Carla Coutinho da Rosa rode her mud-caked bicycle to Brazil’s day of chaos, joining thousands of far-right militants as they marched on congress with a clear objective in their minds.
“The idea was to get rid of Lula,” the 60-year-old businesswoman said of Brazil’s democratically elected president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who defeated her preferred candidate, Jair Bolsonaro, in October’s election.
Like millions of devoted Bolsonaristas, Rosa rejects the outcome of that vote and after lunch on Sunday she took to the streets of the capital, Brasília, joining a mass protest that she said was designed to overturn the result.
“He’s a corrupt thief,” Rosa fumed of the veteran leftist, claiming marchers had planned a peaceful demonstration as they made the 8km hike from their encampment outside Brasília’s army headquarters to the nerve centre of Brazilian politics.
The result was anything but peaceful.
Journalist George Marques, who reached the area outside Oscar Niemeyer’s spectacular congress building at about 3pm on Sunday after disguising himself as a Bolsonaro supporter, said he saw thousands of people storm the complex.
“There were so many people … and the barricades [outside congress] had all been torn down and destroyed … the police were no longer there and the ramp leading into congress was completely overrun,” he said.
From congress, Marques, 32, followed the demonstrators – many wearing the green and yellow Brazil flag appropriated by Bolsonaro’s far-right movement – as they advanced over the road to the Planalto presidential palace, where Lula had been sworn in just seven days earlier.
“The Bolsonaristas were shouting: ‘Come on! Come on! The time has come! It’s now!’” Marques remembered, describing a carnival-like atmosphere as the elated radicals swarmed towards the building’s marble ramp.
“It was a moment of Bolsonarista joy. They were almost in orgasm … They were in ecstasy – as if they were staging a revolution that was positive for the country,” Marques said, adding: “Many of them truly believe in this nonsense”.
Inside the palace, Bolsonaro’s followers ran riot. Offices were invaded, historic works of art – including one by the master painter Emiliano Di Cavalcanti – smashed. Portraits of Brazil’s former presidents were torn from the walls and thrown to the ground. Weapons were reportedly stolen from the Institutional Security Bureau, which is responsible for presidential security.
One of the palace’s ransacked offices belonged to one of Lula’s closest allies, the former defense and foreign minister Celso Amorim.
“I feel extremely shocked,” Amorim told the Guardian on Monday as he flew back to Brazil’s modernist capital to assess the damage. “It was unquestionably an attack on Brazilian democracy by deranged people.”
Amorim said the pro-Bolsonaro “band of fascists” appeared to have vandalized the office of Brazil’s first lady, Rosângela Lula da Silva, with particular delight.
“Just as Bolsonaro is a cheap imitation of Trump, this was a cheap imitation of the [US] Capitol [invasion on January 6 2021],” Amorim said, warning of “tense moments” in the days ahead as the government pursued those responsible for the havoc.
From the presidential palace, the demonstrators moved on to the supreme court on the other side of Brasília’s Three Powers Plaza which suffered even more severe damage.
A replica of Brazil’s 1988 constitution was ripped from a display case and carried outside. A black robe belonging to one of the court’s justices was pillaged and shown off to the hordes of mobile-phone-toting rioters.
The phrase “You lost, you prick” was daubed on to the court’s outer windows – a reference to a remark from the supreme court judge Luís Roberto Barroso urging Bolsonaro followers to accept Lula’s election win.
“I’m still trying to process everything I saw … It was like a scene from a war,” said Marques. “They were unimaginable scenes of destruction and savagery. Never in my 12 years covering politics in Brasília did I think I’d witness acts of such violence and depredation … Historic objects were smashed, busts, works of art … were burned or destroyed … I felt a mixture of despair and sadness. I wanted to cry. I didn’t know if someone was going to get shot.”
As the Bolsonarista mob ran amok, Brazil and the international community looked on in horror, with world leaders including Rishi Sunak, Emmanuel Macron, Gabriel Boric and Joe Biden condemning what the US president called an “assault on democracy and on the peaceful transfer of power in Brazil”.
Amorim said such an outpouring of international support was crucial to Lula’s week-old government as it confronted the aftermath of what many call the most serious outbreak of political violence since the return of democracy in 1985.
“Even the prime minister of Italy, who is said to be extreme or ultra-right, has spoken out against this brutal act,” Amorim said.
But Rosa, the Bolsonarista activist, rejected claims she had been part of a terrorist attack on her country’s democratic institutions.
“It was a peaceful protest,” she insisted on Monday as she sat with her bicycle beside the pro-Bolsonaro camp outside the army HQ waiting for hundreds of riot police and army troops to clear away the tents. “We pay our taxes. None of us are terrorists – nothing of the sort.”
Rosa wept as she described her conviction that October’s election had been rigged – a conspiracy theory that Bolsonaro and his allies repeatedly peddled in the lead-up to the vote.
“I feel so angry. It’s all so cowardly. We are patriots. We love our flag. These people only think about stealing,” she said, hailing Bolsonaro as the leader of a noble patriotic revolution. “When I was at school we used to sing the national anthem … these days all they talk about is homosexuality and I don’t know what else. The values have changed. It’s all wrong,” she complained, adding that she believed her leader was right to abandon Brazil on the eve of Lula’s 1 January inauguration.
“They want to arrest him – of course he had to go,” she said of Bolsonaro, who watched Sunday’s turmoil from a mansion in Orlando, Florida.
Another pro-Bolsonaro activist at the camp, 29-year-old William Sartott, blamed Sunday’s destruction on leftist agitators who, without evidence, he accused of hijacking a “peaceful” protest in order to discredit the right, with help from the “rotten media”.
“They infiltrated the protest and these infiltrators carried out numerous acts of vandalism, setting fire to things and breaking things in congress,” Sartott claimed. “I’ve got loads of videos on my Telegram channel that prove this … We’re absolutely certain of it.
“What happened yesterday was an outrage,” Sartott added as he livestreamed the police operation to remove the pro-Bolsonaro camp.
“It was the second Capitol – this was the Brazilian Capitol version 2.0,” he added – although for Sartott the culprits were from the left.
“They want to impose the idea that the Brazilian right are terrorists. This is the narrative they want to sell so that upstanding citizens do not rise up … [to stop] Brazil becoming yet another communist country in Latin America, like Venezuela, Cuba and the others.”
Marques said such conspiracy theories were typical of Bolsonaro’s hardcore base. “Some of these people are so utterly furious and there’s no talking to them. It’s as if they have been bulletproofed against any kind of truth or fact,” he said.
As he prepared to board a flight back to Brasília, Amorim said many questions remained about Sunday’s anarchy. “Did they want to create havoc that might spark a military intervention? Or was it just depredation and an act of terrorism designed to intimidate and inspire others to follow them?” he asked. “I don’t know.”
But Lula’s special aide was particularly troubled that the Presidential Guard Battalion had not intervened to stop the sacking of some of Brazil’s most beautiful architectural treasures.
During previous protests, demonstrators had been kept well away from the palace. “This time there was nothing. Why was there nothing? Why were reinforcements not sent? It’s impossible to believe there wasn’t intelligence about this. I don’t want to blame anyone … but this is very troubling.
“It’s as if it was allowed to happen. This is very serious,” added Amorim, calling for the punishment of the demonstrators and those who financed and masterminded their historic attack on Brazil’s democracy.
“I’m worried,” he said. “But we will overcome this.”
