200th Anniversary of Brazil's Independence

                         Last Wednesday, precisely on 7th September, Brazil celebrated its 200 years of independence from Portugal. So this post is a tribute to this huge country that has everything to be a good country to its entire population but it is not. But we can not give up to do this country be good to all. There is not much to celebrate in the 200th anniversary of Brazil's independence: high unemployment, inflation, lowest share of the industry in the GDP, a high share of population distrusting the voting machines, what is terrible for the electoral system. In 2016 when I was candidate to city councilor I had only 10 votes, what was a surprise, because everybody said that I would be the most voted candidate of all. Because the people here where I was born and live know me since I was fourteen years old, they know I have always been a hard-working, ethical and sympathetic person. Let's see what will happen in the election of this year. This post is a summary of three articles, the first was published at  https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/07/world/americas/bolsonaro-brazil-bicentennial.html. The second was publishe https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/internacional/en/business/2022/04/independent-brazil-shrinks-in-200-years.shtml. The third was published https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/09/08/brazil-bolsonaro-election-lula-independence-day/

                         For months, the bicentennial had been billed as a test of Brazil's democracy. The left in Brazil feared that Mr. Bolsonaro would use the moment to declare war on Brazil's democratic institutions and preview an attempt to hold onto power if he loses the presidential election next month. In the end, the atmosphere was more of a party than an uprising. And Mr. Bolsonaro, who for months has made worrisome comments about the security of the elections and his willingness to accept the results. Perhaps his most forceful comments were calling his political rivals "evil" and warning that they would try to break the laws in the constitution. There have been recent signs of a truce between elections officials and Brazil's armed forces, which have backed Mr. Bolsonaro's claims that Brazil's elections systems are vulnerable. The morning before the bicentennial celebrations, he was casting doubt on Brazil's voting machines in an interview with a right-wing news network. Mr. Bolsonaro has made attacks on Brazil's Supreme Court and its elections systems for years. He has argued that Brazil's eletronic voting machines are vulnerable to fraud. Despite Mr. Bolsonaro's toned-down rhetoric, his supporters still wanted to focus on the supreme court and the voting machines.                                                                              The bicentennial takes place in a context of stagnation and the relative shrinkage of the country in the global economy. There is no long-term project, and the demographic conditions that drove much of the 20th century's advances are virtually exhausted. In retrospect, it is possible to consider that the Brazilian population growth and the transition from the coutryside to the cities in the last century were the protagonists in the growth of GDP, not the economic dynamism and productivity gains that leveraged other economies, especially the North American and more recently, Asian. The point is that nations poorer than Brazil a few decades ago, such as China, have progressed rapidly. The problem is that with the rapid aging of the population, Brazil will have great difficulty in making a new leap, as did in the past. The forecast is that, in a period of 50 years, Brazil will make the transition from 7% to 28% of the elderly population (65 years and older). From a historical perspective, Brazil's post-independence economic trajectory can be divided into three major periods.                                                                                                                                                                             Tens of thousands of Brazilians rallied to support President Jair Bolsonaro during Brazil's bicentennial celebrations on Wednesday, as the country's presidential race heats up. Experts say Bolsonaro blurred the lines between national celebrations and his campaign events, taking advantage of the day to rally his devoted base and push his far-right nationalist platform. "He reinforced his narratives that the polls are fake and the voting machines can't be trusted, and therefore, his base needs to stay mobilized," said Catherine Osborn, a Brazil-based journalist. She added, "Bolsonaro is lagging behind Lula because voters dislike him more than they dislike Lula. It is actually going to be an election between who has more rejection instead of who has more positive opinions of them." For many Brazilians, Lula represent a period of well-being. "The time when Lula was in power between 2003 and 2010 were years of prosperity. The economy was booming. As Bolsonaro falls behind in the polls, he has made unfounded claims that Brazil's voting systems are vulnerable to fraud, in what experts fear is an effort to contest election results and even attempt to launch a coup. These efforts as well as his threatening rhetoric and misinformation will likely profoundly shape Brazilian society. "Even if there is not a coup in the strict sense of the word, Bolsonaro is sowing the ingredients of a risky, explosive political situation among the civilians for a long time, that does not go away very easily," said Osborn.