ABSTRACT
Bolsonaro’s election in 2018 represents the apex of a de-democratization process that deeply affected the struggles of Indigenous peoples and environmentalists in contemporary Brazil. This chapter will present a brief history of those struggles with emphasis on recent developments. Our argument begins with (1), an account of the process of re-democratization in the 1980s and its virtuous effects for the struggle of Indigenous peoples; (2) the limits and contradictions of the PT environmental policies and their ambiguous effects, before addressing (3), the first years of de-democratization, when the destruction of Museu Nacional by fire symbolizes the fragility of a state which is incapable of keeping national memory alive. A final section (4) will present a brief overview of the environmental and human calamity in Bolsonaro’s first year in office.
