Brazil, Bolsonaro, and the Politics of Nostalgia

About this Episode

In October 2018, Brazil elected far-right ideologue Jair Bolsonaro to the presidency. Bolsonaro, a retired military officer often called the "Trump of the Tropics," campaigned on a platform that mixed anti-corruption with open nostalgia for the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985. On this month's History Talk podcast, your new hosts Eric Michael Rhodes and Lauren Henry speak with two experts — Jennifer Eaglin and Pedro Cantisano — about the rise of Bolsonaro, his place in the longer history of Brazilian politics, and what his success means for the future of the world's fourth-largest democracy.

For more Origins coverage of Brazil, check out A Postcard from Brazil: The Old Struggle for a Better Future, Top Ten Origins: Brazil's Presidential Elections, and South America’s ‘Sleeping Giant’ Wakes: Brazil’s 2010 Election

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Jennifer Eaglin, Pedro Cantisano , "Brazil, Bolsonaro, and the Politics of Nostalgia" , Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective
https://origins.osu.edu/index.php/historytalk/brazil-election-jair-bolsonaro-politics-nostalgia?language_content_entity=en.

Transcript

Eric Michael Rhodes 

Welcome to History Talk the podcast that brings together experts to discuss current events in historical perspective. My name is Eric Michael Rhodes and I'm here with my cohost, Lauren Henry. Together with you, our listeners, we'll be exploring how the past informs the present this year.

 

Lauren Henry 

That's right, Eric. And our first episode takes us to Brazil. In October of 2018, following months of divisive rhetoric, fake news and general social upheaval, Brazilians elected far right populace Jair Bolsonaro as president the backdrop, soaring violent crime, massive political scandals and a flagging unequal economy. The so called Trump of the tropics called for restoring order, reducing government's role in the economy, opposing political correctness and cleansing the body politic of corruption, a retired military officer himself, Bolsonaro has made overtures to bringing back what he called, quote, the good old days of 1964 1985 when a repressive military regime ruled the country, the majority of the electric shared in this nostalgia. In fact, a recent poll shows 55% of Brazilians would support nondemocratic rule if it quote, “solved problems.”

 

Eric Michael Rhodes 

Here are some of the questions that we’ll be trying to answer today. Why was Bolsonaro's campaign so appealing to so many Brazilians? What does the resurgence of far-right authoritarianism mean for a young democracy like Brazil? And what role does history play in shaping the future?

 

Lauren Henry 

With us today to help make sense of all of this are two historians of Brazil. Jennifer Eaglin is an assistant professor of environmental history, sustainability at The Ohio State University and a faculty affiliate of the Mershon Center for International Security Studies. She's an expert on the history of the Brazilian energy sector during the 20th century. We're so glad to have you on Dr. Eaglin.

 

Dr. Jennifer Eaglin 

Thank you for having me.

 

Eric Michael Rhodes 

And joining us as well is Pedro Cantisano, he's visiting assistant professor of history at Kenyon College. His research considers the role of law as both a tool of oppression and liberation in Latin America, with a particular focus on Rio de Janeiro. Thanks for being here, Dr. Cantisano.

 

Dr. Pedro Cantisano 

Thank you for having me.

 

Eric Michael Rhodes 

All right, doctors, Eaglin and Cantisnano. I know here in the United States, we're at the end of a long and hotly contested midterm electoral season. And a few weeks ago, Brazil's election came to a conclusion. What were some of the issues around which the election turned what were the most salient concerns of everyday Brazilians, corruption, the economy, violent crime?

 

Dr. Jennifer Eaglin 

I would say the results of the election while I think somewhat surprising to many people outside of Brazil, by the time that the second round of elections came up, because elections in Brazil follow a first round, you have to win an outright majority. So the first round Jair Bolsonaro won 46%. And then that went on to a second round, at which point he won 55% of the vote. I think by the time it got to the first round, many Brazilians, it didn't actually think that the second round would be necessary. They thought that an outright that Bolsonaro would win an outright majority in the first round, which is a significant shift in the kind of expectations of the election from even early on in the summer. And I would say, a certainly a kind of exhaustion with corruption, all three of the things that you already mentioned, right, the corruption, the economy and violent crime, where were dramatic factors. I think one should add Bolsonaro was actually stabbed. I believe it was back in September. And, and I would consider that one of the turning points when I think the Bolsonaro train really started rumbling. But I would love to hear Pedro's opinion.

