Brazilian Capital Stormed by Thousands of Protestors
Protestors with banner that reads “Military Intervention” | Photo Credit: Eraldo Peres/Associated Press via CBC
Approximately 4,000 protestors occupied Brazil’s Congress, Presidential Palace and Supreme Court in what’s widely considered the democratic nation’s worst-ever episode of political violence.
Organised through social media and inspired by far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro’s claims of widespread voter fraud, the thousands that amassed Jan. 8 were fighting to overturn the recent election results that saw Bolsonaro’s opponent, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known simply as Lula, win by 1.8 per cent.
Bolsonaro has held a seat in Congress since 1991, before being elected President in 2018, promising to address corruption and tackle crime.
Concerns about the former president’s views on democracy have arisen. “I am in favour of a dictatorship […] We will never resolve serious national problems with this irresponsible democracy,” he said in 1992. Brazil was controlled by a military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985.
Lula was declared the winner of the election, with 50.9 per cent of the vote, on Oct. 30. He was previously elected President from 2003 to 2010. He was sentenced to nine years in prison on charges of corruption in 2017. His sentence was later reduced to 18 months.
Bolsonaro has remained largely silent and not conceded to losing the election. He left Brazil two days before Lula’s inauguration, an event outgoing presidents normally attend.
Throughout the country, camps of Bolsonaro supporters had gone up around military facilities. The protesters sought an intervention from soldiers to reinstate Bolsonaro as President.
While many of these camps were dismantled, in Brasília, the capital, a camp located just 8 km from Brazil’s Congress, Presidential Palace and Supreme Court remained.
BBC News reported that through social media, code words were used to invite people to a “party” in the capital over the weekend of Jan. 7 and 8. Free transportation was also promised.
The weekend saw roughly 4,000 Bolsonaro supporters, calling themselves Bolsonaristas, gather at the camp near the Forte Caxias army headquarters and the Military Command of the Plateau. Despite Lula voicing concern, police choose not to remove the camp.
An eight-kilometre peaceful march to Brazil’s Three Powers Plaza, or Praca dos Tres Powers, which Congress, the Palace and the Court border, was planned for 2 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 8.
More pro-Bolsonaro protests were already underway on the path of the march on the large lawns of Esplanada avenue, nearby the Plaza.
Just before 3 p.m., the crowd reached police barricades preventing access to Three Powers Plaza. Video posted to social media and verified by the BBC show only a single line of waist-high metal barriers stopping them. Police were sparsely spaced along the barriers and lacked the necessary personnel. They were quickly overwhelmed by protesters.
“There were so many people […] and the barricades [outside Congress] had been torn down and destroyed,” journalist George Marques, told The Guardian. “[T]he police were no longer there and the ramp leading to Congress was completely overrun.”
“I’m still trying to process what I saw […] It was like scenes from a war. They were unimaginable scenes of destruction and savagery. Never in my 12 years covering politics in Brasília did I think I’d witness acts of such violent depredation […] I didn’t know if someone was going to get shot,” he said.
But protestors disagree. “It was a peaceful protest. None of us are terrorists – nothing of the sort. […] The idea was to get rid of Lula [...] He’s a corrupt thief,” Carla Coutinho da Rosa said in an interview with The Guardian the day after.
William Sarott, another protester, told The Guardian left-wing actors aided by the “rotten media” were responsible for the violence in an attempt to shine a negative spotlight on right-wing activists. He didn’t provide any evidence.
“We need to re-establish order after this fraudulent election. I'm here for history, for my daughters,” Lima, a protester, told AFP News.
Protesters then permeated the entire campus, including the roof of the Congress building. They even forced a police officer off his horse and attacked him outside Congress, videos posted online show.
In the Presidential Palace, the site of Lula’s inauguration seven days earlier, rioters ransacked the offices of Lula’s close adviser and former defence and foreign minister Celso Amorim, first lady Rosângela Lula da Silva, and his official photographer Ricardo Stuckert, among others, according to The Guardian. The camera Stuckert used to document Lula’s election campaign was stolen.
“The feeling I have is that we are going to have to really fight so that our children are able to live in a country without violence,” Stuckert said.
Videos and photos posted to social media show protestors occupying the insides of buildings, with, in some cases, no security presence and “trashing offices, smashing windows and doors, flipping furniture, and tossing computers and printers to the ground,” according to BBC News. In the Senate chamber, protestors jumped on seats and slid down benches. Precious artwork, including portraits of former presidents, was also destroyed.
“The value of what was destroyed is incalculable because of the history it represents,” Rogério Carvalho, Director of Curatorship of the Presidential Palaces, told BBC.
Upon the request of Brasília’s governor at the time, Ibaneis Rocha, Lula eventually invoked emergency measures and called in the National Guard.
Using water cannons and stun grenades, security forces cleared out most protestors by 5:30 p.m.. Large crowds remained in the Plaza for another hour. “Absolute control” over the capital was then regained by the government, foreign minister Mauro Vieira declared.
More than 1,800 arrests have since been made in connection to the protests.
While Bolsonaro lost, the political climate he embodied in Brazil, seems to live on.
In the recent election, The Guardian reports, right-wing parties made further seat gains in Congress, building on already high representation from 2018.
