BRAZIL: FROM THE FIRST PEOPLES TO LULA, WHO FIGHTS TO SAVE THE AMAZON (Earth’s Oxygen-photosynthesizing lungs)

By Sasha Alex Lessin, Ph.D. (Anthropology, UCLA)

LULA FIGHTS TRUMP TO SAVE THE AMAZON, WHOSE TREES ARE THE RESPIRATORY CELLS OF THE EARTH

By Sasha Alex Lessin, Ph.D. (Anthropology, UCLA)

Learn the fascinating events that have brought us to our current crisis with Brazil at https://wp.me/p1TVCy-9pD

Watch the video that goes with this post; the video’s posted above this post.

Brazil’s President Lula is ridding his country of the rampant illegal mining, cattle ranching, and cocaine-farming of the Amazon forest on which the Earth depends to slow Global warming. He is halting the rapacious capitalists’ and narco-gangs’ theft of Native preserves as well. He is way more people-oriented, whereas Trump and his Bolsonaro allies are more exploitative-capitalist-fascist oriented.

The struggle over Brazil has acquired a startling new international dimension. DONALD TRUMP’S UNITED STATES and LUIZ INÁCIO LULA DA SILVA’S BRAZIL are contesting not merely tariffs, but how much influence a powerful United States should exercise over the political choices of its enormous South American neighbor.

The confrontation invites comparison with the MONROE DOCTRINE, proclaimed by President James Monroe in 1823. Monroe originally warned European powers against further colonization or intervention in the Americas. Later U.S. governments expanded that hemispheric idea into claims of exceptional American influence.

Trump has not simply resurrected the nineteenth-century Monroe Doctrine. Still, the historical analogy raises our central question: IS SOUTH AMERICA A U.S. SPHERE OF INFLUENCE — OR DO BRAZILIANS ALONE DECIDE BRAZIL’S POLITICAL FUTURE?

In 2025, Trump openly connected punitive measures against Brazil with Brazil’s prosecution of his political ally, former Brazilian President JAIR BOLSONARO.

On July 30, 2025, Trump imposed an additional 40-percent tariff, bringing duties on many Brazilian goods to 50 percent. The White House explicitly attacked Brazil’s treatment and prosecution of Bolsonaro.

Lula responded that Brazil’s courts, elections, and government belonged to Brazil, not Washington.

In 2026, Washington imposed new tariffs on selected Brazilian goods. Brazil opened a process under its Economic Reciprocity Law that could lead to countermeasures, while Lula continued to call for negotiation rather than an escalating trade war.

August 21, 2026, Lula and Trump spoke directly by telephone. Brazil said Trump proposed that officials from the two governments meet quickly to discuss the tariff dispute.

TRUMP’S BOLSONARO ALLIES CHALLENGE LULA FOR BRAZIL

This international contest now overlaps directly with Brazil’s OCTOBER 4, 2026 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. Jair Bolsonaro himself is not Lula’s principal opponent. His son, Senator FLÁVIO BOLSONARO, is a leading challenger.

By August 24, a Nexus poll reported Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro in a technical tie in a possible runoff. On August 26, Reuters reported that Flávio’s economic team planned a public-debt ceiling that would trigger tighter spending restraints when debt crossed a specified threshold.

LULA’S COOPERATIVE VISION emphasizes social programs, workers, Brazilian sovereignty, diplomacy, and stronger protection of the Amazon.

THE BOLSONARO CAMP emphasizes conservative social policies, market-oriented economics, tighter fiscal restraints, law and order, and political affinity with Trump’s movement in the United States.

Brazil’s democracy contains environmentalists and developers, workers and financiers, farmers and Indians, socialists and conservatives, Catholics and evangelicals, rich and poor, and millions whose views fit no simple ideological box.

Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research — INPE — reported that Amazon areas under deforestation alert fell 36 percent during the August 2025–July 2026 monitoring cycle, to 2,874.38 square kilometers, the lowest value for that period since 2016. INPE reported consolidated 2025 Amazon Legal deforestation of 5,731 square kilometers. Thousands of square kilometers of forest are still disappearing. Illegal mining, ranching, logging, fires, roads, development, and competing land claims continue. Brazil also faces difficult development-versus-conservation choices, including controversy over oil exploration near the Amazon coast.

WILL BRAZIL THWART U.S. DOMINATION AND SAVE EARTH’S AMAZON LUNGS?

The Amazon is Brazilian territory, yet its immense forests influence rainfall, biodiversity, carbon storage, and climate systems extending far beyond Brazil. What Brazilians decide therefore matters to the entire planet.

TRUMP-SPHERE DOMINATORS say: Our economic power gives us leverage over governments whose policies conflict with ours.

BRAZILIAN SOVEREIGNTY COOPERATORS answer: Brazil’s voters choose Brazil’s president. Brazil’s courts decide Brazilian cases. Other nations may negotiate with us, but they do not choose our government.

