In the year since Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro took office, he's grabbed international headlines for his far-right views and frequent use of social media — both of which have drawn comparisons with U.S. President Donald Trump. So, too, have Bolsonaro's refusal to acknowledge climate science, isolationist foreign policy stance, and push for increased resource development.
HuffPost senior reporter Alex Kaufman traveled to Brazil last year to report on how that toxic mix of "Brazil First" policy has had ruinous results for the country's indigenous community. The Munduruku, an indigenous people deep in the Amazon, are among those who have suffered under Bolsonaro's reign. Must Reads spoke to Alex about the story.
How did you find the Munduruku? What drew you to that part of Brazil?
I had been reading about the Munduruku fight against hydro dams in that part of the Amazon for a few years. Following Bolsonaro’s election, I wondered how they would cope. I got in touch with Greenpeace officials in Brazil who campaigned on behalf of the tribe in the past. Those officials put me in touch with a fixer who had connections in
Pará.
The Munduruku, in my view, represented the story I wanted to tell about the Bolsonaro era. The tribe was large, politically organized and had the backing of a well-funded NGO. It had won previous fights against past governments. And yet even the Munduruku are — at least for now — broadly outmatched against the extremists now in power.
Are the comparisons of Trump and Bolsonaro fair? Do they miss something?
The comparisons are in many ways fair. Both men are figureheads of reactionary, chauvinistic political movements that exploit age-old social divisions on behalf of polluting industries. Both men hold minority rights and environmental protections in low regard. Both men are demagogues who cultivate online fans with bombast, cartoonish self aggrandizement and an open embrace of violence and weapons, particularly guns. Both men were also carried to power by an increasingly powerful Evangelical Christian voting bloc.
But I think the comparisons miss some key points. Brazil and the United States hold very different places in the world order. As such, Bolsonaro is less powerful internationally, and has a harder time throwing his weight around on the world stage. Bolsonaro’s ties to deadly violence are more explicit than Trump’s, including highly suspect connections to the alleged killers who assassinated the left-wing politician and feminist activist Marielle Franco. And Brazil only transitioned from dictatorship in 1985, so it’s a younger democracy with less entrenched social barriers.
Brazil had been seen as a climate leader not so long ago. Where does it fit into global climate policy now?
For years, Brazil’s economy grew at a gangbusters speed while a left-wing government successfully slowed deforestation by increasing enforcement. The Amazon is the world’s largest terrestrial carbon sink, meaning its vast expanses of trees and jungle suck planet-heating gases out of the atmosphere. If the world is going to avert complete climate catastrophe, the Amazon needs to remain as intact as possible. So that crackdown on deforestation made Brazil a climate leader. That started to change a few years ago as economic growth slowed and new administrations reduced environmental enforcement. Under Bolsonaro, that tailspin has rapidly accelerated.
How are Brazil's climate and indigenous rights concerns related?
Indigenous ways of life often depend on keeping forests intact. Certainly that’s the case in Brazil. In the story, I cited a new study published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that found that 90% of net emissions in the Amazon came from outside protected indigenous lands. That’s a stunning figure, and illustrates the obvious: The climate crisis we face is not the fault of some innate human flaw; it’s the result of a societal development model that classifies nature only as an external obstacle.
Why should American readers care about what's happening in Brazil right now?
Brazil is the second-largest country in our hemisphere. It’s a country where our country has meddled for years; the CIA helped install a military dictatorship that lasted decades. We eat food grown there, listen to music from there and many of us vacation in its scenic tourist spots. And we share our country with hundreds of thousands of Brazilian-Americans. But perhaps the most important reason is that what happens to its forested territory will have lasting effects on all life on this planet. | 
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