Jan Rocha is a former correspondent for the BBC and the Guardian and lives in São Paulo, Brazil. She is the author of a number of LAB books, and contributes this regular column for LAB, known for its incisive analysis of current Brazilian politics.
Bolsonaro has sole responsbility for Brazil's soaring Covid death-toll. Utterly indifferent he stages Mussolini-style rallies, unmasked and riding a motorbike, and plans for next year's presidential elections, or a coup.
The pro-government majority in the lower house of the congress has rushed through a bill (PL3792) which will virtually eliminate the need for Brazil’s environmental licences for a wide range of economic activities, opening the way for widespread exploitation.
The activities which will be freed from licensing include agriculture, cattle raising, logging, dam and road building, sewage plants and water management.
Lula's return to the political stage has transformed the discourse, with the centre right and even the military starting to wonder whether to continue their support for Bolsonaro
By letting Covid multiply Brazil's president endangers the whole world. As do his policies which promote the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. Lula has been exonerated. Will he now run in 2022?
All over the world leaders have celebrated the beginning of vaccination in their countries, some of them taking the first jab themselves. But when the first vaccines were administered in São Paulo on Sunday, Jair Bolsonaro sulked in silence in his palace.
Bolsonaro and his brand of extreme right wing politics have emerged as the big losers in Brazil’s recent local elections, but established left wing parties have not done so well either. Jan Rocha reports.
President Bolsonaro is the new 'Jim Jones', says Jan Rocha, comparing the Brazilian president to the cult leader who led his followers in a mass suicide in Guayana in 1978.