THE AMAZON’S UNBORN GENERATIONS might add: Your political quarrels will pass. Decide whether the forest remains when you are gone.

Brazil’s Backstory: FROM THE FIRST PEOPLES TO LULA

See video slotted above this post for more on the Trump vs Lula competition over Brazil.

Brazil occupies nearly half of South America. Its history therefore unfolded across many ecological and cultural worlds: the Amazon Basin; the Atlantic coast; the dry Northeast; the central cerrado; the southern grasslands; and the immense river systems that connected communities hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of miles apart.

ANUNNAKI-SEEDED DOMINATORS & ANUNNAKI ANTIDOMINATION ADVOCATES ACTIVATED ALTERNATIVE ATTITUDES IN BRAZILIAN BELIEFS

The so-called “Indians” of Brazil are descendants of Ka-in [Cain in Bibles], the Hybrid Anunnaki Homo sapiens/Homo erectus Ka-in, son of Enki, Chief Scientist of the Nibiran Mining Expedition to Earth from the Planet Nibiru. Anunnaki General Ninurta and Prince Adad/Viracha transported the Hybrids to the Lake Titicaca region to serve as laborers and technicians as the Anunnaki spread their control over South America, Central America, and the Valley of Mexico.

The Hybrids Ninurta and Viracocha, imported from the area now called Iran, spread through South America and became incorporated into successive South American, Central American, and Mexican societies and fiefdoms.

The, albeit mislabeled, “Indians” dealt, as do we all, with the recurring choices humans everywhere must balance between the competing Nibiran/Anunnaki ideologies of domination and cooperation that Earth’s people still face in balancing the entire giving-and-taking dimension.

People lived deep inside what is now Brazil thousands of years before Europeans arrived.

At Serra da Capivara, in today’s state of Piauí, archaeological remains and rock art preserve evidence of very ancient communities. People lived in Brazil for tens of thousands of years.

Securely surviving rock art dates to more than 10,000 years ago. From those first Pho-Indian communities, Portuguese conquest, African slavery, monarchy, republic, dictatorship, and democracy, one question continually returns: WILL THE DOMINATION IDEOLOGY OF RULERS AND THE PARTNERSHIP PARADIGM OF THE PEOPLE OF BRAZIL BALANCE GIVING AND TAKING, or will elitism and the power of the propertied elite stifle the partnership ethos of the poor?

1500 CE: MANY PEOPLES CREATED MANY BRAZILS

People inhabited what became Brazil long before anyone conceived of a country called Brazil. Serra da Capivara in the Northeast preserves some of South America’s richest evidence of ancient human occupation and rock art. Its paintings portray hunting, gathering, animals, dancing, and social life. Over thousands of years, societies adapted in different ways to Brazil’s enormous range of environments.

THE AMAZON contained fishing, farming, and forest-management communities that rivers linked. Archaeology on Marajó Island, near the mouth of the Amazon, reveals large, constructed mounds, elaborate ceramics, and substantial, organized communities.

THE ATLANTIC COAST contained numerous peoples, including many speaking languages of the Tupi family. CENTRAL BRAZIL became home to numerous peoples associated with Jê-language traditions. THE SOUTH included large Guaraní-speaking populations whose settlements and networks extended across areas later divided among Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, and Bolivia. These communities differed in rank, prestige, gender roles, and political authority, yet cooperation among families, villages, and wider networks remained essential to food production, exchange, defense, ritual, and survival. Brazil’s Indigenous diversity continues today; Brazil’s national statistical agency, IBGE, records Indigenous peoples and languages throughout the country.

COMPETING IDEOLOGIES–DOMINATION AND COOPERATION–CLASH IN BRAZIL FROM THE HUMAN GET-GO THERE TO THIS VERY DAY

DOMINATORS, in areas controlled by Europeans and their descendants, demand control of Brazil’s land, labor, and surplus. COOPERATORS: want, but seldom, in areas of colonial and post-colonial control, get communal sharing of forests, rivers, fields, knowledge, obligations, and resources.

1493–1600s: POPE, KINGS AND PORTUGUESE CONQUEST

European rulers approached South America with a radically different premise: distant European monarchs whom Popes — starting with POPE ALEXANDER VI (Rodrigo Borgia) — supported could claim territories inhabited by peoples they had never met.

THE POPE DREW THE FIRST LINE; PORTUGAL AND SPAIN MOVED IT

In 1493, after Columbus returned from his first voyage, Alexander VI issued the papal bull Inter caetera, establishing a north-south demarcation favoring Spain’s claim to newly encountered lands west of a designated Atlantic line. Portugal objected. In 1494, King João II of Portugal and Ferdinand and Isabella of the Castilian monarchy negotiated the TREATY OF TORDESILLAS.

The Spanish and Portuguese moved the line farther west—to about 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. Territory east of the line fell within Portugal’s zone; territory west of the line belonged to Castile. The resulting Portuguese zone included part of eastern South America and became the territorial opening from which Portuguese Brazil expanded enormously. Pope Julius II later sanctioned the agreement.

