SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. September 29, 2022.
With only a few days to go before October 2, the first round of Brazil's national elections for president, national Congress, governors and state legislatures, the country's democratic institutions are under great pressure.
The opposition candidate, former president Inácio Lula da Silva, leads by wide margins in virtually all polls, but the current president, Jair Bolsonaro, has openly rejected the legitimacy of any possible outcome other than his reelection, mobilizing his supporters to do the same. Concern that anti-democratic actions could trigger a return to military rule is widespread. Added to this are concerns about unfair electoral practices and even physical threats, especially against black and indigenous candidates, social activists and academics who have spoken out against increasingly authoritarian practices.
Global Exchangean international human rights organization based in San Francisco, in collaboration with the Peninsula 360 Press communications team, recently conducted a fact-finding mission to Brasilia and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to learn about and document the socio-political conditions leading up to the elections.
The team was in Brasilia and Rio de Janeiro between August 30 and September 8, 2022. Numerous individual and group interviews - focus groups - were conducted with ordinary Brazilians, as well as with journalists and renowned academics specializing in democracy, human rights, social justice and the environment.
In parallel, a team of data scientists from Peninsula 360 Press began analyzing the use of social networks to spread false information and hate messages in the context of the Brazilian elections.
Electoral context
Elections will be held in Brazil on October 2. Not only the presidency of the country is at stake, but also several popularly elected positions: the vice presidency, governors and deputy governors of the states, as well as part of the National Congress.
This electoral process has been accompanied by an intense political confrontation between the two main candidates: Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, former president and leftist candidate of the Workers' Party -PT-; and the current president seeking reelection, Jair Bolsonaro, of the far-right Liberal Party.
In addition, there will be 11 other presidential hopefuls from different political parties representing a wide range of ideological-political leanings.
In Brazil, voting is compulsory for all citizens over 18 years of age. Presidential elections are held in a first round and, if no candidate obtains 50% + 1, a final second round.
This year's first round will be held on October 2. If no candidate obtains a majority, the top two contenders will compete again on October 30.
Governors and lieutenant governors, as well as the Federal Senate, are also elected. 81 senators representing one-third of the chamber will be on the October 2 ballot.
In the case of the members of the Chamber of Deputies, its 513 members will be elected and will have electoral candidates in 27 constituencies; likewise, the members of the legislative assemblies will be elected at the state level.
Incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro has consistently underperformed his opponent Lula da Silva in polls conducted during 2022. Due to the large number of candidates, a runoff election is likely; however, polls indicate that Brazil's electorate is strongly leaning toward bringing back leftist and former President Lula da Silva.
It is in this context that President Bolsonaro has amplified his unfounded complaints about the possibility of fraud in Brazil's ?all electronic? electoral system. Many Brazilians we spoke to believe he is doing this to signal his intention to ignore the election results if they do not favor him.
Results:
Environment and human rights
According to Dr. Celso Sanchez, biologist and professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO), the government of President Jair Bolsonaro has been characterized by unprecedented environmental devastation in Brazil, especially in the Amazon, considered the lungs of the world, as well as a "significant increase in human rights violations".
Therefore, according to Sánchez, director of GEAsurAccording to UNIRIO's environmental studies laboratory, these elections are "absolutely important because the continuity of life is at risk not only in Brazil but throughout the world.
Sanchez points out that the 305 indigenous peoples of Brazil, as well as the Afro-descendant communities - called quilombolas - have received some kind of "threat" from the current government. There are 6000 quilombola territories in the country.
Brazil is not only a megabiodiverse country, but also has a social megadiversity. What threatened indigenous peoples and traditional native peoples was a subliminal incentive for paramilitary groups, illegal garimpo groups - interested in making gold garimpo - to advance on indigenous territories, destroying their territories where, at the same time, there was a decrease in police operations, a dismantling of the Federal Police and of the environmental control body.
Sanchez adds that President Bolsonaro's administration has also severely neglected the massive forest fires in the Amazon over the past four years, which have had a global impact.
We had historic fires in very fragile and specific biomes, such as the Pantanal, which burned in unprecedented proportions, such as the Atlantic Forest biome, one of the biodiversity hotspots of planet Earth... So it was a sequence of dramatic ecocide phenomena that have had a very visible influence on local climatic changes, on microclimatologies, on wind and rainfall distribution patterns.
Bolsonaro's government, Sanchez argues, dismantled a satellite observation system of the Amazon, which now prevents accurate data on the ecological disaster.
