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TOPIC: brazil

Ideas

On Democracy, Republics And Lula's Theory Of Relativity

A democracy is not just the vague and dangerously malleable promise of popular rule. It is instead an institutional regime or "republic" that defines and protects the rights of the people, and of individuals.

-Analysis-

BUENOS AIRES — In a column in this newspaper (Clarín) earlier this year, Professor Loris Zanatta drew our attention to declarations made in July by Brazil's President Lula da Silva rejecting criticisms against Venezuela's socialist regime. Lula said "democracy is a relative concept, for you and for me," when asked if Venezuela is a democracy.

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Israel Raids Gaza Hospital, Xi In The U.S., Bird Of The Century

👋 Aluu!*

Welcome to Wednesday, where Israeli forces raid Gaza’s largest hospital, Chinese President Xi Jinping lands in the U.S. for his first visit in six years, and New Zealand’s Pūteketeke gets crowned “bird ot the century” — with a little help from John Oliver. Meanwhile, Turin-based daily La Stampa meets with Sara Barsotti, the Italian scientist leading the task force that monitors Iceland's major volcanic eruption threat.

[*Inuktitut - Canada, Alaska]

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This Happened — October 27: Lula Elected (The First Time)

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won the presidency in Brazil on this day in 2002.

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Hezbollah-Hamas Meeting, China Sacks Defense Minister, Bangladesh Festival

👋 A jaaraama!*

Welcome to Wednesday, where Hezbollah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad leaders meet to coordinate their actions, China removes a second senior official with no explanation after he disappeared from public view for two months, and Australia’s beloved national spread celebrates its 100th anniversary. Meanwhile, Aila Inete and Flávia Rocha, in Portuguese-language online magazine Revista AzMina, look at how thousands of Brazilian girls are deceived by “foster parents” and duped into forced labor.

[*Fula, West and Central Africa]

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Society
Aila Inete and Flávia Rocha

How Thousands Of Brazilian Girls Have Been Duped Into Slavery By Foster Families

Brazil has come a long way in improving the rights of domestic workers, but it has failed to completely abolish the dangerous nexus between domestic work and child labor.

PARÁ — Luana* was exploited as a domestic worker when she was still a teenager. She almost died of exhaustion. Leila was a 15-year-old black girl when she was left in the home of strangers, who forced her to work in conditions similar to slavery. Josiane was “welcomed” by a family when she was 7, but soon they dumped household duties on her: washing, sweeping, folding, taking care of the other children.

Luana, Leila, and Josiane are just three among thousands of Brazilian girls deceived by 'foster parents' who steal them away from their families with the lure of a better life and a shot at education. It's all a lie. The chance to go to school never comes, nor do wages for their labor. They are barred from sitting at the family table or even turning on the lights. They are confined to cramped rooms, forced to eat what they don't like, passed around like objects. They are bullied, harassed, shamed, and given names such "useless, frizzy hair Nigger.”

Luana, Leila, and Josiane worked day and night. They slept crying. Their childhood died as soon as they stepped foot inside these “family homes”, scarring them for their entire lives.

Brazil has come a long way in improving the rights of domestic workers, but the country has failed to completely abolish the dangerous nexus between domestic work and child labor. The spectre of “foster daughters”, while more common in middle- and upper-class homes in the past, still haunts Brazilian society. In Pará, where the practice takes a heavy toll on the indigenous community, thousands of children remain trapped in this hell.

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Geopolitics
Leopoldo Villar Borda

An End To Venezuela Sanctions? The Lula Factor In Biden's Democratization Gamble

The Biden administration's exploration to lift sanctions on Venezuela, hoping to gently push its regime back on the path of democracy, might have taken its cue from Brazilian President Lula's calls to stop demonizing Venezuela.

-OpEd-

BOGOTÁ — Reports last month that U.S. President Joe Biden's apparent decision to unblock billions of dollars in Venezuelan assets, frozen since 2015 as part of the United States' sanctions on the Venezuelan regime, could be the first of many pieces to fall in a domino effect that could help end the decades-long Venezuelan deadlock.

