Brazil under Bolsonaro: Social base, agenda and perspectives

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/jglobfaul.6.1.0062
• Published date: 01 August 2019
• Date: 01 August 2019
• Pages: 62-69
• Author: Ana Garcia

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Brazil under Bolsonaro

Ana Garcia

Brazil under Bolsonaro

Social base, agenda and perspectives

Ana Garcia

The rise of the far right is a worldwide phenomenon, rooted in the nefarious effects of neo-

liberal globalization that have pushed the world into mass unemployment and enormous

inequalities. I consider it to be a late political effect of the global financial crisis that hit the

world at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

It is not an easy task to explain the phenomenon of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and to

understand the groups that support him, both within and outside government. It’s difficult,

for anyone, to draw a truly complete and sober analysis of what we have experienced. This

essay is not based on in-depth research but on collective reflections and debates. I intend to

pose some key questions and try to identify some clues to answer them.

Despite its innumerable concessions to the bourgeoisie,1 why was the Workers

Party (PT) attacked by the right-wing forces, creating space for the emergence

of “Bolsonarism”?

First of all, the effects of the 2008 economic crises were felt quite late, but they were profound

in Brazil. Low commodity prices and economic slowdown had a perverse effect on employ-

ment levels. The GDP dropped 7.2 per cent between 2015 and 2016, and unemployment

reached 12% during the 2018 election year. The economic crisis also generated a political cri-

sis, which led to massive street demonstrations in June 2013, and it recently turned into an

ideological crisis.

On the bourgeois side, the crisis revealed its deeply anti-social and truculent charac-

ter. The modest gains that the poor had made in terms of social rights during the PT govern-

ments (yearly increases in the minimum salary, access to higher education, racial and social

quotas, labour rights for domestic workers, income transfer programs, resources for the poor

North and Northeast regions, etc.), were forcefully repudiated by upper classes in large urban

centers and by the rural bourgeoisie linked to agribusiness. It was not acceptable, in their