Since Jair Bolsonaro emerged victorious in the 2018 presidential elections, many analysts, almost always rightly, point to growing threats to democracy in Brazil.
However, even before the arrival of the former far-right military man to power, the Brazilian democratic project already showed significant weaknesses. Two of them returned to haunt the country after the disappearance of the British journalist Dom Phillips and the indigenist Bruno Pereira: the persecution of journalists and the genocide of indigenous peoples. This one is closely linked to the ecocide underway in what is left of Brazil’s biomes.
Dom and Bruno traveled by boat through the interior of the state of Amazonas, near a region known as Vale do Javari. The Guardian journalist was collecting material for a book he was writing about the Amazon Rainforest when he and the former employee of the National Indian Foundation were declared missing.
Later, the threats that Bruno suffered from miners and hunters who used to invade indigenous lands to exploit their riches came to light. With considerable delay and little interest, the Federal Government claimed to have mobilized the Armed Forces to search for the pair, who have not yet been found.
So far, it is not possible to know what happened to Dom and Bruno, but there are real reasons for concern. According to UNESCO’s Observatory of Murdered Journalists, since 1993, 52 journalists have been executed in Brazil. In Latin America, only Mexico has more journalists murdered in the mentioned period.
Not even in Colombia, a country trying to overcome a long and bloody armed conflict, have so many professionals been killed. To make matters worse, the same Unesco says that the cases that end up unsolved are the majority in Brazil.
In Brazil, threats to journalists are constant and come from politicians, businessmen, landowners, prospectors, drug traffickers and militiamen.
Even the current president’s children use their social networks to encourage violence against communication professionals, even to the point of mocking the brutal torture suffered by a well-known journalist during the Brazilian military dictatorship.
Creating an environment where communication professionals can exercise their profession without fear is essential for democracy. We hope that Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira are found alive and can promptly return to their activities. Unfortunately, that was not what happened with Eranildo Ribeiro da Cruz.
A little less than a year ago, the journalist and social activist was found dead and with signs of torture, in the state of Pará, neighboring the Amazon, where Dom and Bruno are missing. Eranildo covered local politics and the activities of social movements in the region. Possibly, because he was not a European citizen and did not work for any major media outlet, his murder had almost no repercussions outside Pará.
Much has been said about the genocide of indigenous peoples in the Americas, however it is common for this process to be treated as a set of events lost in the distant past. What we observe daily in Brazil is that it continues in full force and is associated with the destruction of the environment and an economic model that reproduces historical inequalities.
Gold prospectors, loggers, landowners and large mining companies advance over the Amazon Forest and the cerrado, exploiting its resources, leaving a trail of destruction and death. All this, commonly with the support or negligence of the authorities.
The President of the Republic himself is a notorious defender of the exploitation of economic activities in indigenous lands and is proud of not having demarcated any reservations in his four years of government.
There are countless economic, political and social problems in Brazil, but some of them are at the base of a whole chain that prevents the realization of the democratic project and the realization of the citizenship promised by the 1988 Constitution.
In this sense, the election and the government of Jair Bolsonaro should not be interpreted as mere points outside the curve, but as the tip of an iceberg that cannot be circumvented with the election of this or that candidate in the election that will take place in the second half of this year. . Brazil needs to face the obstacles posed to its democracy, including the persecution of journalists and the genocide of indigenous peoples.
In short, the disappearance of Dom and Bruno makes us question: is it possible to speak of a de facto democracy while journalists and activists are forcibly silenced when they dare to harass the established powers? Is it plausible to speak of citizenship while entire peoples are exterminated at the pleasure of those who look to nature as a source of profit and not of life?
We need more democracy to overcome the violent colonial project that founded and ruled Brazil by exploiting nature, annihilating indigenous peoples and silencing divergent voices.
