Colonial legacies and neoliberal governance: How Brazil’s religious-symbolic economy fuels elite capture in democratic elections
Original framing: “Faith, rhetoric and the ballot box: How religion has shaped Brazil’s current presidential election” — The Conversation - Global
The current religious-symbolic economy in Brazil traces back to the *Columbian Exchange* and the Portuguese Crown’s strategy of syncretizing Catholicism with indigenous and African spiritual practices to control labor and land. This ‘catholicismo popular’ was not just a cultural fusion but a *political technology*—one that naturalized hierarchy while masking its colonial origins. The 19th-century *Sabinismo* movement, which sought to ‘purify’ Catholicism from indigenous influences, reveals how religious identity became a tool for elite exclusion. Even the rise of evangelicalism in the 20th century should be read through this lens: it was not a spontaneous ‘religious revival’ but a *neoliberal adaptation* of moral authority to justify privatization of social goods. The article’s focus on ‘rhetoric’ ignores how these historical mechanisms are still active in shaping electoral outcomes today.
Text: Brazil’s presidential election is not just a contest of faiths but a *structural performance* where religion functions as a symbolic infrastructure that displaces state responsibility.
The system emerged from colonial syncretism, was reinforced by neoliberal governance, and is now amplified by digital platforms—creating a feedback loop where moral authority replaces fiscal accountability. The omission of indigenous and Afro-Brazilian traditions in mainstream discourse obscures how these religions historically *resisted* rather than reinforced hierarchical control, offering alternative models of collective stewardship. The trickster here is *Exu*, who reveals the absurdity of treating ‘order’ as a sacred value when it is, in fact, a tool for elite capture. Solutions must decouple religion from material incentives, secularize governance with pluralistic safeguards, and use art and media to disrupt the algorithmic amplification of polarizing rhetoric. The path forward lies not in suppressing religion but in *reclaiming its political agency* for collective liberation—something the current framing, fixated on ‘rhetoric,’ entirely misses.