 

Dr. Pedro Cantisano 

Yeah, I agree with Dr. Eaglin. Concerning, what were some of the reasons why people voted for Bolsonaro, I would also agree that the stabbing episode sort of gave even more power to his campaign. But we can all, we have also to consider, the fact that Lula da Silva, who was the Workers Party leader, and was president of Brazil for two terms, he was arrested in April 2018. So we've loaded up the picture, the Workers Party had to sort of make a candidate or create a candidate out of nowhere. They didn't have their prime candidate anymore. And that wasn't enough. I mean, Lula da Silva wasn't able to transfer all his popularity to the Workers Party candidate as well.

 

Dr. Jennifer Eaglin

And I would actually add, I mean, I completely agree with that comment. But Lula's popularity was ever declining, as well. So by the end of the election, the association with Lula became ever more toxic for the leading PT candidate Haddad.

 

Lauren Henry 

What segments of the population did Bolsonaro primarily draw his support from that is to say, what does the average Bolsonaro of voter look like?

 

Dr. Jennifer Eaglin

Well, part of what actually allowed the second term, the second election or having to actually go to the second round, was that the Northeastern voters still voted strongly in favor of Haddad. But it was actually the large city centers were where Bolsonaro really swept the election in, in the major cities. So that cuts across in ways that were somewhat surprising to me. It certainly cut across economic and social structures in ways that Bolsonaro maybe had not expected either.

 

Lauren Henry 

Dr. Cantisano, on or what are your thoughts about the kind of profile of Bolsonaro’s success? And is it different from other sorts of political movements in the past? Or is he following kind of regular divisions within the Brazilian electorate?

 

Dr. Pedro Cantisano 

Well, I mean, the regional divide that Dr. Eaglin mentioned is clear at the end of the election, when you looked at the map of where Haddad was, and where Bolsonaro won, I would add to that, yet, there was a cross glass kind of support to Bolsonaro leaning towards, though, to the middle and richer parts of society. But with the popular sector with the poorest parts of those big urban centers, Bolsonaro capitalized on the rise of evangelical churches as really political sort of environments in which pastors and other religious leaders were campaigning for him. So this is a political project that has emerged recently in Brazil, not the churches themselves, but the churches as it is sort of political arena in which people get together and vote for the same candidate. So he really capitalized on that and all the evangelical or almost all evangelical vote went for Bolsonaro and that's one of the reasons why he was able to catch this popular vote and steal some of those votes from the Workers Party.

 

Eric Michael Rhodes 

Many in the media referred to Bolsonaro as Brazil's Trump. Do either of you think that that's an accurate comparison to draw? And in what sense?

 

Dr. Jennifer Eaglin 

I actually would say that he benefited from the image of being the Brazilian Trump. I certainly see a lot of similarities in a disregard or a utilization of popular media, disregard for traditional political, politics, party politics. But at the same time, I actually think it's a misrepresentation of Bolsonaro and the fact that he's actually been in politics for 30 years. And so in some ways, as he campaigned as an outsider to clean up the Brazilian politic, then I would say, he, unlike Trump, who legitimately had not had extensive experience in politics, somewhat problematically, that's actually not an accurate representation of Bolsonaro.

 

Eric Michael Rhodes 

So what do you think Bolsonaro gets from taking on this sort of outsider? This, this mantle of outsider-ness? What do you think he gains from that? Or how does that play out in the election?

