Special report | The prospects

Time to go

Brazil’s future depends on the outcome of the 2022 election

THREE MONTHS after Mr Bolsonaro became president, he ordered the army to mark the 55th anniversary of the coup. His press office distributed a video in which a man explains that the 1960s were a “time of fear”. Communists were “killing their compatriots” in the name of a leftist ideology. The public took to the streets, begging for intervention. Then “Brazil remembered that it had an army.” Black and white shifts to colour as the music picks up and Brazil’s flag appears. “The army saved us,” the man says.

This article appeared in the Special report section of the print edition under the headline “Time to go”

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From the June 5th 2021 edition

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