Jan Rocha
Veteran correspondent and regular LAB contributor Jan Rocha writes about life in São Paulo and Brazil
April 11th 2017. In Rio recently ex-military officer and ultra rightwing deputy Jair Bolsanaro was applauded for his racist remarks at the Hebrew club, of all places, while a new survey showed that 73% of cariocas think human rights get in the way of fighting crime. So two new books are a timely reminder of what unlimited power in...
São Paulo, March 22nd. With their usual fine sense of irony, the Federal Police named their latest operation, launched on Friday 17th, “Carne Fraca” – the Flesh is Weak. The targets were Brazil’s biggest meat companies, all household names, exporters of billions of dollars worth of beef, chicken and meat products to over 150 countries.
The two-year investigation, involving over...
São Paulo, 15 March. Despairing of finding justice in Brazil, cacique Ladio Veron of the Guarani Kaiowá indigenous people in Mato Grosso do Sul, has set out on a 3 month trip to 10 European countries to appeal for help in reclaiming the lands taken from them by successive Brazilian governments, and now occupied by ranchers, farmers and sugarcane...
Main image: police family members protest in Vitória. Their placard reads: We've had no wage increase since 2013 - 40% inflation. The coffin is for Paulo Hartung, the state governor.
São Paulo. February 12. A series of moves by President Michel Temer, the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies are being interpreted as attempts to block the investigations into Brazil’s...
Brazilians began the New Year in the most terrible way, with images of piles of headless, dismembered corpses, the result of a savage massacre in an Amazon prison. The photos were put on social media by the murderers themselves, in boastful celebration of their bloody crimes.
On New Year’s Day, 56 prisoners died in the Anísio Jobim prison on the...
São Paulo 11 Dec 2016. Another turbulent week in Brazilian politics. As Brazil lurches from crisis to crisis, it seems more like a country grappling to stay in the present than the country of the future.
The first revelations of the promised “end of the world” plea bargain have been published, exposing a vast and shocking scheme of kickbacks and...
As rain-soaked soldiers carried coffin after coffin into the football stadium in the small city of Chapecó, in a procession which seemed as though it would never end, Brazilians were mourning not only the loss of sons, husbands, brothers and idols, but the loss of a dream. “Even God is crying, “said Chapecó’s mayor, as the heavens opened and...
In less than three months Rio has passed from the splendour and success of the Olympic and Paralympic Games to a state of public calamity and chaos.
The state government is bankrupt; salaries are in arrears, hospitals are at breaking point, suppliers are unpaid. The causes include the steep drop in the royalties enjoyed by Rio when the oil price...