 

Dr. Jennifer Eaglin 

Well, as Dr. Cantisano already noted, the toxic nature of the Brazilian part of Brazilian politics at this point, complete disillusionment with the Petrobras scandal and with its subsequent expansion into the PT into the which also contributed to Dilma Rousseff, his former president Dilama Rousseff, his impeachment, and its continued kind of rot into association with current president, Michel Temer, are all things that made the image of a candidate outside of the traditional Brazilian political structure even more appealing to Brazilian voters.

 

Dr. Pedro Cantisano 

Well, I think Bolsonaro and Trump, they are both personalities that embrace certain misogynist points of view in society and they attract conservative votes by quote unquote, saying whatever they want to say. And represent themselves as the sort of bold guys that can say what the population wants to say, but can't because of the dictatorship of the politically correct, right? So they both they both present themselves in that way. So in that way, they're similar. The press in Brazil has also compared Bolsonaro to other world leaders, such as Rodrigo Duterte from the Philippines, because they expect Bolsonaro to wage sort of a clean-up campaign against corruption and violence that might remind us of what Duterte is doing in the Philippines, a very violent one. One that doesn't respect due process, or any sort of legal procedures in order to put alleged corrupt and criminals in jail. So that's another comparison that has been made in Brazil.

 

Lauren Henry 

One thing that I think is also interesting is the sense that I get from the way that you've described it, that in many ways, there's a commonality in a sense of almost weaponized nostalgia. And I think that history has played an outsized role in the Brazilian election, perhaps even to a greater degree than in American politics. So Bolsonaro loudly extols the right-wing authoritarianism of the dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985. For our listeners, who might not know very much about Brazilian political history, what enabled the dictatorship to take power in the 1960s?

 

Dr. Pedro Cantisano 

Yeah, sure. So Brazil, the critical stage in Brazil happened in 1964. It was. There are several reasons to that. One of them is, of course, the Cold War context and a sort of anti-communist fear. In Brazil, especially after the Cuban Revolution, Latin America was sort of a, became one of the big stages of the Cold War within Brazil. I could add, I mean, so it has US support to the military coup in Brazil. But within Brazil, I would add, sort of the support of the elites, also sort of drawn into this anti-communist fear discourse. At the time, the president Joao Goulart was announcing social reform, was announcing agrarian reform, and other kinds of reformist measures that were portrayed by the elites in Brazil as a communist track. But in addition to that the military itself had its own problems. There had been certain uprisings within the military. So recent historiography has also put in the picture of the fact that intra-military problems were part of the coup, as the military try to appease not only Brazil as a whole, but the institution of the military itself by taking direct control over government.

 

Eric Michael Rhodes 

The military took control of the government in 1964. What was life like for the average Brazilian under the dictatorship?

 

Dr. Jennifer Eaglin 

Well, I would actually say that you have the, I mean, a lot of the similar fears of expanding violence that are kind of coloring in the Bolsonaro's campaign and coloring in his promises to clean up, clean up the American, the Brazilian politic are actually some of the components that were filling out the Brazilian experience directly after the military coup. So you had a large campaign to clean out opposition. And that opposition, broadly speaking, was kind of generalized into this communist threat or to this kind of anti-institutional threat that justified the intervention of the military in ’64. But it actually expanded to targeting, as Dr. Cantisano already noted, targeting social movements and groups that were trying that had been mobilizing between, particularly between ‘60 and ‘64, as many of the kind of political changes under Goulart were. Well and his predecessor, but as those political changes, to give more voting rights to illiterates, and also to giving, expanding labor rights and other things that had actually inflamed elites’ fears of, particularly, land reform. And so these are some of the kinds of underlying components that then under the military dictatorship, this kind of especially intensifies in the first thing, four or five years of the dictatorship. But they lead kind of a broad, sweeping violence, repression of all kinds of opposition to the government or to the military government. And those are some of the things that I think Bolsonaro has actually successfully mobilized the fears of present-day violence in Brazil, which has reached unprecedented levels. That's part of what has kind of legitimized this rhetoric of this and nostalgia of, of the military dictatorship, controlling violence, even if they were actually expanding violence in a lot of ways.

