Land in São Paulo and go ask for The Economist. You will hear a short, indifferent, 'Não chegou' (it hasn't come in yet). You will then rightly get one more bad impression of the (yet) biggest economy in Latin America. But there's much more to it.
Gabriel, like an angel, came to Dilma Rousseff's life on the first Wednesday of the year. Light, however, did not follow. Much to the contrary.
Brazil's president, notorious for imposing her wanting, banned the circulation of The Economist since the magazine published her, chin to the ground, on the cover of 2016's first edition under the title Brazil's fall. No edition of the magazine, not even the special "The world in 2016", can be found at the newsstands and bookstores in the most important city in Brazil, São Paulo, so we must realize the issues reached no state in the country at all.
Yesterday at Av. Paulista, heart of the city of São Paulo, I saw people ask for the magazine, unavailable even at the prestigious bookstore Livraria Cultura.
One vendor told me, 'There is a dispute going on.' At that bookstore, the display with the name of the magazine was put in the drawer, as if this could erase the first magazine in the world from the mind of all Brazilians. This also reveals how power regards its servants in Brazil. "A bunch of fools. If they cannot see it, they will not ask for it."
The magazine must have calculated and chose just the first edition of the year to cause more impact, but probably did not know the president's second grandson was about to be born. An unpleasant coincidence then came about - the birth of Gabriel (in the state of Rio Grande do Sul) along with the issue of the magazine negatively exposing Ms. Rousseff the most. Major local TV news announced The Economist's initiative by presenting the cover and an overview of the content. The text from the editor was, for the publication, by far the most commented item online that week (see economist.com).
The magazine 's focus topic certainly made Brazil's president known by name widely, but it is hard to believe many people in the world care about the head of Brazil. Therefore the greatest impact is bound to have been felt right by the target, precisely by Ms. Rousseff herself; we bet that was the very magazine's intention.
Rousseff's response
End-of-the-year recess, trace of Christmas mood, none of these made that leader show different patterns. She took immediate, usual 'democratic' measures, i.e. order full boycott of the print editions of the magazine without making this decision public, and, as a happy lady in red, go posing with angelic Gabriel on the lap.
Her reaction, disagreements hard to stand, could not have been any worse.
She has a bad relationship with The Economist at least since it recommended the dismissal of Mr. Guido Mantega (then minister of finance) on the grounds of incompetence. Again then, the president overreacted and accused The Economist of disregarding the sovereignty of a country. In 2014, during her battle for a second mandate, The Economist editors declared that Aecio Neves should win the election (not Dilma). Well, she won - narrowly and under the whole country's suspicion the electronic voting system was tempered with.
Dilma started the second mandate with another minister of finance, but that did not work out. (the change has been repeated over this second term)
The ban on The Economist is astonishing for a couple of reasons. First, the government dwells on declaring Brazil a strong, consolidated democracy, especially for the world to see it as such. How to get away with it while banning the first magazine in the world? It seems a strategy only conceivable by those blind by power. A dangerous sense of power that defies, for instance, the mindset of the much more visible heads of the Isis.
Second, the ban is now long enough to point to the lack of reaction by the press or other institutions that claim to safeguard democracy. Is there any other note, tweet, whatever from anyone, a mere library? I could not find.
As soon as the issue came online, I got the articles - the editorial and the essay - from the internet and also read the translation the newspaper O Estado de S.Paulo promptly published on the last day of the year - bad day to make people read a long, apocalyptic article ("Irredeemable?", Portuguese "Sem salvação?") Reading through the internet must have made a number of readers fail to notice the print edition did not reach the sellers. But, as I witnessed, many others do look for the edition at physical points of sale.
Not seeing specially the Brazilian press denounce the ban on The Economist is as alarming as banning it itself.
No angel falling from heaven just at the occasion of such alarming events could help matters. The desperate Christ depicted by The Economist in that edition is surely hopeless.
How to censor The Economist and get away with it
