Tropical Trump: The Rise Of Jair Bolsonaro

Before October 8, most people outside of Brazil had never heard of Jair Bolsonaro. An undistinguished seven-term congressman before this election cycle began, Bolsonaro was most famous among Brazilians for his history of misogynistic and anti-black comments, around which he built his brand as a politically incorrect outsider fighting for Conservative values in Congress. However, the former army captain, who had been considered a fringe candidate of the far-right, won the first stage of Brazil’s presidential election with an impressive 46% of the vote. His opponent in the run-off election, Fernando Haddad of the left-wing Workers’ Party, failed to overturn the deficit, and three weeks later, Bolsonaro was elected president of the most populace country in Latin America. Often referred to as a “Tropical Trump,” Bolsonaro’s notorious bigotry is only part of the danger he poses to Brazil. A Bolsonaro led government has ominous implications for marginalized groups and the global fight against climate change; it could also present a serious threat to the institution of democracy in Brazil.

“She doesn’t deserve to be raped, because she’s very ugly.” This comment, directed at a rival Congresswomen, earned Bolsonaro a court ordered $2,500 fine and international ridicule in 2015.  It was not his first brush with controversy. According to The Independent, he told Playboy that he “would be incapable of loving a homosexual son…I would prefer my son to die in an accident” in a 2011 interview. Although Bolsonaro is a Roman Catholic himself, his brand of hardline religious conservatism is part of his appeal to Brazil’s large Evangelical population, especially on issues like abortion and gay rights. His embrace of anti-black tropes in a country in which around 50 percent of citizens identify as black or “Pardo” (of mixed race) is baffling but has yet to impede his momentum. On the campaign trail, Bolsonaro derided “quilombos,” communities within Brazil descended from escaped slaves, as useless, saying “I don’t think they even serve for procreation anymore.”

The endless stream of infuriating soundbites has provided critics with plenty of material. A major focus of Haddad’s campaign was Bolsonaro’s conduct. Perhaps that focus was misguided. Although a history of racist comments has aroused some frustration, Bolsonaro still has visible support among Pardo, black, and indigenous voters throughout the country. Legendary Afro-Brazilian footballers Ronaldinho and Cafu even publicly endorsed Bolsonaro, and he carried the states containing some of Brazil’s most diverse cities including Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. In response to his vehement rhetoric, massive women-organized demonstrations took place before the first round of the election under the banner #EleNão (not him), yet recent polling found Bolsonaro’s support among the female electorate nationwide rose after the marches. Progressives in Brazil are beginning to find out what Americans learned in November of 2016: while blatant misogyny ought to disqualify one from a nation’s highest office, in reality it does not.

Understanding the appeal of Jair Bolsonaro begins with understanding an anti-corruption sting dubbed Operation Carwash. Since 2014, Brazil has been roiled by an investigation into corruption at the highest levels of government. The scandal has implicated over eighty politicians, including the sitting president and the two that preceded him. The only reason Haddad found himself leading the Workers’ Party ticket is that Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president from 2003 to 2011, was forced to bow out of the race at the last minute to contest allegations of corruption, although those allegations are widely viewed to be politically motivated. The overwhelming level of corruption has exhausted Brazilians, and Bolsonaro, who is only loosely affiliated with his party (the Social Liberal Party) has emerged from the past few years of scandal unscathed.

Along with the perception that he is an authentic, if brash, leader, Bolsonaro’s militaristic approach to preventing crime appeals to millions of voters who fear inner city violence stemming from the drug trade. Donald Trump warned of “criminals, drug dealers, and rapists” swarming across the Mexican border and painted a dire picture of “American carnage” in cities supposedly being torn apart by lawlessness. Bolsonaro and his supporters have better evidence to support their claims of a Brazil under siege by organized crime. According to the Brazil Forum of Public Security, 63,880 people were murdered in 2017, around 175 deaths every day. The murder rate rose to 30.8 per 100,000 people; compare that to 5 per 100,000 in the US and 25 per 100 per 100,000 in a particularly violent year in Mexico. This violence is driven by organized crime and has sparked public pleas for a robust solution. To combat the violence, Bolsonaro promises to roll back gun control laws, a move that would to comfort wealthy Brazilians rather than protect the poor who are actually in danger. Furthermore, he has argued that security forces should be empowered to use lethal force more often. Never mind that, per the New York Times, police officers themselves were already responsible for 5,144 killings in 2017, up 20 percent from the previous year. Nevertheless, no other candidate has seized upon people’s (legitimate) fear of violence with the same effect.

