Jair bolsonaro

In May, Flávio Bolsonaro sat down with Donald Trump at the White House. He made a pledge: if he were elected president, Brazil would join the Shield of the Americas, Trump's hemispheric alliance against the cartels. That pledge is now three weeks from coming due. On Sunday Flávio finished ahead in the first round of Brazil's elections, 47 percent to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s 45, short of an outright win but in pole position for the runoff on October 25. Much of this is down to the dismantling of USAID. American tax dollars underpinned Brazil's left-wing establishment, with funding for progressive media, universities, Supreme Court staffers and pro-LGBT activists. Now that money is gone, and Bolsonaro Jr.

Last month, two State Department officials were set to make what they called a routine visit to Brazil, ahead of October’s presidential election. Their stated objective was an assessment of election integrity, religious freedom and freedom of expression in Latin America’s largest democracy. Brazil was not convinced. It slammed the door in their faces and denied their visas.  Washington insists its diplomats were simply sent to ask questions. Brasília cries foreign interference from a nation that has a history of meddling in Latin American politics. Tensions between the two largest democracies in the Americas have not run this high in decades.

Brazilian former president Jair Bolsonaro was charged Tuesday for allegedly orchestrating a plan to overturn his 2022 election defeat through a coup. The indictment further complicates his prospects for a political resurgence, as Prosecutor General Paulo Gonet accuses Bolsonaro and his former vice presidential candidate, General Walter Braga Netto, of leading a “criminal organization” with the objective of undermining Brazil’s democracy. Thirty-four individuals, including prominent military figures, have been named in the charges. Among them are Bolsonaro’s former national security advisor, retired general Augusto Heleno, and former navy commander Almir Garnier Santos.

The “Trump of the Tropics,” former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, was indicted Tuesday for falsifying his Covid-19 vaccination status for his Florida vacation. The indictment is the first faced by the conservative leader, who has already been barred from running for office. More are headed his way, in what he is describing as a lawfare effort spearheaded by President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva. The indictment was signed by Detective Fábio Alvarez Shor, who says in his report that the former president and his aides “issue[d] their respective [vaccination] certificates and use[d] them to cheat current health restrictions.

Javier Milei, a messy-haired bombastic libertarian economist, won Argentina’s presidential elections against socialist minister of economics Sergio Massa this Sunday. With the backdrop of inflation that the International Monetary Fund projects will trail only that of Zimbabwe and Venezuela by the end of the year, Milei triumphed with over 55 percent of votes in the runoff with more than 94 percent of votes counted, according to data from the country’s National Electoral Chamber. In a brief speech before the results were announced, Massa, who came first in the October 22 election that led to the run-off, said, “Milei is the president elected for the next four years,” adding that he had called Milei to personally congratulate him on his victory.

As the dust settled on Jair Bolsonaro’s seismic victory in Brazil back in 2018, one might have spared a thought for those dedicated to the cause of international socialism. Having bathed in the glory of the so-called "Pink Tide" and the commodities boom of the early 2000s that allowed socialist governments such as Hugo Chávez's Venezuela to seemingly prosper, any hopes that Latin America would forever unify in the cause of left-wing anti-imperialism seemed well and truly dashed. In many of the continent’s wealthiest countries, right-of-center politicians had swept to power with a view to restoring their nation’s former glory. These included Bolsonaro in Brazil, Sebastian Piñera in Chile, Ivan Duque in Colombia, and Mauricio Macri in Argentina, among others.

So the Brooks Brothers riot has arrived in Brasilia. That riot, a precursor to January 6, took place in Miami-Dade County in November 2000 and was led by Republican staffers intent on disrupting the recount of votes. On Sunday, with Jair Bolsonaro hunkered down in Florida, his followers thought it would be a neat idea to follow suit, trashing the presidential palace, the National Congress and Supreme Federal Court. A motley crew of Americans helped stoke the madness. “The whole thing smells,” said one visitor to Steve Bannon’s podcast following the first round of voting in October. It was the very same farrago of lies that circulated after America’s presidential election took hold. There was the nonsense about a “stolen election.

After a bruising campaign, the leftist former president of Brazil Lula Ignacio Da Silva appears to have won back control of the Palácio da Alvorada, the Brazilian presidential residence. Lula defeated conservative incumbent Jair Bolsonaro by the narrowest of margins and is now poised to bring back socialist leadership to the world’s fourth-largest democracy. However, the result was by no means a blowout for Lula and his Workers' Party, which polls had suggested could win a landslide victory. In reality, Bolsonaro outperformed expectations just by taking the vote to a second round, while his Social Liberal Party maintained control of Brazil's congress. Nevertheless, the outcome marks an incredible comeback story for the 77-year-old Lula.

Italy is about to have its first female leader and the American left is furious. Giorgia Meloni grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Rome and was raised by a single mother, after her father, a communist, fled to the Canary Islands and was later convicted of drug trafficking in Mallorca. She wrote in her autobiography that her mother planned to have an abortion when she was pregnant with her but changed her mind at the last minute. Meloni worked as a nanny, a waitress, and a bartender before getting into politics, but she’s no AOC. Meloni, 45, is the leader of the right-wing populist Brothers of Italy party, which recently won Italy’s general election with 26 percent of the vote. She’s widely expected to be named Italy’s first female prime minister.

Brazil’s Donald Trump has a challenger. Jair Bolsonaro is preparing to take on his predecessor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in what will be the socialist’s sixth run at office. But if the flamboyant Bolsonaro is Trump, does that make Lula the Brazilian Biden? Part of the reason Trump lost was his erratic response to the Covid crisis. In Brazil, Covid policies are mostly set at the local level. But Bolsonaro has been pilloried in the press for opposing shutdowns, appearing at rallies without masks or social distancing, and promoting chloroquine and Ivermectin as treatments. He refuses to get vaccinated. He has also done himself no favours with impatient and petulant answers to journalists’ questions about the pandemic. He comes off sounding uncompassionate.