Signs that Brazil is a brutally unequal country are an everyday occurrence. This very week, the fact was unequivocally on display. While the percentage of indebted Brazilian families reached a new record at 80%, making its way into the electoral debate, the reaction of a judge to the fear of losing the extravagant privileges of the bureaucratic elite has left the public stunned. Not to mention, generated scandal. “Soon we won’t even be able to pay the bills,” complained the magistrate. Eva do Amaral Coelho, who is white, went even further: “Soon, judges will be like those civil servants working under slave-like conditions.” Last month, Coelho earned about $18,000 in salary and bonuses. Her fellow citizens know it thanks to Brazil’s transparency laws.

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President Lula’s veto of the bill was overturned by Brazil’s congress and senate, meaning it now awaits confirmation by supreme court

Brazil’s largely conservative congress has approved a bill reducing the prison sentence of the far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro, who was convicted last year of attempting a coup.

The bill had initially been passed by congress in December, but President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva vetoed it in January in a symbolic move marking three years since Bolsonaro supporters ransacked the capital, Brasília.

Spain, Mexico, and Brazil have reaffirmed their diplomatic rapprochement following the summit of progressive leaders in Barcelona this weekend and are joining forces to denounce U.S. pressure on Cuba. The three countries called for dialogue in the face of the threat of military intervention on the island and pledged in a joint declaration to increase the delivery of humanitarian aid to address the “dramatic situation facing the Cuban people” after three months of energy cuts imposed by the Trump administration.

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