How a Mob Tried to Oust Brazil’s Lula (original) (raw)
Americas|‘We Will Die for Brazil’: How a Far-Right Mob Tried to Oust Lula
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/13/world/americas/brazil-protests-mob.html
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‘We Will Die for Brazil’: How a Far-Right Mob Tried to Oust Lula
The storming of Brazil’s capital failed to overthrow the elected government. But an examination of the attack reveals how extremism is threatening Latin America’s largest democracy.
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Jack Nicas, The Times’s Brazil correspondent, reported from Brasília. Simon Romero was the Brazil correspondent from 2011 to 2017.
- Published Jan. 13, 2023Updated Jan. 15, 2023
As the bus made its way from Brazil’s agricultural heartland to the capital, Andrea Barth pulled out her phone to ask fellow passengers, one by one, what they intended to do once they arrived.
“Overthrow the thieves,” one man replied.
“Take out ‘Nine-Finger,’” said another, referring to Brazil’s leftist president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who lost part of a finger decades ago in a factory accident.
“You might escape a lightning strike,” another man said, as if confronting Mr. Lula himself. “But you won’t escape me.”
As the passengers described their plans for violence, more than a hundred other buses bulging with supporters of Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right former president, were also descending on Brasília, the capital.
Video
Video posted on social media shows dozens of supporters of Jair Bolsonaro arriving in Brasília by bus.CreditCredit...Jakelyne Loiola, via Twitter
A day later, on Jan. 8, a pro-Bolsonaro mob unleashed mayhem that shocked the country and was broadcast around the world. Rioters invaded and ransacked Brazil’s Congress, Supreme Court and presidential offices, intending, many of them said, to spur military leaders to topple Mr. Lula, who had taken office just a week earlier.
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