I first interviewed Jair Bolsonaro in April 2015, when he was already well-known for his inflammatory speeches. He was still politically insignificant, but part of a rising tide of Brazilian deputies advocating a hardline on law and order issues theguardian.com/world/2015/apr…
The far-right in Brazil has been on the up for a while. Movimento Brasil Livre, Brazil's self-styled "Tea Party"equivalent, sprung up in the wake of Dilma's re-election in 2014. Its leader, Kim Kataguri, is likely to be elected to congress on Sunday theguardian.com/world/2015/apr…
One of the symptoms and causes of this rise of the right has been the explosive growth of evangelical groups over the past decade or so, leading in some instances to religious intolerance, particularly against Afro-Brazilian religions theguardian.com/world/2015/jun…
The sharp uptick in the number of evangelicals has consequences both in the political and cultural spheres, with Bishop Edir Macedo's TV Record an increasingly powerful player in the entertainment industry. (As well as Bolsonaro's go-to network) theguardian.com/world/2016/jan…
Though black Brazilians remain underrepresented in public life, 10 years after quotas were introduced at public universities, Afro-Brazilians are more visible & more politically active. This has, perhaps, brought to surface more overtly racist attitudes theguardian.com/world/2015/oct…
In the days before her impeachment, I interviewed Dilma, along w/ five other foreign journalists. Warning about the consequences of the "coup", she said it would have consequences. "It will leave a deep scar on Brazilians’ political life.” theguardian.com/world/2016/mar…
After the impeachment and ahead of the municipal elections in 2016, Brazilians' disenchantment w/ democracy became increasingly clear: bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
With the Supreme Court instituting a ban on corporate donations in 2015, the 2016 municipal elections were dominated by millionaire candidates as well as those bankrolled by evangelical churches bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Austerity measures implemented by the Temer administration may have been fiscally necessary, but they hardly lifted Brazil's increasingly toxic mood: bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
There was no sense of national renewal, and the corruption allegations continued to pile up against the new government, further alienating the Brazilian electorate: bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Then Temer was accused of corruption, effectively ending his hopes of passing any more major reforms aimed at shoring up Brazil's public accounts bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Lula, who left office w/ an 86% approval rating, was sentenced to jail for corruption and money-laundering. Meanwhile, Jair Bolsonaro started to climb in presidential polls bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
After the truckers' strike in May, Temer felt obliged to rule out the possibility of an imminent military intervention
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And now here we are, with the genuine possibility of a first round win for Jair Bolsonaro, though it remains likely that there will be a second round runoff with the Workers' Party candidate Fernando Haddad bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
