Normality in the Brazil elections despite the polarization

São PauloThe last time Brazilians stood before the electronic ballot box to choose a new president, in October 2022, the Federal Highway Police (PRF) carried out massive road closures with traffic controls in the Northeast Region, which is the great electoral bastion of the left, to inhibit the vote for Lula da Silva. These blockades were considered by the Supreme Court and the Federal Police as part of the attempted coup d'état, for which the then-president, Jair Bolsonaro, now imprisoned, was sentenced to a 27-year prison term. Now the right-wing candidate has won the first round with 47% of the votes, ahead of Lula's 45%, and the final vote will be on October 25th.

With Lula da Silva (Workers' Party, PT) in power, and seeking the last reelection of his long career, internal democratic normality returned this Sunday –the interference of the United States, however, has hovered throughout the entire electoral process–, in a harsh confrontation with Senator Flávio Bolsonaro (Liberal Party, PL), the firstborn of the Bolsonaro clan.

On social media, the calcified polarization of the last eight years has been more present than ever throughout the day, fed by flawed algorithms: with posts ranging from personal disqualifications and fake news in a very harsh tone, spread en masse by far-right bots, to fine irony and memes, for whose creativity Brazilians are renowned.

At the polling stations, however, the climate has been calmer, at least in general terms. Even so, former president Dilma Rousseff, who suffered an impeachment in 2016 and is now president of the BRICS Development Bank, was harassed by Bolsonaro supporters when she voted in Belo Horizonte. A similar situation was experienced by Fernando Haddad, Minister of Finance this term and PT candidate for governor of São Paulo.

Virgin Mary T-shirts

There have been many queues, some exceeding an hour in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, in a country where voting is mandatory for those between 18 and 70 years old, and where this time the voting receipt from the first round served as proof of life for all retirees and pensioners who receive Social Security benefits, a sector in which Lula prevails over the far right.

The process required a lot of patience. Voters have had to confirm up to six candidates before the electronic ballot box, which go by numbering, because this Sunday they have chosen, apart from the president, two senators, a deputy to Congress, the governor and a regional deputy.

As in the last two presidential elections, there has been a re-edition of the chromatic battle at the polling stations. The absolute majority has been for the Brazilian football teams, which are usually part of the Sunday attire of Brazilians, even though on this occasion there was no match day for the Brasileirão league. L’ARA has witnessed this at various voting points in São Paulo, the largest city in the country.

The extreme right insists on making the t-shirt its own green and yellow of the Brazilian national football team –which, by the way, is experiencing one of the worst moments in its history– as a symbol. Left-wing militants wore the traditional red attire, often with the image of Lula –something that is not prohibited by electoral justice– and with adaptations communists of football team jerseys. Quite a few have been seen in São Paulo of Corinthians, the club of which Lula da Silva is a staunch supporter. Four years ago, the organized supporters' groups –the animation stand of the Paulista team– opened the blockades of many federal highways of the far-right coup plotters that did not accept the return of the left to power.

And this time the religious war that has marked the final stretch of the electoral campaign has reached the ballot box. The news that Flávio Bolsonaro (reconverted to evangelicalism), in the event of reaching the Palácio do Planalto, would withdraw the status of patron saint of the country from the Virgin of Aparecida –a black image venerated since 1717– and the attacks by the far-right candidate have spurred Catholic mobilization.

This Sunday, the Brazilian Bishops' Conference (CNBB) published a message in which it defended the country's sovereignty –one of Lula's arguments against Donald Trump's support for Flávio Bolsonaro–, and in which it added: "We entrust our homeland to the protection of the Virgin Mary.” For the first time, Catholics, mainly elderly women, have been seen going to vote wearing t-shirts with the image of Aparecida, which have become an electoral symbol.