Authorities probe uprising in Brazil
Investigate those who transported rioters to capital
RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazilian authorities said Monday that they were looking into who may have been behind the uprising that sent protesters storming into the nation’s halls of power in a riot that had striking similarities to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol.
In an unprecedented display for Latin America’s largest nation, thousands of supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro swarmed into Congress, the Supreme Court, and the presidential palace on Sunday. Many of them said they wanted the Brazilian army to restore the farright Bolsonaro to power and oust the newly inaugurated leftist president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Also on Monday, police broke down a pro-Bolsonaro encampment outside a military building and detained some 1,200 people there, the justice ministry’s press office told the Associated Press. The federal police press office said the force already plans to indict roughly 1,000 people.
Lula and the heads of the Supreme Court, Senate, and Lower House signed a letter that denounced the attack and said were taking legal measures.
Justice Minister Flávio Dino told reporters that police have begun tracking those who paid for the buses that transported protesters to the capital. Speaking Monday at a news conference, he said rioters apparently intended for their displays to create a domino effect nationwide, and that they could be charged with a range of offenses, including organized crime, staging a coup, and violent abolition of the democratic rule of law.
“We think that the worst is over,” Dino said, adding that the government is now focused on punishing lawbreakers and those who enabled them. “We cannot and will not compromise in fulfilling our legal duties, because this fulfillment is essential so such events do not repeat themselves.”
Rioters wearing the green and yellow of the national flag broke windows, toppled furniture and hurled computers and printers to the ground. They punched holes in a massive Emiliano Di Cavalcanti painting at the presidential palace and destroyed other works of art. They overturned the U-shaped table where Supreme Court justices convene, ripped a door off one justice’s office, and vandalized a statue outside the court. The buildings’ interiors were left in ruins.
Monday’s detainments came in addition to the 300 people who were arrested Sunday during the riot.
Police were noticeably slow to react — even after the arrival of more than 100 buses — leading many to question whether authorities had either simply ignored numerous warnings, underestimated the protesters’ strength, or been somehow complicit.
Prosecutors in the capital said local security forces were negligent at the very least. A Supreme Court justice temporarily suspended the regional governor. Another justice blamed authorities for not swiftly cracking down on budding neofascism in Brazil.
After his Oct. 30 electoral defeat, Bolsonaro, who has gone to Florida, has been stoking belief among his hard-core supporters that the nation’s electronic voting system was prone to fraud, though he never presented any evidence. His lawmaker son Eduardo Bolsonaro held several meetings with former president Donald Trump, Trump’s longtime ally Steve Bannon, and his senior campaign adviser Jason Miller.
By early afternoon Monday, the remaining Bolsonaro supporters dissipated as word spread that he was hospitalized in Florida with abdominal pain. His condition wasn’t clear, but a photo published by Brazilian newspaper O Globo showed him smiling from a hospital bed. He has been hospitalized multiple times since surviving a stabbing in 2018. A hospital spokesperson did not immediately respond to a phone call and text message.
In a joint statement issued from Mexico City, President Biden, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada condemned the attack “on Brazil’s democracy.”