In 1500, Pedro Álvares Cabral’s expedition reached the Brazilian coast. Portuguese settlement subsequently intensified. Colonists extracted brazilwood, established sugar plantations, and increasingly sought control of Indian land and labor. Rulers declared possession; armed men enforced it; settlers converted territory into private wealth. Religious institutions evangelized, protected communities, disciplined communities, and participated in colonial society.

PORTUGUESE DOMINATORS said, The King possesses this territory. Its forests, fields, and labor will enrich the Crown and its settlers. INDIANS said, Your King lives across an ocean. We live here. Our ancestors, families and communities already belong to this land.

1500s–1700s: SUGAR, SLAVERY, MISSIONS AND THE EXPANDING BRAZILIAN COLONY

Portuguese Brazil became increasingly tied to plantation production. Sugar created enormous fortunes while demanding tremendous labor. Portuguese colonists later imported Black Africans to administer Central American and Valley of Mexico populations and work Brazilian plantations on a massive scale. Brazil consequently became profoundly shaped by African peoples—their labor, agriculture, technologies, religions, music, foods, languages, resistance, and community building.

Enslaved Africans and Afro-Brazilians escaped plantations and created independent communities called quilombos. The most famous was PALMARES, an extensive community of fugitives and their descendants that resisted Portuguese and colonial forces for decades.

Meanwhile, Portuguese expeditions called bandeiras, many originating around São Paulo, penetrated far beyond the Tordesillas frontier. They searched for Indian captives and minerals and expanded the territory effectively controlled by Portugal deep into South America.

The Catholic clergy occupied several positions within this contested world. Jesuit missionaries created settlements or missions where Indian populations were Christianized. Missionaries sometimes defended Indian communities against settler enslavement. Clergy could accompany empire, confront slave hunters, build missions, defend Indigenous communities, or challenge political rulers.

PLANTATION DOMINATORS’ VOICES called for land, sugar, and labor to produce wealth; Native and enslaved voices demanded human communities, family solidarity, cultural preservation, and mutual assistance.

1700s–1825: GOLD, REVOLUTIONARY PRIESTS AND INDEPENDENCE

Gold discoveries shifted immense activity toward Minas Gerais and the interior. Wealth traveled toward merchants, slaveholders, government officials, and the Portuguese Crown while enslaved Africans performed much of the mining labor.

By the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, revolutionary currents crossed the Atlantic world. Brazil experienced conspiracies and rebellions seeking political change.

FREI CANECA — BRAZIL’S REVOLUTIONARY PRIEST

Joaquim do Amor Divino Rabelo e Caneca — Frei Caneca — was a Carmelite friar, teacher, journalist, and revolutionary. He participated in the Pernambuco Revolution of 1817, a republican uprising against Portuguese monarchical rule, and spent years in prison afterward. He later joined the CONFEDERATION OF THE EQUATOR, a movement opposing Pedro I’s centralizing government. He was a Brazilian parallel to Mexico’s Father Hidalgo.

NAPOLEON CONQUERED PORTUGAL; PORTUGUESE ROYALS MOVED TO BRAZIL

Napoleon’s armies invaded Portugal, so the Portuguese royal court transferred itself to Rio de Janeiro in 1808. Brazil suddenly became the seat from which Portugal’s monarchy governed its empire. Brazil’s status rose, and Rio became an imperial capital.

King João VI eventually returned to Portugal in 1821 and left his son Prince Pedro in Brazil.

PEDRO I, BRAZIL’S EMPEROR

Portuguese political authorities attempted to restore stronger metropolitan control over Brazil. Pedro aligned himself with Brazilian elites favoring separation. On September 7, 1822, he proclaimed independence. He subsequently became EMPEROR PEDRO I. Brazil passed from Portuguese colonial rule into an independent Brazilian monarchy led by the Portuguese King’s son.

Portugal formally recognized Brazilian independence in 1825. IMPERIAL DOMINATORS DECLARED: Order requires a throne, an emperor, and obedience from the provinces.

REPUBLICANS AND COOPERATORS COUNTERED: Independence should enlarge the people’s power and change the flag above the government.

1822–1889: EMPIRE, SLAVERY, ABOLITION AND REPUBLIC

Pedro I’s monarchy survived turbulent regional revolts before he abdicated in 1831. His son eventually became PEDRO II, whose long reign brought political stability, economic development, and expanding coffee production while slavery remained fundamental to Brazilian society. Resistance by enslaved people, free Afro-Brazilians, journalists, activists, and abolitionists gradually intensified. International pressure against the Atlantic slave trade also mounted. On May 13, 1888, Princess Isabel, acting as regent, signed the LEI ÁUREA — GOLDEN LAW, abolishing slavery. Abolition transformed the legal status of hundreds of thousands of people. Formerly enslaved families then pursued livelihoods, education, land, security, and political participation within a society whose wealth and property had been accumulated through centuries of slavery.

