Yearbook 2008
Brazil. In July, banker Daniel Dantas, notorious for his involvement in corruption, was arrested in a federal police action. Later, it turned out that Brazil’s intelligence service (Abin) participated in the operation without the necessary court permission. In addition, it was revealed that Abin had illegally eavesdropped telephone, including the chairman of the Supreme Court. The deal put great pressure on President Lula da Silva, and Abin’s head, Paulo Lacerda, who was accused of being the brain behind it all, was suspended. Critics said the country’s most important security institutions during President Lula’s time in power have been taken over by suspicious elements seeking to establish a police state in Brazil.
Despite several other cases of corruption and abuse of authority within government agencies, President Lula maintained his popularity. In a mid-year opinion poll, 67 percent of those surveyed said they were happy with him.
During the year, the Brazilian government created an international fund to finance the preservation of the Amazon rainforest, which occupies 40 percent of the country’s area. In total, it was expected to receive a billion dollars in the first year from both foreign governments, of which Norway was the first with $ 100 million already in September, as well as international and domestic donors. The fund will primarily fund surveillance against illegal logging and measures against carbon dioxide emissions in the region. Exactly at what rate the rainforest is decomposed, there are no clear figures, but the monitoring system Deter noted in June that 7,800 km2 had been felled since August 2007, a doubling compared to the period 2006-07.
- ABBREVIATIONFINDER: Click to see the meanings of 2-letter acronym and abbreviation of BR in general and in geography as Brazil in particular.
In mid-June, it was announced that a group of soldiers arrested three young men in one of Rio de Janeiro’s townships and handed them over to a rival criminal gang that immediately killed them. The incident was just one in a long line of scandals surrounding the issue of the high crime rate in the country. The army has been patrolling Rio’s townships for some time and had hitherto had a reputation for not being corrupt, contrary to the regular police force.
Brazil’s citizenship feared that Lula da Silva would win the presidential election in late 2018. To prevent that, he was jailed in April. In an attempt to ward off the prison, Lula sought refuge in the Metal Workers’ Union headquarters in Sao Paulo, but surrendered after a few days. Lula’s supporters instead set up a protest camp outside the prison in Curitiba in southern Brazil. The bourgeoisie then hired criminals, who in late April attacked the camp early in the morning, shot into it and seriously injured two camp participants. Lula’s “sentence” was 12 years in prison for corruption.
In May, hitherto secret documents were published showing that the country’s then military dictator Ernesto Geisel (1974-79) in 1974 had ordered the execution of several hundred oppositionists. The CIA was well-informed about the program and had also informed United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. During this period, the United States had transformed most of Latin America into military dictatorships, training its officers and death patrols.
The dictatorship gradually allowed Petrobras to raise gasoline prices through the spring to the detriment of the country’s poorest population in particular. In mid-May, the truck drivers therefore decided to go on strike, and at the same time blocked the country’s main roads. The strike quickly put a stop to the economy, food could not be transported to the cities, and at the end of the month, Sao Paulo was declared in a state of emergency. The dictatorship and the right wing took the opportunity to plead for the introduction of military dictatorship, as the strike quickly evolved not only to the rising gasoline prices but also to the widespread corruption. At the beginning of June, the Temer dictatorship helped lower gasoline prices, and the strike was abolished.
14-year-old schoolboy Marcos Vinicius da Silva was killed in mid-June when a police helicopter shot uninhibitedly into a favela near a school in Rio de Janeiro. Both police and military had been fighting drug gangs for weeks in the city’s slums and including a police inspector had been killed. It prompted prominent police detective Marcus Amim to publicly swear revenge: “You will pay for this… we will chase you wherever you are”. Since the transition to dictatorship in 2017, the violence in the favelas has escalated dramatically and the regime has put several thousand soldiers into the fighting with drug gangs. Following the execution of Silva, residents of the favela blocked the main road to Rio’s airport and set a bus on fire. Police shot and then killed 6. “Band members” was the official explanation.
Following the coup d’état in 2016, the regime revived the death patrols of the 1970’s. They took control of a growing number of slums previously under the control of drug gangs. Basically, these were the same criminal gang structures as the drug gangs, but with the significant difference that they worked closely with the police. Brazilian media could reveal that the murder of Marielle Franco in March was a joint action by a death patrol and police. By mid-2018, $ 2 million lived. Brazilians in the area controlled by the death patrols.
In mid-August, incarcerated Lula announced his candidacy for the upcoming presidential election. The UN Human Rights Council instructed Brazil to accept the candidacy, which the authorities, however, refused. Human rights were nonetheless set in motion in the country. A month later, he had to give up the candidacy, recognizing that the authorities would still prevent him from running. Instead, he pointed to his Vice Presidential candidate Fernando Haddad.
Population 2008
According to Countryaah reports, the population of Brazil in 2008 was 195,713,524, ranking number 5 in the world. The population growth rate was 1.010% yearly, and the population density was 23.4159 people per km2.