Brazil

AQ Top 5 Corruption Busters: Sérgio Moro

This article is adapted from our 1st print issue of 2016. For an overview of our Top 5 Corruption Busters, click here. “Brazilian of the Year.” “Personality of the Year.” One of Brazil’s “Most Influential People.” Sérgio Moro is a star, and it’s no mystery why. The young Brazilian judge pried the lid off a … Read more

Brazil’s Impeachment: Who Are the Swing Voters in Congress, And What Do They Want?

Proceedings to oust Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff have been underway for a week, and the battle lines are becoming clear. Rousseff appears to have enough support among the 28 parties in Congress to block impeachment over her alleged misuse of public funds. But that could change. Rousseff’s fate will ultimately rest in the hands of several … Read more

Sexual Harassment in Brazil Starts at Age Nine. Here’s What One Group Is Doing About It.

Nine years old. That’s the average age that, according to Brazilian NGO Think Olga, Brazilian females are first subjected to sexual harassment. Think Olga uncovered the startling number as part of a Twitter campaign called #primeiroassedio (#firstharassment), which encourages women to use social media to recount their first experience of sexual assault or harassment. To … Read more

A Scenario Under Which Rousseff Gets Impeached in Brazil

In Brazil a few weeks ago, I asked a former official from Dilma Rousseff’s government whether his old boss would be impeached. “Forgive me for being politically incorrect,” he said, “but only if the poor take to the streets.” Ah, Brazil, where even in moments of high political drama, the class divide reigns supreme. But … Read more

Brazil, Heaven and Hell in the Same Day

Last Thursday began beautifully, deep in the Brazilian Amazon, with a walk through a lush city park. I strolled among bougainvillea and castanha do Pará and samaúma trees. I saw a large red and blue macaw ambling down the sidewalk, and had just sat down to take a selfie with him when the little jerk … Read more

A Munduruku tribal leader. Photo: Maria Tama/Getty

A Batalha Pela Amazônia

Nosso barco deslizava calmamente sobre o rio Tapajós, quando, de forma inesperada, a monotonia hipnótica da Amazônia foi quebrada por pequenos corpos saltando na água. Um punhado de crianças da tribo local Munduruku havia se pendurado em árvores ao longo da margem do rio. Ao nos ver chegando, elas pularam na água escura, subiram a … Read more

Health Education in the Amazon? Go to the Movies

In a scene from Parente, a documentary short about sexually transmitted diseases in the Amazon, indigenous Yanomami woman giggle during a sex education class as they pass around and examine an unwrapped condom. For all the sensitivities and complexity behind the foreignness with which they approach the idea of safe sex, the portrait of the … Read more

Garbage Is Choking the Amazon’s Biggest City

Maria da Conceição Peixote has lived in a floating house on the Igarapé do Quarenta, one of the two longest waterways in Manaus, for most of her life. “I can’t afford to move,” says the 63-yearold housekeeper. “But it’s hard.” Da Conceição and her husband, Natanel Baima de Oliveira, 60, a produce vendor, are among … Read more

The Perverse Justice of São Paulo’s Slums

Paperback, 192 pages Graham Denyer Willis doesn’t go as far as calling Brazil a failed state in his book The Killing Consensus, but anyone looking to support such a claim would find plenty of evidence in this examination of a São Paulo crime syndicate and the underpaid and often corrupt homicide investigation unit tasked with … Read more

The Food World’s Hottest Ingredient Has “Roots” in Seduction

This article is adapted from the Fall 2015 print edition of Americas Quarterly. To subscribe, please click here What began as an aromatic oil used by indigenous tribes in the art of seduction has quickly become one of the Brazilian Amazon’s most popular exports. At first glance, it’s easy to dismiss the priprioca, a grass-like … Read more

Turning a Slash-and-Burn Capital into One of the Amazon’s Greenest Places

In 2007, the Brazilian government named the municipality of Paragominas, in Pará state, one of the biggest culprits for deforestation of the Amazon. Ranchers there were responsible for the loss of 156 square miles of forest per year. But just a few years later, Paragominas was being hailed as a model for sustainable development in … Read more

Vamos reduzir o desmatamento a zero. Saiba como.

Read in English Quando Theodore Roosevelt explorou a Amazônia um século atrás, ele ficou encantado com o poderoso rio que corria “de oeste a leste, do poente à aurora, dos Andes ao Atlântico”. No diário de viagem do ex-presidente americano, Nas selvas do Brasil, de 1914, ele descreve poeticamente “as frondosas árvores, o emaranhado de … Read more

Let’s Cut Amazon Deforestation to Zero. Here’s How.

This article is adapted from the Fall 2015 print edition of Americas Quarterly. To subscribe, please click here Versão em português When Theodore Roosevelt explored the Amazon a century ago, he was enthralled by the mighty river that ran “from west to east, from the sunset to the sunrise, from the Andes to the Atlantic.” … Read more

Brazil Progressing in Fight Against Deforestation, Says Environment Minister

This article is adapted from the Fall 2015 print edition of Americas Quarterly. To subscribe, please click here A milestone has been reached in the fight against deforestation in the Amazon. Over the last five years, Brazil has seen the lowest deforestation rates since measurements began in 1988 — capping more than 10 years of … Read more

Three Innovations That Might Save the Amazon

This article is adapted from the Fall 2015 print edition of Americas Quarterly. To subscribe, please click here With each passing day, we lose more of our world’s forests to deforestation and degradation. But the good news is that in recent years, we’ve become considerably more sophisticated in how we try to protect the Amazon … Read more