Highway Police underestimated risk of blockades following Election Day

Over a week after Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won the presidential election against President Jair Bolsonaro, supporters of the incumbent continue to refuse to accept the results. In the days that followed the election, pro-Bolsonaro demonstrators blocked roadways in hundreds of spots — trying to strangle the country’s supply chains while urging the military to stage a coup.

By November 8, just three blockades remained in Mato Grosso, a Center-Western state, and one in Paraná, in the South. But in big urban centers, thousands of protesters have gathered in front of garrisons to call for a military coup. As described by Filipe Campante, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins University, these acts are akin to a Brazilian “slow-motion version of [the] January 6 [Capitol riot].”

These anti-democratic demonstrations were...