The Daily - ‘Trump of the Tropics’: How Brazil’s President Came to Power

Episode Date: March 20, 2019

President Trump welcomed Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, to the White House on Tuesday. We look at the back story of Mr. Bolsonaro, whose campaign tactics, incendiary rhetoric and brash style have earned him the nickname “Trump of the tropics.” Guest: Ernesto Londoño, the Brazil bureau chief for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today. Today I'm very thrilled to welcome President Bolsonaro of Brazil for his first visit to the White House. On Tuesday, President Trump held a joint news conference with the newly elected president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro. President Bolsonaro, I want to congratulate you again

on your tremendous election victory. Last October was an incredible feat and really a truly incredible challenge. And the end result was something the whole world was talking about. The campaign he ran and his brash style have earned Bolsonaro the nickname the Trump of the tropics, a comparison that Trump has embraced and said he is honored by. I also know that we're going to have a fantastic working relationship. We have many views that are similar.

My colleague, Ernesto Landano, on the story of Bolsonaro. It's Wednesday, March 20th. So who is Bolsonaro and how did he enter Brazilian politics? Bolsonaro is a former army captain. He was a paratrooper who had a pretty short and fairly turbulent stint in the military. He actually got kicked out. But after leaving the military in not the best of terms, he was very successful

at sliding into a political career, initially as a city council member in his native Rio de Janeiro. And then very soon he found his way to the capital, Brasilia, as a congressman. The dictatorship was at its most harsh in the late 60s and early 70s. The country was emerging from a pretty traumatic period. Student demonstrations in 1968, calling for the restoration of democratic rights, prompted a strong response from the military. It was definitely an era of repression, of terror for many groups that were at odds with the military government

and a pretty widespread censorship and curtailment of civil rights. Many of those arrested were to face torture. But in 88, lawmakers passed a very progressive constitution. It's 29 years since Brazil last held three presidential elections. If there's one point where it became starkly clear that Brazil had reached cruising altitude as a democracy, it would have been the election of Luiz Inácio da Silva, commonly known as Lula, in 2002. Lula was a former shoeshiner, son of a single mother,

raised poor, rose to prominence as a union leader, started building a political movement during the era of military rule, and was briefly jailed as a political prisoner. And when he is sworn in, in 2003, the region really sort of took a look at Brazil and said, wow, this country has really turned a corner. If a man like Lula can get elected in Brazil, Brazil has really matured as a democracy. And what role does Bolsonaro play in the midst of this pretty dramatic shift in Brazil? in the midst of this pretty dramatic shift in Brazil.

Bolsonaro was seen as kind of a loud and obnoxious lawmaker who would just get into these shouting matches in Congress, would deliver these fiery speeches. He became infamous for saying things that were very offensive about women. About blacks. About gays. He made the news, for instance, when he got into a shouting match with a female lawmaker. And told her that she was too ugly to rape. And the most startling thing,

and it was a theme he went back and back to, was his praise for the era of military rule. That Brazil needed strongmen at the helm praise for the era of military rule. We did a job that we didn't do. We killed 30,000. That Brazil needed strongmen at the helm and that this experiment with democracy was not taking the country in the right direction. So just as kind of modern democratic Brazil is coming into form, it sounds like Bolsonaro is entering politics, but is pushing in the other direction for less democracy, more authoritarianism. Absolutely. He essentially made the case,

only the military can run this large, unwieldy country effectively, and we're wasting our time thinking that this experiment with democracy is going to take us anywhere productive. And what was the response to moments like that? thinking that this experiment with democracy is going to take us anywhere productive. And what was the response to moments like that? Largely speaking, people started saying, well, that's just Bolsonaro being Bolsonaro. He made headlines. He was admonished. He was criticized. But he was not somebody who was really taken seriously. He was not somebody who was center stage when big deals were being negotiated. For most of his career, he was a little bit of a sideshow.

And at the same time... In Brazil, Petrobras recently made what could be the world's biggest oil discovery since the 1970s. Lula had a remarkably successful first term as president, and Brazilians started seeing some pretty sweeping changes. Brazil, like much of the region, was enjoying a commodities boom. The discovery could mean that Brazil will become one of the world's leading oil exporters. There were some pretty groundbreaking policies that paved the way for people from poor families, people from rural communities, for the first time to go to university.

