On Wednesday, Jair Bolsonaro was sworn in as Brazil’s new president. President Trump, Nikki Haley, and other leading American politicians congratulated him on Twitter with Trump saying “the U.S.A. is with you!”
Bilateral relations between the U.S. and Brazil are important, but the U.S. should not be so quick to offer uncritical praise for the far-right leader.
Congratulations to President @JairBolsonaro who just made a great inauguration speech – the U.S.A. is with you!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 1, 2019
First the back story.
To put it mildly, the United States has a troubled history with supporting military dictatorships in Brazil. In 1964, the U.S. embassy and the State Department backed a successful military coup. During the action, U.S. military and intelligence forces floated off the coast of Rio de Janeiro ready to assist and, in the years prior, the U.S. ambassador had funneled money to opposition groups and even discussed ways to depose the sitting president.
That paved the way for the military to take power and, from 1964 to 1985, they controlled the country with brutal tactics of forced disappearances, torture and extra judicial killings – including against indigenous peoples. After seizing power, the military quickly introduced a new, restrictive constitution, clamped down on freedom of speech and punished opposition. The military justified anti-democratic actions based on national security and fears communism saying that the state of the country was a “crisis” that necessitated their continued rule.
Bolsonaro has his share of ties and sympathies to that legacy – and not just the anti-communist, national security heavy, and pro-U.S. ideas.
Even after the return to democracy in the mid 1980’s, Bolsonaro voiced his support for the dictatorship describing it as a “glorious” period in Brazil’s history saying that it was “20 years of order and progress.” Even more controversially, he has publicly said that “the error of the dictatorship was that it tortured, but did not kill” and argued that torture, such as that employed by the military dictatorship, was “legitimate practice.”
Politically, he has also defended military intervention in Brazil and even the imposition of a military government.
As he selected his running mate, a retired general who had talked openly about the possibility of another coup, and, later built his cabinet, those views were again on display. Now sworn in, his government will be filled not with politicians, but with military leaders and other supporters some with little or no experience.
Moreover, his first moves in his new role have a troubling resemblance to undemocratic practices of his heroes of the dictatorship and of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, whom he claims to admire. He picked Sérgio Moro, a federal judge responsible for putting Bolsonaro’s rival former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva behind bars, to serve as Justice Minister. While Bolsonaro and his supporters claim the corruption charges are legitimate, his conviction in 2017 was decried as politically motivated.
On social issues, Bolsonaro threatens established rights. He has called himself a “proud homophobe,” demonstrated blatant disrespect for women, telling a colleague on the floor of the national legislature, for example, that he wouldn’t rape her because she was “not worthy” of it. In one of his first moves in office, he essentially stripped indigenous communities of land claims decreeing that such matters would be decided by the Agriculture Ministry.
On other policy issues, Bolsonaro has stood out for the lack of concrete details of his plans – and deep contradictions. Although he ran on a pro-free market platform, he had previously supported anti-free market policies. Although a key part of his campaign was anti-corruption, his son remains embroiled in a corruption scandal. In claiming to be anti-communist, he has alienated his traditional allies, instead inviting to his inauguration Hungary’s authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, the only European leader in attendance.
Those should all be clear warnings for his U.S. supporters: Bolsonaro is an untested leader and his nascent government is rife with brewing trouble and echos of the dictatorship that ended decades earlier.
Even on issues where Trump and Bolsonaro might be aligned — countering China’s growing influence for example — the reality of China as Brazil’s largest trading partner leaves Bolsonaro with little real leverage. When it comes to combating instability in Venezuela, another U.S. foreign policy concern, Bolsonaro seems more interested in demonizing the country than finding a workable political solution.
If the U.S. is serious about countering China’s influence in Latin America and pushing back against the spiraling chaos of authoritarianism in countries like Venezuela, supporting Bolsonaro is not the right way to do it. Buying into his claims that he is freeing the country from socialism, never mind that it was never socialist, leaves socialism a straw man making it harder to combat real threats of autocratic central planning. Allowing his support of the military to go unchecked, never mind Brazil’s deeply troubling past dictatorship, is to turn a blind eye to the same authoritarian spiral that has eroded democracy decades earlier in Brazil and, more recently, in Hungary.
In the end, that poorly serves U.S. interests, setting Washington up, once again, as the defender of an authoritarian leader against vague threats of communism and on lose justifications of national security.
That lesson, however, is one we should have learned in 1964.
