As January 6th approached, it was easy to spot features and articles on the Internet analyzing again the 2021 US Capitol attack carried out by backers of former US president Donald Trump. In some of these pieces their authors pondered about the consequences of that insurrection.
One of the most worrying consequences actually materialized yesterday when a mob of supporters of Brazil's far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro descended on Brasília invading the country's Palácio do Planalto (the official workplace of the president of Brazil), the National Congress of Brazil and the Supreme Federal Court, located at the Praça dos Três Poderes (Three Powers Plaza).
The mob was protesting against the recently elected and sworn in leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in an episode that seemed to follow Donald Trump's 2020 playbook and that instantly brought to mind the US Capitol invasion.
Lula defeated Bolsonaro in election run-offs last year, but the former president questioned the results, stating that Brazil's electronic voting system was prone to fraud and causing election deniers to mobilize in the weeks that followed.
In a press conference, Lula, who was on an official trip to São Paulo state overseeing flood relief at the time of the insurrection, blamed Bolsonaro who, from Florida where he flew before the end of his mandate, defended his government on social media.
Lula called the attackers "fascists" and "fanatics" and complained about a lack of security in the capital, stating that authorities had allowed the attack to happen (a supreme court justice also ordered to remove the pro-Bolsonaro governor of the federal district where Brasília is located from his post for 90 days).
After helping creating a Bolsonarista movement (business magnate and Twitter's CEO Elon Musk is among those ones who believed conspiracies by Bolsonaro's supporters claiming that Twitter personnel gave preference to leftwing candidates during the elections in Brazil...), social media played a role also in the insurrection, as the attack was organized on platforms such as WhatsApp and Telegram.
Meta, Facebook and Instagram's owner, announced it will take down content that praises the storming of government buildings in Brazil's capital, in particular posts with the code "Festa da Selma" (this word being a reference to "selva" - "war cry"; "festa" means "party") that protesters were encouraged online to attend.
In the hours that followed security forces managed to retake the buildings, arresting 1,200 people, according to reports.
Bolsonaro represents now an issue also for the US authorities who will have to decide what to do with him and if he faces consequences. Two Democrats in the US Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Joaquin Castro, are also calling for Bolsonaro's extradition from the US.
In this "assault on democracy", as US president Joe Biden defined it, there were some unlikely protagonists, Oscar Niemeyer's architectures designed at the end of the '50s and built in the decade that followed. In the film L'Homme de Rio (That Man From Rio, 1964) directed by Philippe de Broca and starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Françoise Dorléac, the modernist architectures of this utopian city designed to shape a new identity for Brazil, take centre stage.
The main character, Adrien, is often framed contemplating the landscape, running or cycling around it, climbing buildings to escape the hitmen looking for him. Partially completed modern structures inspired by Swiss-French modernist architect Le Corbusier create distinct shapes around him, giving a further sense of dynamism to his actions and the impression that this new and strange partially built city in which the main characters move, is a dream being moulded out of the red rugged earth.
Yesterday, instead, these architectural spaces were colonized by Bolsonaro's supporters clad in yellow-and-green, the colours of the Brazilian flag that the former president turned into a sort of personal trademark. Protesters were filmed as they ran in the main square, climbed on the roof of the national congress building or as they roamed the building's corridors, tossed around furniture, equipment and works of art, destroyed official documents and vandalised the nearby supreme court, whose windows were smashed.
The attack has been condemned by leaders all over the world, but there is something more that could be done on a legal level: the attackers destroyed indeed public property, buildings that represent the Brazilian institutions and the democratically elected president.
Yet the buildings are also part of Brasília and the city was chosen as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987 due to its modernist architecture and uniquely artistic urban planning. It often happens that, sadly, World Heritage sites are destroyed or damaged during a war and such an act is usually considered as a crime against the common heritage of humanity.
The common cultural heritage is protected by national and international laws and the International Criminal Court (ICC) may intervene when a shared heritage or a World Heritage site is destroyed or damaged. Crimes committed against cultural heritage constitute indeed an attack on a particular group's identity and practices, but, in addition, also an attack on an essential interest of the entire international community and this could be applied to Brasília's case.
Hence if Bolsonaro's supported vandalized a World Heritage site, they could be condemned by a Brazilian court, but also by the International Criminal Court and, who knows, maybe Bolsonaro could be extradicted for instigating an insurrection and a crime against cultural heritage. The punishment for them all? My eldest nephew suggests that all those arrested should work on the reforestation of the Amazon rainforest. Brilliant idea: it is indeed only by actively taking care of our shared cultural heritage that we can learn how to protect it.
In the meantime, let's keep in mind the architectural and cultural importance of World Heritage Sites and, for those fashion houses always on the lookout for unique locations for their runway shows, well, keep Brasília in mind. Beauty can not erase the brutality of such an attack against democracy, but it can definitely bring back a little bit of that modernist utopian mood seen in L'Homme de Rio that Brasília may benefit from.
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