Political participation and violence
In response to the "ecogenocide", as Sanchez calls the environmental devastation in Brazil, native peoples have organized not only to resist, but also to re-exist through the creation of collectives, support networks and minority candidates that will play an essential role in these elections. To this, we can add the efforts of artists, journalists and academics who not only investigate the eco-genocide, but also denounce it.
These candidates "are predominantly female, black and indigenous. The role of black women today, of course, given the gigantic legacy of Marielle Franco and the seed of hope that it represents to speak in this seat of political occupation, the importance of indigenous black women, Afro-indigenous? or as we prefer to call them: Afropindoramic? because pindorama was the name given to the continent by our indigenous ancestors".
The Afro-indigenous youth also has a vast participation, they have organized the marches: the march of the Margaritas, the march of the black women, the march of the indigenous women; from here, many artistic leaders came out later.
But the defense of territory and human rights in Brazil can be very lethal. A recent case is the murder of the indigenist Bruno Pereira and the British journalist Dom Phillips, who disappeared on June 5, 2022 in the Yavari valley. About this homicide, the newspaper Falha de S. Paulo expressed: "The tragedy exposes the Amazon as a lawless land sponsored by Bolsonaro".
Sanchez assures that Brazil is living a "dramatic moment of violence." After the 2018 murder of black councilwoman Marielle Franco in Rio de Janeiro, many black women across the country followed her legacy of social activism; however, Sanchez denounces that political violence against these activists, and even with academics working with them, has increased in the current electoral context: "Threats are received almost daily." Sánchez himself has been threatened.
We are living a dramatic situation of real and virtual threats, a complex situation because, for example, in the most affected areas in the center of Rio de Janeiro, we have the action of paramilitary groups that have already said -I was a witness of it- that they would not allow people to vote for Lula in certain parts.
It is a very complex moment, challenging and of growing hatred because, what we see, is a president who has a hate speech... he is imposing an increasing tone of his speech and I don't know how we are going to stop that, it is dramatic.
Bolsonaro's speeches and actions, according to academics, keep the country at a very high level of tension that continues to increase as election day approaches.
Journalist Fernando Cruz explains that "as long as Bolsonaro continues undermining the nation's democracy, Lula has made poverty and inequality a key prioritya message that resonates with many who remember the social achievements achieved during his previous term in office. Even so, the country remains deeply divided, with growing fears of political violence on election day and concerns about the military's position in the face of a possible crisis if Bolsonaro refuses to accept defeat. Many Brazilians still vividly remember the two decades of repressive military rule that ended in 1985."
This political division, as experts suggest, only creates more tension in the country, and we are seeing violent crimes erupt all over Brazil.
Two months ago, on July 10, a agent killed local leaderMarcelo Arruda, treasurer of the Workers Party (PT) in Foz do Iguaçu. While Arruda was celebrating his 50th birthday, a prison officer, Jorge José da Rocha Guaranho, invaded the private party shouting, "Here we are for Bolsonaro!" and shot Arruda to death. Arruda is survived by a wife and four children, including a baby.
In Finsocial, Goiânia, a 40-year-old business consultant named Davi Augusto de Souza was shot in the leg on August 31, 2022 by Military Police Corporal Vitor da Silva Lopes during a fight over politics in a church, according to Souza's family. As reported by Correio BrazilienseSouza's brother's testimony stated that the fight began with "a debate about whether church members should support the government or not, and that members should not vote for the left, as the leaders indicated," he reported.
Just a few days later, an article in the El País reported that a political argument led to a murder in a rural area of the state of Mato Grosso, in the interior of the country. According to data from the Civil Police, Rafael Silva de Oliveira, 24, a supporter of President Jair Bolsonaro, stabbed to death Benedito Cardoso dos Santos, 44, a supporter of Lula da Silva, after a heated discussion about politics got out of control on September 7, 2022. Police have no doubts about the political motive for the murder.
The 2022 electoral campaign has accumulated episodes of violence against candidates and supporters of leftist parties. Federal deputy candidate Vanessa Negrini, of the Workers' Party, and her supporters were threatened. twice in the same day, in Guaráon September 11, 2022.
André Borges, a political scientist at the University of Brasilia, believes that the elections in Brazil are important because, although there is little chance of a coup d'état, political violence similar to that which occurred in the United States when Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol is very likely.
"People agree that the likelihood of a coup is very low, it's very unlikely that we're going to have a break with democracy, but I think there is a concern that there could be some kind of political violence, some kind of repeat of what happened in the United States after the last election when supporters of the former president invaded the Capitol, we have that concern."
However, although there is skepticism about a coup d'état, the population lives in fear of expressing their political ideas due to the increasingly frequent attacks by Jair Bolsonaro's supporters on anyone who shows support for Lula.
