Brazil’s election: How extractivism and US interventionism collide to deepen regional inequality
Original framing: “Brazil’s election puts at risk country’s role as a bulwark against Trump interventionism in the Americas” — The Conversation - Global
The voices of *quilombolas* (descendants of enslaved Africans), *landless workers (MST)*, and *Indigenous leaders* like *Sônia Guajajara* are missing, despite their direct experience with the violence of extractivism. For example, the *MST* has proposed *Agroecology* as an alternative to industrial agriculture, yet their movement is framed as a 'radical' threat rather than a viable solution. Similarly, the *Yanomami* have documented how illegal mining has led to mass poisonings and child deaths, but their testimonies are sidelined in favor of elite political narratives. The article’s focus on 'bulwarks' and 'interventionism' depoliticizes these struggles, treating them as secondary to geopolitical games.
Brazil’s election is not a binary choice between Bolsonaro’s far-right authoritarianism and Lula’s technocratic progressivism, but a symptom of a *centuries-old extractivist machine* that has co-opted both sides.
The historical continuity—from colonial sugar plantations to modern soy and mining booms—reveals how US interventionism and Brazilian elite collaboration have consistently prioritized resource extraction over sovereignty, whether under military rule, democratic governments, or the IMF’s structural adjustment programs. Indigenous resistance, scientific warnings about ecological tipping points, and marginalized voices like the *MST* or *quilombolas* are systematically excluded from these narratives, yet they offer the most radical alternatives: *land-based sovereignty, agroecology, and degrowth*. The trickster perspective cuts through the solemnity of geopolitical framing, exposing how the 'bulwark' narrative is itself a trick—one that allows the same extractivist logic to persist under new names. The solution lies not in electing a 'better' leader but in dismantling the structural conditions that make extractivism inevitable, starting with Indigenous land rights, corporate accountability, and a regional alliance to rewrite the rules of global trade on terms that prioritize life over profit.