The monarchy itself soon fell. In 1889, military officers proclaimed a republic. But the recurring question survived the change of government: Would republican institutions actually distribute power more broadly? PROPERTY-HOLDING DOMINATORS DEMANDED THAT Political change must preserve order, estates, and established authority. ABOLITIONISTS AND FREED PEOPLE PROTESTED: Freedom means controlling our labor, keeping our families together, and building lives of our own choosing.>

1889–1964: REPUBLIC, VARGAS AND THE GROWING UNITED

STATES CONNECTED; Brazil’s republic passed through oligarchic politics, regional struggles, industrialization and expanding cities.

GETÚLIO VARGAS came to power in 1930 and became the defining Brazilian politician of the middle twentieth century. His governments combined labor legislation, nationalism, industrial development, political centralization and, during the Estado Novo dictatorship of 1937–1945, authoritarian rule.

The United States recognized Brazilian independence in 1824, and by the early twentieth century officials described the relationship as an “unwritten alliance.”

During World War II, Brazil allied itself with the United States and its Allies. The Brazilian Expeditionary Force fought in Italy, while northeastern Brazil became strategically important to Allied Atlantic operations. After the war, however, the Cold War transformed Washington’s priorities. American officials increasingly evaluated Latin American political movements through the lens of the contest against communism. CENTRALIZERS CAUTIONED: Industry, national development and security require concentrated authority. WORKERS AND DEMOCRATS, on the other hand, harped: Development should increase the dignity, wages and political voice of the people who create it.

1964–2002: MILITARY RULE, RESISTANCE, THE CHURCH AND DEMOCRACY

In 1964, Brazil’s armed forces overthrew President JOÃO GOULART. The

United States government supported the anti-Goulart forces and prepared Operation Brother Sam, a contingency operation involving naval and logistical assistance. Brazil then endured more than two decades of military government. Political opposition was restricted. Activists, students, trade unionists, journalists, clergy, and other opponents challenged the regime.

Latin American liberation theology emphasized Christianity’s obligations toward poor and oppressed people. In Brazil, Archbishop Hélder Câmara of Recife and Olinda became internationally renowned for defending the poor, human rights, and victims of authoritarianism. Other priests, nuns, bishops, and Catholic lay activists worked in poor communities, organized pastoral networks, and defended human rights. Christianity had been embedded in Portuguese colonial expansion, embedding Catholicism in Brazil. Priests became important institutional defenders of Indians, workers, political prisoners, and impoverished communities. This tradition explains why the Latin American church milieu from which Pope Francis later emerged placed such emphasis on poverty, inequality, migrants, and the dignity of marginalized people. Francis belonged to a later historical generation; Frei Caneca belongs directly within Brazil’s revolutionary age.

Popular movements, labor organizations, and political pressure gradually helped restore civilian rule. Brazil received a new democratic constitution in 1988.

AUTHORITARIAN ADVOCATES ASSERTED: National security requires obedience. We must suppress disorder. DEMOCRATIC COOPERATORS COUNTERED: Security worthy of the name protects people, speech, participation, and human dignity.

2003: HOJE — LULA, BOLSONARO, TRUMP AND THE STRUGGLE OVER BRAZILIAN SOVEREIGNTY

Brazilians elected metalworker and trade-union leader LUIZ INÁCIO LULA DA SILVA President in 2003. Brazilian politics since then has swung among competing projects involving redistribution, privatization, workers’ rights, environmental policy, Indigenous rights, development, international alignment, and the enormous question of the Amazon.

JAIR BOLSONARO, president from 2019 through 2022, established a close political relationship with Donald Trump. Lula defeated Bolsonaro in the 2022 presidential election and returned to office in January 2023.

The U.S.–Brazil relationship entered an extraordinary confrontation during Trump’s second presidency. In July 2025, Trump linked punitive trade action against Brazil explicitly to Brazil’s prosecution of Jair Bolsonaro, whom Trump described as the victim of a “witch hunt.” Trump’s administration imposed an additional tariff that brought duties on many Brazilian goods to 50 percent, while exemptions protected several important sectors. Lula called the action an intrusion upon Brazilian sovereignty and defended the independence of Brazil’s judiciary.

Relations temporarily improved after direct Lula-Trump discussions in late 2025 and again in 2026, and the United States removed some of the additional tariffs. Yet the confrontation has revived. On August 17, 2026, Trump again imposed new tariffs on selected Brazilian goods, while Brazil has initiated procedures under its Economic Reciprocity Law that could authorize countermeasures. Lula’s government said Trump’s tariffs were retribution for Lula beating Trump’s pal Bolsonaro and has sought negotiations while asserting Brazil’s sovereign authority. Brazil’s 2026 presidential campaign has now officially begun. Lula is seeking another term; Senator FLÁVIO BOLSONARO, Jair Bolsonaro’s son, is a leading challenger. Lula has accused the United States of interfering in Brazilian politics on behalf of his opponents.

