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Written by Uriel Araujo, PhD, anthropology researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts
The Brazilian Federal Police arrested five officers on November 19. They are accused of having plotted a coup to overthrow the government of then-newly elected President Luis Lula in 2023. Other top military and political figures are being investigated. The co-conspirators allegedly were working with a number of scenarios, which included plans for kidnapping or assassinating President Lula, as well as his Vice President Geraldo Alckmin, the controversial Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, and others.
They were also illegally monitoring and spying on these targets. All the accused have connections to former President Jair President, who is on the record casting doubts about the validity of the 2022 elections (when he ran for reelection and was defeated by Lula da Silva by a tight margin). For years, many different political actors from both the left and the right have questioned the security of Brazil’s electronic voting system, but the topic has now become a political taboo.
Four special operations military men have been arrested (including a retired brigadier general), plus a Federal Police officer. Justice Moraes authorized the arrests, which would be deemed, legally speaking, a very peculiar situation, to say the least, in any legal system in the world (Brazil included). This is so because Moraes himself was also a target and a potential victim of the alleged crimes – and thus it seems only natural that he should not act in any role analogous to that of a Judge Rapporteur in a case which involves himself. And yet he is doing precisely that.
I wrote before about Moraes controversial methods and rulings in the context of his feud with Elon Musk. The very allegations about a conspiracy aiming to launch a coup d’etat including assassinating Moraes and Lula da Silva are not new at all. They go back to the storming of the Brazilian Congress on January 8, 2023, when a mob of rioters vandalized the Supreme Federal Court, and other government buildings. At the time President Lula was not in Brasilia (the capital city) and Bolsonaro in turn was in Orlando, Florida, where he had been even before the end of his term. He tried to meet with Trump then, to no avail. Most of the rioters, many of them angry elderly and pensioners not carrying guns, committed basically acts of vandalism, but they have been convicted as domestic terrorists under a new controversial definition of terrorism, and face up to 17 years in prison, like 67-year old Maria de Fátima Mendonça Jacinto Souza.
At the time, acting as the guardian of democracy, Justice Moraes took the most strict measures. I wrote before on how a New York Times piece detailed his excessive powers and abuses (even pertaining to many other cases).
In 4 January 2024, Moraes said in an interview that the storming of the Congress and the palaces was part of a large conspiracy, which included three plans or scenarios:
“The first one was that the Special Forces (of the Army) would arrest me on a Sunday and take me to the city of Goiânia. In the second one, they would dispose of [my] body on the way to Goiania. In that case, it wouldn’t really be an arrest, but a homicide… And in the third… after the coup, I should be arrested and hanged in Praça dos Três Poderes [“Three Branches Plaza” in Brasilia].
What is new now, almost 2 years after the 2023 riot are new documents leaked, messages and lots of evidence which finally led thus far to the arrest of five people. The timing of the arrests and of the disclosure of some of the documents is also peculiar: just a few days before, on November 13, in what appeared to be a right-wing self-immolation protest, Francisco Wanderley Luiz, a former city council candidate (from Bolsonaro’s political party), blew a bomb in front of the Supreme Court. The explosive was not particularly powerful, no damage whatsoever was done to any building and no one was harmed – Luiz himself was the only one killed.
Moraes claimed that the suicide bomber intented to actually blow up the Supreme Court building – even though so far evidences of enough explosives for that have not been produced. The event took place a few days before the G20 Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In a mysterious (and suspicious) turn of events, the bomber’s house was burned to the ground 4 days later in what some think could be an attempt to destroy evidence. Luiz’s former wife is being charged with the arsoning and she is suspected of having helped him plan his suicidal “attack”.
In all these cases and investigations the judge overseeing every single one of them is Alexandre de Moraes. The difference is that now Moraes is going after big fish – not just angry pensioners.
It is quite clear that there two major pressing issues in Brazil right now, one being the specter of domestic terrorism and a radicalized anti-communist right, who, rightly or not, believes the election was stolen, and sees in the incumbent center-left administration a “communist” threat – and is ready to employ violent and coupist methods. Lots of evidence seem to indicate Bolsonaro could be involved. The problem is that millions of Brazilians have similar beliefs and Bolsonaro is still a major political force in Brazil (and so is his family). In July 2023, he was barred from running for office again until 2030 over abusing his power.
Bolsonaro appealed against it but the ruling was allowed to stand by (you guessed it) Justice Moraes. Bolsonaro in any case was having conversations with members of Congresso to get a January Amnesty Bill going so that he could run for office again. Then came the November 13 suicide bombing – followed by November 19 arrests. Those events may have placed a nail in the coffin for Bolsonaro’s election ambitions. And now he could face arrest himself pretty soon – which is sure to trigger major demonstrations in a polarized country. Those in turn can be expected to be labeled as acts of terrorism and the like.
I mentioned before that Brazil faces two major issues. The second issue is what seems to be a de facto judicial dictatorship in the country, a situation which prompts and even fuels reactions (including violents ones, coming from the radicalized right). The two issues feed off each other. Brazil’s democratic cycle is quite recent and it could become short-lived. One can expect political turmoil to unfold and the impact of that on the economy and Brazil’s foreign policy remains to be seen. The Biden administration did “contribute decisively to the maintenance of Lula da Silva in power after the failed coup attempt attributed to former President Jair Bolsonaro”, as Fabiano Mielniczuk, a NEBRICS research member, puts it.
US-Brazilian dialogue however was far from going great. With Trump’s announced nominations, Latin America can expect American Monroeism to hit the continent harder. To make matters worse, Trump also has a kind of personal relationship with the Bolsonaro family. The incumbent Brazilian administration then might be left with no other choice than to turn “anti-American” (while enforcing harsher anti-democratic measures domestically) and to seek to further enhance its partnerships with actors such as China – rather than simply trying to “balance” its foreign policy as usual.
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i’m from brazil and i say, jar bolsonaro is the greatest ally that lula ever had is i can say more lula only managed to get out of prison because of the allies of bolsonaro who released him