Brazil’s Election Is a Warning, But Not of the End of the Donroe Doctrine

The media and the global left have hailed the apparent reelection of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as a turning point for the Latin American left’s electoral future, upending the recent conservative wave in the region and marking the downfall of the Trump administration’s highly successful “Donroe Doctrine” of hemispheric engagement.

In reality, recent events in Brazil tell a story not of the anti-American left’s renewed popular appeal in Latin America, but of Brazil’s ruling party seizing extraordinary judicial power to silence and marginalize the conservative opposition, effectively criminalizing dissent.

There is perhaps no clearer example of this effort than the recent steps of the Brazilian Supreme Court to prosecute opposition presidential candidate Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, ordering him to surrender his passport less than 24 hours after the election. During the campaign, Lula da Silva publicly threatened to prosecute Bolsonaro if he were to lose the election.

However, it is important to note that Bolsonaro has not been convicted or even charged with any crime, and the Supreme Court justice who apparently sought his arrest is himself facing serious corruption allegations.

With the help of Argentina and the Trump administration, Bolsonaro was able to make it safely to the United States in effective exile. Bolsonaro surely recognized the threat he and his family faced in Brazil from a heavily politicized and powerful judiciary.

After all, this was on display hours earlier, during the Oct. 25 runoff election, when Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin, formerly the personal lawyer of President Lula da Silva, extended voting by two hours, an unprecedented disruption of the election’s rules that seems to have favored the leftist candidate’s reelection.

Long before this year’s election, the Brazilian Supreme Court has been actively engaged in disproportionate and questionable judicial targeting of conservatives in Brazil. Indeed, Bolsonaro’s father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, is currently serving a 27-year prison sentence following his highly controversial prosecution by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes last year.

Moraes has also taken heavy-handed actions to restrict free speech in Brazil, again targeting conservative politicians and commentators, even fully banning X in Brazil in 2024 amid a high-profile confrontation with Elon Musk.

Under these circumstances, it would be dishonest to point to the results of Brazil’s fraught elections and chaotic political environment as indicative of the state of conventional left-right political and ideological competition across the hemisphere.

Despite what many are saying, Latin America’s conservative wave is also far from over. Indeed, even in Brazil, the right successfully took effective control of Congress in early October’s first-round elections. And just in the last several months, countries across Latin America, including Colombia, Chile, Peru, and beyond, have elected new, pro-U.S. conservative leaders who are making bold advances in restoring security, halting illegal migration, and promoting responsible, market-oriented economic policies.

If anything, this progress is poised to accelerate with bold regional leadership and continued substantive U.S. engagement in countering narco-terrorism, creating secure hemispheric supply chains for energy and critical minerals, and restoring border security in the Western Hemisphere.

However, the rest of the Western Hemisphere should nonetheless take careful note of the recent developments in Brazil. In addition to pressing for transparency and the protection of political freedoms in Brazil, the rest of the hemisphere must ensure that its own judicial systems are protected from those who would turn them into tools of political lawfare and persecution, as that would mark the true end of Latin America’s conservative wave.

More from this network:
Domains for Sale · GOTPeople.org · TheDSAPlatform · The Truth About Socialism

Donate to GOTPeople.org