What Went Wrong in Rio’s Favelas?
Correction appended below This article is adapted from AQ’s most recent issue, “Fixing Brazil.” To receive the print edition at home, subscribe here. Standing in the doorway of her mud-and-bamboo cottage at the very top of a favela called Babilônia, Maria Regina Luiz peers out cautiously. She was born and raised on this steep hillside … Read more
Temer and Refugees in Brazil: Off the Mark
At a United Nations summit in New York last week, Brazil’s President Michel Temer proudly declared that his country was home to more than 95,000 refugees. The revelation stirred admiring nods from diplomats in attendance at a time when the number of global refugees has surpassed that of World War II, creating a serious threat … Read more
Brazil’s ‘Car Wash’ Probe: Tell Me How This Ends
During their first year in the spotlight, the young federal prosecutors leading the “Operation Car Wash” corruption probe seemed to handle themselves with an eerie, almost cinematic grace. From the case’s obscure roots of money laundering at a gas station, to its eruption into an unprecedented scandal that helped bring down Dilma Rousseff’s presidency, the … Read more
Brazil Finds Remnants of Its Dictatorial Past in a Radio Show
If you’re driving in Brazil on a weekday evening and want some music for your drive, you should probably pack a CD. Chances are you’ll catch A Voz do Brasil, the country’s longest-running radio show, if you turn on the radio between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. This is because Brazilian law mandates that radio … Read more
Why Brazil’s Olympic Gold Could Boost Its New President
The year was 1994, and a depressed Brazil was desperately in need of a lift. Recent years had seen a president impeached for corruption, inflation in excess of 2,500 percent, horrendous massacres of innocents inside a prison and outside a church, and a general feeling the country couldn’t do anything right. As June approached, so … Read more
Why the LGBT Community Will Remember Rio 2016
If you’re looking for signs that LGBT inclusion in the sports world is on the rise, the Rio 2016 Olympics are a good place to start. Despite concerns surrounding the host city, the competition itself has gone off (mostly) without a hitch; for LGBT people in Brazil and around the world, it’s been downright monumental. … Read more
BNDES Helped Save the Olympics. But Is it Hurting Brazil?
Corrections appended below Updated 8/17/2016 New leadership atop Brazil’s massive national development bank is unwinding a decade of rampant lending that fed large conglomerates and strained the country’s finances. Over the past half-century, Brazil’s Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Economico e Social (BNDES) built huge power plants and highways through the industrial southeast, aided social programs in the … Read more
A ‘School of Rock’ in Rio’s Biggest Favela
Kids from Rio de Janeiro’s largest favela are reaching new heights – literally. Equipped with grippy shoes, hand chalk and encouragement from renowned climbers worldwide, young people from the Rio neighborhood of Rocinha are increasingly taking to the city’s tallest mountains in search of recreation, thrills and, for some, a way to avoid the pitfalls … Read more
Eight Ways to Not Enjoy Rio During the Olympics
An amazing city, Rio de Janeiro can also be exasperating if you’re not prepared. The 500,000 foreigners visiting this month for the Summer Olympics will soon discover the challenges of life in the self-proclaimed cidade maravilhosa, from its world famous congestion to its quirky social norms. Here are eight ways for visitors to not enjoy … Read more
Hey World, Let’s Cut Brazil Just a Little Slack
After being kidnapped by uniformed police in Rio on the eve of the Olympic Games, a young New Zealander proclaimed on Facebook that Brazil “is well and truly f***ed in every sense of the word imaginable.” Many others agreed, from the Australian athletes who arrived in their dorms to find overflowing toilets (and a fire, … Read more
What Brazil Can Learn From the Terrorist Threat to the Rio Olympics
Brazil may be the world’s seventh-largest economy and highly visible on a global scale, but it is, in many ways, remarkably isolated from the rest of the world and from global threats like terrorism. At least most thought it was. The arrests in recent days of 12 Brazilians suspected of plotting to carry out attacks during the … Read more
AQ Top 5 Latin American Academics: Artur Avila
See the rest of the AQ Top 5 “I can’t talk right now” Brazilian mathematician Artur Avila murmured into the phone. “I’m in Brasília to carry the Olympic torch.” When AQ contacted him the next day, he warned the conversation would have to be short because he was running late for the screening of a … Read more
This Week in Latin America: Brazil’s New Speaker
Sign up here to get This Week in Latin America delivered to your inbox every Monday. Brazil’s New Speaker: Brazil’s lower house will elect a new speaker on Wednesday, following the tearful resignation of Eduardo Cunha on July 7 amid an ethics investigation. Accused of taking up to $40 million in bribes and lying about an offshore bank account linked to the vast … Read more
Podcast: The Threats to Brazil’s “Car Wash” Corruption Probe
Also available for download for Apple iOS and Android. There are several threats facing the probe into corruption at Brazil’s state-run oil company Petrobras, according to José Ugaz, global chairman of Transparency International. Ugaz, who is based in Peru but visited Brazil last week, said some Brazilian politicians are trying to obstruct the investigation – although they likely … Read more
Help Brazil Preserve the Amazon
In the new issue of Americas Quarterly, we asked people, “What would you tell the next U.S. president about Latin America?” To see other authors’ responses, click here. Dear Mister / Madam President, Last June, Presidents Barack Obama and Dilma Rousseff, meeting in Washington, jointly declared that addressing climate change requires “continued, robust financial support.” … Read more