 

Lauren Henry 

Yeah. So how is the military dictatorship remembered in Brazil? And is there any difference in the way that this period has been addressed in Brazilian politics and memory, versus other South American countries that also have a history of dictatorships like, say, Argentina?

 

Dr. Pedro Cantisano 

Well, Brazil dealt with or started dealing with the memory of the dictatorship fairly late. I mean, of course, the memory battles around what happened between ‘64 and ‘85 start as the dictatorship is still in power. But talking about government initiatives regarding the dictatorship, the worst, some sort of compensations paid to people who are put in exile and arrested during the dictatorship by the government. However, while countries such as Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile, very early on, after the democratic transitions, established truth Commissions to investigate the crimes committed during their military regimes, Brazil only established its own official truth commission in 2014 under Dilma Rousseff, who was herself part of the left wing resistance to the dictatorship and was herself tortured by the military during that period. So when Dilma was elected president, one of her more clear and strong commitments was precisely to create a truth commission, and that was created in 2014. And sort of opened up the archives of the dictatorship, and they did a similar work that was done in Argentina and Chile, by investigating the crimes committed by the military, and bringing back the memory of those who disappeared, or were arrested and killed by the military during dictatorship. The other part of this way of dealing with the past in Brazil, regards prosecutions, right? So in Argentina and Uruguay, especially Argentina, military men, officials and other sorts of lower ranks are prosecuted for crimes committed during the military dictatorship in Argentina, although this goes back and forth, and it says that Argentina also passed amnesty laws very early on. The overall sort of attitude of the judicial institutions in Argentina was to prosecute those who committed crimes during the dictatorship, and many of them are still in jail up to this present day. Whereas in Brazil, although there were some prosecutions, nobody was ever convicted by crimes committed during the dictatorship, so there is no stigma, right? So that's why Bolsonaro can go in front of Parliament during Rousseff’s impeachment, as Professor Eaglin mentioned, and praise the name of a torturer of demand, who tortured Rousseff herself. Because that man was never convicted. Nobody ever talked about him as being a criminal, as having committed crimes against humanity, as being a human rights violator. From the official standpoint, although, of course, historians and others have denounced those crimes that happened during the dictatorship in Brazil. So that's, I think, one of the biggest differences between Brazil and Argentina, for example.

 

Dr. Jennifer Eaglin 

Yeah, I completely agree with Dr. Cantisano's assessment, I think it's also worth kind of adding the political economic memory of the military dictatorship. So you have the I mean, the military intervene to, to quote unquote, rebalance or, or establish stability in an unstable political environment. Whether that is entirely accurate or not, whether that was created or there really was a communist threat, all these things, that's part of the rhetoric that justified the military dictatorship entering. So certainly today, as we see unhappiness with the impeachment and with Temer, and this kind of impression of a political vacuum, particularly with Lula in being imprisoned there's more space, I think, to make the similar argument that the military is potentially filling a void, or that there would be a return to a military dictatorship, or that Jair Bolosnaro, invoking the military dictatorship as a positive experience, is, again, selling this idea of political stability that has kind of eroded. And then I would also add that Brazil experienced a lot of economic growth under the military dictatorship. And so as Brazilian, as the Brazilian economy fault has fallen into one of its worst recessions since the dictatorship, I think that also is, is not entirely accurate, but is repurposing and or shifting the kind of dialogue around what the military dictatorship represented in ways that are at least some of the successes of the military dictatorship, at least for a period. Because actually, the dictatorship collapsed in the midst of a horrible economic implosion. But it's easier to say there was a lot of economic growth under the dictatorship.

 

Eric Michael Rhodes 

Notwithstanding all of that catastrophe, towards the end of the dictatorship this was the period of the Brazilian miracle, right? I mean, there were significant economic gains made during the dictatorship, which makes it a complicated question, right? So when did the downfall of the dictatorship begin? And for what reasons? Was the transition a smooth one as it began in sort of the mid 1980s?