DONALD’S DOMINATION DECLARATION: Our economic power gives us leverage over your government’s decisions. BRAZIL’S DEMOCRACY DEVOTEES DISAGREE; THEY SAY, Brazil’s voters choose Brazil’s government. Brazilian institutions decide Brazilian cases. Nations negotiate with one another as sovereign peoples.

Brazil occupies nearly half of South America. Its history therefore unfolded across many ecological and cultural worlds: the Amazon Basin; the Atlantic coast; the dry Northeast; the central cerrado; the southern grasslands; and the immense river systems that connected communities hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of miles apart.

LULA FIGHTS TO SAVE THE AMAZON, WHOSE TREES ARE THE RESPIRATORY CELLS OF THE EARTH

Trump has not simply resurrected the nineteenth-century Monroe Doctrine, but the historical analogy raises our central question: IS SOUTH AMERICA A U.S. SPHERE OF INFLUENCE — OR DO BRAZILIANS ALONE DECIDE BRAZIL’S POLITICAL FUTURE?

In 2025, Trump openly connected punitive measures against Brazil with Brazil’s prosecution of his political ally, former Brazilian President JAIR BOLSONARO.
On July 30, 2025, Trump imposed an additional 40-percent tariff, bringing duties on many Brazilian goods to 50 percent. The White House explicitly attacked Brazil’s treatment and prosecution of Bolsonaro.

Lula responded that Brazil’s courts, elections, and government belonged to Brazil, not Washington.
In 2026, Washington imposed new tariffs on selected Brazilian goods. Brazil opened a process under its Economic Reciprocity Law that could lead to countermeasures, while Lula continued to call for negotiation rather than an escalating trade war.

August 21, 2026, Lula and Trump spoke directly by telephone. Lula said Trump proposed that U.S. and Brazilian officials meet to discuss the tariff dispute.

TRUMP’S BOLSONARO ALLIES CHALLENGE LULA FOR BRAZIL

LULA’S COOPERATIVE VISION emphasizes social programs, workers, Brazilian sovereignty, diplomacy, and stronger protection of the Amazon.

TRUMP-SPHERE DOMINATORS say: Our economic power gives us leverage over governments whose policies conflict with ours.

ANUNNAKI-SEEDED DOMINATORS & ANUNNAKI ANTIDOMINATION ADVOCATES ACTIVATED ALTERNATIVE ATTITUDES IN BRAZILIAN BELIEFS

The so-called “Indians” of Brazil are descendants of Ka-in [Cain in Bibles], the Hybrid Anunnaki Homo sapiens/Homo erectus Ka-in, son of Enki, Chief Scientist of the Nibiran Mining Expedition to Earth from the Planet Nibiru, who were originally transported as laborers and technicians to the Lake Titicaca region. They spread through South America and became incorporated into successive South American, Central American, and Mexican societies and fiefdoms.

The, albeit mislabeled, “Indians” dealt, as do we all, with the recurring choices humans everywhere must balance between the competing Nibian/Anunnaki ideologies of domination and cooperation that Earth’s people still face in balancing the entire giving-and-taking dimension.

People lived deep inside what is now Brazil thousands of years before Europeans arrived.

At Serra da Capivara, in today’s state of Piauí, archaeological remains and rock art preserve evidence of very ancient communities. UNESCO archaeological finds indicate human occupation dating back tens of thousands of years. Securely surviving rock art dates to more than 10,000 years ago. From those first Pho-Indian communities, Portuguese conquest, African slavery, monarchy, republic, dictatorship, and democracy, one question continually returns: WILL THE DOMINATION IDEOLOGY OF RULERS AND THE PARTNERSHIP PARADIGM OF THE PEOPLE OF BRAZIL BALANCE GIVING AND TAKING, or will elitism and the power of the propertied elite stifle the partnership ethos of the poor?

1500 CE: MANY PEOPLES CREATED MANY BRAZILS

People inhabited what became Brazil long before anyone conceived of a country called Brazil. Serra da Capivara in the Northeast preserves some of South America’s richest evidence of ancient human occupation and rock art. Its paintings portray hunting, gathering, animals, dancing and social life.

Over thousands of years, societies adapted in different ways to Brazil’s enormous range of environments.

THE AMAZON contained fishing, farming and forest-managing communities linked through rivers. Archaeology on Marajó Island, near the mouth of the Amazon, reveals large constructed mounds, elaborate ceramics and substantial organized communities.

THE ATLANTIC COAST contained numerous peoples, including many speaking languages of the Tupi family.

CENTRAL BRAZIL became home to numerous peoples associated with Jê-language traditions.

THE SOUTH included large Guaraní-speaking populations whose settlements and networks extended across areas later divided among Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, and Bolivia.

