174  Patricia Rangel et al. and again in 2012. The parties who voted to impeach Dilma’s ran more female candidates for mayor in 2016 than 2012 (from 1,532 to 1,633), while the leftist parties ran fewer (from 383 to 380). In large Brazilian cities that make use of a second round: out of 57 mayors elected, only one was female, elected by the PSDB, while several leftist parties reached the second round but failed to elect female candidates.22 Brazilian political parties were compelled to respect the gender quotas in 2012 and 2016, which require that all party lists (or coalitions) must include 30% female candidates. Thus, while the number of female candidates for city council and other legislative positions (but not mayors and governors) has surged, parties have not generated real opportunities of election for women. This indicates problems in the effectiveness of the quotas, which parties are able to easily circumvent by filling legislative party lists with laranjas or fake candidates who often receive very few or even literally zero votes (Wylie et al. 2019). For this reason, Brazilian mayors seem to have a far higher election rate than mayoral offices, even though the executive position should have higher barriers. It also means that empirical measures of success for female candidates in legislative positions cannot compare elected female candidates to unelected females, as the latter was severely inflated starting in 2012. The 2016 election for city councilors and mayors in Brazil overlapped substantially with Dilma’s impeachment, as well as a more general wave of anti-system sentiment. During this period, thousands of women and men decided whether to run, and political parties on both sides of the impeachment conflict sought new talent that could resist or capitalize from this critical juncture. Soon after, the public decided whom to vote for. As discussed earlier, prior research provides two highly plausible but countervailing predictions for women in 2016: the salient misogyny would discourage their entry and success, while the tide of anti-system sentiment should open the door for women. It is worthwhile to understand what happened in the post-impeachment Brazilian city council race for its own sake, as women entering politics would be vastly more likely to enter politics through city council than any other office. This scenario also provides an opportunity to explore, in a general sense, how anti-system voting affects female candidates. While it is impossible to know how candidate entry and voting would have occurred differently in 2016 in a counterfactual Brazil without salient misogyny, the very modest increases in 2016 for female city councilors and modest losses for female mayors do not initially lend credibility to the theory that popular distrust of elites and anti-system voting have opened the door to Brazilian women. However, we assume it is possible for anti-system voting to contribute to female candidate success even as the national trends saw no real growth. To explore this relationship, we focus on variation in anti-system sentiment among municipalities. We use TSE electoral data aggregated by CEPESP (2020) to exploit municipal variation in first-round voting for the anti-system candidate Jair Bolsonaro in the 2018 presidential election as a proxy for anti-system sentiment in the 2016 city council elections. While Bolsonaro’s first-round voting in a future

De-democratization in Brazil  175 election could not have a direct effect on outcomes in 2016 (or before), we assume the anti-system sentiment that gave him the presidency already existed by 2016 in a form that would affect (female) candidates’ decisions to run, as well as voters’ preferences toward (female) elites. The variation among the 5,570 municipalities (ranging from 2% to 89% first-round support for Bolsonaro) presents an opportunity to see how women fare compared to men across a variable range of anti-system sentiment. Thus, this variation among municipalities should appear as a more important explanatory factor for 2016, as this anti-system characteristic becomes activated between 2012 and 2016. Figures 11.3a to 11.3d show how women and men from four party groupings evolved in city council races from 2004 to 2016. We split the municipality samples into equal terciles based on the percentage of the first-round voting received by Bolsonaro (anti-system proxy). The cutoff points of the terciles are: low municipalities below 27%, the middle is 27–51%, and high is above 51% of the first-round vote. We separated the parties into those that supported impeachment in the 2016 Chamber of Deputies vote and those in which 50% or fewer of the deputies voted to impeach.23 The pro- and anti-impeachment groups can be understood as correlating with the Brazilian Right and Center versus the Left; however, some members of the center-left supported Dilma’s impeachment, such as the PSB. Figures 11.3a and 11.3b show that men and women in the PT suffered losses in all three municipality terciles in 2016; however, both female and male candidates suffered greater losses (% change) in the highest anti-system tercile. When comparing the relative losses of women to men in the PT across levels of anti-system voting, women in the PT suffered a greater loss of seats than men in low anti-system voting, while men suffered a greater proportional loss

Figure 11.3a Female City Councilors Elected (2004–16) Grouped by Municipality Terciles of First Round Votes for Bolsonaro in 2018

176  Patricia Rangel et al.

Figure 11.3b Male City Councilors Elected (2004–16) Grouped by Municipality Terciles of First Round Votes for Bolsonaro in 2018