 

Dr. Jennifer Eaglin 

Um, well, there's this. I mean, as Dr. Cantisano knows, already noted, there are internal divisions within the military dictatorship, within the military, this military dictatorship, that kind of shape, the eb and flowing of the dictatorship. So there's their conservative hardliners that are saying that Brazilian politics is not going to act on its own behalf, or will not properly act on its own behalf and should say, we should have this dictatorship. But then there's also moderates within the military that say, that kind of justify, the dictatorship or the intervention to say they had to stabilize and reestablish, clean out the opposition, clean out the threats, communist threats, and etc. After which the Brazilian politics could return to, to democracy, right and so, so under Ernesto Geisel’s administration, under the military dictatorship in ‘74, you have this general opportunity, this, this beginning of the political opening to remove some of the censorship on media and to loosen or to open up more space for political engagement. And, you know, that was rocky and in the fact that some of that went well, some of that then leads to another clamping down on political dissent. But this, I would say, is the very slow beginning of the transition back to democracy. This is going to accelerate in the ‘80s, as Brazil as the Brazilian economy hits some really, really ugly road bumps. So as inflation, a thing that had once again been one of the economic justifiers of the military intervening in ‘64, was a rampant inflation and then as inflation returns to those levels and exceeds those little levels again in the ‘80s. And as Brazil, along with the rest of Latin America, or much of Latin America, falls into what is generally known as the last decade of extensive debt and inflation, where that that kind of erodes one of the pillars that had justified the military dictatorship. And you're also going to start to see more social movements starting to demand political, the return of political rights such as the DerechosZA, and so even if this larger protest didn't directly lead to the return to democracy, it put a lot of pressure on the military dictatorship to slowly return returned to a democratic system.

 

Lauren Henry 

Actually, this is a perfect transition to talk to you Dr. Eaglin, a little bit about the economy and Bolsonaro. So as we said before, you're a specialist in environmental history and sustainability. And Bolsonaro's platform was explicitly in favor of prioritizing development over the environment. Is this a mainstream perspective in Brazil that we've sort of protected the environment too much?

 

Dr. Jennifer Eaglin 

Well, it's very interesting talking about it in as we're also talking about the comparison to the military dictatorship, because the main agenda of the military dictatorship was development over everything, right. And, and certainly, within Brazil, there has historically been, on the one hand of very cogent kind of activism around environment, around the environment. But there's also a perception that Brazil, amongst other countries should not have to delay their own development in favor of environmental protections that other countries that have already reached certain developmental markers have not had to do. And so you, you see that conflict throughout the dictatorship. And I think that this is something that they kind of, that Bolsonaro invoking in his platform, I think it's something that they fall back on when the economy starts to turn, right. So, so and under, under Lula, as Brazil experienced monster amounts of economic growth, I think you see, actually, Brazil very much mobilized the kind of foreign diplomacy around their environmental, positive environmental, kind of energy matrix, right. So Brazil actually has one of the most diverse energy matrixes in the world. So when I say that, I mean, they rely on hydro power, they rely on nuclear energy, they rely on ethanol as I research. And particularly hydropower is a huge part of their energy system, what they use for their, the majority of their energy. And, and so these are all things that they actually mobilized into political capital, international political capital, earlier in the 2000s and even early in the 2010s. So I would say as the economy has turned, its, you're starting to see more interest in exploiting the Amazon or exploiting it, and particularly talking about expanding dams for more hydroelectric power, more deforestation, all these things to exploit Brazil's natural resources to turn the economy around.

 

Eric Michael Rhodes 

So Dr. Cantisano, you know, how have legal investigations paved the way for Bolsonaro’s rise?