These communities differed in rank, prestige, gender roles, and political authority, yet cooperation among families, villages, and wider networks remained essential to food production, exchange, defense, ritual, and survival.

Brazil’s Indigenous diversity continues today; Brazil’s national statistical agency, IBGE, records Indigenous peoples and languages throughout the country.

Widespread Amazon populations invite us to investigate ancient movements to the Amazon basin from the Andean-Titicaca region and the relationships among Andean, Amazonian, and coastal peoples.

COMPETING IDEOLOGIES–DOMINATION AND COOPERATION–CLASH IN BRAZIL FROM THE HUMAN GET-GO THERE TO THIS VERY DAY

DOMINATORS, in areas controlled by Europeans and their descendants, demand control of Brazil’s land, labor, and surplus.

COOPERATORS: want, but seldom, in areas of colonial and post-colonial control, get communal sharing of forest, rivers, fields, knowledge, obligations, and resources.

1493–1600s: POPE, KINGS AND PORTUGUESE CONQUEST

European rulers approached South America with a radically different premise: distant European monarchs whom Popes — starting with POPE ALEXANDER VI (Rodrigo Borgia) — supported could claim territories inhabited by peoples they had never met.

THE POPE DREW THE FIRST LINE; PORTUGAL AND SPAIN MOVED IT

In 1493, after Columbus returned from his first voyage, Alexander VI issued the papal bull Inter caetera, establishing a north-south demarcation favoring Spain’s claim to newly encountered lands west of a designated Atlantic line. Portugal objected.

In 1494, King João II of Portugal and Ferdinand and Isabella’s Castilian monarchy negotiated the TREATY OF TORDESILLAS.

They moved the line farther west—to about 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands.

Territory east of the line fell within Portugal’s zone; territory west belonged to Castile.

The resulting Portuguese zone included part of eastern South America and became the territorial opening from which Portuguese Brazil expanded enormously.

Pope Julius II later sanctioned the agreement.

In 1500, Pedro Álvares Cabral’s expedition reached the Brazilian coast.

Portuguese settlement subsequently intensified. Colonists extracted brazilwood, established sugar plantations, and increasingly sought control of Indigenous land and labor.

The similarity to other conquest systems is striking: rulers declared possession; armed men enforced it; settlers converted territory into private wealth.

Religious institutions could simultaneously evangelize, protect communities, discipline communities, and participate in colonial society.

PORTUGUESE DOMINATORS said, The king possesses this territory. Its forests, fields, and labor will enrich the Crown and its settlers.

INDIGENOUS COOPERATORS said, Your king lives across an ocean. We live here. Our ancestors, families and communities already belong to this land.

1500s–1700s: SUGAR, SLAVERY, MISSIONS AND THE EXPANDING COLONY

Portuguese Brazil became increasingly tied to plantation production. Sugar created enormous fortunes while demanding tremendous labor.

Portuguese colonists enslaved Indigenous people and increasingly imported enslaved Africans on a massive scale.

Brazil consequently became profoundly shaped by African peoples—their labor, agriculture, technologies, religions, music, foods, languages, resistance, and community building.

Enslaved Africans and Afro-Brazilians escaped plantations and created independent communities called quilombos. The most famous was PALMARES, an extensive community of fugitives and their descendants that resisted Portuguese and colonial forces for decades.

Meanwhile, Portuguese expeditions called bandeiras, many originating around São Paulo, penetrated far beyond the Tordesillas frontier.
They searched for Indian captives and minerals and expanded the territory effectively controlled by Portugal deep into South America.

The Catholic clergy occupied several positions within this contested world. Jesuit missionaries created settlements or missions where Indigenous populations were concentrated and Christianized. Missionaries sometimes defended Indigenous communities against settler enslavement while simultaneously seeking profound religious and cultural transformation.

Clergy could accompany empire, confront slave hunters, build missions, defend Indigenous communities, or challenge political rulers.

PLANTATION DOMINATORS VOICES called for land, sugar, and labor to produce wealth; voices of Natives and Slaves demanded human communities, family solidarity, cultural preservation, and mutual assistance.

1700s–1825: GOLD, REVOLUTIONARY PRIESTS AND INDEPENDENCE

Gold discoveries shifted immense activity toward Minas Gerais and the interior.
Wealth traveled toward merchants, slaveholders, government officials, and the Portuguese Crown while enslaved Africans performed much of the mining labor.

By the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, revolutionary currents crossed the Atlantic world.
Brazil experienced conspiracies and rebellions seeking political change.

FREI CANECA — BRAZIL’S REVOLUTIONARY PRIEST

Joaquim do Amor Divino Rabelo e Caneca — Frei Caneca — was a Carmelite friar, teacher, journalist, and revolutionary.
He participated in the Pernambuco Revolution of 1817, a republican uprising against Portuguese monarchical rule; spent years imprisoned afterward; and later joined the Confederation of the Equator movement opposing Pedro I’s centralizing government.

