Elections in Brazil? “Slavagist mentality is exposed without disguises”

“I don’t remember another historical moment in Brazil when the parallel with our past is more explicit”, says Luca Algiers, in an interview with Lusa, in writing, explaining that she follows “daily” Brazilian politics, despite the distance, signaling 2013, the year of the manifestations known as June Days, such as its political awakening.

For the musician, the politicization of his generation intensified from this period and, later, with Dilma Rousseff's destitution process, in 2016, to which he refers as a “coup”, leaving a “fracture” that he considers, remains in Brazilian society.

“What seems more desperate to me is that we are at a stage where the space for dialogue has been reduced to a minimum, or is virtually unfeasible,” he says.

According to Luca Algiers, “concrete facts, logical reasoning and good arguments have no longer seen votes”, a situation that compares with the political process in progress in Portugal.

The musician, who refuses to consider irreversible the current situation, points out the need for greater regulation of social networks as one of the conditions to recover a less polarized political debate, defending a “strict regulation” of algorithms, which accuses of promoting and monetizing the absence of constructive debate.

Author of the album “Samba de Guerrilha”, edited in 2021, Luca Algiers considers that this work remains particularly current in the face of the Brazilian political context: “maybe it is even more current than it was then.”.

“ The colonialist, extractive and slave mentality, which has always prevailed in the country, is smug, exposed without disguises”, states, considering that the current situation also involves the model of exploitation of brazilian natural resources.

In its reading, the pressure on these resources does not only come from Europe, as in the colonial past, but also from the United States, and Brazil runs the risk of being reduced to “a repository of natural wealth to be privatized and depleted”, and of “work force to be exploited until exhaustion”, for the sole benefit of a foreign power.

It is in this context that the forthcoming elections, which you believe to represent “a global threat”.

“ As the largest country in South America, Brazil is the crown jewel of the imperialist project,” he says, adding that a possible victory of this project in the Brazilian polls, “there was a Trump ventriloquist dummy”[Flávio Bolsonaro], “can have international consequences that we cannot even measure at this time”.

The Brazilian Intelligence Agency (Abin) prepared a report, released in September by Folha de S.Paulo in which it pointed to the risk of influence or interference of the United States in this year’s Brazilian elections, warning of a trend of “scaling pressure” on Brazil.

Luca Algiers also says he does not believe that a possible electoral defeat of this project necessarily means the end of contesting the results.

“ I have no illusion that they will respect the results and give up (again) trying a coup. The day after these elections will be very tense, regardless of the outcome”he did.

On the legacy of Bolosnarism, the musician considers that this is not a political view of the country, but the creation of “a collective identity capable of raising the dissatisfaction and hatred of a huge portion of the population”.

Part of this dissatisfaction, he says, has dimensions of class, race, gender and religion, but there is also a rejection of institutions and a “system” that, in his opinion, has failed in responding to historical problems, especially violence.

According to Luca Algiers, the permanence of this political identity is also explained by the continuity of the pocket-narist influence in institutions and by the presence of disinformation structures, and therefore does not consider that the current situation simply results from a “short memory” of voters.

“The election campaign of 2022 seems never to be over, it was stretching until the next elections,” he says, associating this continuity with the tiredness of the population and the least interest in election campaigns in the last years.

Resident in Portugal, the musician does not consider, on the other hand, that emigration necessarily changes the relationship of Brazilians with the policy of the country of origin.

In his experience, living outside Brazil can broaden the terms of comparison and allow a better understanding of the country’s specificities, but “the formation (or transformation) of the political vision” needs to happen “on site”.

“It’s not the distance”, he concludes.

Singer and composer, Luca Algiers was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and lives in Portugal since 2023, having acquired Portuguese nationality. His work has explored the relationship between music, history and Brazilian politics, notably through “Samba de Guerrilha”.