The 2018 presidential electoral victory of Jair Bolsonaro initiated a sharp turn to the far-right in Brazil. On December 1, 2018, 200 Brazilian activists and scholars of Brazil meeting at the Columbia Law School founded the U.S. Network for Democracy in Brazil (USNDB) and the Washington Brazil Office (WBO). Over the next four years, the USNDB organized over 1,000 different events in defense of Brazilian democracy in Brazil. When former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defeated Bolsonaro in October 2022 presidential elections, far-right forces allied with the military attempted to carry out a coup to overthrow the new administration. They failed in their efforts due to national and international actions, including those of the WBO. This presentation outlines the complex history of U.S.-Brazilian relations, the role of academics and activists in defending democracy in Brazil, and the perspectives for the October 2026 Brazilian presidential elections.

Speaker

James N. Green is Professor Emeritus of Brazilian history at Brown University. He is the author of Beyond Carnival: Male Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century Brazil (Chicago, 1999), We Cannot Remain Silent: Opposition to the Brazilian Military Dictatorship in the United States (Duke, 2010), and Exile within Exiles: Herbert Daniel, Gay Brazilian Revolutionary (Duke, 2018), all three also published in Portuguese. Green is the co-author or co-editor of nine additional works, including The Brazil Reader: History, Culture and Politics (Duke, 2019) and Brazil: Five Centuries of Change, 3rd ed. (Oxford, 2020). He is the National Co-Coordinator of the U.S. Network for Democracy in Brazil, and the President of the Board of Directors of the Washington Brazil Office.

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