The Donald Trump administration has fully entered the Brazilian presidential race, which will hold its first round on Sunday, October 4th. The explicit support for the far-right candidate, Flávio Bolsonaro, has turned into an operation of electoral interference that has forced Lula da Silva, who is running for re-election, and his executive branch to take measures to protect themselves.Brazil, due to its position as a regional leader and for being one of the last great bastions of the left on the continent, has become a priority for the Republican administration within the framework of the reinterpretation of the Monroe Doctrine, which defended “America for the Americans”. Now, Latin America, forgotten during the last decades by Washington, is once again a key zone of influence for the United States, which wants to exercise direct and unilateral dominance there and integrate it into its national security and economic exploitation strategy, curbing Chinese commercial expansion.In the case of the Brazilian elections, there is a coincidence of personal, business, and political interests between Trump and his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, who, in some conflicts generated by the White House, has acted as a counterbalance to the presidential rashness and outbursts. In this case, however, that has not been so.

Brazilian politics remains entrenched and polarized around the figures of Lula da Silva and Jair Bolsonaro, the last two presidents, who personify the two mass ideological movements with the greatest capacity for mobilization this century: democratic labor populism of social inclusion versus the far-right subservient to the interests of the United States.Four years later, there is a second face-to-face at the polls between Lula, who at 80 is seeking an unprecedented fourth term, and Bolsonaro, this time embodied by his eldest son, Senator Flávio, given that his father is disqualified and serving a 27-year and three-month home detention sentence for the coup attempt. It is an unequal confrontation, due to the curriculum and trajectory of the two contenders, in which the current president emerges as the favorite in the polls (41% of preferences in the first round compared to 36% for the oppositionist), but with all scenarios open.The electoral campaign for the October presidential elections – the first round will be on Sunday the 4th and, if necessary, the second will be on the 25th – has started with a low tone, with the protagonists saving their strength, aware that everything will be decided in the second half of September.Everything stays at home

The far-right's preferred candidate for these elections was the current governor of São Paulo, Tarcísio de Freitas, who had the support of landowners, big business, Faria Lima – the São Paulo avenue that names the country's main financial center –, all the centrist "hinge" parties of the Centrão, which in recent years have largely embraced radicalism, the great neopentecostal evangelical churches, and the main media groups that gave him a veneer of "moderation", ignoring the extermination policy that the São Paulo military police, under his mandate, has carried out in the favelas.Tarcísio de Freitas represented a new phase: Bolsonarism without Bolsonaro, a more presentable, modern, and chameleon-like ultraconservatism, stripped of the rudeness and outbursts of the former president. It was even speculated that the former first lady, Michelle Bolsonaro, would form a tandem with the São Paulo governor as a candidate for vice president. This move, however, generated a war of vanities, jealousies, and ambitions within the clan. The four sons, all of them with elected positions, united against their stepmother upon realizing they were losing control of their father's political capital.

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