THE REINVENTION OF THE AUTHORITARIAN MINDSET AFTER YEARS OF DEMOCRATIC LIFE

This chapter has aimed to introduce some features of the authoritarian mindset that have been alive and active during central moments of Brazilian constitu­tionalism, particularly during the 1987-88 Constituent Assembly.

The political and judicial systems, which are some of the core legacies both in design and informal practices of that �past’, have proven rather dysfunctional in settling the conflicts that naturally emerge in a country that has gradu­ally become more democratic. There is also, on the other hand, the backlash of that very authoritarian mindset as the country has begun assuming demo­cratic principles as non-negotiable. The representation deficit of the political system, where the same �figures of the past’ keep exerting significant influence, is conspicuous. There lies much of the institutional portrayal of the gap between what that participatory environment of the Constituent Assembly of 1987/1988 aimed to achieve and what the same Constituent Assembly aimed to preserve. It is in this paradox that much of the country’s constitutionalism would be shaped and the dilemmas for the rule of law would be found. If, during the Constituent Assembly, the clash of narratives played a fundamental role in the very draft­ing of the constitutional text, in the period that followed it such a clash had a decisive impact on how constitutionalism would be internalised as a standard practice.

This chapter began with Hobsbawm’s omen and followed the route of a brief introduction to the authoritarian mindset as it has been coined, justi­fied and reinvented with particular emphasis on the process that led to the country’s current constitutionalism. However, it merely suggested some possi­ble connections with recent events in the country, when Brazil was faced with an authoritarian mindset that, more than ever during democracy, reappeared in the figure of President Jair Bolsonaro and the revival of the military. From the drafting of the 1988 Constitution to today, nonetheless, there are many nuances the following chapters will further explore. In this analysis, there is evidently the risk of falling into anachronisms, when the past is portrayed as if it were the present and vice-versa. Yet, as this chapter emphasised, the argument here is not repetition, but preservation through reinvention. The authoritarian mindset has had a considerable capacity for reinventing itself over time. In fact, it is shocking to read analyses by prominent scholars written in the 2000s and compare them with their current insights about what the country has become and may become in the future, as it is also shocking to read analyses of promi­nent scholars during the transition to democracy and their insights about the country just one or two decades later. Many of those analyses might seem outdated today, and some written today might become outdated in the future. Hobsbawm’s cautionary tale certainly applies here. Still, the consensus that Brazil has a conflictive relationship with its authoritarian past appears to be rather immune to change.

If Brazil ended up electing Jair Bolsonaro as President, such an outcome certainly frightened those who have long praised Brazil’s democratic achieve­ments, but it also confirmed a diagnosis that was certainly not new.

The following chapters will explore such a clash of narratives in the very functioning of institutions, in the very commitment or not to the rule of law, and in the very practice of democracy as a continuous struggle for inclusion in a country with such high inequality. Gradually, the signs that led to the rise of a �past figure’ like Jair Bolsonaro and the military may become more visible, but such a narrative would be unsatisfactory if it were based on �monocausal explanations’.^[489] As has been the case in Brazil’s history, the signs that have led to a vibrant democracy are also the signs that have led to its recurring disap­pointments. The question is whether, unlike the situation that has played out in Brazil’s democracy and despite the natural institutional achievements of years of democratic life, Brazil will finally learn from its mistakes. Hobsbawm’s omen is still very much true. But for how long?