According to the study "Violence and Democracy: Pre-electoral Panorama Brazil 2022", published on September 17, seven out of ten people say they are afraid of being physically assaulted because of their political opinions.
Research institute Datafolha surveyed 2100 people over 16 years of age throughout the country between August 3 and 13.
67.5% of respondents said they were afraid of being a victim of aggression and 3.2% said they had been threatened for political reasons in the last month, equivalent to 5.3 million Brazilians.
In addition, the document lists a series of attacks that Lula supporters have suffered in recent weeks, such as murders at the hands of Bolsonaro's police, feces attacks on Lula supporters, among others.
These violent acts become more relevant as the election date approaches.
Bolsonaro's anti-democratic narrative
The possibility of Bolsonaro winning the election cannot be ruled out, says Dr. Adrian Albala, a professor at the Institute of Political Science in Brasilia; however, opinion polls indicate that the president is shaping up to lose the election and, as such, is building a narrative of fraud that, should Bolsonaro lose, could detonate violence from his supporters, many of whom are military, police and even armed civilians.
Bolsonaro's narrative throughout the election has been anti-democratic, claiming that the electoral system cannot be trusted and that, according to him, fraud may occur in Brazil.
"However, it should be remembered that the current president - Bolsonaro - and his children were elected through the same democratic system that he criticizes today," explains Carolina Botelho, a political scientist at UERJ.
Botelho, who is a professor and researcher at the Cognitive and Social Neuroscience Lab/Mackenzie and an associate at the Electoral Studies Lab, explains that "when people validate Bolsonaro's intentions, his anti-democratic narrative and the electoral dynamics he is trying to set in motion, we can perceive that this has more to do with creating a solution for him in case he loses the election. As of this moment, there is no evidence of fraud in the elections. What we do have evidence of, so far, is that this president's chances of reelection are very low and have worsened over time."
Political communication and public opinion expert Botelho says that "one way Bolsonaro could resolve future election results is by discrediting the electoral system. Despite the fact that the electoral justice has responded firmly to his accusations and has shown the population - who already understand and know their democratic system - that fraud is not possible and that Bolsonaro's anti-democratic narrative is an attempt to gain some political advantage in case he is defeated."
Cruz, meanwhile, writes that "for Bolsonaro, the threat from Alexandre De Moraes [Brazilian jurist, now newly appointed president of the Superior Electoral Court and a Supreme Federal Court justice] stems in part from his focus on online political disinformation, which has been a key tool for Bolsonaro throughout his presidency, allowing him to shape the message on a range of issues, from COVID-19 vaccines, to Amazon deforestation and, of course, the upcoming elections."
In technical terms, André Borges explains that elections in Brazil are centralized and operate with an electronic voting system which, on the one hand, guarantees that all states have the same vote counting system supervised by the Superior Electoral Court and, on the other hand, allows for fewer errors when counting votes.
In addition to this, it has been investigated with tests and even with questions to specialized hackers if it would be possible for them to hack the electoral system and they have explained that it would not be possible.
"There is no element that points to the possibility of fraud, actually this is just a narrative they are creating because in the end Bolsonaro and some military are connected to Bolsonaro and the extreme right in Brazil, they do not want to accept the result in case they are defeated."
Another element that has played against Bolsonaro was his response to the COVID-19 pandemic, especially his constant statements in which he underestimated the pandemic by considering the disease as a simple flu. In addition, vaccination in Brazil was slow compared to other countries in the region such as Chile.
But, according to Borges, the reason Bolsonaro could probably lose the election is mainly related to the economy.
"Why is Bolsonaro going to lose the election? It is because of the economy. That's why Lula, from the Workers' Party, is much better among poor people, because they have those memories of his government, of Lula's government when inflation was low and the economy was growing, and they compare it to what is happening now."
But, according to Borges, the reason Bolsonaro could probably lose the election is mainly related to the economy.
Bolsonaro's anti-democratic discourse in social-digital networks
During the Brazilian elections of 2022, we have registered a reedition of Jair Bolsonaro's dangerous anti-democratic discourse. This is crystallized in different expressions, often under an apparent democratic veil; Bolsonaro's discourse remains authoritarian and refuses to accept horizontality as a democratic ideal.
Bolsonaro has spread an anti-democratic message through social networks. Since his first candidacy, he has based the dissemination of his messages on social networks. Therefore, it is through them that we can identify those meanings where his ideological position is consolidated, which, in turn, allows us to follow the voice of his followers. In this report, we will only touch on two elements: the struggles for gender equality and Bolsonaro's claim on environmental resources for "development".