 

Dr. Pedro Cantisano 

Well, so Operation Car Wash led by the federal police, and federal public ministry, which is an independent institution that does investigations of prosecutions in Brazil, started in 2014, and is now around it's 50th phase. So it's the kind of police operation that has taken the sort of the characteristic of a permanent, permanent prosecutorial agenda coming from the federal public ministry and your federal police. They found billions of dollars in corruption associated to contracts with the Brazilian public oil company Petrobras, and other contracts within public companies under the Workers Party government, right. They also found that this kind of corruptions team had been sort of in place since the military dictatorship. However, I must point out that the 1988 constitution that came out of the transition process, and the Workers Party government itself, both empowered those institutions of investigation, to sort of create transparency and accountability within government. So that's one of the reasons why it's under the Workers Party government that those things emerge to the public, right. It's a combination of things. Many would argue that the Workers Party exaggerated in terms of creating a corruption scheme. But what investigations have found is that this corruption scheme was in place at least since the ‘70s. And it was just now sort of discovered, or at least unveiled by the police, precisely because the police have an institutional power to control government that it  didn't have before, right. The other sort of face of the Operation Car Wash is the fact that Judge Moro who is a federal judge in the state of Paraná in southern Brazil, and who was sort of brought all the persecution sort of together under his jurisdiction, all there's a there's a part of it in Rio, there's a part of it in Brasilia, but a lot of the prosecution came to be under Moro’s jurisdiction. He is himself a fan of the clean hands operation that happened in the 1990s in Italy, that sort of set out to wipe Italy of corruption, and he actively used the press  and sort of sought popular support for the operation in order to keep it going. So Moro politicized the operation by seeking popular support by using the press, and by even sort of doing certain illegal acts, such as publicizing audio records of President Rousseff during the impeachment process. He also used very doubtful methods of imprisonment and interrogation, meaning that people would get arrested for almost no reason, and then be interrogated and asked for information under circumstances that sort of pressured them to give up information, even if that information wasn't good, right. So Moro politicized it very much since the beginning. And the public, the Federal Public Ministry, also sort of portrayed the Workers Party as a criminal organization, right. So that's another, this operation is surely a huge part of the sort of demise of politics that Professor Eaglin was talking about earlier, right. So they contributed a lot to create an anti-corruption agenda in Brazil among voters. And they contributed a lot to that, to make sure that that anti-corruption agenda is actually an anti-politics agenda, and in particular, an anti-Workers Party.

 

Eric Michael Rhodes 

Dr. Cantisano, thanks for that. Speaking of those judicial institutions, I'd like to ask you very quickly, you know, given the challenge of Bolsonaro’s election to the legal framework, do you think that these judicial institutions in your view, will be able to stand up to the onslaught of Bolsonaro, that sort of anti, as you said, anti sort of government ideas that are in the body politic of Brazil at the moment?

 

Dr. Pedro Cantisano 

Well, the most recent news is that Judge Moro himself just accepted to be the Minister of Justice and security under Bolsonaro. So, you know, the same person who ordered the arrest of Lula is now a part of the government. And he had the question for Moro I think, as the Minister of Justice, I'm not going to touch on individual courts, like the Supreme Court itself. But let's talk about Moro himself. The question is, whether he will be able to advance his anti-corruption agenda independently from Bolsonaro’s political sort of circle. That means going after people who are who have supported Bolsonaro in the past and were part of the government, still, like he did as an independent judge before, and or if Moro himself is going to be sort of a part of the government in the sense that he will act as almost a political police going after only the opposition. So I think that's the big question regarding judiciary institutions at this point in Brazil, is what is Moro, the former judge who conducted Operation Car Wash, going to do now that he is under Bolsonaro as one of his ministers?

 

Eric Michael Rhodes 

Dr. Eaglin, would you like to speak to that?

 

Dr. Jennifer Eaglin 

Yeah, I actually completely agree with that analysis. And I just wanted to add that, there's also been discussion of Bolsonaro joining the Ministry of Agriculture, and the Ministry of the Environment, in ways that are worrisome for the environment, where he's spoken out to be very pro agro corporations that want to deforest in favor of soy production and in favor of cattle grazing, which are two of Brazil's largest exports, and so are agricultural exports. And so there, these are also ways that the institutions that Bolsonaro has the opportunity to reform the institutions for better or for worse. It's encouraging that he or we'll see what Moro does with the Justice program. And he's actually I mean, originally, he spoke of joining these to the agriculture, culture and environment. And there's been a lot of kind of popular outrage and also within the political system, some outrage about that. And so how does Bolsonaro respond to that? He's backed away from it a bit, since originally saying that, which maybe speaks to the possibility of maintaining the political infrastructure under Bolsonaro.

