Brasília riots were a long time in the making

The world was shocked when supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro violently stormed the headquarters of Brazil’s three branches of government. In the most severe case of domestic terrorism since the return of democracy in 1985, throngs of far-right radicals destroyed millions in public property and tried to place the country in a state of terror.

But Sunday’s violent assault on the very symbols of Brazilian democracy was a long time coming. As editor-in-chief Gustavo Ribeiro has shown on Twitter, The Brazilian Report has been warning about the dangers of a January 6-like riot in Brazil, since the original 2021 invasion of Capitol Hill — incited by then-U.S. President Donald Trump.

Former President Jair Bolsonaro has consistently pushed the boundaries of what is acceptable in Brazilian politics. Some institutions did their best to provide him with some checks and balances, but that never seemed to be enough.

In April 2022, political scientist Fernando Bizzarro — a Ph.D. candidate at Harvard’s Department of Government — wrote for The Brazilian Report that “Mr. Bolsonaro is rotting Brazilian democracy, serving as a masterclass of modern-day democratic backsliding and autocratization.”

But his assault on Brazilian democracy began even before he took office.

In 2018, while still a presidential candidate, Mr. Bolsonaro was already sowing distrust about Brazil’s electoral system. In a television interview a few days before the election, he said he would “not accept” a result other than his victory, given the large number of supporters he saw on the streets. He also said there would not be a runoff, since he believed he would have enough votes to win in the first round.

Mr. Bolsonaro got 46 percent of the vote, just short of an outright majority necessary to win in the first round. He qualified for a runoff against Fernando Haddad, the stand-in for Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. After he took office as president, Mr. Bolsonaro repeatedly lied that he had supposedly won the election in the first round, despite there being no evidence to support that.

Brazil has a 100-percent electronic voting system, adopted in the late 1990s. The new election format steered the country into a new era of transparency and efficiency in vote counting.

In its first century of existence, the Brazilian Republic suffered from endemic voter fraud and moments of democratic hiatus. But since voting machines were introduced in Brazil, the country has never faced credible allegations of widespread voter fraud.

Still, Jair Bolsonaro has repeated ad nauseam that the system can be rigged — and suggested that a broad conspiracy colluded to unseat him through shady means.

He had as accomplices the country’s Armed Forces. Mr. Bolsonaro blurred the line between military and civilian authority within the Armed Forces and had generals echoing his unfounded suspicions about the electoral system. 

In 2021, electoral authorities chose to involve them in the election preparation process as a way to silence conspiracy theories about the system, spread by Mr. Bolsonaro and his acolytes — a move that backfired.

Catering to their former commander-in-chief, the military pushed for an unofficial audit of the voting system — despite having no constitutional mandate (nor proven expertise) to conduct such endeavors. They also raised several questions about the safety of ballot boxes (none of which were substantiated by evidence) and suggested changes.

The “audit” produced a final report in which the Army admitted that no evidence of election fraud was found. A day later, however, the Defense Ministry released a new statement highlighting that the Armed Forces “do not rule out the possibility of fraud” having taken place.

Although it did not bring anything new to the table, the new statement served to fire up groups of Bolsonaro supporters who still do not accept the electoral result. On social media, users understood the move as a dog whistle for pro-Bolsonaro demonstrators to continue their street rallies — calling for a military coup.

In September 2021, Mr. Bolsonaro organized the first large-scale putschist demonstrations on Brazil’s Independence Day. Many of Sunday’s elements were in place at that event, including a small police presence to counter them and promises to storm the Supreme Court. 

Radicals jumped the gun and broke police barricades on the eve of the scheduled protests. That led the then-Supreme Court chief justice to personally call the Brasília governor and urge him to up his security plans. 

As The Brazilian Report said at the time, that prevented the worst from happening, which meant many observers minimized the severity of the protest. “Many said a barking dog doesn’t bite. Well, it just did on Sunday,” says analyst Mario Sergio Lima.

Also in 2021, Mr. Bolsonaro told his supporters in Brasília a lie: that he would soon convene a meeting of the Council of the Republic, which is responsible for advising the president before he decides on whether to request a state of siege — a situation in which constitutional guarantees are suspended, and the president is granted emergency powers.

Although the meeting never happened, the remarks gave pro-Bolsonaro demonstrators hope that the president would enact a coup — something which they had been openly advocating for since at least 2020.

Also on that Independence Day, Mr. Bolsonaro said he would “no longer comply” with decisions issued by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who presides over an inquiry into Bolsonaro allies, targeting lawmakers and business people. It was one more vitriolic notch against the court and its justices, whom he saw as checks on his authoritarian project.

In July 2022, a few months before the election, pro-Bolsonaro penitentiary guard Jorge Guaranho stormed a Lula-themed birthday party in the southern city of Foz do Iguaçu and shot a man dead while yelling pro-Bolsonaro slogans. 

