Brazil’s Bolsonaro Cracks Down On Dissent As His Presidency Enters Crisis Mode

Indigenous leaders, journalists, scientists, doctors and other critics have faced increasing threats from the far-right president’s government in recent ...

A prominent newspaper columnist. Multiple Indigenous leaders. Doctors, academics and scientists. All of them, in recent weeks and months, have been subject to subpoenas, investigations, or other more implicit efforts to silence the criticism they’ve leveled against the government of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right leader who has ramped up his authoritarian tactics as his own political future has become increasingly uncertain. For most of his presidency, Bolsonaro has enjoyed an iron grip on Brazil’s political narrative, able to whitewash potential scandals or change the discussion with a single tweet or rambling appearance on Facebook Live.  But that grip is loosening: A congressional investigation into his denialist and conspiratorial handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed 450,000 Brazilians, now dominates morning newspapers and nightly newscasts. Rates of deforestation in the Amazon and attacks on Indigenous tribes, issues that have turned Bolsonaro into a global pariah, have attracted increasingly negative attention at home, especially now that Bolsonaro’s environmental minister is under investigation over illegal timber exports to the United States. And the reemergence of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a popular former president who is positioning himself to pursue the presidency again next year, has largely solidified Brazil’s leftist opposition, creating a countervailing force around a leader skilled at capturing the attention of the Brazilian public and the world.