New Left Review 139 (2023)

In a famous preface to Sérgio Buarque de Holanda’s classic Raízes do Brasil (1936), Antonio Candido reminded readers in 1967 that the book concludes on a note of doubt with regard to ‘the conditions for democratic life in Brazil’. Buarque acknowledged that in the cities, the old aristocracies were being replaced by cadres coming from below, tempered by the difficulties of work and capable of establishing an egalitarian political order. At the same time, he noted the persistence of older personalist and oligarchic forms. Which of these impulses would prevail remained uncertain. The Brazilian elections of October 2022 were a dramatic actualization of this question. The largest country in Latin America—some 215 million inhabitants, an economy ranked thirteenth in the world—commemorated the bicentenary of its independence with a new lease of life for violent forms of sociability. Moving in the opposite direction, a species of democratic concertación, or coalition—though far less formalized than its counterparts in Chile—swept the former metalworker Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva into the Presidency for the third time, by 51 to 49 per cent of valid votes in the second round on 30 October 2022, on a turnout of 79 per cent. A sigh of relief with a samba beat could be heard around the world.