? Combat to the struggles for equality of gender dissidences. Bolsonaro's discourse has fought any expression that allows the inclusion of gender dissidence, a situation that we can identify in his categorical rejection of inclusive language.
An example of this was during Bolsonaro's speech in Brasilia during the bicentennial parade, where he called on his followers to show "virility" and get a "little woman" to accompany them in their lives.
Its "pro-family" position declares itself against same-parent families. Their discourse condemns both dissidence and family configurations that do not adhere to the "traditional family". Both break with the democratic notion of the inclusion of different social forms, since they start from a hierarchy of values where the "superiors" can impose their ways of life on the "inferiors".
In the first capture (figure 1) we found Bolsonaro's message from his Instagram account -with 21.3 million followers- where he condemns the officialization of inclusive or neutral language in Argentina.
For that adds a condition of risk to her "Argentine brothers" whom she commends to God. Two central elements in this piece consist in the condemnation of language that gives voice to sex-gender dissidence, which contrasts with her commendation to God and, therefore, links to religious movements that also reject this transformation of language.
A second message, which also appeals to the support of more religious voters, consists of his support for the traditional family.
Contrary to feminist demands, in which the movement seeks freedom in reproductive choices, the candidate's position rejects the right of women to terminate pregnancies, assuming as its own the condemnation made by religious groups.
Bolsonaro is shown in this video (Figure 3) reaching out to a baby in the middle of the crowd and lifting it up for all to see. The video is accompanied by the music ?The Circle of Life? from the soundtrack of the Disney movie, ?The Lion King?
The Figure 2 is a screenshot from Bolsonaro's Twitter that reads: "A baby that is seven months pregnant, it is not a matter of discussing the way it was conceived, whether it is supported by law or not. It is inadmissible to talk about taking the life of this defenseless being!".
?Developmentalism. Bolsonaro's government seeks to "develop" the Amazon through its transformation into a space for capitalist exploitation. For the same reason, there is a vision of the native population as "backward" and in opposition to progress and development. This idea presents the indigenous population as one that "needs" to be transformed in order to be included within the capitalist vertigo, thus encountering an imperial gaze where there is no respect for other forms of life. In this way, the "developmentalist" imposition hides the destruction of the other. For the same reason, there is no democratic vision of native populations.
The Figure 4 ?posted on Jair Bolsonaro's official Telegram account? shows the native population as eager for progress. Where the headdress and traditional dress contrasts with the possibilities represented by the connection to the world of socio-digital networks. This apparent benefit is an imposition of a type of society without giving voice to the native communities. Therefore, this image is elaborated around the contrast between development and backwardness.
President Bolsonaro's messages only start from his story. Their impact expands from a series of dominant nodes in the different socio-digital networks that seek - through high-impact opinions - to dominate the conversation. Therefore, there is no logic of dialogue, but rather manipulation is sought to attack the adversary. On the Twitter platform, some stand out: i) Flavio Bolsonaro (@flaviobolsonaro), son of the president, who from his position as senator of the republic is one of the most prominent nodes of the Bolsonaro clan. A character accused in the media for his extravagant spending; ii) Braga Netto (@braganotto_gen) ex-military and vice-presidential candidate. A conservative user with deep ties to the Brazilian military elite; iii) Tarcísio Gomes de Freitas (@tarcisiogdf), candidate for the government of São Paulo and who also promulgates the rejection of the rights of gender dissidence; iv) Rico Pinheiro (@ ric0_pinheir0) Brazilian businessman who promotes a developmentalist policy based on the actions of private companies; and Alexandre Padrao (@PadraoeAlexandre. ), anti-Bolsonaro activist in socio-digital networks.
The elections in Brazil pose a re-edition of Bolsonaro's political proposals. He proposes to continue with a liberal model of development - now under the protection of traditional ideas - that seeks to continue with the unlimited exploitation of bodies and the jungle from an anti-democratic imperial position that does not consider other forms of life and, on the contrary, seeks to impose - often from socio-digital networks - a model of destruction and discrimination towards different minorities. Therefore, from a critical point of view, we must condemn these positions that, under a cloak of democracy, seek to legitimize the exclusion of others.
Global Exchange's coverage of Brazil's elections
Global Exchange will provide coverage of the elections in Brazil, both in the first round on October 2, 2022, and the final round on October 30, 2022.
Our team, composed of international and local journalists based in Brasilia, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Salvador da Bahia and the Amazon, will produce reports and multimedia content in English and Spanish that media outlets interested in the material will be able to publish on their platforms.
This work is done in partnership with Peninsula 360 Press, Rompeviento TV, Ethnic Media Services, Brasil de Fato and Peoples Dispatch, Levante Popular da Juventude and Movimento Brasil Popular.
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