Much of institutional Brazil gathered this Monday at one of the crime scenes to commemorate the first anniversary of the coup attempt perpetrated by thousands of Bolsonaro supporters in Brasilia. At the same time that on January 8, 2023, a mob destroyed stained glass windows, works of art and offices in the headquarters of the three powers while taking selfies and demanding military intervention, the Senate celebrated a year later that it won democracy and repudiated the assault in a solemn ceremony presided over by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. “Today we celebrate the victory of democracy over authoritarianism,” Lula said.
The president wanted to repeat the image of national unity that he achieved the day after the attack, but the political allies of his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, have prevented him from doing so. The governors related to the far-right have been absent from the event, with various excuses. Yes, the heads of the Armed Forces have attended.
The Brazilian president has urged his compatriots to avoid triumphalism: “We are saving democracy, but we must take care of democracy all day long.” He has also recalled his own history saying that, only in democracy, a metallurgist with him could reach the Presidency of the Republic. “After losing three elections,” he added. He has demanded exemplary punishments from the judges for those responsible. For Lula, that should include Bolsonaro, for orchestrating the riot. The president of the Supreme Court, Luis Roberto Barroso, has ruled that the coup plotters “did not pass and will not pass.”
The momentary unity in defense of democracy and institutions exhibited immediately after that assault that emulated that of the Washington Capitol has given way, a year later, to the polarized Brazil of recent times. With an eye on the municipal elections at the end of the year, politicians close to the far-right former president want to be seen giving in to rivals or betraying their leader Bolsonaro.
They have also participated in the ceremony, named Unbreakable democracy, the judges of the Supreme Court, the president of the Senate and the governors allied to the Government. At the last minute, the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Artur Lira, from Bolsonaro's orbit, canceled his presence, alleging health problems in the family; The most powerful opponent, the governor of São Paulo, Tarcisio de Freitas, made it clear from the beginning that he did not intend to bring forward his return from a Christmas vacation in Europe.
Other governors have also not wanted to interrupt their days off to attend an event that they consider politicized by Lula. Bolsonaro, who was in the United States on the day of the assault, lived the first anniversary far from the capital, in Rio de Janeiro.
Not even in institutional Brazil there is consensus on the purposes or significance of the massive invasion of the beautiful headquarters of the Presidency, the Congress and the Supreme Court, designed by the architect Oscar Niemeyer. The protests of thousands of Brazilians for two months, convinced that Lula's victory was a fraud, culminated.
While Lula, his political allies and the Supreme Court consider it a coup maneuver to seize power from the former, the president's opponents downplay its importance. For them, it was pure vandalism that caused serious material damage but was not intended to break the constitutional order. And in any case, even if he intended it, he failed in the attempt.
The Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Morais – whom Bolsonarism considers its bête noire – and who this weekend revealed that among the plans of the coup plotters was to hang him in the Plaza de los Tres Poderes, has cried out “against impunity, appeasement and oblivion.”
The Supreme Court has punished 30 of the perpetrators of the assault, sentencing them to sentences of up to 17 years, for crimes such as violent abolition of the rule of law. Meanwhile, police and judges are still investigating the alleged instigators—including Bolsonaro—and the financiers. This same Monday the police have ordered an arrest and more than 40 searches related to the case. The political scientist Camila Rocha highlights in her column Folha de S.Paulo that, among those convicted, there is a cook or a delivery man who carried a knife but still “no politician, military politician or big businessman.”
Of the two thousand detained those days, about a thousand were prosecuted and 66 remain imprisoned. Hundreds passed into prison, a shock for these white middle class Brazilians who believed they had gone unpunished. Many defendants are under house arrest, with electronic ankle bracelets and a ban on using social networks.
The ceremony was held under strong security measures. Nothing to do with the situation a year ago, when thousands of protesters marched from the Army Headquarters, where they were camped demanding an intervention that would prevent Lula from assuming power, to the Plaza de los Tres Poderes. Police officers escorted them along the road and then allowed them to ignore the security barriers and effortlessly invade the presidential palace of Planalto, the Supreme Court and the two parliamentary chambers. They caused damage valued at 24 million reais (five million dollars, 4.5 million euros).
To neutralize the assailants, Lula ordered the intervention of the security of Brasilia, in the Federal District, and placed a high official as intervener. He and the then commander-in-chief of the Army, General Julio César de Arruda, starred in one of the most tense and delicate moments of that night. Order restored, the newly appointed auditor, Ricardo Capelli, number two of the Ministry of Justice, went to the Army Headquarters accompanied by several ministers close to Lula. His intention was for the camp to be dismantled. Capelli has now revealed the disturbing dialogue with the general:
-The head of the Army to the civil auditor: “Are you going to enter here with armed men without my authorization?
-I have come to inform you.
-I have a little more men than you, right?
After a tough exchange and negotiation, the police operation was postponed until dawn the next day. By then, a good part of the campers, including many soldiers and their families, had already left.
That day last year, while the police detained the remaining coup plotters at the Brasilia Headquarters, the Congressional conservation team returned, along with the cleaning brigades, to some razed buildings. They collected every bit of the destroyed heritage. “We didn't even know where to start,” says Maria das Grutas Carvalho e Silva shortly before the anniversary ceremony begins in the Senate. Next to it, a display case with fragments of a red vase given by a leader of the Chinese Communist Party, part of an exhibition on the restoration of what was damaged. Among other objects, a Santos ball that the thief returned intact after 20 days to a police station thousands of kilometers away, in Sorocaba (São Paulo).
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