The year 2024 is likely to be a lukewarm economy in Brazil and the world, and hot politics for many.
Donald Trump could become US President again if he is not prevented from running for office, which would also be very relevant.
He is increasingly Mussolinian or, better yet, Putinian, and he is more capable and determined to manipulate the “system” and defeat the “deep state” that, as he says, has prevented him from restoring America's greatness. Given the court outcome, the election will simmer all year long; The primaries begin in January.
With regard to the interests of the Brazilian public, the election of the American president may be the most striking. It must be a definition that can change the direction of the wind and the perception of Brazilian political elites.
To say that victories by authoritarian demagogues will have an impact on the electorate is more than frivolous speculation, with little more to it. But in the political world there are usually contagions and inspirations.
For some 60 years, Argentina and Brazil conducted similar economic experiments, often with similar failures, carefully observing the successes and many disasters in their neighbors.
We have had warlord dictators, military dictatorships, developmentalism, debt crises and more or less contemporary liberaloid reversals.
It's no coincidence that the similarity of adventures has popularized the beverage advertisinginspired phrase, the “Orloff Effect”: “Tomorrow I'll be you.”
This stopped in the late 1990s with Brazil's relative economic and political stabilization. Put yourself in the shoes of a “relative”, good. But the comparison in this case is with Argentina.
Argentina is, of course, interested because of Javier Milei, the youngest and loudest scion of the “antisystem” demagoguery that has plagued the world since the middle of the last decade. It is very difficult to make a reasonable, considered and objective analysis of your fate, especially because Milei is neither taken into account nor reasonable.
His government project has so far been an improvised mess with an authoritarian overtone and uncertain implementation.
However, Milei encourages comparisons with Jair Bolsonaro; Bolsonarism and Brazilian libertarianism were boosted by the victory of dog libertarianism in Argentina. The fate of his government, which will be revealed in 2024, will give Brazil's political and economic leaders food for thought.
This year 2024 is also the year of local elections in Brazil. In every round of the mayoral election you hear the cliché about the alleged irrelevance of the political balance of this election for the presidential election campaign two years later and similar things.
However, any attentive observer will notice how much the victories in the cities say about the country's political constitution, about underwater currents or ideological affectations, about the effect of institutional changes.
Note the spread of the centrão, conservatisms and reactionaries in the 2020 local elections, almost repeated in the 2022 congressional elections, setting the tone for institutional changes (advancement of parliamentary power, the right) and important limits for Lula 3.
It seems obvious that municipalities, Trump and Milei should have the greatest influence on Brazil's political climate. But there will also be other elections that could come into discussion.
There will be something like a presidential election in Venezuela in October. The left could also return to power in Uruguay in October.
Despite the fiction that constitutes the idea of Latin America, we pay very little attention to Mexico. Of greater interest is that Mexicans are expected to elect a woman president for the first time in June.
Government member Claudia Sheinbaum, an environmentalist, slightly leftwing, is the favorite against the second option, initially Bertha Xóchitl Galvez, from the centerright party, of indigenous origin.