Explaining Brazil

As the saying goes, the calm comes before the storm. In Brazil’s Supreme Court, the current crisis came after a period of glory and renown.

In September 2025, the Supreme Court made history and became a global reference. Breaking with Brazil’s long tradition of impunity for military interference in politics, the court analyzed a wealth of evidence and convicted former President Jair Bolsonaro and top-ranking military officers for at...

Amid a global context of eroding multilateralism and rising US trade wars, Mercosur and the European Union are trying to create a shared market for more than 700 million people. 

The proposed free trade zone for goods and services encompasses 27 European countries, plus Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay on the other side of the Atlantic, with Bolivia in the process of joining as well. Combined, the economies involved in the de...

Lula did not recognize Maduro’s 2024 election win, but his first two terms in office in the 2000s saw him make South American integration a top priority of Brazil’s foreign policy, and maintain close ties with the Hugo Chavez government of the time.

Venezuela held the world’s largest oil reserves. It was a country with limited development in other sectors, highly dependent on imports, and eager to challenge a US-led world ...

In Latin America, 2026 quite literally got off to an explosive start.

Just before sunrise on January 2, the city of Caracas was violently awoken by the sound of bombs, as US forces launched a sudden, high-intensity strike on the Venezuelan capital. Within hours, President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were in American custody — flown out of the country and headed to New York to face criminal charges.

The Venezuelan gover...

In any democratic republic, it’s normal for the executive, legislative, and judicial branches to clash. That’s a sign of mutual oversight. It’s also normal for politicians to make concessions to their adversaries. That’s a sign of democracy.

But the sequence of recent events in Brazilian politics has turned into a sweeping narrative about what happens when these dynamics of checks and balances slide into sheer revanchism and bargain...

In a country with 27 state governments, more than 5,000 city halls, and around 12 million people working in the public sector, calls to reform — or improve — Brazil’s civil service never really seem to go away.

We talked to Brazil's special secretary for state transformation — and asked him to compare the reform proposals coming from the lower house with the Lula administration's approach. 

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Over the past decade, Brazilian lawmakers have steadily built up procedures to expand their powers over the purse. That has included increasing the overall volume of congressional grants; making a large share of them mandatory spending; limiting the Executive’s discretion over when to release those funds, and creating ways to erase transparency and traceability from the process. A perfect recipe for corruption, which has now trickl...

Each passing year, the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP) gains more urgency. More and more biomes around the world are approaching what scientists call tipping points — the Amazon chief among them. Hosting the 30th edition of COP in Belém, one of the Amazon’s biggest cities, therefore represents one of the most significant responsibilities Brazil’s diplomacy has taken on in recent times. 

This week, we are joined by exp...

Brazil’s Congress is discussing a proposal for income tax reform. Backed by the Lula administration, the bill seeks to make the country’s system more progressive. But just how unequal are taxes in Brazil? 

This week, we host economist Davi Bhering, who co-authored a Paris School of Economics study on Brazil’s tax income system. In our newly released episode of the Explaining Brazil podcast, he unpacks:  

• Why Brazil’s income inequ...

Crowds on Sunday fanned out across Brazil’s 27 state capitals to denounce two measures moving through Congress: a constitutional amendment proposal that would essentially shield lawmakers from prosecution, and a bill that could forgive or soften penalties for those convicted of a coup attempt masterminded by former President Jair Bolsonaro and his acolytes.

The demonstrations, initially organized in a spontaneous, online f...

A massive police operation exposed how deep Brazil's largest criminal organization has penetrated the legitimate economy.

Rafael Alcadipani, a professor at the FGV’s School of Public Administration and a member of the Brazilian Forum on Public Safety, unpacks: 

• How the PCC evolved into a mafia-like organization, with multiple economic activities.
• The impacts of this expansion on democracy.
• Brazil’s federal and state-...

The Brazilian Supreme Court has reached a majority to convict former President Jair Bolsonaro of leading a conspiracy to overturn his 2022 electoral defeat. 

The trial is about to bring an end to a political career long marked by authoritarian views and practices. To review Bolsonaro's political path, the Explaining Brazil podcast invited journalist Juliana Dal Piva. She is the author of the book “O Negócio do Jair” (...

The final stage of Jair Bolsonaro’s coup trial kicked off on September 2 in Brasília. After months of evidence-gathering, arguments and testimonies, the justices are expected to deliver their ruling by September 12, in what is arguably the most consequential trial in Brazil’s recent history.

At the center of the case are the riots that occurred on January 8, 2023. They looked eerily like January 6 in the United States — bu...

At a time when US President Donald Trump is pressuring Brazil on both trade and military fronts, the country’s digital vulnerabilities have come into focus. The notion of sovereignty now extends beyond borders to the infrastructure, systems and data that underpin the digital world.

How prepared is Brazil to secure its digital sovereignty?

Listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts or on The Brazilian Report.

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