Country music and cowboy hats: Brazil’s rightward shift

{"text":[[{"start":8.2,"text":"At Villa Country, São Paulo’s premier venue for sertanejo music, the belt buckles are big and the cowboy hats even bigger."}],[{"start":16.6,"text":"“This is what Brazil listens to now,” said Tainá Sampaio, a 24-year-old personal assistant sporting a Texas baseball cap, proud that Brazil’s version of country music is now the most popular genre — even if some of her work colleagues sneer at it."}],[{"start":34.8,"text":"The popularity of sertanejo has become one of the cultural markers of a deep-seated shift in Brazilian politics — the development over the past decade of a conservative identity with heavy American influence."}],[{"start":45.92,"text":"The music has grown in tandem with the explosion in the country’s agricultural sector — economically and politically — whose heartlands have become a bastion of Brazil’s radical right, which has also been boosted by the rapid growth in evangelical Christianity."}],[{"start":60.08,"text":"The polls suggest Flávio Bolsonaro will narrowly beat incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Sunday’s presidential run-off. If Bolsonaro wins, it will demonstrate that the nation’s right has built a resilient, America-coded political movement that goes well beyond his father’s unlikely 2018 election."}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":79.68,"text":"Just as in the US, these social shifts have gained political energy by the perception among conservatives that they are scorned by Brazil’s traditional coastal elites. The Maga inspiration is so direct that it is common at Bolsonaro campaign events to see people carrying American flags."}],[{"start":95.94,"text":"“Politics in Brazil is becoming increasingly like American politics,” said André Borges at the University of Brasília."}],[{"start":103.44,"text":"The conservative constituency had always been present but it has taken on a sharper political edge over the past decade, Borges added. “There has been a cultural backlash to changes in our values, and Bolsonarismo has been able to take advantage of this,” he said."}],[{"start":119,"text":"When Brazil conducted a census in 1980, only 7 per cent of the overwhelmingly Catholic population were evangelical Protestants. By 2022, that figure had jumped to 27 per cent, representing some 50mn people, many living in poor neighbourhoods on the edge of towns and cities."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":136.4,"text":"Often these churches provide a social support network to members who are struggling. But there is also a political undercurrent to their ideas. They place a strong emphasis on personal responsibility that dovetails with a conservative worldview. And they often promote traditional views on the family and sexuality that are anathema to progressives."}],[{"start":155.44,"text":"In one poll this week, 70 per cent of evangelicals said they would vote for Bolsonaro, compared to 26 per cent for Lula."}],[{"start":163.6,"text":"In parallel to the growth of evangelism, younger Brazilians are increasingly attracted to the idea of working for themselves — whether driving a vehicle for Uber or starting a small business in their community."}],[{"start":175.72,"text":"Both of these phenomena are evident in the São Paulo favela of Paraisópolis, a labyrinth of narrow hillside streets crammed with brick buildings and tangled overhead cables."}],[{"start":189.92,"text":"Marcela Novais, 32, has run a small photo-printing and gift store there for 13 years after buying the business on an instalment plan from her former boss."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":196.34,"text":"As a teenager, she briefly worked in a cinema but wanted to be her own boss. This has become a common aspiration in her community, where residents often commute to wealthier neighbourhoods to work in service roles. (Novais’s father is a janitor and her mother a maid)."}],[{"start":196.84,"text":"“We find it hard to hire, as so many people want to start their own venture,” she said. “The new generation doesn’t want to live the kind of life their parents did.”"}],[{"start":197.34,"text":"Beatriz Santana, who works in Marcela’s shop and was previously a Catholic, joined an evangelical church almost a decade ago. The church helped the 25-year-old through a period of depression and also runs groups promoting personal development, where she learnt multimedia skills."}],[{"start":197.84,"text":"“The scriptures say that God wants us to prosper. God has this vision for us to evolve and grow,” she said. “I also have the aim of working for myself further ahead.”"}],[{"start":206.12,"text":"Some on the right are trying to fuse entrepreneurship with religion in echoes of the American ‘prosperity gospel’ movement. Pablo Marçal, an influencer and Bolsonaro ally, promotes what he calls “the theology of coaching”, which combines business ideas and self-help with evangelical scripture. However, Novais warns people are being “sold an illusion” through some of these aspirational narratives."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":229.4,"text":"“It’s not as easy as the internet suggests,” she said. “You won’t open a business today and get rich tomorrow.”"}],[{"start":235.48,"text":"The other factor behind the conservative shift is the country’s emergence over the past two decades as an agricultural superpower, becoming the biggest producer of soyabeans and beef in the world. Historically dominated by cities on the coast, much of the economic dynamism now comes from the interior."}],[{"start":252.38,"text":"Just as the growth in the US sunbelt, the region stretching across the southeast and southwest, shaped the modern Republican Party, the fast-growing agricultural areas in the centre-west and south-east have become a rightwing bastion."}],[{"start":266.16,"text":"Their cultural influence has also grown. In Spotify’s list of the top 20 artists in Brazil last year, 12 were sertanejo musicians. While Rio de Janeiro and Salvador have long been the spiritual homes of Brazilian music such as samba and bossa nova, the sertanejo industry is based 1,000 miles inland, in Goiânia, a city in the centre of the agricultural belt."}],[{"start":288.48,"text":"Brazil’s cowboy culture is also celebrated at rodeos. The biggest event, at Barretos in São Paulo state, takes on a political tint in election years. Lula has never attended but Bolsonaro appeared this August."}],[{"start":301.32,"text":"“Everyone who believes in God knows that agriculture is the heart of Brazil,” he told the huge rodeo crowd."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":307.6,"text":"It was not inevitable that these social currents would harden into a rightwing political identity. But in the past decade, the left has found it much harder to engage with these groups. For many evangelical leaders, one of the crucial moments was the approval of same-sex marriage in 2011 under a Workers’ Party (PT) government. Since then, many pastors have urged people to vote for rightwing candidates."}],[{"start":329.54,"text":"Like the Democrats in the US, Lula’s PT has a large constituency of urban professionals influenced by identity politics. It has been caught in the trap familiar to many leftwing parties of having a working-class base that is more socially conservative than its middle-class activists."}],[{"start":345.6,"text":"And like the US in the Donald Trump era, there has been a tendency for some intellectuals to dismiss these phenomena, arguing poor evangelicals are being manipulated by their pastors or that the popularity of sertanejo is the result of the backing of big agricultural interests."}],[{"start":360.78,"text":"Such sentiments are a perfect foil for rightwing populists. The ability to channel resentment towards cultural elites is one reason the Bolsonaros, a family of career politicians from an upper-middle-class suburb in Rio, have managed to position themselves as outsiders."}],[{"start":375.92,"text":"The claims of condescension came to a head during this year’s carnival in Rio. A leading samba school put on an homage to Lula, which sought to make fun of people it saw as his opponents — including farmers, evangelical churches and the “traditional family”."}],[{"start":390.68,"text":"Flávio Bolsonaro used the resulting furore to build his credentials with evangelicals, accusing the samba school of “mocking your faith, your pastor and your church”."}],[{"start":400.48,"text":"As the right has grown in strength over the past decade, Lula has remained a highly competitive candidate, in part through the personal connection he has developed with many poorer Brazilians over his decades in politics."}],[{"start":412.2,"text":"Fabio Lima, a sertanejo fan at Villa Country originally from a part of the rural hinterland in Minas Gerais, said he knows lots of people from his hometown, Uberaba, who will back the 80-year-old one more time."}],[{"start":424.52,"text":"“But when he leaves the scene, who knows what happens?”"}],[{"start":429.96,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1792824727_1028.mp3"}