The Frias family, from the soft dictatorship to the democracy-cracy.

The Frias family never had a good relationship with democracy. In 1964, at the most important moment in Brazilian history up to that point, they participated in the preparation and supported the military coup that eliminated all remaining democracy in the country.

With the dictatorship installed and democracy destroyed, the Frias family's company was responsible for one of the most scandalous crimes of complicity between the private media and state terrorism, by lending cars bearing the company's name so that the persecution of those fighting against the dictatorship would be disguised and could act with greater impunity, arresting, torturing, and killing democracy activists.

This crime should have been investigated and resulted in a human rights violation trial, but it was instead swept under the rug by the amnesty imposed by the military to avoid responsibility for all the crimes committed.

At the end of the dictatorship, in order to clean up the company's image, it began to advocate for democratic transition and the campaign for direct elections. It was a moment of prestige for the company, which was short-lived, because afterwards it threw itself wholeheartedly into the neoliberal government of FHC (Fernando Henrique Cardoso).

The company created a supplement called "The FHC Era," believing that the country would be different, much better, with their preferred candidate. This supplement gradually disappeared, without ever admitting that it represented a continuation of the Collor era and that nothing would change in Brazil.

As if the failure of his preferred candidate and the defeats of his columnist, José Serra, weren't enough, Lula triumphed. The man whom the Folha editor believed couldn't be president of Brazil if he didn't speak English received the fitting answer from Lula, in words and in the most successful government in the country's history.

With Lula, the company was definitively disgraced because it could not accept the success of a government led by a union leader from the PT (Workers' Party), an immigrant from the Northeast. The São Paulo elite felt defeated and demoralized, and the company became their organ of resistance to the greatest process of social democratization that Brazil had ever experienced.

They tried to discredit Lula, supported baseless accusations, published lies about Lula, Dilma, and the PT, but they were always democratically defeated by the Brazilian people at the polls.

Annoyed by the mark of their inglorious past under the dictatorship, they tried to rewrite the country's history, presenting the version that there had been no dictatorship, but a "soft dictatorship." They were vilified from all sides and ended up backtracking, confessing that the cleansing operation of the dictatorship and the company itself had failed.

Having been defeated four times by the Workers' Party (PT), the Frias family's company threw itself wholeheartedly into the coup against Dilma, consistent with its support for the 1964 military coup. With rare exceptions, its columnists obeyed the company's orders and actively supported the coup against democracy.

In the same way that they tried to convey the idea of ​​a "soft dictatorship," they are now trying to convey the idea that there was no coup and that democracy exists in Brazil, through a kind of "democradura," a dictatorship disguised as a democracy.

They had to endure the embarrassment of all the major prestigious international media outlets, including the New York Times, Le Monde, The Guardian, and many others, categorically refuting the versions given by the national media, including the Frias family's company, about what was happening in Brazil. Le Monde even published an editorial criticizing its trust in the Brazilian press's accounts of the coup.

Reduced to a minimal print run, tending to disappear in its printed edition and be reduced to the virtual version, with a total loss of the prestige it once had, the Frias company came to an end after a long process of decline, while Lula and the PT survive all this, fighting for democracy, against which the Frias company squandered everything it had.