A horde of several thousand Bolsonaristas stormed this Sunday afternoon in Brasilia in the political heart of the Brazilian republic, the headquarters of the presidency, Parliament and the Supreme Court of Justice. Wrapped in the national flag and often wearing the soccer team jersey, with their faces uncovered, the followers of the far-right ex-president, Jair Bolsonaro, occupied the most symbolic buildings in the country and committed acts of vandalism. From the state of São Paulo, the current head of state Lula da Silva announced the punishment of the “fascist fanatics” and issued the orders for the federal power to immediately restore order, with strong criticism of the Brasilia government.
The assault on the main institutions of Brazilian democracy occurred almost two years after hundreds of far-right Americans occupied the Capitol in Washington to prevent Joe Biden from taking office. It also comes just a week after Lula da Silva became president of this country at the head of a coalition government but in which the left-wing Workers’ Party dominates.
The assault came after weeks of warnings about the potential coup by the thousands of Bolsonaro supporters who since October 30 occupied squares and blocked roads in rejection of Lula’s electoral victory.
The appearance of a very irritated Lula, from a city that suffered recent floods, took place around six in the afternoon in Brazil. He directly blamed his predecessor, Bolsonaro, whom he referred to as the “genocide”, for his role in the pandemic. He declared that the investigation will go to the bottom, to find those responsible and affirmed that there were recordings of proclamations of the ex-president to the concentrates. Shortly after, the police began to regain control of the buildings and the square they share, the Plaza de los Tres Poderes.
Designed by the architects Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer as the urban embrace of the legislature, executive and judiciary, the square houses the Planalto Palace, the seat of the presidency, although it is not the residence of the head of state, who lives in the palace of the Alvorada; the seat of Parliament and the Federal Supreme Court.
The assault took place in the early hours of the afternoon, in the midst of much-criticized passivity by the Federal District authorities, who did not intervene in the face of the march of the demonstrators who have been camped out for months in front of the Army headquarters. The unattended request for security reinforcements from the Senate to the Federal District Public Security Secretariat appears as proof of the passivity, if not the complicity, of the capital’s government, chaired by Ibaneis Rocha, of the chameleonic Brazilian Democratic Movement party, MDB. Rocha supported the Bolsonaro presidency. His government received strong criticism from Lula this Sunday.
In an unsuccessful attempt to deal with strong criticism, when the mob was already rampant in the Plaza de los Tres Poderes, the governor dismissed the security secretary, Anderson Torres, who according to CNN Brazil was in this Sunday USA. There, in Orlando, is Bolsonaro himself, who left the country just before the end of his term at the end of the year, to avoid, contrary to all previous tradition, handing over to his successor, the leftist Lula, the presidential sash. .
The most emblematic square in Brazil was this Sunday a chaos throughout the afternoon. From the first moment, the demonstrators greatly outnumbered the police, some on horseback, who did not hide their impotence. The first arrests were not reported until several hours after the start of the occupation. At that time, the acts of vandalism were reproduced in the three buildings.
The attack on the office of Judge Alexandre de Morais, president of the Superior Electoral Court and Bolsonaro’s great beast noire, was especially symbolic. The insurgents displayed on the outside a closet door with the name of the magistrate. The Brazilian media reported various damages inside the parliament and the presidential palace and the aggression of at least five journalists.
The attempted coup unleashed immediate support from Latin American governments for Brazilian democracy. Gustavo Petro, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Alberto Fernández and Gabriel Boric, among others, expressed their solidarity with the legitimate government. The Spanish Pedró Sánchez also expressed his support for the Lula government in a tweet.