He offers Brazil a useful parallel to Mexico’s Father Hidalgo: a priest whose religious identity coexisted with revolutionary political action, though their movements and circumstances differed.

Napoleon’s armies invaded Portugal, so the Portuguese royal court transferred itself to Rio de Janeiro in 1808.
Brazil suddenly became the seat from which Portugal’s monarchy governed its empire.
Brazil was elevated in status, ports opened, and Rio became an imperial capital.

King João VI eventually returned to Portugal in 1821 and left his son Prince Pedro in Brazil.
Portuguese political authorities attempted to restore stronger metropolitan control.
Pedro aligned himself with Brazilian elites favoring separation.
On September 7, 1822, Pedro proclaimed independence.
He subsequently became EMPEROR PEDRO I.
Brazil therefore passed from Portuguese colonial rule into an independent Brazilian monarchy led by the Portuguese King’s son.
Portugal formally recognized Brazilian independence in 1825.

IMPERIAL DOMINATORS DECLARED: Order requires a throne, an emperor, and obedience from the provinces.

REPUBLICANS AND COOPERATORS COUNTERED: Independence should enlarge the people’s power and change the flag above the government.5. 1822–1889 — EMPIRE, SLAVERY, ABOLITION AND REPUBLIC

Pedro I’s monarchy survived turbulent regional revolts before he abdicated in 1831.
His son eventually became PEDRO II, whose long reign brought political stability, economic development, and expanding coffee production while slavery remained fundamental to Brazilian society.

Resistance by enslaved people, free Afro-Brazilians, journalists, activists, and abolitionists gradually intensified. International pressure against the Atlantic slave trade also mounted.

On May 13, 1888, Princess Isabel, acting as regent, signed the LEI ÁUREA — GOLDEN LAW, abolishing slavery.
Abolition transformed the legal status of hundreds of thousands of people.
Formerly enslaved families then pursued livelihoods, education, land, security, and political participation within a society whose wealth and property had been accumulated through centuries of slavery.

The monarchy itself soon fell. In 1889, military officers proclaimed a republic.

The recurring question survived the change of government: Would republican institutions actually distribute power more broadly?

PROPERTY-HOLDING DOMINATORS DEMANDED THAT Political change must preserve order, estates, and established authority.

ABOLITIONISTS AND FREED PEOPLE PROTESTED: Freedom means controlling our labor, keeping our families together and building lives of our own choosing.

1889–1964: REPUBLIC, VARGAS AND THE GROWING UNITED STATES CONNECTION

Brazil’s republic passed through oligarchic politics, regional struggles, industrialization and expanding cities.

Getúlio Vargas came to power in 1930 and became the defining Brazilian politician of the middle twentieth century. His governments combined labor legislation, nationalism, industrial development, political centralization and, during the Estado Novo dictatorship of 1937–1945, authoritarian rule.

Brazil and the United States simultaneously developed an increasingly important relationship.

The United States had recognized Brazilian independence in 1824, and by the early twentieth century officials sometimes described the relationship as an “unwritten alliance.”

During World War II, Brazil allied itself with the United States and the other Allies. The Brazilian Expeditionary Force fought in Italy, while northeastern Brazil became strategically important to Allied Atlantic operations.

After the war, however, the Cold War transformed Washington’s priorities. American officials increasingly evaluated Latin American political movements through the lens of the contest against communism.

CENTRALIZERS CAUTIONED: Industry, national development and security require concentrated authority.

WORKERS AND DEMOCRATS, on the other hand, harped: Development should increase the dignity, wages and political voice of the people who create it.

1964–2002: MILITARY RULE, RESISTANCE, THE CHURCH AND DEMOCRACY

In 1964 Brazil’s armed forces overthrew President João Goulart.

The United States government supported the anti-Goulart forces and prepared Operation Brother Sam, a contingency operation involving naval and logistical assistance.
Declassified U.S. State Department records explicitly document the operation.
Brazil then endured more than two decades of military government.

Political opposition was restricted. Activists, students, trade unionists, journalists, clergy, and other opponents challenged the regime.
Latin American liberation theology emphasized Christianity’s obligations toward poor and oppressed people.

In Brazil, Archbishop Hélder Câmara of Recife and Olinda became internationally renowned for defending the poor, human rights, and victims of authoritarianism. Other priests, nuns, bishops, and Catholic lay activists worked in poor communities, organized pastoral networks, and defended human rights.
Christianity had been embedded in Portuguese colonial expansion; later, parts of the Brazilian Church became important institutional defenders of Indigenous peoples, workers, political prisoners, and impoverished communities. This tradition helps explain why the Latin American church milieu from which Pope Francis later emerged placed such emphasis on poverty, inequality, migrants, and the dignity of marginalized people.
Francis belonged to a later historical generation; Frei Caneca belongs directly within Brazil’s revolutionary age.

Popular movements, labor organization, and political pressure gradually helped restore civilian rule. Brazil received a new democratic constitution in 1988.

