Brazil’s far-right president-elect Jair Bolsonaro was sworn in on Tuesday during a ceremony in the capital Brasilia, likely marking the beginning of a hard conservative shift in governing Latin America’s largest economy and most populous nation.
Bolsonaro was elected president at the end of October, defeating his rival Fernando Haddad of the centre-left Workers’ Party by a comfortable margin in the second-round runoff.
He has pledged to crack down on crime, tackle corruption and restore traditional family and Christian values in a country that, according to him and many of his supporters, echoing the “anti-globalist” rhetoric of the global authoritarian right, has been besieged by “cultural Marxism”.
Meanwhile, human rights experts, political rivals and environmentalists have expressed grave concern over Bolsonaro’s promises to give police “carte blanche” to kill suspects, “cleanse” the country of left-wing “outlaws” and open up the country’s vast Amazon region to mining interests.
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