Virginie Jacoberger-Lavoué is a journalist. She is the author of several books on Brazil and publishes "
Brazil -voyage au pays de Bolsonaro
" (éd.
Du
Rocher, 312 p., € 19.90).
FIGAROVOX Brazil is cut between supporters and opponents of Bolsonaro, explain yourself. “We can no longer count the number of young adults who have cut ties with their parents, of sisters who hate a sister, a brother; cousins who no longer speak to each other. " So politics got the better of the Brazilian family spirit?
Virginie JACOBERGER-LAVOUÉ.-
There is no question of making it a generality, but in many Brazilian families, during the 2018 election campaign, the dialogue broke down, there were cries and slam doors, a refusal to debate ideas even among people who are usually measured, charges of incredible brutality… This was not just a conflict between generations, it was parents who stopped seeing an uncle who defended the left then whether they voted for Bolsonaro, or vice versa;
They were teenagers who rejected, one evening, a brother, a friend… and insulted themselves copiously on Facebook or WhatsApp before leaving the group.
What are the main causes of the large victory of Bolsonaro (55.1% of the vote) in the presidential election of October 2018?
Excluding supporters, the base that supports Bolsonaro, made up of those who are nicknamed the “BBB” for Balles - the pro-arms -, Bœuf - the agribusiness - and Bible - the evangelicals - and who represented about 35% of voters in 2018, the Brazilians did not choose Bolsonaro out of membership but out of concern for disagreement, rejection of the left entangled in corruption scandals and of the political class as a whole which has benefited so much from impunity.
Bolsonaro was the only candidate without conviction or prosecution for corruption, he demanded order in a country of rampant insecurity, the second concern of Brazilians.
Without corruption in Brazil, Bolsonaro would never have been elected. But his election as head of Latin America's largest economy was not entirely an unexpected shift, after a turbulent campaign in which ex-President Lula da Silva, candidate of the Workers' Party (PT) , favorite of the polls, imprisoned for corruption, was declared ineligible and Bolsonaro was the victim of a stabbing attack, allowing him to avoid any participation in the traditional televised debates between candidates.
We nicknamed him the "
Trump of the tropics
", it is relevant in terms of ideas (pro-weapons, climate-skeptic ...), less in terms of posture (he is "without filter" but it is not not a "showman"), and their backgrounds differ.
Ex-captain and deputy for 27 years, Bolsonaro was the only candidate without conviction or prosecution for corruption, and he demanded order in a country-continent (213 million inhabitants) with galloping insecurity, the second great concern of Brazilians.
Bolsonaro voters, you write, meet from the bottom to the top of the social ladder.
How does he achieve this feat?
Despite the emergence of a new middle class, which is not comparable to ours, Brazil remains one of the most unequal countries in the world.
You are not elected there without the support of several social classes.
Bolsonaro won votes in the favelas due to insecurity, state abandonment and the growing influence of evangelicals.
Bolsonaro seduced the elite, financiers and entrepreneurs, with his ability to block the left and to promise reforms;
and he won votes in the favelas due to insecurity, state abandonment and the growing influence of evangelicals who called to vote for him.
This evangelical "hold" goes beyond the poor neighborhoods;
much of the new middle class that emerged in Lula's first term is evangelical, she believed in a bright future before the disillusionment after the historic recession in 2016.
The record of the left is not famous.
While 30 million Brazilians were lifted out of extreme poverty, at least half of them returned to precarious living conditions.
Read also:
Bolsonaro, the populist who has seduced the economic elites
You point out a paradox: certain cultural traits attributed to Latin America, such as the cult of the strong man and the father, are at the heart of the Bolsonaro phenomenon.
However, you see, Brazil has remained a democracy and a rule of law: "It is easier to attack Bolsonaro than Maduro or Erdogan."
Bolsonaro could not (even) appoint one of his sons ambassador to Washington ...
Openly homophobic, racist, misogynist and nostalgic for the dictatorship (1964-1985), Bolsonaro ticks all the boxes;
in power, he has not stopped attacking minorities, artists and sees plots from the left everywhere;
conviction shared by his supporters with the fear that Brazil will become another Venezuela, forgetting in passing that Jair Bolsonaro once took Chávez as a model.
With Bolsonaro, has Brazil fallen into populism?
Was
n't
“
lulism
” another form of populism?
We can legitimately ask the question.
Brazil seems to be looking for a popular figure, a “
little father of the people
”.
There are no political prisoners;
freedom of the press exists even if the media are a prime target of the president.