In just seven years, almost 30 million Brazilians have joined the ranks of the middle class, some helped by government handouts, others through improved education, which leads to higher wages. There was a sense that inequality was diminishing in a country where it's long been really hard to move up the ladder. And Brazil started aspiring to great things. Brazil started making alliances with other large economies like Russia and China and South Africa and kind of projecting itself on the world stage as a rising power. I think this all became crystal clear, just kind of the sense of optimism and the sense that Brazil seemed unstoppable when... I have the honor to announce that the Games of the 31st Olympiad are awarded to the city of Rio de Janeiro.

In 2009, Brazil beat the odds and won the rights to host the 2016 Olympic Games. And, you know, looking back now at how optimistic, you know, the scenes of people partying on the beach in Copacabana, just celebrating this major triumph for Brazil. It seems impossible to think now that the seeds of what would happen next had already been planted. And the reality was that underneath this triumphant country that seemed to be rising into a bright new era, underneath all that, there was a lot of rot. And it would take a few years for people here to discover just how much. We'll be right back.

So, Ernesto, how did this rot that you described, this ugliness beneath the surface, eventually get exposed? Well, things in Brazil started taking a definite turn for the worse in 2014. Two major things happened. On the one hand, the economy, which had been on a slide, entered into recession. On the other hand, a team of investigators stumbled into a major scandal while they were looking at some funny financial transactions, initially at a gas station. In the past week, Brazilians have had wall-to-wall coverage of a political scandal threatening to bring down the country's government.

It first came to light when Brazilian police uncovered a money laundering operation at a car wash. It's known as Operation Car Wash. That quickly reached very, very deeply into very powerful politicians and the top companies in Brazil. The investigation centers on a billion-dollar corruption scandal at Brazil's mammoth oil corporation Petrobras. Petrobras is one of Brazil's biggest companies. Its alleged senior officials took almost $700 million in bribes when awarding construction contracts.

Many that may have taken bribes are linked to the government. We're talking about massive companies that had entire departments with the task of paying bribes to politicians. The Speaker of Brazil's lower house of Congress has been charged over alleged involvement in a corruption scandal. News breaking in the last hour that the former president of Brazil is being detained by police after a raid on his home and office in Michele Cruz. It soon became apparent to Brazilians

that corruption had been institutionalized. Five former Brazilian presidents, nearly one out of three cabinet ministers, and almost one out of three senators have been indicted or investigated. And what was the reaction in the general Brazilian public once all this corruption comes to light? There was outrage.

As these scandals start engulfing some of the pillars of the economy here, some of the biggest companies in the country, unemployment goes up, people's purchasing power goes down, and state governments start going bankrupt. In some places, this means the police aren't getting paid, and people start seeing a surge of violence. With more than 50,000 violent deaths every year, Brazil has one of the world's highest homicide rates. They go from a period of feeling optimistic and almost euphoric about the future to a period of despair and anguish.

And where is Bolsonaro in all of this? Bolsonaro is one of the rare veteran lawmakers who has not really been splattered by these corruption investigations. And at this time, he starts getting a fair amount of traction. All of a sudden, this guy who had kind of been, you know, a fringe character comes more into sync with how Brazilians were feeling about their lot in life. Around 2016, he starts telling people that he wants to take a shot at the presidency. And the way he spread his message was unique in the history of Brazilian presidential races. He was campaigning largely by sitting in front of a phone, which was often shaky.

And just broadcasting videos live on Facebook, on Instagram. Where he was speaking to people as though they were long-lost friends. It was completely unscripted, oftentimes a stream of consciousness. He would jump from one subject to another. And I think people saw that as pretty refreshing. People were so disgusted with politics as usual in the political establishment that they saw in this guy who had been in the fringes for so long, somebody who could radically reinvent the system. And does he have the stature at this moment to do that?

When the very first rumblings of a Bolsonaro presidential bid start coming up, people laughed it off. The conventional wisdom was he's too extreme, he's too outside of the norm. But despite the skepticism, by the end of 2017, it became pretty clear that Bolsonaro's message had strong appeal across the country. And what exactly is he promising on the campaign trail that the Brazilian people are finding so compelling? On corruption, he was very clear in stating that he was going to have no patience for business as usual. And that under his tenure, people who were corrupt had tons to fear. People who were corrupt had tons to fear.

