Beef, Bible and Bullets

Brazil in the Age of Bolsonaro

By: Richard Lapper

Narrated by: Leighton Pugh

Backed by Brazil’s wealthy agribusiness groups, a growing evangelical movement, and an emboldened military and police force, Jair Bolsonaro took office in 2019. Driven by the former army captain’s brand of controversial, aggressive rhetoric, the divisive presidential campaign saw fake news and misinformation shared with Bolsonaro’s tens of millions of social media followers. Bolsonaro promised simple solutions to Brazil’s rising violent crime, falling living standards and widespread corruption, but what has emerged is Latin America's most right-wing president since the military dictatorships of the 1970s. Famous for his racist, homophobic and sexist beliefs and his disregard for human rights, the so-called ‘Trump of the Tropics’ has established a reputation based on his polemical, sensationalist statements. Written by a journalist with decades of experience in the field, Beef, Bible and Bullets is a compelling account of the origins of Brazil's unique brand of right-wing populism. Lapper offers the first major assessment of the Bolsonaro government and the growing tensions between extremist and moderate conservatives.

©2021 Richard Lapper (P)2022 Manchester University Press

Great read prior to Brazil trip

Excellent book to listen to in preparation for a trip to Brazil. The book explores the country's politics since the return to democracy in 1985, focusing extensively on Bolsonaro, but not exclusively. There are long sections on the rise of Luis Inácio Lula da Silva to the presidency in 2003 and also of the presidency of his successor, Dilma Rousseff, in 2010. There is just enough detail about the inner workings of Brazil's multi-party system and the payoffs and machinations that go on between the parties to keep the reader interested without getting bogged down.

I really appreciated the in depth explanation of the "Car Wash" scandal ("Lava Jato") that led to Lula's arrest and eventual conviction in 2018 for corruption and money laundering. I knew he had been sentenced to prison, but never really understood the whole case until reading this book.

Throughout, there's a lot of information about Brazil's economy, which is to be expected since the author was a journalist for the Financial Times for decades. Again, I feel he gave just enough detail to be informative without getting boring for this non-economically minded reader.

I also really appreciated the introduction to the book, where the author explains his point-of-view. The description of his journey from impressionable, left-leaning student living in South America during the abuses of the Pinochet dictatorship in the 1970s, to a decidedly right-leaning, pro-free-market journalist today helped me situate his analyses along that familiar left-right scale. To my decidedly leftist sensibilities, I felt he did a good job of objectively analyzing the various governments, both conservative and liberal, that are covered in the book.

[I listened to this as an audio book very well performed by Leighton Pugh. It's not easy to narrate a non-fiction book full of statistics and lots of Portuguese names. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this narration.]