In recent days, the internal geopolitics of Brazil only reminds me 1930. We have a leader acclaimed by the urban masses, as in 30. São Paulo is cracked, as in 30. To boost the election of the one who is well-liked by the masses, it bets on Minas Gerais leaders – who end up delivering fewer votes than expected. The popular leader’s base was a real bag of cats that included military, liberals and supporters of the fight against corruption. And to ensure power, the opposite side resorts to Bahia, which delivers the promised votes. But that was not enough: to stop the candidate of the masses, the owner of the pen used all possible tools to stop him from campaigning. The Carioca press and part of the São Paulo press, which were in the collusion, made a disgusting coverage of the elections and revolted the supporters of the popular candidate. In the end, Júlio Prestes and Lula won, respectively, the tightest elections in the Old Republic and the New Republic. But the electoral process, as well as the engagement of the Vargas and Bolsonaro electorate, led the country to convulsions.
Some differences are obvious, however. The first is that the Army of today is not the Army of 30. Another is that, in the São Paulo split, Vargas took the capital and Bolsonaro took the interior. (When talking about Vargas, Paulistas have in mind the failed Revolution of 32, against him. However, the same people who repudiated Vargas in 32 greeted him in 30, and even paid for the successful Revolution.) Another, also glaring one, is that Bolsonaro managed to being an anti-establishment president, something absolutely impossible in the Old Republic. The growth of the Judiciary in democracies transferred the pen to the Supreme Court. Last, but not least, Bahia da República Velha had not yet entered the most frank economic decadence. It had a lot of people, but it was more of an agrarian state in an agrarian country. Bahia today is a poor and archaic agrarian state within a technological and modern agrarian country. It is supported by the country, but its colonels thought it would be a good idea to decide the election against the productive sector. The economic axis that saves the country’s trade balance extends from the Midwest towards the South, to São Paulo and to the west of the Northeast (the region of state borders known as Matopiba).
Limar simple explanations
As this Gazeta showed, Lula won in 8 of the 12 largest cities in the country . At the top is São Paulo, with its 12 million inhabitants. For comparison, Bahia, which is the largest electoral college in the Northeast, is close to 15 million inhabitants. The city of São Paulo alone is worth almost an entire Bahia, in terms of population.
At these times, the Paulista always appears who says that São Paulo is full of Northeasterners. In this regard: (1) Bolsonaro won in Maceió, but no genius will say that paulistas infest the capital of Alagoas; (2) Haddad won in São Paulo in the noble and poor neighborhoods; (3) Guarulhos, Rio de Janeiro and Brasília are also full of northeasterners, but Bolsonaro still won in these cities; (4) the Northeast was the only region in which the PT had fewer votes than in 2018.
We must therefore begin to admit that there are regional differences that cannot be limited to “poor people wanting help who vote for the PT” versus “the productive sector wanting an efficient state”. I believe that two things had an undeniable weight in the fall of Bolsonaro’s electorate in the Southeast: inflation and the press. More enlightened people know that the government has been great at managing inflation because they have the international scenario in mind. However, in a continental country like Brazil – and especially in a region that does not border another country – people tend to compare the current situation with the past situation; not to the situation of the neighbors. As for the press, I limit myself to pointing out that an important newspaper in the Southeast started to call the “secret budget” “rapporteur’s amendments”. When social networks confronted the newspaper’s Twitter profile, he lied that only opinion columns used the expression “secret budget” and rushed to edit past news stories. When it’s Bolsonaro, it’s a “secret budget”; when it’s Lula, the same thing became “rapporteur’s amendments”. In addition, Bolsonaro was genocidal because of Covid and was going to end the giraffes of the Amazon. If the press wanted it, it could have shown Lula thanking nature for the creation of the coronavirus.
Understanding the elites
North the Northeast link to public opinion. If I had called, I would have stopped voting for the PT after the Mensalão, as Brazil did from São Paulo down, plus the Midwest. One of the myths that fell apart in this election is that it is enough to give aid and infrastructure to win votes in the Northeast. On second thought, one could doubt this before: looking at the maps of the elections of the New Republic with the victorious candidates by state, it is clear that Bahia elected the same presidents as the state of São Paulo in all rounds of 89 up until 2002. The maps of this period are overwhelmingly the same color, with some states that at some point clash: Rio de Janeiro and Rio Grande do Sul sometimes clash together (they are the two states that elected Brizola to the government, in addition to being close during Coffee with Milk); Alagoas gives a counter of nothing; Ceará elected Ciro when it had Ciro (the first time this did not happen was in this election).
