Explaining Brazil #32: The Brazilian political system in shatters

October 10, 2018 • Reading Time: 3 minutes

Sunday’s election results showed that the global conservative wave ended up becoming a tsunami in Brazil. Never before have so many military men got elected into public office — from 18 in 2014 to 67 this year. That’s a record since Brazil became a democracy. The presence of religious leaders in the center of Brazil’s political system — which was already substantial — got even bigger. And even more gun lobbyists got a seat, too.

How much of that is due to this conservative wave that led Donald Trump to the White House, the British to vote for Brexit, and Eastern European countries like Poland and Hungary become less and less democratic? How much of it is simply due to sentiment against the political system? And how much of it is out of sheer hatred for the Workers’ Party, and their jailed leader Lula?

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Gustavo Ribeiro has extensive experience covering Brazilian politics. His work has been featured across Brazilian and French media outlets, including Veja, Época, Folha de São Paulo, Médiapart and Radio France Internationale. He is the recipient of multiple awards, including the Abril Prize for outstanding political journalism. He holds a master’s degree in Political Science and Latin American studies from Panthéon-Sorbonne University in Paris.

Euan Marshall is a journalist and translator who has lived in São Paulo, Brazil since 2011. Specializing in Brazilian soccer, politics and the connection between the two, his work has been published in The Independent, The Guardian, and Jacobin Magazine, among others. In 2014, he authored a comprehensive history of Brazilian soccer entitled “A to Zico: An Alphabet of Brazilian Football.”

This podcast was produced by Maria Martha Bruno. She is a journalist with 14 years of experience in politics, arts, and breaking news. She has collaborated with Al Jazeera, NBC, and CNN, among others, and worked as an international correspondent in Buenos Aires.

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