Calamity Brazil 2021

Calamity Brazil 2021

Calamity Brazil 2021. 63100.jpeg

It took just three years for Brazil to slide into social and economic chaos, its fabric torn apart, its unemployment rate skyrocketing. Total Collapse

Fortunately we have found a way in 2021 to write an article and place it in the editing program in the future or in the past. I have chosen October 25, 2018, just before the election in which Jair Bolsonaro was elected in a massive miscalculation by the people of Brazil, as usual acting with the heart and not the head.

Nobody back then when you are reading this could have predicted what was about to happen. The people blamed on the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) the final two years of the Dilma/Temer government when the social terrorist policies of President Michel Temer started to create cracks in the fabric of Brazilian society. Anxious to blame all cases of corruption on the PT (as if all corruption in Brazil was a feud of the Workers' Party), the people turned to Jair Messias Bolsonaro as a Messiah, a Myth.

Brazil's Sebastian never came

It was the Brazilian form of Sebastianism, a current in Portuguese artistic circles since the absurd venture of King Sebastião I in Morocco which ended in the flowers of the Portuguese nobility being captured or killed at the Battle of Alcázer Qibir in 1578, leading to the Spanish domination of Portugal from 1580 to 1640, during which there were visions of King Sebastian riding back into Portugal at the head of his army to chase away the invading Spanish. Just as Sebastian never came, Bolsonaro was never a Messiah.

After two years of virtual political and economic gridlock as the policies of the right-wing President were blocked at all levels, the drugs cartels had not only declared open war on each other but now with the liberalization of arms, and with the economic downturn, had as many recruits as they wished and turned against the authorities.

Murder rates reach epic proportions

The 60,000 deaths a year registered in 2017 became 160,000 by mid-2019, 345,000 by the end of the year and a staggering 650,000 in 2020. Now in November 2021 the figure is over 1,250,000. The armed forces staged a coup at Christmas 2020 but things became worse, as new guerrilla forces sprang up like mushrooms, some politically motivated and targeting only military objectives, others more opportunistic and mixed with crime cartels. These spread panic among society as bomb attacks on schools and cinemas and soccer matches, machine-gun bullets sprayed at lines waiting at shopping centers became commonplace.

By early 2021, Brazil was in lock-down. Schools and Universities ceased functioning, the food supply was halted, people barricaded themselves into their condominiums and shoot-outs between residents and gangs became a daily occurrence, usually ending in the latter invading the complex after killing the guards then ransacking the homes, committing murder and rape, throwing people out of their windows and taking everything they could lay their hands on.

In a country with 200 million souls, a substantial part of these either out of control or invisible, it goes without saying that no military force could cope with a State descending into chaos. Tourism collapsed, private interests had been quick to follow up the election by grabbing Brazil's resources, some of which were sold off at bargain prices to Uncle Sam, the North-East and Amazonia today are preparing to secede and the center and south of the country threatens to become an independent but loose federation of States. A brain drain has seen ninety-five per cent of Brazil's greatest minds flood out of the country in a torrent and anyone who could or who had family abroad took the first plane to the USA or Europe.

Brazil, broken into pieces

The result is what we see today. A military junta in control of a country which has spiraled into an economic and social nose-dive, breaking into pieces as Brazil as we know it is about to disappear.

The guilty one was not Bolsonaro, even he could never have predicted what was going to happen. The blame lies at the feet of those who used the vote with crass irresponsibility, blinded to common sense by electing a vector which was obviously going to tear society apart.

You feed a plant, nurture and water it. You do not prune it to the ground, stamp on it and poison its roots. This was the choice placed before Brazilian society in October 2018. Unfortunately it appeared they went ahead just the same.

Satire: Calamity Brazil 2021.

Photo: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/El_Tres_de_Mayo%2C_by_Francisco_de_Goya%2C_from_Prado_thin_black_margin.jpg

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

Pravda.Ru 

Twitter: @TimothyBHinchey

[email protected]

*Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey has worked as a correspondent, journalist, deputy editor, editor, chief editor, director, project manager, executive director, partner and owner of printed and online daily, weekly, monthly and yearly publications, TV stations and media groups printed, aired and distributed in Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal, Mozambique and São Tomé and Principe Isles; the Russian Foreign Ministry publication Dialog and the Cuban Foreign Ministry Official Publications. He has spent the last two decades in humanitarian projects, connecting communities, working to document and catalog disappearing languages, cultures, traditions, working to network with the LGBT communities helping to set up shelters for abused or frightened victims and as Media Partner with UN Women, working to foster the UN Women project to fight against gender violence and to strive for an end to sexism, racism and homophobia. A Vegan, he is also a Media Partner of Humane Society International, fighting for animal rights. He is Director and Chief Editor of the Portuguese version of Pravda.Ru. He is an official translator, a coach, a consultant and a professor.