The series of invasions and depredations in the buildings of Praça dos Três Poderes in Brasília on the afternoon of January 8, 2023, a Sunday, shocked due to the violence carried out by Bolsonaro protesters, but did not surprise all the characters who, for professional reasons, follow the institutional daily life in the federal capital, such as journalists and politicians.
That day, senator Eliziane Gama (PSD-MA) remembers that she was at her home in São Luís, after going to the Assembly of God, where she works as a Sunday Bible school teacher, when she saw a message in a Whatsapp group with images of destruction in Brasília.
“I said: guys, this can’t be true. This is a montage, it’s not true,” he told program Reporting Pathsfrom the TV Brasilwith the participation of Brazil Agency.
Brasília (DF) 06/06/2023 Senator and CPMI rapporteur for the coup, Eliziane Gama. Photo: Lula Marques/ Agência Brasil
Frightened, the parliamentarian went to her mother’s house where the television was broadcasting the barbarity live.
“I was shocked. It took me minutes to believe what I was seeing”, he says, remembering the crowd climbing the ramp of the National Congress, breaking the building’s glass and occupying a part of the Federal Senate, where he has served his mandate for five years.
The impact was revived when the following Monday (9), returning from São Luís, Eliziane Gama found “a desolate, war-like environment” in the Senate. “It looked like a horror movie: the building was completely dark, [com] the floor completely wet, [e] the windows destroyed. You couldn’t walk inside the National Congress.”
Still amazed by the destructive voracity of the invaders, the senator reveals that the possibility of disturbance, albeit absurd, was on the horizon.
“What happened was something that we watched, that we said couldn’t happen, but we never stopped to think and say that this will happen.”
In the opinion of Eliziane Gama, who was the CPMI rapporteur on January 8, everything that was seen was sown for years by Jair Bolsonaro when he held the Presidency of the Republic (2019-2022) and was an attack on democracy.
“He questioned the election process, questioned the vulnerability of the electronic voting machine. So, this thing of creating instability in the democratic process, it automatically created a cushion of conditions for the most extremist Brazilian movement to reach what we saw on January 8th.”
Bolsonaro’s signature
January 8 has become a date on which people tend to remember where they were and what they were doing when they received news of the impact, as happened in the broadcasts of the first man’s landing on the moon (1969), Ayrton’s fatal accident Senna (1994) or the crash of planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York (2001).
As happened with the senator, journalist and writer Bianca Santana vividly remembers where she was when she found out about the incidents: she had landed in Brasília from São Paulo that Sunday afternoon. I was still on the plane when I started receiving messages on my cell phone asking if I had arrived safely.
Curious, she started searching on the device to see what was happening. A friend picked her up at the airport in the federal capital and took her straight home.
“We decided to stay indoors. He didn’t even go out to eat.”
For Bianca Santana, the intention she initially saw on her cell phone screen “had a very strong signature.” She recalls that Jair Bolsonaro instigated the chaos, depriving the credibility of the voting system. “He announced numerous times that he would not accept the results of the polls.” For her, the former president “all the time called into question the population’s trust in the electoral process. This is already a process of attempted coup.”
Brasília (DF), 09/11/2024 – Leandro Demori on the DR program with Demori. Photo: Bruno Peres/Agência Brasil
In the opinion of journalist Leandro Demori, who presents the program Getting Real with Leandro Demoriin TV Brasilfeelings against democracy were provoked by Jair Bolsonaro even before he came to power.
“In the 2018 election, [Bolsonaro] had already raised the possibility of electoral fraud, the printed vote agenda, and [a ideia] that the system was not secure. This all ends up ending on January 8th.”
Journalist Juliana Dal Piva, author of the book Jair’s Business: the forbidden history of the Bolsonaro clanassesses that the former president “created a narrative based on a lie and intensified this lie” over time, especially in the last two years of his term, and despite the dissemination of falsehoods “refused to admit that he did not I had proof.” She remembers that Bolsonaro “was elected and re-elected [para] several terms as federal deputy [total de seis mandatos] and as President of the Republic through the electronic voting system.”
Staged coup
Taking actions against the election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was expected by the senator from Randolfe Rodrigues (PT-AP).
“I knew they would not peacefully accept the result of the October 30, 2022 elections. I was aware of that. So for me it was no surprise.”
He, however, admits to being appalled at the lack of initiative on the part of security forces to protect public buildings.
“What I did not expect was the coordinated and organized negligence to allow them to access the headquarters of the Three Powers – the terrorists of that day. But when I saw them invading the National Congress, my feeling at that moment was that there was a coup d’état underway.”
Randolfe Rodrigues, who has a degree in History, says he feared an outcome similar to that in Chile in the 1970s, when President Salvador Allende was surrounded at the La Moneda Palace by troops led by General Augusto Pinochet. “I was afraid that Brasília – January 8th would be a Chilean September 11th of 1973.”
Brasília (DF) 04/11/2024 Senator Randolfe Rodrigues. Photo: Lula Marques/ Agência Brasil
The possibility of a new coup d’état in Brazil was so much raised that the writers of the production company Porta dos Fundos created two humorous sketches simulating the mobilization of military personnel to carry out a new coup intervention.
“There was already, you know, this shadow of the coup. She had been there for a long time, right?”, recalls publicist Antonio Tabet, one of the production company’s partners and writers. “There was a lot of talk about this, there was a lot of indirectness, truncated communication, some veiled threats, and the fact that the government of the time [2019-2022] Being aligned with ideals and interests that were not exactly democratic made this subject effervescent.”
In Tabet’s opinion, the sketches Coup in Brasilia and Coup in Rio they were dissuasive to some less democratic spirits. “I’m sure these videos circulated a lot, each one has millions of views. And it certainly hit someone who wanted to do it and who changed their mind after seeing that.”
“Humor informs in a friendly way. Sometimes, when a person watches a news program, they cannot really understand how institutions work, what they are for, what this is, what the real danger is, the real ridiculousness of it. The humor goes there and shines a spotlight on it”, believes the screenwriter.
On January 8, as if following a well-rehearsed script, thousands of people who were camped in the Urban Military Sector in Brasília began a long march at 1 pm to Praça dos Três Poderes.
At 3pm, the coup plotters managed to climb the Congress ramp to invade and destroy the building. Twenty minutes later, other vandals tore down the Planalto Palace’s insulation bars, climbed the ramp, broke the glass on the facade and entered the building. At 3:37 pm, they began the invasion of the headquarters building of the Federal Supreme Court (STF).
THE Brazil Agency sent a message, on Monday (6), to lawyer Paulo Bueno, defender of former president Jair Bolsonaro, for a demonstration, but has not received a response so far. The space remains open.
*With interviews by Ana Passos, Marieta Cazarré, Patrícia Araújo and Thiago Padovan, from TV Brasil
