During the 2018 campaign, Bolsonaro had struck a chord with voters by criticising the way the indigenous reserves had stifled the state’s economic development, labelling the policy “separatist” and “dooming Roraima to economic failure”.3 Two indigenous reserves in particular – those established for the Yanomami to the north-west, where Ramalho’s

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Jair Bolsonaro and his more radical supporters have never sought to hide their disdain for the idea of global warming. Like one of their most important political mentors, Donald Trump, the Bolsonaristas are unremittingly sceptical about the science. Ernesto Araújo, Bolsonaro’s foreign minister, went so far as to claim that what he called

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In fact, in recent years police violence has appeared to be spinning out of control. Killings by police officers have nearly tripled since 2013 and now rank among the highest in the world. The number of police killings rose from 2,212 in 2013 to 6,220 in 2018. By comparison, police officers in the United States killed 1,146 people in 2019. The

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The economy posed some other challenges too. True, Brazil’s economy has been hit less badly than those of its Latin American neighbours, but unemployment still rose sharply during 2020, reaching 14.6 per cent in the third quarter of the year, its highest level since the current measurement began in 2012. The closure in January 2021 by Ford of three

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during his first eighteen months in office Bolsonaro had made little progress in winning approval for new legislation. His one big achievement was the approval in 2019 of an extensive reform of pensions that had been piloted through Congress by Maia, in spite of the president’s lack of interest and the open opposition of many of his hardline

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Brazil was already the world’s second largest producer of soya and a major agricultural power, among the world’s top producers of beef, chicken, pork, coffee and sugar. Since the 1970s the Embrapa government research institute had been developing new agricultural techniques that had allowed Brazil to expand the cultivation of many crops away from

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China’s penetration into Brazil presents some policy challenges. First, there is the sheer weight of the trade dependency. Without the China trade surplus to cushion its current account deficit, Brazil would have much greater financing needs. “The administration knows that if things were to go wrong China might punish us and our trade surplus would

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Slowly the debate about the impact of untrammelled development was becoming more heated. In part this was a product of international pressure. The apocalyptic images coming out of Serra Pelada had raised awareness considerably. Images of the Serra Pelada mine captured by the Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado became iconic and synonymous with

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The Bible lobby, which is closely associated with the rapidly growing and financially powerful evangelical church, has opposed moves to liberalise education and family relations. The group is stronger than ever in the current Congress. Opposition to abortion has united them with the country’s dwindling Catholic majority, but evangelicals from both

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