With Jair Bolsonaro, "the other is the enemy", he did not seek to lead the country by being the "president of all Brazilians".
His strategy was to flatter his base.
However, we are far from an autocratic power.
There are no political prisoners;
freedom of the press exists even if the media are a prime target of the president.
Much to his regret, Eduardo, his most ambitious son, had to relinquish the post of Ambassador to the United States.
He continues to embarrass and anger many diplomats from Itamaraty, the Brazilian Quai d'Orsay.
The clan of sons, Flávio, Carlos and Eduardo, plays on his influence, behaving like a dynasty entering politics and showing little concern for respect for institutions.
Eduardo caused a scandal by suggesting, in the case of a radicalization of the left, a "
new AI-5
", this institutional act promulgated in 1968 considered as one of the founding acts of repressive power during the dictatorship, resulting in the removal of mandates and the suspension of constitutional guarantees.
Now there is a tension over what the president calls the “
risk of fraud
” in the 2022 elections and a paranoid state of mind that has led in the haste to the recent cabinet reshuffle.
This sparked an unprecedented crisis with the military, its allies, and the historic departure of the three chiefs of staff.
The atmosphere at the end of the mandate is feverish.
Let's talk about the Covid.
What is the health situation in the country today?
The so-called Brazilian variant, P1, worries scientists. In Brazil, the curve of the pandemic continues to rise like a rocket: in March we reached a record of more than 66,000 deaths, a figure which in one month more than doubled, and it is not finished, at the end of the month (April), Brazil could exceed 400,000 dead; and it is all the more appalling that the country has another age pyramid than ours, a young population, and that the official figures seem far below reality.
In 2020, Bolsonaro did not think for a moment to find himself an orphan of Trump, he modeled all his health policy on his, with the mantra of privileging the economy.
He sacked four ministers of health, continued to downplay the severity of the pandemic by speaking of "
flu
", denigrated vaccines before recently doing an about-face.
Bolsonaro knows it, what awaits him in the countryside is a catabase, he will have to confront the dead of Covid-19 to convince the living.
There is currently no risk of dismissal, but a parliamentary commission of inquiry has just opened on the management of the health crisis and possible "omissions" of the government, strongly criticized for its management. crisis.
There are more than 70 million precarious workers: everyone does not judge the refusal of confinement defended by Bolsonaro unfavorably.
But anger mounts at his lack of compassion.
In a country where the informal economy is colossal, where there are more than 70 million “invisible” workers living in a precarious situation and without correct social coverage, not everyone judges the refusal of confinement defended by Bolsonaro unfavorably.
But anger rises against his contempt, his lack of compassion and his refusal of barrier gestures such as wearing a mask.
This lack of exemplarity could cost him dearly. Emergency aid, reduced, is not enough to live on. Food inflation penalizes the poor population and 9% of Brazilians, or nearly 20 million, are said to be facing hunger in a context of worsening health crisis. The challenge today is, as elsewhere, the acceleration of vaccination (nearly 20 million doses have already been administered).
The Amazon is another fixing abscess.
It is not so easy as one might think to establish indisputable facts about the state of the Amazon.
The political power and the NGOs are engaged in an information war.
Now, do you observe, for certain NGOs, “Amazonia is also a business;
a lie as old as politics does not spare legitimate causes ”: why is the Amazon such a passionate subject?
The Amazon has become a political subject.
Some NGOs do very serious work;
others are politicized, are amateurish and unreliable.
But the official scientific data exists - 11,000 square kilometers of razed rainforest - and Jair Bolsonaro has rejected the science.
The Amazon is a complex subject, millions of people live there;
it is not just a tropical forest biotope (5.5 million square kilometers), it is sometimes forgotten;
this in no way exonerates Brazil from its responsibilities (60% of the Amazon rainforest).
Read also:
Despite the pandemic, Brazil relaunches privatizations
In the Amazon, the situation of indigenous peoples, already neglected, worsened considerably under Bolsonaro's mandate, they are peoples in danger and, moreover, a population vulnerable to Covid-19.
Bolsonaro, backed by agribusiness, is an ideal culprit, but he's not the only Nero in the Amazon.
Since Bolsonaro came to power, deforestation has reached its highest level in ten years. It's tragic, but the situation was just as appalling a decade ago and long before. It would be time to take an interest in it; Bolsonaro, backed by agribusiness (43% of exports, 21% of GDP), is an ideal culprit, but he is not the only Nero in the Amazon.