“We need to be really vigilant. We can’t just think it was something that happened and is over and that’s it,” stated Amorim in an interview with The Guardian.
“Brazilian democracy has been unquestionably tarnished and is at risk,” agreed Mauro Paulino, a commentator on Globo News.
Lula claimed that the protesters' goal was to stage a coup, where security forces would intervene, and Bolsonaro would regain power. Evidence found in the wardrobe Bolsonaro’s former justice minister and security chief of Brasília during the protests, Anderson Torres, details a plan where Bolsonaro would reinstate himself as President by taking control of the Superior Electoral Court.
Torres was arrested upon return from the US, where he claims to have been vacationing during the protests. He has rejected all accusations of wrongdoing.
Strong Bolsonaro support in security forces has been accredited to such massive security failures.
“You will see in the images that they [police officers] are guiding people on the walk to Praca dos Tres Powers,” said Lula.
Two BBC verified videos depict police laughing and taking photos while protesters walk up a ramp and Congress.
Another BBC verified video shows protesters passing through a larger stairwell as police guard a smaller hallway to the side. An officer waves and gives the protesters the thumbs up, who then applaud. The officers appear to belong to the Policia Legislativa, a federal force responsible for protecting Congress.
Amorim said he’s concerned over how the Presidential Guard Battalion couldn’t keep these protesters away from the Palace, unlike other protests.
“It’s as if this was allowed to happen. This is very serious,” he told The Guardian on Jan. 9.
Furthermore, Rocha failed to take necessary steps to prevent the riots and throughout them, he was “painfully silent,” said Justice Alexandre de Moraes, as reported by BBC. He is being investigated by the Supreme Court and was forced to take leave from his position for 90 days.
Lula says he is sure that “people in the armed forces” allowed the protests to take place and participated in collusion. He’s working to rid the military of far-right Bolsonaro supporters. He has fired the head of the army, Gen. Julio Cesar de Arruda, as well as “several dozen” security personnel from his detail, according to Aljazeera, without providing any reasoning.
“We are going to find out who the financiers of these vandals who went to Brasília are and they will all pay with the force of law,” he promised. Police have found and confiscated some 40 buses used to transport protesters.
“…this was engineered by people with economic and political power,” Sônia Guajajara, the head of Brazil’s newly created ministry for Indigenous peoples, told The Guardian.
An inquiry is investigating the protests, including Bolsonaro’s role. His lawyer rejected the accusations of wrongdoing, saying Bolsonaro is a “defender of democracy”.
Meanwhile, since Dec. 30, two days before Lula’s inauguration, Bolsonaro has been living in the home of a retired ultimate fighting champion south of Orlando, as reported by TIME Magazine.
Felipe Alexandre, a lawyer for Bolsonaro, said in an email statement that his client is merely in the US on vacation. “He would like to take some time off, clear his head and enjoy being a tourist in the United States for a few months before deciding what his next step will be,” he said.
Those next steps may be limited, though. Six investigations are underway into the alleged provocation of his supporters and baseless claims of voter fraud. They may disqualify him from becoming president again and result in prosecution.
“For god in heaven, I will never go to prison!” he proclaimed to followers last year.
Bolsonaro travelled to the US on a 30-day A-1 visa, a type given to foreign leaders and diplomats, as reported by the Financial Times. At the beginning of February, he applied for a 6-month tourist visa, according to TIME. It’s unclear what the result of that request was, however, he remains in the US.
Due to Bolsonaro’s role in the protests, Democratic lawmakers have called on President Biden to revoke his visa. A Feb. 10 letter signed by nearly 50 US House members, demands Biden “reassess [Bolsonaro’s] status in the country to ascertain whether there is a legal basis for his stay and revoke any such diplomatic visa he may hold.”
Others have drawn the link between Bolsonaro, nicknamed “Trump of the Tropics” by some, and his proximity to former US President Donald Trump, who lives just a few hours away in Mar-a-Lago, Florida.
“Just as Bolsonaro is a cheap imitation of Trump, this was a cheap imitation of the [US] Capitol [invasion on 6 January 2021],” says Amorim.
Following the Jan. 6 attack, David Nemer, a Brazilian professor of media studies at the University of Virginia and an expert on disinformation, predicted something similar would happen in Brazil in an interview, he told The Guardian.
“The reason why I was saying that was because the same sort of narrative that was flowing around social media in the US, it was also flowing in WhatsApp and Telegram groups that I’d monitor and that I researched [in Brazil].”
“The core of the Bolsonaro government was formed largely by individuals who were inspired and disseminated here in Brazil the concepts produced by the American far-right,” added Michel Prado, an independent analyst who studies Brazil’s far-right, in an interview with TIME.
The two former Presidents and their inner circles also have close ties through Bolsonaro’s son, Eduardo. He was in Washington on the day of the January 6 attack.
He has visited Mar-a-Lago multiple times, meeting Trump, Trump Jr., and Jared Kushner.
Bolsonaro himself appeared Feb. 3 at Turning Point USA, a major right-wing event at the Trump golf course in Miami.
The entire situation has sparked international outcry from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as well as heads of state from Chile, Columbia, France, Germany, Mexico, Turkey, the UK, and the US, condemning the violence and voicing support for Lula. President Joe Biden called the events an “assault on democracy and the peaceful transfer of power in Brazil.”