The socially liberal candidate, Jair Bolsonaro, has recently been elected to the office of President of Brazil. Brazil has had a rather extreme and rough upbringing since being under military regime from 1964–1985. The two most recent presidents, Lula da Silva (2003–2011) and later, Dilma Rousseff (2011–2016), caused a political earthquake. The Workers’ Party, socialists, and left-wing populists were overthrown and these two were involved in a major corruption scandal with Petrobras, a petroleum industry company. With the extremely high demand for drugs within the country that is surrounded by major drug-affiliated countries like Colombia, Venezuela, and Mexico, the crime rate has increased more than the country ever knew possible. There have been 64,000 murders in the past 12 months, and the Brazilian people are demanding that enough is enough. The lower-class Brazilian population has been put in a circumstance where they can no longer vote based off their ideologies, but rather they vote based on personal need and the false promises that have been promoted to help them for years.

Bolsonaro was an army captain during the regime as an officer; after the regime ended, he went into politics. He has remained a controversial congressman throughout his seven years in office, primarily because of his offensive and extreme remarks towards such groups as the Afro-Brazilian population, the Brazilian LGBTQ+ community, and Brazilian women. The Brazilian people are concerned that his ideas of bringing military regime back into Brazilian society will cause another mass destruction. The high violence rate and poverty rate that are a result of the corrupt government have left a rather conservative country with around 13 million people out of work with no options left. Cutting political spending seems to be the first major step that the government must take in order to regain its people’s trust back.

A Brazilian fourth-year student, studying international relations at the University of Massachusetts Boston, Maria Lucia Ferreira, stated in an interview: “What is going on in Brazilian politics is a lot like what is occurring within American politics. You have two candidates that aren’t necessarily exceptional and ask them to do the exceptional. You don’t really have a choice other than to pick the better candidate. You had people in the past American election that hated Hillary Clinton and also hated Donald Trump. Similarly in Brazil, Brazilians are forced to choose between Jair Bolsonaro and Fernando Haddad. I think that as a country we could have done a lot better over the years. Personally, I believe we have failed our democracy. In order to be a president you have to obtain some kind of composure. Bolsonaro is very outspoken in a backwards way. As a country, we are divided, and Bolsonaro has opened up a lot of doors for general hatred.”