The victim was Marcelo Arruda, a municipal guard and local treasurer of the Workers’ Party.

Mr. Bolsonaro never explicitly condemned the murder. Instead, he merely tried to avoid the political downfall for the crime and avoid responsibility.

Months later, days before the runoff, former Congressman Roberto Jefferson, a Bolsonaro ally, fired a military-grade rifle at a Federal Police squad. Once again, the president and his allies prioritized avoiding being associated with the crime rather than explicitly condemning it. This was impossible, however: Mr. Jefferson had been a Bolsonaro loyalist for too long, including endorsing the pro-gun discourse and joining in the vitriol against the Supreme Court.

Mr. Jefferson’s political party even nominated a candidate, Father Kelmon, whose purpose was to play softball with Bolsonaro in televised presidential debates. Mr. Kelmon finished the election with 0.07 percent of the vote.

Brazil’s House and Senate suspended public visits that weekend “for security reasons,” a sign they were already aware, at the very least, that the event would draw a lot of people.

Lula won that night, and, to a lot of people’s surprise, nothing happened. Pro-Bolsonaro demonstrators wept and prayed outside Congress, and the president went absolutely radio silent. This silence was nonetheless important: he never conceded, never admitted defeat, once again inspiring in his supporters the idea that something could be done in the future.

In order to support and prepare for this coup that would come in the future, demonstrators set up campsites nationwide outside military facilities. Some of these camps were still in place this Monday, over two months later.

In late November, the coalition for which Jair Bolsonaro ran for re-election formally challenged the integrity of the 2022 presidential election, issuing a petition to nullify tens of millions of votes cast during the runoff. 

The challenge was based on a conspiracy theory spread by Argentinian blogger Fernando Cerimedo claiming that older voting machines are susceptible to tampering.

One week later, far-right pro-Bolsonaro lawmakers held a public hearing at the Senate to incite an insurrection-like movement. Congresswoman Aline Sleutjes of the southern state of Paraná was the most explicit: “We need to act fast,” she said. “On December 12, there is a certification ceremony that they want to happen.”

The certification ceremony is Brazil’s closest parallel to the U.S. electoral college vote count. 

On the night of December 12, when Lula was certified as president-elect, pro-Bolsonaro vandals stormed the headquarters of the Federal Police, in an attempt to free a detained demonstrator named José Acácio Serere Xavante. They also set fire to buses and cars, some of which were close to the hotel where Lula was staying. On that night, no one was detained, which bolstered demonstrators to act again.

On Christmas Eve, a 54-year-old man named George Washington Sousa was arrested for setting up a bomb found in a fuel truck close to the Brasília international airport.

Mr. Sousa told police of his intent to sow “chaos” and create the conditions for Brazil to be placed under a state of siege, echoing Mr. Bolsonaro’s talking points.

According to the police report, Mr. Sousa was a member of the pro-Bolsonaro putschist camp in Brazil’s capital, where he talked to other demonstrators about terrorist plots.

The incident placed local authorities on alert in order to thwart attacks during Lula’s inauguration on January 1. Nothing serious happened on that day. But peace would be broken just seven days into the new government.

On Wednesday, January 4, pro-Bolsonaro influencers held a live broadcast on Instagram discussing “seizing Congress,” and wondered how many buses they needed to get enough people to Brasília. By Saturday, roughly 100 buses with far-right radicals arrived in Brasília. 

Justice Minister Flávio Dino then tweeted he was aware of an alleged “war” in Brasília, about which he had talked with the governor and the Defense Minister, and informed Federal Police.

On Sunday, around 5,000 supporters of former President Bolsonaro began marching from a putschist campsite outside of the Army headquarters, some 6.5 kilometers from the Congress building. They were escorted by local police and later easily broke through a police barrier surrounding the Three Powers Square. 

Brasília is a city built to avoid this sort of assault. Distances are vast and the heart of the capital is a huge open space that makes it easier for authorities to repress violent mobs. Which is why observers say that a protest couldn’t have escalated to the point it did without complicity from the authorities.

The Solicitor General’s Office asked for the arrest of Anderson Torres, who until Sunday was Brasília’s top security official. And the Supreme Court suspended the capital’s governor, Ibaneis Rocha, from his duties for 90 days due to criminal omission in the face of the crisis. President Lula signed an emergency decree that put federal authorities in charge of security in Brazil’s capital.

In a press conference on Monday, Mr. Dino put it simply: “Former President Jair Bolsonaro and his followers, for example, directed frequent attacks against the Supreme Court. Words have power.” He added: “This discourse, frequent on social media, gained legs, arms, stones, shots, bombs — precisely yesterday.”