Brazil Apart

de Perry Anderson

"What does Brazil's lurch to the hard right under Jair Bolsonaro portend for Latin America's largest country, and how has it come about? Always something of a world unto itself, under the Workers' Party between 2003 and 2016, Brazil was 'the theatre of a socio-political drama without equivalent in any other major state'. Bucking the global trend towards a tighter neoliberalism, former steelworker Luiz Ini cio Lula da Silva swept aside the broken promises of the Cardoso years to invest in social transfers, defying the vituperations of the Brazilian press to become the most popular ruler of the age. But in a second spectacular reversal, a parliamentary coup d'i tat against Lula's successor - backed by the Armed Forces and a youthful New Right -has been consolidated by Bolsonaro's 2018 capture of the Planalto. With Lula, the PT's lodestar, now behind bars, a weighing up of his legacy, and of the contrasting Bolsonaro regime, is urgently needed. Brazil Apart is the leading English-language account of these remarkable upheavals, by one of our foremost observers of the Brazilian scene. Perry Anderson provides an unforgettable reading of Brazil's serpentine politics and social transformations, with commentary on the key Lusophone analysts of Lulismo, left economist Andri Singer and Marxist sociologist Chico de Oliveira"--