Brazil’s Presidential Election Is One Piece Of A Larger, More Depressing Story

If one wanted to understand the alarming state of international politics in the Western Hemisphere through a single story, it'd be hard to beat Jose Antonio Kast visiting CECOT this past January. Kast spent nearly 20 years at the extreme right fringe of Chilean politics, mostly crusading against women's rights. His father was a Nazi, and not in any sort of metaphorical sense; he served as an Oberleutnant in the Wehrmacht in World War II. Various members of the Kast family also worked for the Pinochet dictatorship and have dedicated their lives to revanche. Last December, Kast won Chile's presidential election thanks in part to Donald Trump throwing his weight around, and before he took office, he went up to El Salvador to visit its notorious CECOT prison. Kast said he was interested in how to "import good ideas and proposals," such as the mass torture compound, in his quest to militarize Chile against the specter of narcoterrorists and illegal immigrants, and in doing so bring it into close collaboration with the Trump administration. This sort of thing has been happening all across Latin America since Trump strode back into power, with a rapidly dwindling handful of notable exceptions. The two most-populated countries cling to leftist rule, for now anyway. Claudia Sheinbaum's government is quite popular in Mexico and has managed to keep the U.S. relatively at bay, while Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is still in charge of Brazil. However, Lula underperfomed in the first round of Brazilian elections this past Sunday, and Brazil is on the verge of electing Flavio Bolsonaro. The eldest son of the currently jailed and constantly leaking fascist former president assuming office of the second-most populous country in the Western Hemisphere would represent a total victory for the Trump-aligned right-wing movement in South America, and would by extension be a disaster for the country, the hemisphere, and the planet. How did we get here, and what tensions animate this broad coalition?

Read it at Defector ↗

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