Introduction

Major turmoil has wracked the country of Brazil for months, and came to a head early this month with an attempted coup against the newly elected government.

Brazil, with 215 million people, is the sixth most populous country in the world and the eighth largest economy. It is also the most populous country in Latin America. Deep poverty marks Brazil, both in the huge rural areas and in the densely-packed favelas (shantytowns) surrounding the major cities. Inequality is extreme—the wealth of the six richest people in Brazil is equal to that of 100 million people—almost half the population! And while Brazil is overall an oppressed nation, dominated and exploited by the imperialist powers (mainly the U.S.), it has often acted as a regional power, throwing its weight around to advance its own interests and/or those of the U.S.

So what is happening in Brazil will have significant impact—not only in Brazil itself and the surrounding countries, but on an international scale.

What Happened on January 8, and What Led Up to It?

On Sunday, January 8, several thousand supporters of Brazil’s former president—fascist leader Jair Bolsonaro—stormed the Congress, the Supreme Court and the Presidential Palace in Brasilia, the capital city. They faced little resistance from police and none from the military. They then occupied the buildings, and over several hours, smashed windows, set fires, destroyed works of art, and assaulted journalists. They called upon the Brazilian military to restore Bolsonaro to power.

According to Brazil’s new justice minister, the attackers intended “to create a domino effect nationwide”—fascist revolts in many cities. And there were calls on social media for fascists to organize attacks on critical infrastructure such as oil refineries, and to block highways.

All this took place just one week after the inauguration of the new president—Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (commonly called “Lula”)—who defeated Bolsonaro in elections in October.¹ And it came as the culmination of two months of concerted efforts to overturn Lula’s election. There were dozens of highway blockades that caused food shortages. Anti-Lula encampments were set up outside military bases in many cities—including Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo—agitating for a military coup. And on December 12, a mob rampaged through the streets of Brasilia and attempted to storm police headquarters there.

All this was justified using Bolsonaro’s false claim that the election was “stolen.”

Eventually, the new Lula government was able to clear the three buildings, arresting at least 200 from the mob. On Sunday night, January 8, Supreme Court Justice Moraes suspended the governor of the capital district, Ibaneis Rocha, for 90 days, accusing him of complicity in the attack. (Rocha had previously been Bolsonaro’s minister of justice.) And on Monday, police cleared out a large tent encampment in front of a Brasilia military base that had functioned for weeks as an organizing center and staging area for the attack on the capital. At least 1,200 more people were detained there.

The next day, Justice Minister Flávio Dino told reporters that “We think the worst is over.” But the new government’s actions and statements made clear that they still saw a serious threat. Over the next few days, the encampments at military bases around the country were dismantled. The government announced an investigation of funding for coup activities, including for the 100 buses that brought 4,000 coup-supporters to Brasilia in the days leading up to January 8. Officials pointed out that a security plan for Brasilia developed before January 8 was apparently disregarded by local authorities.

On Thursday, January 12, Lula said that “many people from the armed forces were complicit” and that hard-core Bolsonaro supporters would be weeded out of the security institutions. The next day, the government announced that it was investigating Bolsonaro as the instigator of an attempted coup. (Bolsonaro denied playing any role, pointing to the fact that he has been in Florida since a few days before Lula’s inauguration, and that he publicly criticized the attack on the capital—after it was defeated. However, he has not withdrawn his claim that the election was stolen.)

What’s Behind These Events

What has been playing out in Brazil in recent months and years is a clash between two sections of the capitalist ruling class over how to maintain their control of the country and its people.

Jair Bolsonaro is a straight-up advocate of fascist dictatorship. He is often referred to as “the Tropical Trump” because of their mutual admiration for each other, and their similar moronic macho personas. But Bolsonaro’s roots go far back, to the time of the U.S.-backed military dictatorship that held Brazil in a state of terror for 21 years (1965-1986), murdering hundreds and imprisoning or torturing tens of thousands of political opponents.²

Bolsonaro was an army captain in that era, and he was and is enthusiastic about military rule. His only criticism is that it wasn’t repressive enough—he said that “The dictatorship's mistake was to torture but not kill.” When Bolsonaro entered politics in the early 1990s, he declared, “I am in favor of a dictatorship. We will never resolve serious national problems with this irresponsible democracy.”

More recently, Bolsonaro combined this loyalty to old-style military rule with an alliance with Brazil’s Christian fascist movement, which has been growing much stronger over the past decade, including among many poor people, and especially through the growth of evangelical Protestant churches.³ In line with this, the orientation of Bolsonaro’s government (2019-2023) was viciously pro-police,⁴ anti-gay,⁵ anti-abortion, and anti-science.⁶

Who Is Lula da Silva, and What Does He Represent?

Lula is the “opposite” of Bolsonaro—the bourgeois (capitalist) opposite. Lula is the leader of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT)—in English, the Workers’ Party. Lula and the PT recognize and condemn many of the horrible conditions facing the masses of people in Brazil—the deep inequality, the massive impoverished slums, the racism against black and Indigenous people, the denial of women’s basic reproductive rights, the destruction of the rainforest.

PT and Lula argue that these problems can all be addressed—solved or at least greatly reduced—through the political system of (bourgeois) democracy (by putting “good people” like themselves in office) and under the profit-driven capitalist system of production, and without an actual revolution that breaks up that old system and establishes a socialist society.

This illusion of painless progress is very appealing to many people, and it got PT candidates (first Lula, and then Dilma Rousseff) elected president several times (PT held power from 2003 to 2016). But the reality is that it is the capitalist-imperialist system itself that causes so much suffering and destruction, and these problems can’t be solved within that system.

Thirteen years of PT rule brought no qualitative change to Brazil. Women did not get the right to abortion; the favelas were not replaced by decent housing; inequality and poverty are still extreme; and the Amazon was not protected and restored. This failure to bring about significant change is one reason why Lula—once extremely popular—barely eked out a one percent victory over Bolsonaro. 

Fascists like Bolsonaro rail against and want to actually slaughter PT and its supporters as part of going after and crushing the sections of the people PT claims to represent—and they have powerful support for this among sections of the security forces, the wealthy, and some of the masses. PT wants to draw people into the illusion of changing the system from within, and string them along with the promise (and occasional delivery) of modest reforms, a position that also has significant ruling class support.

But again, both of these are forms of capitalist rule—capitalist dictatorship—aimed at preserving the capitalist system.

In this latest round, the fascist forces failed to achieve their goals, but it is clear that they remain powerful and will persist.

The attempted coup in Brazil and the deep split within the people reflected by the election is not unique to Brazil. The critical question there, as it is in so many places, is whether a force can be brought forward that can break through the deadlock and work toward an actual revolution.