Just before the Earth summit on Thursday, April 22, Brazil pledged to reduce deforestation by 40% in twelve months, while asking Western countries for a billion dollars to initiate this policy which is the sole responsibility of a promise.
There is tension on the Amazon issue between Biden and Bolsonaro, yet the United States is, after China, Brazil's second largest trading partner.
There is also the prospect of an agreement between the European Union and Mercosur.
What is the economic record of his presidency to date?
How to explain the absence of social explosion, unlike other Latin American countries?
Traditionally, Brazilians do not demonstrate in the streets unlike their neighbors.
That changed in 2014, the year of the World Cup (football), with the anti-Dilma Rousseff protests.
Brazil then turned into "the
inferno of the frustrated
" with immense anger against the state of disgraced public services.
As for the current economic record, there is little to celebrate apart from the pension reform (2019) led by the economy minister Paulo Guedes, an ultraliberal (Chicago school).
The other promises (administrative reform, tax reform, etc.) are not effective;
structural reforms have not been undertaken.
In addition, the weakening of the real, the Brazilian currency, contributes to inflation, which is hitting increasingly hard the poor and the middle class.
Public debt exceeds 90% of GDP, the highest debt among emerging countries other than China;
however, this debt is mainly in local currency, which should avoid a crisis such as Argentina experienced.
But investor concerns are growing as the economy has deteriorated.
The government has just relaunched its infrastructure privatization program (airports, ports, etc.).
We foresee, for the presidential election of 2022, a shock between Bolsonaro and Lula, two men in denial, one of the pandemic, the other of corruption.
Where are ex-president Lula and, more broadly, the opposition?
Is Bolsonaro still in a strong position for a second term in 2022?
Left-wing icon ex-President Lula da Silva sees himself in the presidential race after a Supreme Court ruling overturned his corruption convictions.
He is at the top of recent polls, he exults, forgetting that before a political future, what awaits him is still a judicial appointment.
We foresee, for next year's elections, a “clash of the titans” between Bolsonaro and Lula and the prospect of a highly polarized campaign. This is not very encouraging for Brazilian democracy because it will be the face-to-face between two political figures in denial: Bolsonaro in denial of the pandemic; Lula in denial of corruption. We do not see a "third man" but justice could change the prognosis.
Lula will soon be summoned to Brasília or São Paulo before a competent court, his indictments for corruption remain. The Bolsonaro clan is meanwhile entangled in bribery cases, including the eldest son, Flávio. Recently, Jair Bolsonaro fell in the polls. However, politically, he does not have one knee on the ground as long as his Centrao allies support him in Congress
[Brazil is a presidential regime characterized by a strict separation of powers, Editor's note].
Among his supporters, the vote of the pro-arms, satisfied with his decrees, and that of agribusiness - exports increased by 24% in 2020 despite the pandemic - are acquired.
The vote of the evangelicals is more uncertain even if Bolsonaro the Catholic was baptized according to the evangelical rite and he defends conservative positions.
Evangelicals had once supported Lula.
Let's wait for the candidates' programs and their solutions in the face of a sinking economy, unemployment reaching 14.6%, and state failings that have come to light with the pandemic.
If there is disorder in progress, then we must not lose sight of Brazil, which retains its strengths and can turn into a great power.
Everything is willingly extreme in Brazil, you write.
How to explain this national trait?
Brazil has its spells, its insolent beauty, its natural resources, its disproportionate space, its grandeur, an unfailing generosity;
when he gives birth to the best, as in literature with João Guimarães Rosa, the author of Diadorim (Grande Sertão: Veredas, in its original title) that we rightly compare to a Brazilian Joyce, he goes far beyond conventions.
But it is also a country-continent where we do not sink a little.
The scourge of corruption has been so obvious there that it takes the place of plunder.
The frustrations and anger of its abysmal social disparities are expressed through ultraviolence.
Added to this is a Kafkaesque bureaucracy ...
Despite all this, Brazil, twenty-six states and a federal district, has no concerns about identity.
The feeling of belonging is strong there, the pride of being Brazilian is strong, and if disorder can mark progress, then we must not lose sight of Brazil, which retains its strengths and can transform itself into a great power, where French companies (Engie, Carrefour, Total, Vinci Airports, etc.) are investing successfully despite a difficult economic context.
Brasil-Voyage au pays de Bolsonaro, by Virginie Jacoberger-Lavoué, Rocher editions, 312 pages, 19.90 euros.
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