Brazil is continuing to reel from the election of far-right leader and President-elect Jair Bolsonaro, the former Army captain who won 55 percent of the vote Sunday, easily defeating Fernando Haddad of the leftist Workers’ Party. As Bolsonaro prepares to take office in January, many fear Brazil’s young democracy is now at risk. Bolsonaro, who has often praised Brazil’s former military dictatorship that ended just 33 years ago, has promised to appoint many military officers to his Cabinet. We speak with Bruno Torturra, founder and editor of Studio Fluxo, an independent media outlet based in São Paulo, and James Green, professor of Brazilian history and culture at Brown University, about how the election will affect social movements, the environment and democracy across Latin America.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to Brazil to look at the implications of the election of Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right former Army captain who won 55 percent of the vote in Sunday’s election, easily defeating Fernando Haddad of the leftist Workers’ Party in a runoff. Many fear Brazil’s young democracy is now at risk. Bolsonaro has often praised Brazil’s former military dictatorship, which ended just 33 years ago. He has also spoken in favor of torture and threatened to destroy, imprison or banish his political opponents.
Bolsonaro has vowed to fill his Cabinet with many military officers once he takes the reins of the presidency on January 1st. His vice president, Antônio Hamilton Mourão, is a four-star general who just retired from active duty in February. Former General Augusto Heleno is expected to become Bolsonaro’s minister of defense.
There’s also growing fear that Brazil could move militarily against Nicolás Maduro’s government in Venezuela. On Monday, a newspaper in Brazil quoted an unnamed…