Brazil’s already-delayed 2020 census under fire again

Brazil has still yet to carry out its 2020 census. And just as national statistics bureau IBGE was set to start collecting data on August 1, the two-year pandemic delay may be about to drag on even further. In a statement released on Thursday, the IBGE claimed that “including questions about sexual orientation would be impossible” and could make the entire census effort “unfeasible.”

The announcement came in response to a last-minute court order from the northern state of Acre, which called on the IBGE to include fields about sexual orientation and gender identity on the already delayed survey, saying the information would provide crucial data for the construction of public policy on Brazil’s LGBTQ+ population.

The IBGE says changing its questionnaire now would cost BRL 2.3 billion (USD 460 million), for a process that has already undergone successive budget cuts.

Indeed, such hiccups in Brazil’s principal populational survey are not new. In the 150 years since the country’s first census was carried out, there have been 12 official surveys, three cancellations, and one delay.

“The history of the census, if we compare it with other countries, started a little late and in a kind of abnormal way. To give you an idea, there was even a revolt against the first census,” says Suzana Cavenaghi, a demographer and member of the 2020/2021 Census Advisory Committee, speaking to The Brazilian Report.

The revolt to which Ms. Cavenaghi refers happened in 1851, when the Brazilian government announced two imperial decrees. The first established that a census would take place in the middle of the following year, while the second created a record of all births and deaths in the country. 

These measures were not well received by the population, who feared the government planned to tabulate all of Brazil’s poor and free people, so as to enslave them. The incident later became known as the “War of the Wasps” in reference to the way people were “buzzing like insects” through the streets. By that point, the transatlantic slave trade had already been outlawed, but the practice was still legal in Brazil up until 1888.

The government gave up on its plans for a census and only returned to the idea in 1872, when the first survey was finally conducted. 

Brazil’s first census distributed forms to 1,441 parishes across 20 provinces, with information filled out by heads of household and transported by horse or mule to Rio de Janeiro, the capital city at the time. It took approximately four years to count...