Brazil is still dominated by Jair Bolsonaro’s unhinged reactionary politics. Which makes it all the more incredible that the leftist housing organizer Guilherme Boulos recently defied all expectations by making it to a runoff in São Paulo’s upcoming mayoral election.
When Lula and the Workers’ Party took power in Brazil, they had a plan to take on crime and the power of the police. Their failure helped undermine their entire program.
Lula’s election victory was nearly derailed by a Bolsonaro-supporting police effort to suppress the vote. It was only the most recent episode in which politicized police forces have intervened to thwart democracy — and the US is far from immune to the problem.
Housing organizer and socialist Guilherme Boulos recently shocked Brazil by forcing a runoff for mayor in the largest city in the Western Hemisphere, São Paolo. In an interview, he lays out his vision for the position, how to embed the Brazilian left in the country’s working class, and how to “place the periphery in the center.”
As Lula's judicial saga moves into a new stage, the Brazilian left faces more questions than ever.
It's presidential election year in Brazil, and anything is possible.
The deforestation that led to the fires that recently raged across the Amazon is driven by the imperatives of capitalism. To halt the fires, we have to fight those imperatives.
Despite overwhelming evidence that former Brazilian president Lula da Silva was the victim of a right-wing campaign to keep him out of another presidential term by jailing him, Bernie Sanders is the only Democratic candidate who has called for his release. The rest of the party’s presidential candidates should demand that Lula be freed, too.
Mainstream media coverage of Mexico’s leftist president Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his response to the coronavirus crisis has been terrible. While world health authorities have commended Mexico’s approach, the media — blindly parroting AMLO’s right-wing opposition — have panned it.
Leftist leader Lula da Silva was inaugurated on Sunday as Brazil’s president. It’s a huge win for the global left — I only wish the late Michael Brooks, who tirelessly agitated for Lula’s release from prison, would have lived to see his return to power.
If socialists want to take power through the ballot box, we have to be ready for when capitalists stop playing by the rules.
Brazilian vice-presidential candidate Manuela D'Ávila on misogyny in politics, the ruling class's motivations for keeping Lula jailed, and what's driving the far right's resurgence.
The church is responsible for a litany of injustices — and today Christian rhetoric is used to defend a violent neoliberal capitalism. But the glorious tradition of liberation theology can't be forgotten.
Lula is finally free. Now, the mass movement of millions that made his release possible will have to press on to dismantle the entire Bolsonaro regime.
In an exclusive interview, Ecuador’s former president Rafael Correa spoke to Jacobin about the coup against his ally Evo Morales in Bolivia and the mass resistance to his rightward moving successor Lenín Moreno in Ecuador.
Argentina’s public health response to COVID-19 was far better than Jair Bolsonaro’s disastrous mismanagement in Brazil. Yet as the two countries seek to rebuild, both are enfeebled by their subordinate place in the global financial system, a subordination that is threatening to turn today’s shock into a protracted crisis.
Lula rose from humble origins to become a leftist icon, exuding working-class authenticity and successfully bringing working people into the country’s political life. And his story isn’t over: he could soon return to power.
Paulo Freire, who was born one hundred years ago today, came of age in a country where half of all adults were illiterate and therefore disenfranchised. Freire’s ideas were forged in a uniquely Brazilian context.
Justin Trudeau’s strategy in Latin America has been to attack the region’s progressive governments. He has failed miserably. Now, as left-wing governments mount successive wins across the region, Ottawa may find it played the wrong hand.
Positioned between major power blocs, Brazil sits at the center of debates on geopolitics, development, and the green transition. In an interview, left-wing finance minister Fernando Haddad assesses domestic political trends and Brazil’s place in the global economy.