2018 Election
Retired Army General Hamilton Mourão rose to fame last year, after defending a military coup if Brazil’s Justice system failed to punish corrupt politicians. Now, he is a vice presidential nominee, running alongside far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro – another former member of the Brazilian Armed Forces. They are part of a growing phenomenon in Brazil:… Read More »
During Brazil’s worst recession on record, no economic sector lost more than industry. For 14 months in a row, Brazilian industry posted negative results. As a result, industry started to account for a smaller share of the GDP – even in a scenario of economic retraction. Rock bottom came at the beginning of 2016, when… Read More »
2018 Election
Brazil’s 2018 presidential race has officially begun. From now on, candidates are allowed to distribute advertising material and openly ask for votes. We have separated the main proposals laid out by the five candidates with the best polling numbers – as the next president will most likely be one of them. We focused on four… Read More »
2018 Election
It has been 36 years since Brazil returned to a widely competitive electoral system, after roughly two decades of authoritarianism. During the military dictatorship, electoral competition was not completely suppressed, although severely hampered. A symbol of the new democratic era was the return of a multi-partisan system. Multi-partisanship had previously existed during two periods of… Read More »
There are few dams in the world that capture the imagination as much as Belo Monte, built on the “Big Bend” of the Xingu river in the Brazilian Amazon. Its construction has involved an army of 25,000 people working round the clock since 2011 to excavate over 240 million cubic meters of soil and rock,… Read More »
2018 Election
Brazil’s electoral system is highly digital. The election itself happens entirely through electronic voting machines – and results can be called within a couple of hours after counting has begun. The same goes for all the bureaucratic hoops parties must jump through in order to be a part of the process. The deadline for registering… Read More »
Our podcast is available on: On October 7, around 147 million Brazilians are expected to head to their polling station, show their I.D. and then get into a booth to choose our leaders for the next four years. We will elect a new president, 27 new governors, 513 congressmen, and over 1,000 state lawmakers.… Read More »
2018 Election
Born into a middle-class family, Guilherme Boulos became involved with politics around the age of 15. He joined the Communist Youth Union (UJC), a student movement originated in the Brazilian Communist Party. Then, he got closer to the Homeless Workers Movement (MTST), left home, and started his militancy for the democratization of the access to… Read More »
2018 Election
Brazilians seem to be looking over their shoulders more than they did in the past. And the country is not only losing faith in its institutions, but citizens have also become less confident in one another. That’s what a series of surveys carried out since 2009 by Ibope Inteligência, a polling institute, shows us. Nearly… Read More »
A few months ago, Santander analyst Luciano Sobral (@drunkeynesian on Twitter) published a chart showing the evolution of Brazil’s GDP over time, alongside significant ruptures of the political order. One thing stood out: political shifts, whether democratic or not, come after dire recessions. *Disclaimer: We consider Lula’s 2002 election to be a “rupture” – even… Read More »