Brazilian football ultras keen to reach away games have been hailed as democratic heroes after breaking through road blockades set up by far-right supporters of president Jair Bolsonaro, who refuse to accept his defeat to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Sunday’s tightly contested presidential election.
Pro-Bolsonaro demonstrators baselessly alleging electoral fraud have been blocking roads and highways across the country since Sunday night, causing chaos, cancelled flights and fears of fuel shortages. On Tuesday morning, Brazil’s supreme court ruled that the federal highway police must immediately take measures to clear the roads. Videos showed that some police officers were encouraging the protests.
As of Wednesday morning, the highway police said it had cleared over 600 points of obstruction, while 156 blockades remained on federal highways across the country.
But where security forces failed to break up roadblocks, football fans took matters into their own hands. According to the newspaper O Globo, at least four associations of football ultras – known in Brazil as torcidas organizadas – broke through Bolsonarista barricades in the states of Minas Gerais, São Paulo and Paraná in their efforts to reach Brasileirão games, Brazil’s main football league competition.
Members of the Galoucura football fan association of the Atlético Mineiro club cleared the road linking Belo Horizonte to São Paulo ahead of a game on Tuesday between the Minas Gerais club, fondly known as Galo, and the São Paulo football team. Videos circulating online show football fans clearing tires from the road and lorries driving off. “The barricades-busting troop is here,” one man says. “We’re going to see the Galo whatever happens!”.
On social media, amused Brazilians thanked the ultras for defending democracy. “I’m in favour of my team losing to Galo today simply for the Galoucura’s contribution to [democratic] institutions,” Vera Magalhães, a São Paulo-supporting journalist who has often been harassed by President Bolsonaro and his supporters, tweeted. The game ended in a 2-2 draw.
Meanwhile, the Gaviões do Fiel fans of São Paulo club Corinthians cleared two roadblocks late on Tuesday as they headed from São Paulo to Rio, where they will play Flamengo at the Maracanã stadium on Wednesday evening.
After clearing a section of the Marginal Tiête highway in São Paulo, Corinthians fans hung a banner emblazoned with the words “We are for democracy”, while chanting Lula’s name. As well as being the team of President-elect Lula, Corinthians is known for its opposition to Brazil’s 1964-1985 military dictatorship with the “Democracia Corintiana” movement led by footballers such as Sócrates and Casagrande.
The hardcore Bolsonaro supporters protesting against the election result are demanding a military intervention along the lines of the 1964 military coup.
How did it begin?
Brazil’s leftist president, João Goulart, was toppled in a coup in April 1964. General Humberto Castelo Branco became leader, political parties were banned, and the country was plunged into 21 years of military rule.
The repression intensified under Castelo Branco’s hardline successor, Artur da Costa e Silva, who took power in 1967. He was responsible for a notorious decree called AI-5 that gave him wide ranging dictatorial powers and kicked off the so-called “anos de chumbo” (years of lead), a bleak period of tyranny and violence which would last until 1974.
What happened during the dictatorship?
Supporters of Brazil’s 1964-1985 military regime - including Jair Bolsonaro - credit it with bringing security and stability to the South American country and masterminding a decade-long economic “miracle”.
It also pushed ahead with several pharaonic infrastructure projects including the still unfinished Trans-Amazonian highway and the eight-mile bridge across Rio’s Guanabara bay.
But the regime, while less notoriously violent than those in Argentina and Chile, was also responsible for murdering or killing hundreds of its opponents and imprisoning thousands more. Among those jailed and tortured were Brazil’s first female president, Dilma Rousseff, then a leftwing rebel.
It was also a period of severe censorship. Some of Brazil’s best-loved musicians - including Gilberto Gil, Chico Buarque and Caetano Veloso - went into exile in Europe, writing songs about their enforced departures.
How did it end?
Political exiles began returning to Brazil in 1979 after an amnesty law was passed that began to pave the way for the return of democracy.
But the pro-democracy “Diretas Já” (Direct elections now!) movement only hit its stride in 1984 with a series of vast and historic street rallies in cities such as Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Belo Horizonte.
Civilian rule returned the following year and a new constitution was introduced in 1988. The following year Brazil held its first direct presidential election in nearly three decades.
On Wednesday, thousands of Bolsonaristas gathered outside Rio’s eastern military command to voice their outrage at Bolsonaro’s defeat and demand a military takeover. “Armed forces, save Brazil!” some chanted, according to Associated Press.
Bolsonaro, who finally broke his post-election silence with the briefest of speeches on Tuesday afternoon, tacitly backed the protesters’ unfounded claims of fraud. “The current popular movements are the fruit of indignation and a feeling of injustice about how the electoral process played out,” he said, while adding that protests cannot impede people’s right to come and go.
Bolsonaro refused to recognize Lula’s win in his speech, let alone congratulate his opponent. But in practice Bolsonaro has conceded, ordering his chief of staff to begin the transition process and admitting to the supreme court that the game was up. “It’s over,” he reportedly told supreme court judges during a meeting on Tuesday.
