It was perhaps the longest week in modern Brazilian history. Seven days ago, Sunday 8, a crowd of fanatics embraced former president Jair Bolsonaro, assault the legendary Praca dos Tres Poderesin the center of Brasilia, claiming a military coup to overthrow the newly arrived government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
It was the most violent and unpredictable end of the enormous polarization that the outgoing sovereign, a anti-liberal far-right leader and close to the fundamentalist, misogynist and medievalist thinking of leaders like Donald Trump or Viktor Orban.
The attacks came just a week after Lula assumed power for the third time in this country on January 1, a ceremony that Bolsonaro deliberately failed to attend. avoid handing over the presidential sash to his successor.
A gesture similar to what Trump exhibited with Joe Biden or Cristina Kirchner with Mauricio Macri. populist homogeneity undemocratic despite the proclaimed ideology.
Around two in the afternoon on Sunday 8, when many officials of the new government had a relaxed lunch with their families without expecting surprises, Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira did so in a restaurant with friends in the city centre, barbarism began.
The radical Bolsonarists camping out after their October electoral defeat in front of the army headquarters in Brasilia, they joined those who had arrived days earlier in dozens of buses funded by businessmen allied with the former president.
They pounced with extraordinary ferocity on one of the most beautiful sites in the city designed by the architect Oscar Niemeyer just over 60 years ago.
Many of the activists were wrapped in the Brazilian flag and wore the jersey of the “Verde-amarela” football team. They marched through the streets, chanting slogans and multiplying the call through social networks.
It was known that something was about to happen, but the new authorities downplayed the threat after the quiet opening day that gathered 300 thousand people on perform two ministries without any incident.
Less than an hour later, the extremists overwhelmed a small police guard, mysteriously reduced hours earlier for apparent accomplices among the protection forces of the place commanded at that time by an ally of Bolsonaro, the secretary of security, Anderson Torres.
The columns arrived first at the National Congress building. There they broke its huge windows, destroyed the shop windows, violated historical documents, paintings, sculptures. From that place, already with the trunk of the horde enlarged by the arrival of more radical activists, they went to the nearby Palacio do Planalto, seat of the Presidency of the Republic also with the slogan of destroying everything in its path.
The last stop of the violent expedition was at the headquarters of the Federal Supreme Court, the Brazilian Supreme Court, the the main target of Bolsonaro’s hatred because he released the leader of the PT, sanctioned his electoral victory and defended the efficiency of the voting machines that the former president has repeatedly attacked to support his false claim of fraud in the comic
The country stopped, shocked. The daughter of the founder of Brasilia, the legendary president Juscelino Kubitschek, the architect María Estela, now 80 years old, he shouted in front of the television at his home in Ipanema.
“Brasilia is my younger sister, which I have seen dreamed up, designed and built. For me it was a personal attack… I cried. I didn’t know whether to take a plane, go there or pray for my own Pope to protect the city,” he told the newspaper Folha de São Paulo.
The next day came the repression. The police arrested more than 1,500 people who took part in the attacks and disarmed the camps set up in front of the military command. Justice, in turn, pickets prohibited on the roadtypical procedure for truckers allied with the former president, including extraordinary fines for the drivers and their companies.
While that was happening, Bolsonaro was staying in an expensive mansion he’d been renting in Orlando, where he arrived as president 48 hours before the new government was due to take office.
In that city, and in the company of his son Eduardo, federal representative for San Pablo, he had lunch at the home of Steve Bannon, the ultranationalist underlined in the United States for its involvement in the storming of the Capitol on January 2, 2021, which tried to prevent with a blow Biden’s presidential inauguration.
What happened in Brasilia is a detailed copy of that event. Social media banns praised the barbarians which destroyed public buildings in the Brazilian capital as “Freedom Fighters” (Freedom Fighters.” The same term he used at the time for the Trump hordes.
On Tuesday, two days after the disaster, Bolsonaro released a video that he deleted three hours after posting it to Facebook, in which he responded to comments by an allied lawyer who again denounced the alleged fraud At the elections.
Trump’s same argument against Biden. Another coincidence: neither of the two populist allies they admitted their defeat at the elections That video is now evidence used by the Supreme Court to support prosecutors’ request to investigate the former president regarding these events.
Lula da Silva is convinced of this the mind of the attacks was Bolsonaro. The president also suggested that there was complicity with the police force and even the military.
In Orlando, the head of City Security, the aforementioned Anderson Torres, who was fired and ordered his arrest. The official, who was Bolsonaro’s justice minister and a close ally of the former president to the point of having worked to block the vote in favor of Lula in the country’s poor northeastern regions in October, returned to Brasilia on Friday and He was arrested.
The authorities are confident that the former official will break and end up implicating the former president with evidence. Torres’ situation worsened after the draft of a decree that the former head of state had to sign cancel the elections and intervene justice. A measure clearly considered coup.
For the moment, the judges of the Supreme Court have anticipated that they will not order the arrest of the former president because they believe that this chapter It has to be resolved at the political level. Former President Frederick Wassef’s lawyer, his right hand man, rejects all accusations and advances them there were provocateurs in the marches
The governor of Brasilia, Ibaneis Rocha, of the right-wing Brazilian Democratic Movement, has also been dismissed, albeit temporarily. He is charged with “omission and collusion … with criminals who previously announced they would commit violent acts,” according to the court order.
In the middle of the week, the president tried to distance himself and accused Torres, the forces of order and the military, arguing that your security plan has been sabotaged. He also claimed to have warned of a possible contingency.
Instead, analysts say that the governor has allowed the arrival of the fundamentalist hordes to win the favor of the Bolsonarists. electoral majority in this district.
For Lula, who came to power with a minimum difference of 1.8% of the votes, this disaster has consolidated with polls showing a strong national rejection of what happened and a majority pointing to Bolsonaro as the cause of the hell of some year ago .week in Brasilia. However, no one is ensuring that this anti-democratic menace is extinguished.
Brasilia. Special delivery
Source: Clarin
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.