It may move the next piece — the renewal of conversations in Mexico between the Venezuelan government and opposition — before pushing over other obstacles to elections due in 2024 and to Venezuela's return into the community of American states.

I don't think I'm being naïve in anticipating developments that would lead to a new narrative around Venezuela, very different to the one criticized by Brazil's president, Lula da Silva. He told a regional summit in Brasilia in June that there were prejudices about Venezuela — and I dare say he wasn't entirely wrong, based on the things I hear from a Venezuelan friend who lives in Bogotá but travels frequently home.

My friend insists his country's recent history is not quite as depicted in the foreign press. The price of basic goods found in a food market are much the same as those in Bogotá, he says.

He goes to the theater when he visits Caracas, eats in restaurants and strolls in parks and squares. There are new building works, he says. He uses the Caracas metro and insists its trains and stations are clean — showing me pictures on his cellphone to prove it.

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Society
Géssica Amorim

Brazil's Evangelical Surge Threatens Survival Of Native Afro-Brazilian Faith

Followers of the Afro-Brazilian Umbanda religion in four traditional communities in the country’s northeast are resisting pressure to convert to evangelical Christianity.

Among a host of images of saints and Afro-Brazilian divinities known as orixás, Abel José, 42, an Umbanda priest, lights some candles, picks up his protective beads and adjusts the straw hat that sits atop his head. He is preparing to treat four people from neighboring villages who have come to his house in search of spiritual help and treatment for health ailments.

The meeting takes place discreetly, in a small room that has been built in the back of the garage of his house. Abel lives in the quilombo of Sítio Bredos, home to 135 families. The community, located in the municipality of Betânia of Brazil’s northeastern state of Pernambuco, is one of the municipality’s four remaining communities that have been certified as quilombos, the word used to refer to communities formed in the colonial era by enslaved Africans and/or their descendents.

In these villages there are almost no residents who still follow traditional Afro-Brazilian religions. Abel, Seu Joaquim Firmo and Dona Maura Maria da Silva are the sole remaining followers of Umbanda in the communities in which they live. A wave of evangelical missionary activity has taken hold of Betânia’s quilombos ever since the first evangelical church belonging to the Assembleia de Deus group was built in the quilombo of Bredos around 20 years ago. Since then, other evangelical, pentecostal, and neo-pentecostal churches and congregations have established themselves in the area. Today there are now nine temples spread among the four communities, home to roughly 900 families.

The temples belong to the Assembleia de Deus, the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and the World Church of God's Power, the latter of which has over 6,000 temples spread across Brazil and was founded by the apostle and televangelist Valdemiro Santiago, who became infamous during the pandemic for trying to sell beans that he had blessed as a Covid-19 cure. Assembleia de Deus alone, who are the largest pentecostal denomination in the world, have built five churches in Betânia’s quilombos.


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In The News
Anne-Sophie Goninet and Laure Gautherin

Karabakh Ceasefire, Zelensky’s UN Speech, Charly In Paris

👋 *سَلام

Welcome to Wednesday, where ethnic Armenian authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijani officials agree to a ceasefire, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivers a passionate speech at the UN General Assembly, and King Charles III kicks off his first official visit to France. Meanwhile, Ekaterina Mereminskaya in Russian independent news outlet Vazhnyye Istorii looks at how Moscow’s manipulation of energy prices for its short-term stability may jeopardize the long-term financial health of Russia’s oil and gas sector.

[*Salaam - Persian]

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Japan
Newsletter by Anne-Sophie Goninet, Valeria Berghinz and Michelle Courtois

U.S. To Send Controversial Shells To Kyiv, Mexico Decriminalizes Abortion, Vi$it V€nice

👋 Dumêlang!*

Welcome to Thursday, where the U.S. says it will supply Ukraine with controversial uranium-based anti-tank shells, Mexico throws out all criminal penalties for abortions, and Venice will soon start charging daytrippers. Meanwhile, for French economic daily Les Echos, Leïla Marchand looks at the “Wild West” of bosses monitoring their remote workers.