Figure 11.3c Female City Councilors Elected (2004–16) Grouped by Municipality Terciles of First Round Votes for Bolsonaro in 2018

than women in the high anti-system voting municipalities. For the PT’s allies in the against impeachment group, both women and men gained a substantial number of seats in 2016, and those gains were concentrated in the lowest tercile of municipalities. Female candidates (see Figure 11.3c) in parties that voted to impeach President Dilma (including the PSDB in Figure 11.3a) lost seats in municipalities with low anti-system voting while men gained seats

De-democratization in Brazil  177

Figure 11.3d Male City Councilors Elected (2004–16) Grouped by Municipality Terciles of First Round Votes for Bolsonaro in 2018

in that tercile. In the highest anti-system category, female candidates gained more seats (% change) than their male counterparts. In the most important comparison for the anti-system theory – men versus women in the high antisystem category – women outperformed the men in their own party category (as % change) in each case; however, the opposite was often true in the lowest tercile. For the PT, this means that women were punished less by voters, even though they also had a net loss. For within gender and within party comparisons between terciles, the party groups become moderating factors: women in the PT and against impeachment group performed better in the lowest antisystem tercile than women in the highest, while women in the PSDB and voted to impeach performed best in the highest anti-system tercile. Thus, betweengender, within-party relationships strongly support the anti-system theory. However, the within-gender, within-party, between-levels of anti-system voting suggest a different mechanism is at play related to whether women are in outsider versus insider party groups in a given district. Figures 11.3a to 11.3d provide support for the theory that women benefit from anti-system environments over men in their own parties under certain assumptions that are defensible: every elected city councilor is weighed equally regardless of how many votes she received. We provide an alternative model that describes the probability that each individual vote for city council between 2004 and 2016 was cast for a woman based on the year, the party group (pro- or anti-impeachment) and the anti-system voting of the municipality in which it was cast (first-round Bolsonaro votes in 2018 as earlier) while controlling for potentially confounding factors. The dependent variable is the proportion of votes in each party list (in each municipality, each year) that

178  Patricia Rangel et al. was cast for female candidates. Each party list is weighted by the total votes it received, which results in a Bernoulli distribution (of successes/trials as female votes in a given list/total votes in a given list). The independent variable in this model is an interaction between 2018 firstround voting for Bolsonaro (anti-system voting) and the party groups described previously. In order to relax the assumption of strict linearity in this relationship, we also perform an interaction with a polynomial (square) of anti-system voting. Because this produces eight coefficients that are essentially impossible to interpret, the results are visualized in Figure 11.4a and Figure 11.4b. Additionally, this model allows us to ensure that the relationships are significant beyond the effects of a number of control variables.24 The results for the control variables are in Table 11.1. The coefficients are odds ratios with p-values in parentheses.25

Figure 11.4a Party List Votes for Women (%): Pro-Impeachment (2004–16) By Municipal-Level First Round Votes for Bolsonaro in 2018

Figure 11.4b Party List Votes for Women (%): Pro-Impeachment (2004–16) By Municipal-Level First Round Votes for Bolsonaro in 2018

De-democratization in Brazil  179 Table 11.1 Party List Voting for Female City Council Candidates, 2004–16 Percentage of Votes for Women

No Coalition List Size (List Candidates/ Seats) Female Mayor Wins Female Mayor (Lagged)

(m2004)

(m2008)

(m2012)

(m2016)

0.52*** p = 0.00 1.31*** p = 0.00 1.13*** p = 0.00

0.88* p = 0.05 1.36*** p = 0.00 0.98 p = 0.38 1.09*** p = 0.0003 2.31*** p = 0.00 0.96*** p = 0.00 1.11*** p = 0.00 1.21*** p = 0.00 0.12*** p = 0.00 58,711

1.19*** p = 0.0001 1.14*** p = 0.0000 1.05** p = 0.004 1.03 p = 0.14 2.11*** p = 0.00 0.94*** p = 0.00 1.08*** p = 0.0000 1.05* p = 0.04 0.24*** p = 0.00 69,302

2.00*** p = 0.00 1.13*** p = 0.0000 1.00 p = 0.88 1.08*** p = 0.0001 1.93*** p = 0.00 0.95*** p = 0.00 1.01 p = 0.57 1.09*** p = 0.0001 0.21*** p = 0.00 75,898

Income Inequality (Gini)

1.53*** p = 0.0001 Population (Ln) 2010 0.96*** p = 0.00 North and Northeast Regions 1.06*** p = 0.0005 Int: No Coalition * List Size 1.04 p = 0.09 Constant 0.16*** p = 0.00 Observations 55,467 Note: * p < 0.05 ** p < 0.01 *** p