Society

The step-by-step preparation of the Brasília riots

The January 8 riots in Brasília had been in the works ever since the Capitol attacks on January 6, 2021. Fact-checking agency Aos Fatos traces the timeline leading to the insurrection

brasília riots preparation
Police arrest rioters. Photo: Ton Molina/Fotoarena/Folhapress

As we at The Brazilian Report have not tired of saying, Sunday’s riots in Brasília were a foretold tragedy, with threats and groundwork being carried out under the surface for years. 

Aos Fatos — a fact-checking agency and a partner organization of The Brazilian Report — tells the story of how the January 8 riots were slowly simmering since the Capitol riot in the U.S., on January 6, 2021.

From statements made by Mr. Bolsonaro and his administration’s staffers, investigations on several platforms, comments from conservative U.S. media, and the increasingly militarized rhetoric of anti-democratic acts, Aos Fatos has split the main driving forces that led to January 8 into three crucial cornerstones.

Brasília riots: Jair Bolsonaro’s role

“If we can’t have paper ballots in [20]22, a way to audit votes, we will have a problem even worse than in the U.S.,” former President Jair Bolsonaro told supporters, the day after the Capitol attack.

After successive conflicts with the justice system — mainly due to the pandemic, attacks on the electoral system, and the opening of inquiries investigating his allies — Mr. Bolsonaro put on his putschist cap and started suggesting an intervention in the Supreme Court and electoral court.

The first target, it seemed, was Brazil’s Independence Day on September 7. “Never another opportunity for the Brazilian people has been so important or will be so important,” he said, before 2021’s independence celebrations. “This year, it’s time to become independent for real,” he added.

On September 7 itself, Bolsonaro made coup-mongering speeches with attacks on the justice system. “We cannot have elections where voters are in doubt. I cannot be part of a lie sponsored by the Supreme Court,” he told a crowd of supporters in São Paulo.

However, while the rhetoric was putschist, the potential coup only existed in the minds of radical truck drivers who parked in the Ministries Esplanade in Brasília, believing Mr. Bolsonaro had declared a state of emergency.

The negative repercussion of his speech forced Mr. Bolsonaro to retreat, though he claimed progress had been made in the shape of the military’s invitation to take part in an electoral transparency commission.

The truce ended the following year, when public disputes between the Defense Ministry and electoral courts resurrected theories of voter fraud. “Imagine if we had the elections, and there was the suspicion that they were not clean?” shouted Mr. Bolsonaro on May 16. As usual, in each inflated statement against the electoral system, social media was flooded with misinformation supporting the accusations of the then-president.

However, the peak of the president’s crusade against free elections came on July 19, 2022, when Mr. Bolsonaro summoned ambassadors to a presentation at the...

Don't miss this opportunity!

Interested in staying updated on Brazil and Latin America? Subscribe to start receiving our reports now!