Protest in Faria Lima against the government has posters ‘NaufraGuedes’

A large poster measuring 4 meters high by 12 meters in length was posted on Avenida Faria Lima, the financial heart of São Paulo, with the expression “NaufraGuedes” flanked by images of Economy Minister Paulo Guedes and President Jair Bolsonaro (without broken).

Urban intervention points to the deterioration of the Brazilian economy under the baton of Guedes, appointed as the main guarantor of Bolsonaro’s candidacy and, therefore, as a decisive factor for his victory in the 2018 elections.

Initially supported by a reformist and fiscal austerity discourse, Guedes was unable to implement important reforms in his agenda, such as the tax and administrative ones. The minister, who graduated from the Chicago School of Economists during the heyday of neoliberal ideas, now lends himself to the role of crafting the hole in the spending ceiling, a measure he has already called politically opportunistic but technically defensible.

Created to force fiscal control by limiting the increase in expenditure to inflation, the ceiling will be circumvented if the PEC (proposed amendment to the Constitution) of the Precatório is approved. The measure makes room in the Budget for the payment of R$ 400 in the Auxílio Brasil program in an election year.

In addition to the social program, Bolsonario has already stated that he intends to use the resources to give a raise to public servants and a diesel aid to truck drivers.​

During Guedes’ tenure in the Economy, inflation exceeded 10%, the unemployment rate reached 13% and the dollar hit the mark of R$ 5.60. In addition, net debt increased to almost 60% of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and public investment fell.

The action is by a small group of designers and communicators who assume they have already made other interventions in the city and who claim to be non-partisan and unrelated to any specific social movement.

A member of the group who prefers not to be identified explained the action. “When he presented himself as guarantor of Bolsonaro, Guedes promised to be the real captain of the economy. Today it is clear that Paulo Guedes sank the economy and became himself a castaway in the government. Clinging to office, without any control, adrift interests of the Center.”

The yellow poster with black letters follows the model of other interventions carried out at the same address and which targeted the economy minister.

In October, Guedes’ image was stamped with US$9.55 million bills, an amount that the minister maintains in an offshore company in the British Virgin Islands, that is, in a company in a tax haven. The case was revealed by the Pandora Papers investigation, a project of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the ICIJ, which investigates tax havens, and generated a crisis around the incumbent in the portfolio.

Before that, smaller posters bore the image of the minister with the phrase “Faria Loser” (something like “loser da Faria”, in free translation from English), which suggested Guedes’ poor performance at the head of the Economy portfolio.