[*Northern Sotho, South Africa]

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Geopolitics
Marcelo Cantelmi

Why China Has Bet On A Bigger (And Nastier) BRICS To Challenge The West

The BRICS economies' inclusion of new members like Iran may not make business sense, but it fits with the Sino-Russian strategy of drawing states of the Global South into their orbit in open confrontation with the U.S. and the rest of the West.

-Analysis-

BUENOS AIRES — Last month's summit in Johannesburg of BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), leading to a decision to expand the club, felt like geopolitical déjà vu. It recalled the 1960s Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) of Third World states that refused, apparently, to take sides in the Cold War, either with the capitalist West or Soviet-led communism.

NAM neutrality was limited, often deceptive, and became obsolete with the fall of the Communist bloc in the late 1980s. The dilemma of what was then called the Third World — now, the Global South — was in the stance it should take toward Russia, the successor state to the Soviet Union that shared few of its traits and goals. Ideologically, the end of communism confused NAM: It didn't know what to do with itself.

That is until now, with an apparent resuscitation of its spirit in BRICS (formed in 2009). Yet the idea of equidistance ends there, as BRICS is led by Russia and communist China and increasingly a part of their open challenge to Western hegemony.

Its founders include Brazil, which has its own agenda, and India. Both states have adopted their own versions of neutrality in the Ukrainian crisis, first in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine,then after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in Feb. 2022.

So far, says Oliver Stuenkel, a professor at Brazil's Getulio Vargas Foundation, the two states have resisted Russia's systematic bid to use an explicitly anti-Western vocabulary in BRICS documents. This, he says, would explain the vague tone of the group's resolutions.

South Africa, the last member to join the group (in 2010), is a lesser power in terms of economy and political clout. But it symbolizes the worldwide spirit the group would come to embody.

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Living Abroad

The (Un)Friendliest Countries For Expats in 2023

Mexico is the most welcoming destination for expats, Kuwait the least, according to an Expat Insider survey.

In its 10th year, the annual Expat Insider survey by global expat network InterNations shines a light on the countries that make settling in easy — and those that don’t.

A warm welcome in Mexico

For the fifth year in a row, Mexico ranks 1st in the Ease of Settling In Index.

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Geopolitics
Pierre Haski

Ukraine War And BRICS Ambitions? Why The Superpowers Still Hold The Cards

The war in Ukraine has become globalized, with its effects being felt from Africa to China. The only hope of de-escalation is in a potential diplomatic summit between the U.S. and China this autumn.

-Analysis-

PARIS — Beware of optical illusions. The fact that the war in Ukraine has become globalized doesn't mean it's a world war. Nonetheless, its impact is being felt everywhere, and political decisions regarding the unfolding conflict in Ukraine, fueled by doubts and ideological divisions, cannot be reserved to the European theater alone.

Stay up-to-date with the latest on the Russia-Ukraine war, with our exclusive international coverage.

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Take the BRICS Summit (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) in Johannesburg this week: It may give the impression that a coherent anti-Western bloc is emerging. The reality is more complex, and while the participants all benefit from this political display, their differences are immense. Yet, we must not overlook the political message being sent out by this emerging "club" of nations.

When it comes to the Sahel region of north-central Africa, for example, we risk falling into the same distorted reflection of reality. After the putsch in Niger, it would be a mistake to see these repeated coups d'état as just one facet of the new global Cold War. The presence of the Wagner group and the specter of Russia are an opportunistic result of instability rather than its cause: the political crisis is first and foremost an African one.

Confusing cause and consequence can lead to over-reactions, of which history is full of examples. Still, the African continent is being dragged unwillingly into the shockwave of the invasion of Ukraine.

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