But I think the main promise he made to his supporters was that he was going to take extraordinary measures to restore security. And we're talking about pretty draconian things. Bolsonaro, for example, once said, a good criminal is a dead criminal. He made it clear he was essentially going to give the police free reign to shoot suspected criminals on the spot. The third thing he did, which was unusual, was surround himself with military leaders and make them kind of a core base of support. The military had been largely out of sight in politics in Brazil for the past three decades. So this was a pretty bold move, but actually one that captured people's imagination

as they longed for a system that was more orderly and more secure. So this cranky, often outrageous character is starting to connect with people. Absolutely. However, I think it's important to note that there were a couple of pretty crucial turning points that turbocharged his presidential bid. Brazil's former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is to stand trial for allegedly accepting over $1 million in bribes. Early last year, former president Lula, who had been the frontrunner, according to opinion polls, and who was trying to make a bid

for a third term in the presidential palace, got jailed. And after he gets jailed on corruption and money laundering charges, he essentially becomes disqualified. And his party is in disarray. And then you fast forward a few months, and in September of last year, there's a very dramatic moment when, on the campaign trail, Bolsonaro is marching through the streets of a small town surrounded by supporters. And a man lunges toward him with a big kitchen knife and stabs him in the stomach. Jair Bolsonaro has been left in a serious but stable condition in hospital.

This after being stabbed while drumming up support ahead of next month's vote. Hospital officials say it could take two months for him to recover. He was essentially knocked off the campaign trail for the remainder of the race. He was in a hospital bed and then he was in his apartment and communicating virtually only through social media. People, I think, saw in this moment the kind of violence that he was railing against in a really crystallized form. This incident that could have easily ended his life ended up propelling his bid.

The breaking news is the far-right candidate, Zaire Bolsonaro, has won Brazil's presidential race. And after this happens in October, he has a decisive victory. this happens in October, he has a decisive victory. And what is the reaction across Brazil to this victory? Brazil emerges from the election pretty polarized. Somebody who had been a very, very long shot for the presidency was able to not just win, but win decisively. However, you also have many communities in the country that feel extraordinarily unsafe in this new Brazil

and that worry that the country under Bolsonaro's watch could well transition into a new era of authoritarian rule. I wonder what Bolsonaro's election means for Brazil, which, as you told us earlier, is just 30 years from having been a military dictatorship and turned to democracy and seems to have had a pretty rocky journey. I think it illustrates that many people, not just in Brazil, but across Latin America, have become very cynical about democracy, at least the version of democracy they were seeing. Many Brazilians felt that they were being governed by thieves who just kept getting elected by playing the old political playbook. And I think in the specific case of

Bolsonaro, who comes with a history of having championed authoritarian rule, of wanting to govern very closely with senior military leaders, the promise of order, even if it came at the price of a rollback of civil liberties and of democracy, it was a price many Brazilians were perfectly willing to pay. So to change this system that seems to not be working, it feels like Brazilians want to shock the system and perhaps test its limits, which sounds a little bit like what's going on in the United States. — Absolutely. When I talked to people on the campaign trail, you know, I was really startled by the level of anguish that they expressed

and their willingness to take big risks on a leader who is untested and who comes with all these question marks. Ernesto, thank you very much. Thank you. Just weeks after his swearing in, when Bolsonaro vowed to, quote, rid Brazil of corruption, he faced charges that his own administration

was engaging in more of the same. Brazilian prosecutors are investigating the mysterious movement of more than $300,000 in and out of bank accounts controlled by the driver of Bolsonaro's oldest son, a state lawmaker, and why some of those payments went to Bolsonaro's wife. At the same time, Bolsonaro has appointed three government ministers

who were previously implicated in investigations of corruption. Here's what else you need to know today. The Trump administration has requested an internal investigation into how the Federal Aviation Administration certified the safety of Boeing's 737 MAX 8, which has crashed twice in the last five months, killing nearly 350 people. The certification process has come under intense scrutiny because it relies heavily on input from Boeing's own employees, who were trying to quickly bring the MAX 8 to market and believed that it required minimal pilot training. And in the latest sign that the world of philanthropy

is turning against the family that created the opioid OxyContin, London's National Portrait Gallery has rejected a $1.3 million donation from the Sackler family. The Sacklers have built their fortune off of OxyContin, prompting calls for the recipients of their philanthropy, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim, and the Louvre, to stop accepting the family's donations.

The decision by the London Portrait Gallery is the first time that a major museum has turned down the Sacklers' money. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.