In order to protect the Brazilian family against “gender ideology”, President Jair Bolsonaro has been performing an efficient project to attack, censor and dismantle the National Film Agency (Ancine). Under the same pretext, the mayor of Rio de Janeiro ordered Municipal Secretariat inspectors to collect a book deemed “unfit for children” at the 2019 International Book Biennial. (more…)

Editors’ Note: Today’s post is part of our guest post series. In these opportunities, Democratizing opens space for further discussion to our focus – transitional justice and the decline of democracy – to hear experts on topics that contribute to a broader reading of the Brazilian political scenario. Good reading!

Emilio Meyer and Mariana Rezende

The Amazon Forest under the Bolsonaro government

In the past months, a vertiginous growth in the number of fires in the Amazon Forest has been shocking the world. According to data of the National Institute of Space Research (INPE), the number of fires between January and August is the biggest in seven years. The Institute concluded that there was a growth of 82% in relation to the same period of 2018. The comparison of numbers regarding deforestation in the months of July of 2018 and July of 2019 also reveals a staggering reality: a growth in the occurrences of this practice of 278%.  (more…)