AUTHORITARIAN ADVOCATES ASSERTED: National security requires obedience. Disorder must be suppressed
DEMOCRATIC COOPERATORS COUNTERED: Security worthy of the name protects people, speech, participation, and human dignity.

2003: HOJE — LULA, BOLSONARO, TRUMP AND THE STRUGGLE OVER BRAZILIAN SOVEREIGNTY

Former metalworker and trade-union leader LUIZ INÁCIO LULA DA SILVA — LULA became president in 2003. Brazilian politics since then has swung among competing projects involving redistribution, privatization, workers’ rights, environmental policy, Indigenous rights, development, international alignment, and the enormous question of the Amazon.

Jair Bolsonaro, president from 2019 through 2022, established a particularly close political relationship with Donald Trump.

Lula defeated Bolsonaro in the 2022 presidential election and returned to office in January 2023.

The U.S.–Brazil relationship entered an extraordinary confrontation during Trump’s second presidency.

In July 2025, Trump linked punitive trade action against Brazil explicitly to Brazil’s prosecution of Jair Bolsonaro, whom Trump described as the victim of a “witch hunt.” Trump’s administration imposed an additional tariff that brought duties on many Brazilian goods to 50 percent, while exemptions protected several important sectors. Lula called the action an intrusion upon Brazilian sovereignty and defended the independence of Brazil’s judiciary.

Relations temporarily improved after direct Lula-Trump discussions in late 2025 and again in 2026, and the United States removed some of the additional tariffs.

Yet the confrontation has revived.

As of August 17, 2026, Washington has again imposed new tariffs on selected Brazilian goods, while Brazil has initiated procedures under its Economic Reciprocity Law that could authorize countermeasures. Lula’s government has characterized the measures as arbitrary and has sought negotiations while asserting Brazil’s sovereign authority.

The political stakes are especially high because Brazil’s 2026 presidential campaign has now officially begun. Lula is seeking another term; Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, Jair Bolsonaro’s son, is a leading challenger. Lula has accused the United States of interfering in Brazilian politics on behalf of his opponents.

This brings the story back to the question with which Brazil’s colonial history began:

Can a powerful outside authority use its economic strength to influence who governs another people?

Brazil in 2026 answers that question through elections, courts, diplomacy, trade policy, and competing conceptions of national sovereignty.

DONALD’S DOMINATION DECLARATION: Our economic power gives us leverage over your government’s decisions.
BRAZIL’S DEMOCRACY DEVOTEES DISAGREE; THEY SAY, Brazil’s voters choose Brazil’s government. Brazilian institutions decide Brazilian cases. Nations negotiate with one another as sovereign peoples.

REFERENCES

1. UNESCO — Serra da Capivara National Park. Particularly useful for Brazil’s deep human occupation and extraordinary prehistoric rock-art record.

2. Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics — IBGE. Essential for contemporary information on Brazil’s Indigenous peoples, ethnicities, and languages.

3. Anna Curtenius Roosevelt, Moundbuilders of the Amazon. Important archaeological work on complex prehistoric societies of Marajó and the Amazon floodplain.

4. Princeton University Library — “Lines of Demarcation.” Excellent concise explanation of Alexander VI’s 1493 decree and the negotiations leading to Tordesillas.

5. Frei Caneca historical materials. Particularly valuable for understanding the clergy’s extraordinary participation in Pernambuco’s revolutionary movements.

6. Library of Congress — Slavery and Abolition in Brazil-U.S. Relations. Useful source for Brazil’s long abolition struggle and the 1888 Golden Law.

7. U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian — Brazil. Useful overview of diplomatic relations beginning with U.S. recognition of Brazilian independence in 1824 and continuing through the twentieth century.

8. U.S. State Department, Foreign Relations of the United States — Brazil, 1964. Primary documents for Operation Brother Sam and American policy during the overthrow of João Goulart.

9. White House Executive Order 14323, July 30, 2025. Primary U.S. source for Trump’s extraordinary tariff measures against Brazil.

10. Reuters and Associated Press, 2025–August 2026. Useful continuing coverage of Trump, Lula, the Bolsonaro cases, tariff escalation, Brazil’s Reciprocity Law and the developing 2026 Brazilian presidential campaign.

#Brazil #Brasil #BrazilHistory #IndigenousBrazil #Amazon #SerraDaCapivara #Marajoara #TreatyOfTordesillas #PortugueseEmpire #AfricanDiaspora #Slavery #ZumbiDosPalmares #Quilombo #FreiCaneca #BrazilianIndependence #Abolition #LeiAurea #GetulioVargas #JoaoGoulart #OperationBrotherSam #MilitaryDictatorship #HelderCamara #Democracy #Lula #Bolsonaro #DonaldTrump #USBrazil #Sovereignty #Cooperation #DominatorsVsCooperators #EnkiSpeaks

Please share this post.