January 8th: Remember so that it never happens again.

January 8th is no ordinary date. It is not an "excess," a "crowd outburst," or an isolated episode in Brazilian political history. It was a frontal attack on democracy, planned, encouraged, and sustained by a coup narrative built over years. The invasion and destruction of the headquarters of the Three Branches of Government in Brasília did not arise out of nowhere. They were the logical outcome of a strategy that sought to discredit elections, institutions, and the very idea of ​​popular sovereignty.

None of this would have happened without the ongoing pedagogy of hatred, disinformation, and the delegitimization of the electoral process. The attempted coup was the culmination of an escalation that began long before the 2022 elections and which had, in former president Jair Messias Bolsonaro, its main political and symbolic guarantor. The rhetoric of the internal enemy, the exaltation of violence, the contempt for constitutional rules, and the systematic attack on institutions formed the breeding ground for January 8th.

The ballot boxes have spoken, the coup plotters will not accept it.

Brazil experienced one of the most decisive moments in its recent history in October 2022. The ballot boxes were clear, audited, and monitored by national and international observers. Even so, defeated sectors chose to deny reality. The discourse of fraud—never proven—became fuel for encampments in front of barracks, road blockades, and, finally, for the explicit attempt at institutional rupture.

What we saw in Brasília was the denial of the most elementary principle of democracy: respect for the electoral result. It wasn't a protest, but an insurrection. It wasn't political disagreement, but a refusal of the rules of the democratic game. January 8th revealed, without disguise, that an organized segment of the Brazilian far right was willing to destroy the rule of law rather than acknowledge defeat.

Lula: the victory of democracy over persecution.

The attempted coup of January 8th takes on even more serious dimensions when one remembers who had been elected by popular vote. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was returning to the Presidency of the Republic for his third term after having been imprisoned, convicted, and subsequently politically rehabilitated, in one of the most controversial episodes in the recent history of the Brazilian Judiciary. His election symbolized not only the alternation of power, but the reaffirmation of the rule of law, after years of... lawfare, Institutional erosion and the political use of the judiciary. Attacking democracy at that moment therefore meant trying to prevent popular sovereignty from redressing a historical injustice. January 8th was also an explicit refusal of the democratic reconciliation expressed at the ballot box—an attempt to revoke, by force, the decision of a people who chose to rebuild the country after authoritarianism, political persecution, and institutional dismantling.

The long shadow of the dictatorship: two decades that still weigh heavily.

To understand the gravity of January 8th, it is essential to look back. Brazil lived through 21 years of civil-military dictatorship, marked by censorship, persecution, torture, political assassinations, and the systematic suppression of freedoms. Unlike other Latin American experiences, the Brazilian transition was negotiated, incomplete, and marked by the absence of full transitional justice.

The broad, general, and unrestricted amnesty did not pacify the country—it silenced it. Torturers were not tried, archives remained closed for decades, and state violence was never fully confronted as a crime. The result was the persistence, within Brazilian political culture, of a dangerous tolerance for authoritarianism and a distorted view that coups can be relativized in the name of "order."

January 8th is a direct heir to this unfinished transition. It expresses the persistence of a mentality that never fully accepted the 1988 Constitution and that sees democracy as a concession, not a right.

The state has failed and needs to answer for it.

The episode also exposed serious flaws in the state apparatus. There was negligence, complicity, and, in some cases, explicit sympathy with the coup plotters. The ease with which the buildings were invaded was not accidental. The prolonged leniency towards encampments at the gates of military barracks was also not neutral. Brazilian democracy paid a high price for tolerating the intolerable.

That is why the institutional response cannot be timid. The actions of the Supreme Federal Court have become central to reaffirming a fundamental principle: there is no democracy without accountability. Judging, condemning, and punishing those involved—funders, organizers, and perpetrators—is not revenge. It is defending the constitutional order.

Democracy cannot survive when political crime is treated as mere opinion. Amnesty, in this context, is not pacification: it is an incentive for recidivism.

Memory as a democratic trench

Remembering January 8th is not about revenge. It is a civic duty. Societies that choose to forget their attacks on democracy pave the way for them to be repeated, with more organization and more violence. Latin American history is full of examples of the human, social, and economic cost of coups treated as "excesses of the past."

The presence of Brazilians at the polls, in commemorative events, and in demonstrations in defense of democracy is not an empty ritual. It is a conscious political gesture, a clear message that the country will not accept authoritarian setbacks. Democracy is not just about voting; it is about defending the result of the vote, even when it is undesirable.

Never again is now

January 8th didn't end on January 8th. Its echoes still reverberate in denialist speeches, attacks on institutions, disinformation campaigns, and attempts to rewrite the facts. Therefore, "never again" cannot be just a moral slogan: it needs to be a state policy, supported by justice, civic education, historical memory, democratic regulation of digital platforms, and the strengthening of institutions.

Defending Brazilian democracy today means confronting, without ambiguity, those who tried to destroy it yesterday. There is no possible reconciliation with coup-mongering. There is no neutrality in the face of barbarity. Brazil will only move forward if it makes January 8th not a silenced trauma, but a historical landmark of democratic reaffirmation.

Because to remember is to resist.

And to resist is to ensure that it never happens again.