Contemporary · South America · Politics
2023
Brasília's January 6
January 8, 2023
A week after Lula's inauguration, thousands of supporters of the defeated Jair Bolsonaro stormed Brazil's Congress, Supreme Court, and presidential palace in Brasilia, smashing windows, destroying priceless artworks, and flooding the building with vandals. Security forces, embarrassingly slow to respond, eventually retook the buildings. Brazil's democracy survived; its judiciary, unlike America's, swiftly prosecuted the perpetrators.