Universities have become flashpoints for organizing around Brazil in recent weeks.
About a hundred students sit on the pavement in front of the university’s main administrative building. They’re making signs for a march this evening.
Tiago wears a red soccer jersey and holds a marker in his hand. That’s not his real name, though. He asked that it not be included, fearing attack from far-right supporters for speaking out. Students have faced this here in the past.
“We’re here because we’re afraid that if Flávio Bolsonaro wins, he will dismantle the public infrastructure for education and health in the country,” he said. “And that will affect a large part of the population.”
Roughly 2 million students in Brazil today study at one of the more than 110 federal and state universities around the country. That accounts for roughly 20% of the students studying at universities in Brazil. It’s an important section of the student body.
“The best universities in Brazil are public universities. They either belong to the federal government or the state government,” said João Feres Júnior, a political science professor at Rio de Janeiro State University’s Institute for Political and Social Studies. “So yeah, they’re publicly funded. Students pay no tuition. There is no debt coming from tuition. And sometimes they can get a stipend too.”
It’s perhaps the biggest difference between public universities in Brazil and the United States.
More than half of students at federal and state universities today are from working-class or poor communities.
The Brazilian government also provides extensive federal funding for grants and research at both public and private universities.
But President Jair Bolsonaro, the father of candidate Flávio Bolsonaro, cut billions of dollars from Brazil’s federal universities when he ran the country from 2019 through 2022. He also tried to defund humanities departments like sociology and philosophy, which he accused of being “Marxist,” the Brazilian equivalent of “woke.”
At the time, grants dried up and universities scrambled for private investment. Brazilian Students led some of the largest protests against his government. Today, they fear a Flávio Bolsonaro administration will mean a return to the policies of his father.
They have reason to be concerned.
At the launch of his candidacy in July, Flávio Bolsonaro danced on stage with a large pair of scissors alongside Argentine president Javier Milei. Milei has overseen widespread budget cuts to education in his country, sparking rolling protests there from teachers and students.
Flávio calls his plan, if elected, the “tesouraço,” which translates loosely to “The massive scissoring.” He has proposed transferring oversight of federal universities from the Ministry of Education to the Ministry of Science and Technology, as part of his promise to cut billions from universities and refocus higher education away from so-called “Marxist social sciences.”
“We have to teach our youth to have their own businesses,” he said on a Brazilian program earlier this year. “To study IT, computer science, technology, math, Portuguese, sciences. That’s all we need.”
Guilherme Vargas says Bolsonaro is on the right path. Vargas, a mechanical engineering student at Santa Catarina Federal University, supports Flávio for the presidency and says Flávio’s promise to trim government fat and push for excellence won’t affect federal universities.
“No, I don’t believe there will be big cuts,” he said. “There’s no way to end funding for the Federal University, because it’s a source of research for the country, and research and education is necessary anywhere.”
But many students are scared. And they’ve been organizing. Earlier this week, they held marches across Brazil, hoping to turn the tide in the election.
“The student movement has woken up,” says Anderson Gheller Froehlich, a professor at UNEMAT, a state university in Mato Grosso. “And the youth are going to save the country. It’s the youth that are going to the streets to convince others to vote.”
Flávio Bolsonaro won the first-round election in early October by just over two million votes. Students have been leading the race, encouraging the 33 million people who didn’t vote to show up this time. They say this election is not just a fight over higher education in Brazil, but the future of other public services, like health and social security.
”I think that by going to the street and talking to the workers, the students absolutely have the ability to change this election,” said Ariadne Meneghel, a leader in the DCE student union at Santa Catarina Federal University.
The runoff vote between Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro is on Sunday, Oct. 25.
The presidential campaign has entered the anything goes phase for the far right.
Polls, are being used as weapons. Anything goes to keep Lula from winning the runoff. Anything goes to boost jailed ex-President Bolsonaro’s son Flávio.
Even when it comes to issues Lula has nothing to do with, such as the crisis at Brazil’s Federal Supreme Court, his opponents look for pretexts to justify polling results that are completely at odds with reality.
Fake news is nothing compared with what is already happening and what is still to come. Lula is already being blamed for things he never said. They will stage hoaxes and make up all kinds of stories, with the media turning a blind eye.
What Globo did to help elect Fernando Collor will look like child’s play compared with what is already happening and what the far right will do in coming days.
Be prepared. What lies ahead will go far beyond anything we can imagine. We must be ready to defend ourselves. Otherwise, the outcome could be devastating for us.
Journalists at Globo itself have discussed the contest between Lula and Collor without even mentioning the network’s own role in manipulating the final debate between the two candidates. That manipulation ultimately proved decisive.
The clash between two political projects is giving way to legal battles, with the right resorting to dirty tricks because it struggles to present viable proposals that can compete with the undeniable success of Lula’s government.
Flávio’s decision to agree to a debate while threatening Lula, only to back down later, is another example. He retreated not only in the face of evidence linking him to Daniel Vorcaro, but also after footage of orgies emerged.
Flávio is still basking in his first round victory, even as new polls clearly point to a shift in the political landscape. The change comes especially in the wake of massive popular demonstrations across Brazil. Although Flávio has said nothing about the scale of these rallies, he has begun changing his position on key issues.
He once dismissed social policies as “populist” measures designed to buy public support. Now he has embraced Bolsa Família and other policies that have long been hallmarks of Lula’s political career. He has also abandoned his radical proposal to privatize nearly all state owned companies. He now explicitly says he will not privatize Petrobras, Caixa Econômica Federal or Banco do Brasil, Brazil’s three most prominent publicly-owned companies.
These concessions are part of the anything goes approach in the final stretch of the campaign. Principles no longer matter. The overriding goal is to win votes in a fiercely contested election.
This article was originally published in Revista Forum, has been translated by Panamerican Dispatch with express consent of the editor-in-chief, and can be read in its original Portuguese here.
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