 

Lauren Henry 

Well, since this is a history themed podcast, we generally try to resist asking our guests to read the tea leaves of the future so much, but we sort of, in this case, have to. And so what I would like to ask both of you on this note about agriculture, and the environment, and some of the responses to this change is that in the United States, following the election of Donald Trump, we've seen the emergence of a grassroots resistance movement that has shaped politics over the last two years. Do you foresee a similarly strong response to the Bolsonaro election and the creation perhaps of some sort of organized resistance movement in Brazil?

 

Dr. Pedro Cantisano 

Sure. I yeah, I see. I mean, to organize resistance as to Bolsonaro started during the elections, one of the sorts of leadership movements, you know. One of the moments that took a role of leadership to resist Bolsonaro was a women's movement, remembering the fact that he is an openly misogynist, and has said outrageous things regarding women's rights. I see. Well, for seeing into the future, I think the left in Brazil has to sort of reconnect with its popular basis that was lost somehow during this election. I see legal resistance as well in court so similar. Regarding Trump, similar to some of the petitions that were brought against the Muslim ban here in the U.S. I see the kinds of sort of injections and petitions in courts being part of the resistance. I think the biggest problem is how to contain violence that is perpetrated by gangs, militia, and armed groups, empowered by and sanctioned by Bolsonaro especially against LGBT people, right. So this is one of the things that we haven't talked about yet, but during the election, political violence and violence against minorities, specially the LGBT minority increase dramatically in Brazil, and this is one of those sort of sanctioned violences coming from the top that people have to learn how to resist. And I'm not sure yet how is that going to be possible given that the police is a military police very much aligned to the Bolsonaro ideological perspective. So going into the police might not work at this point. And there's got to be some sort of grassroots sort of communitarian defense and organizing to protect people from this kind of violence in Brazil.

 

Eric Michael Rhodes 

Dr. Eaglin.

 

Dr. Jennifer Eaglin 

Yeah, I certainly see a lot of space for the resistance, I will maybe contribute a less optimistic perspective, which is I was shocked by how, how prevalent, how visible the pro Bolsonaro kind of supporters were, in a way that, to me was actually maybe more had more vitriol than, than in Trump's election. And that might be understating the vitriol of Trump's election, not understanding the vitriol of Bolsonaro’s election. But yeah, I think that there's space for, for many social groups to, to speak out. And there's a question, I agree with Dr. Cantisano, of the left needs to rebuild itself. Its main kind of support networks that have been ostracized by recent political issues and in ways that mirror the US as well. And so we sit on the precipice of elections in the U.S. where we'll see how effective the kind of resistance movement has been here and I think that maybe that will be a good indicator of some of the possibilities and other markets, including Brazil and beyond Brazil as well.

 

Eric Michael Rhodes 

We'll wrap it up on that note. Thank you to our two guests, Doctors Jennifer Eaglin and Pedro Cantisano.

 

Lauren Henry 

Thanks, everyone. This episode of History Talk podcast was brought to you by Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, an online publication of the public history initiative, and the Goldberg Center and the history department at The Ohio State University in Columbus and Miami University and Oxford, Ohio. History talk is supported by the Stanford foundation. Our main editors are David Steigerwald, Steven Conn and Nicholas Breyfogle, our audio and technical advisor is Paul Kotheimer. Audio producers and hosts are Lauren Henry and Eric Michael Rhodes, song and band information can be found on our website. You can find our podcasts and more on our website origins.osu.edu on iTunes, Stitcher and on SoundCloud, as well as wherever else you get your podcasts. And as always, you can find us on Twitter @OriginsOSU and @HistoryTalkPod. Thanks for listening.

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