Headline grabbing quotes obscure some of the subtler, yet troubling aspects of Bolsonaro’s platform. Home to world’s largest forest, Brazil is an integral part of the fight against climate change. Bolsonaro is a vocal climate denier who, like President Trump, has criticized Brazil’s participation in the Paris Agreement of 2015. To withdraw from the agreement, Bolsonaro would need congressional approval, a difficult task. Even if it is prevented from leaving the Paris agreement, a Bolsonaro administration would be enthusiastic in the adoption of “pro-growth” policies at the expense of the Amazon rainforest. Deforestation in Brazil already happens at an alarming rate. Bolsonaro has called for Brazil’s environmental agencies to be shuttered and for environmental reserves and indigenous communities to be removed to make way for industrial development. Unsurprisingly, mining companies have been  among Bolsonaro’s most important backers. A Brazilian president so uniquely hostile towards the Amazon and the people who preserve it is a terrifying prospect in a world already being buffeted by the extreme weather patterns linked to climate change.

Bolsonaro’s most alarming characteristic is his reverence for the military dictatorship which ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985. “The dictatorship’s mistake was to torture but not kill,” he told an interviewer in 2016. He has repeatedly expressed admiration for the military leaders who orchestrated brutal torture programs to stamp out dissent during the dictatorship and has proposed putting generals in charge of certain government ministries. This should be concerning to anyone supportive of democracy. In a country whose democratic institutions, from legislature to judiciary to police, lack credibility, the threats posed by a strongman without regard for democracy are heightened.

The parallels between Jair Bolsonaro and Donald Trump are not subtle. Their ideological proximity was on display in August when Jair’s son Eduardo, himself a member of the Brazil legislature, tweeted a picture with former Trump advisor Steve Bannon exclaiming “We share the same worldview.” It was on display when former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke endorsed Bolsonaro, saying that “he sounds like one of us.” Trump’s campaign used Facebook and Twitter to disseminate their spin to individuals, millions of Brazilian voters received bulk messages over WhatsApp from marketing groups believed to be supportive of Bolsonaro.  More disquieting than the similarities between the two is that Bolsonaro been embraced by mainstream Conservatives even more than President Trump. In a fawning profile entitled “Brazilian Swamp Drainer,” the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal endorsed Bolsonaro saying, “After years of corruption and recession, apparently millions of Brazilians think an outsider is exactly what the country needs. Maybe they know more than the world’s scolds.”

This nonchalant dismissal of serious concerns betrays Conservative disinterest in how Brazil is governed. Numerous commentators pointed out the parallels between the Journal’s endorsement of Bolsonaro and its support for Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet throughout the 1980s. In 1973, Pinochet took power in a CIA-backed coup against the democratically elected President of Chile, Salvador Allende. Under Pinochet’s regime, secret police “disappeared” more than 3,000 dissidents and tortured tens of thousands. Conservative apologists for Pinochet point to Chile’s stellar macro-economic growth during his reign, growth created by the extreme free market policies of a group of University of Chicago educated economic advisors known as the “Chicago Boys.” Bolsonaro’s top economic advisor, Paulo Guedes, is also a graduate of University of Chicago; his prescription for the Brazilian economy includes privatization of all state-owned companies, and massive tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. Both Guedes and Bolsonaro have also advocated for a bigger role for generals in governance. As long as their policy prescriptions continue to serve private interests, an autocratic Bolsonaro administration will enjoy the same cover from Conservative elites.

None of this is too assert that Bolsonaro will turn Brazil into an autocracy the way Pinochet did in Chile. Unlike Pinochet, Bolsonaro will be a democratically elected leader with a legitimate mandate to reform. Brazil’s democratic institutions, while weak, remain independent of the military. However, Bolsonaro can still wreak havoc on Brazil and the world. Elected leaders like Narendra Modi in India and Recep Erdogan in Turkey have leveraged their own religious conservatism and nationwide social unrest to build formidable bases of power and undermine democracy and stability in their respective regions. It is not hard to imagine Bolsonaro following a similar path. To govern in Brazil’s system of government, he will have to build a legislative coalition which might serve as a check on Bolsonaro’s worst policymaking impulses as long as the more moderate parties show a little courage. Yet, since 2016, many Conservative politicians in the US have subordinated their belief in democracy and civility in order to ride President Trump’s momentum to electoral success and the chance to pass massive tax cuts. Anyone who recognizes the threat of bigotry and autocracy to Brazilians, and climate change to the world, must hope that Brazil’s leaders resist the urge to follow suit.

Rohan Palacios ’21 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at rpalacios@wustl.edu.