Bahia did not vote for Lula in 2002 for because of Bolsa Família, because the project didn’t even exist. Bahia voted for Lula because ACM supported him. Later, Bahia elected Jaques Wagner because the ACM base disbanded and part of the colonels who were subordinate to him (such as the current senators Otto and Coronel) joined PTismo. Around here, Governor Rui Costa left public school students without lunch in the pandemic, and didn’t even want to comply with a court decision that ordered them to give food. Rui Costa succeeded him. Therefore, it cannot be true that the people here vote with their stomachs; votes with the authority, who, in some way (either using press material or Janones’ videos), convinces that the alternative would be worse.
I believe that we should look at the Northeast paying attention to the votes for governor. In Pernambuco he won a toucan; in Bahia, where the first disputed election of the New Republic took place, ACM Neto, from União Brasil, came in second. A supporter of Alckmin won and was second to a candidate whose party, it seems, will compose with the new government.
In my view, the Northeastern elites were divided between supporting the incumbent or the vice president. of the Lula Alckmin plate. The same phenomenon occurred in parts of Minas Gerais and Rio Grande do Sul, two states in which the election for president was tight and in which there is historical or current relevance to the PSDB.
Concentration of old elites
The Midwest does not have enough people to launch a national candidacy. The rural part of São Paulo, once represented by the PSDB, suddenly found itself orphaned. As a result, he elected Tarcísio, a reputable minister appointed by Bolsonaro.
It is difficult to understand São Paulo politics now, but we can say that the old São Paulo toucans joined the PT candidate, against the young toucan Rodrigo Garcia, current governor of the state.
I think that the PSDB, which included both the rural group of Café com Leite and the USPians, became increasingly USP and financier throughout the New Republic. . It could also be that the PSDB represented a portion of the rural sector in the Southeast that did not join the wave of modern agribusiness. Be that as it may, the fact is that the PSDB in São Paulo does not represent agribusiness in São Paulo, and this explains the election of Tarcísio, who filled this gap. The Bolsonaro government is identified as a pro-agribusiness government, unlike the PT government, which is associated with an old, recently disaffiliated toucan.
Thus, it makes sense that the PSDB maintains an electorate cohesive community outside the state of São Paulo. But, in addition, there is Faria Lima in the state, which is now 100% progressive and ESG. These people have no vote. To get elected, then, he released a former popular leader from jail and made a deal to elect him with an old toucan on his back.
Lula, candidate of the São Paulo press?
Lula was elected promising to square the circle. At the Perseu Abramo Foundation, made up of leftist São Paulo intellectuals, he said that eating meat was a luxury, that the family agenda was something for backward people, that the Brazilian middle class had to tighten up like the Europeans, etc. Green agenda in the vein. For the general public, it relied on current inflation to promise barbecue and steak. Well, either you promise a reduction in carbon emissions, cow farts and cattle, or you promise picanha. It is obvious that electoral fraud will be committed there. Either Lula deceived the fazalimers, or he deceived the people. Nor, as far as I know, does the green agenda excite the Bahian colonels, who have been committed to carrying out works and strengthening relations with the nada verde China.
In addition, let us remember how it behaved the São Paulo press in recent decades: it sometimes wanted to elect the PSDB, sometimes it wanted to overthrow the PT. Suddenly, he began to want to overthrow Bolsonaro and, failing to impeach him, began to want to elect Lula. How long will it take for them to want Alckmin to take over? And how many of those who got votes for Lula will be satisfied with the situation?
In 2018, Alckmin did not reach 5% of the votes. He had a little more than Simone “de Beauvoir” Tebet, who in this election stood as a representative of the “third way”, against “extremisms”. At the end of the day, it was these people who washed away Lula’s image in the Southeast and made his election possible. He put him in order to remove him, or to govern in the opposite way to the one promised: there is the coup.
Thus, the plausible scenario for the coming years is that a president desired by 5% of the population assumes, and that a bald person from São Paulo may make a thousand confusions with his magic marker. In the meantime, the population will continue in the same way it has been for nine years: on the streets, protesting.
There is a lot of turmoil out there.
