Until Bolsonaro’s election win, sex workers had been gaining rights. His ultra-far-right, homophobic, racist and mysoginistic views have made the reality much worse.
Ever since a 1904 revolt against the smallpox vaccine, Brazil has run extremely successful vaccination programs.
Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
A 1904 revolt against mandatory smallpox inoculation taught Brazilian health officials a deadly lesson on how to vaccinate a skeptical public. Today President Bolsonaro seems to ignore that history.
A market area in Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital, crowded with people despite the coronavirus pandemic, May 12, 2020.
hmed Salahuddin/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Robert Muggah, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) and Richard Florida, University of Toronto
COVID-19 is spreading fast through not only the world’s richest cities but also its poorest, ravaging slum areas where risk factors like overcrowding and poverty accelerate disease transmission.
In Rio de Janeiro, practitioners of the Afro-Brazilian faiths Candomble and Umbanda are increasingly under attack by evangelical crusaders.
AP Photo/Leo Correa
Robert Muggah, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio)
As evangelicalism spreads across Brazil, some of Rio de Janeiro’s most notorious gangs see minority religions as an affront to God. And they’re using guns to spread their gospel.
Graffiti commemorating Rio de Janeiro city councillor Marielle Franco who was shot dead in an apparent assassination.
Emanoelle Lima/photo by Catherine McNamara
Jair Bolsonaro has very rightwing views likely to put a final nail in the coffin off Brazil’s Africa moment spearheaded by former president Lula da Silva.
The view of Cartagena, Colombia from Tierra Bomba. Despite being one of the most visited cities in South America, Tierra Bomba remains highly impoverished. Why doesn’t large-scale tourism benefit such a community?
Carter Hunt
At many popular destinations, residents are protesting against crowding, rowdy visitors and low wages. With some research, travelers can use their visits to enrich host areas instead of harming them.
Brazil’s jailhouse preachers may not explicitly condone violence against people of other faiths, but they’ve remained largely silent as their well-armed followers wage a holy war.
Reuters/Ricardo Moraes
Robert Muggah, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio)
As hard-line Pentecostalism spreads across Brazil, some drug traffickers in gang-controlled areas of Rio de Janeiro are using religion as an excuse to attack nonbelievers.
In one bloody week in June, 181 Rio residents were shot, including a baby in utero. It’s now impossible not to notice that city’s once-lauded favela “pacification” strategy has all but collapsed.
Residents of the Maré neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro are eight times more likely to be killed by police than other Brazilians. Most victims are young and black.
Rio’s new mayor, a former evangelical bishop, has called homosexuality a sin, but Rio is proud of its tolerance and diversity.
Sergio Moraes/Reuters
Famously freewheeling – but also violent and unequal – Rio de Janeiro has elected a right-wing former pentecostal bishop as mayor. What’s at stake for this ‘gay, black and tolerant’ Brazilian city?
Instead of showcasing a rising global power with a booming economy, the 2014 Games put a spotlight on Brazil’s most serious economic recession since the 1930s, along with a host of social problems.
It’s time to finally put art on the Olympic map, prove the sceptics wrong, and renew and advance some of the more tired aspects of the Games staging process.
An architect rides through the streets of Rio amidst a cacophony of drills and jackhammers. He wonders: Is it worth it? What will the legacy of all this construction be?