January 08th: What is the fundamental question?

Three years ago, Brazil experienced yet another attempted coup against popular democratic governments. At that time, only eight days into President Lula's third term, he was defeating, at least electorally, the 2016 coup that had ousted President Dilma Rousseff and imprisoned him in 2018 to enable the electoral fraud that allowed Bolsonaro to reach the Planalto Palace.

From 2023 onwards, we have seen significant action from the judiciary through the Supreme Federal Court (STF) to punish participants in the attempted coup of January 08, 2023. Last year, we reached the peak of this action with the arrest of the coup's leading figures, including Bolsonaro himself. This group even had the objective of assassinating President Lula (PT), Vice-President Geraldo Alckmin (PSB), and STF Justice Alexandre de Moraes.

This situation is truly significant considering the cliché that Brazil never punished the coup plotters, murderers, torturers, and traitors who constituted the political regime of the 1964 Military Dictatorship. But being significant doesn't mean it's enough. Hell is full of people with good intentions.

The Brazilian parliament is dominated by coup plotters, which is why they approved amnesty to free members of their social base who are imprisoned, as well as their leaders. But this issue is not the fundamental one.

The attempted coup of January 08th, as well as to a large extent the 2016 coup, was coordinated by the Armed Forces. The Armed Forces, as well as the entire state institutional framework, have at their core a dynamic of operation tied to foreign interests, primarily those of the USA.

In this sense, what I mean by this is that we can win on the electoral field, we can move forward with legal measures against certain coup plotters, we can move forward with some social programs to address the fundamental needs of the working class. However, the fundamental structure of the coup plotters, the machinery for overthrowing national interests and popular democratic governments, will remain standing and ready to do so.

At this moment, this structure has been acting from the flanks and not frontally, but it is merely waiting for a moment of weakness to launch an offensive against the country. When that moment arrives, the ever-wavering elements of the national bourgeoisie, who are, moreover, subordinate to imperialism, will not hesitate to join forces with the coup plotters. The very approval of the amnesty and the signs that the judiciary has been negotiating for reduced sentences already show signs of this.

The government and popular forces, in general, have been mistaken in relying solely on institutional means, with agreements between the branches of power and a reasonable position for the government regarding election polls.

The government was, at one point in 2025, experiencing a decline in its popularity, a situation that only reversed when it decided to confront American imperialism, personified in the government of Donald Trump (Republicans), and the National Congress with its anti-popular agenda.

At that moment, instead of taking advantage of the popular support for its agenda to raise fundamental issues that need to be changed in the country, such as the need to reform the Armed Forces and other structural reforms like politics, engaging in public debate together with popular organizations, the government and popular organizations channeled this discontent of the people with the attacks of imperialism and the National Congress so that there would be a resolution at the institutional level.

Even though the presidential veto of the amnesty for the coup plotters approved by the National Congress is expected, the fight against the coup on this January 08, 2026, has a merely performative character because the government and popular forces are afraid to engage in a concrete confrontation to attack the fundamental issues that can truly protect the country from the coups of imperialism and its internal agents. 

Without a genuine process of transforming the country's political regime through public debate involving the broad masses of the people, there is no effective defense of national sovereignty or fight against the coup plotters.