"National polarization has intensified over the past two years" in Brazil, a Genial/Quaest survey cited by financial news outlet Valor Econômico revealed in October .
Former President Jair Bolsonaro was recently sentenced to 27 years in prison for his role in a coup plot with which he sought to remain in power after losing the 2022 general election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. President Lula himself had earlier served jail time for corruption -- charges which were annulled a year before the election.
This context of bitter rhetoric and political violence has left 83% of respondents claiming that the country is more divided today.
South America's largest nation isn't the only one going through such a process. Analysts say the country's political climate increasingly mirrors that of the U.S., where polarization has eroded democratic trust and turned ideological opponents into perceived enemies.
"People's political preferences are starting to interfere with their personal lives," Dr. André Borges, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Brasília told the European Centre for Populism Studies (ECPS) in September.
These concerns were at the forefront of the 10th Horasis Global Summit, which took place in São Paulo last month. Speaking on the sidelines of the summit, Licia Mesquita, President at Impact Hub Brazil, told Latin Times that "Brazil has gone through a period of political polarization, but I wouldn't say we're becoming like the American political landscape."
"Our reality is more complex," she noted, pointing to Brazil's "over 15 political parties and at least three major ideological currents."
Mesquita also believes mood is slowly shifting. "Recently, we've seen signs that polarization may be losing strength, as civic movements and government actions push toward more dialogue and shared agendas," she said, pointing to a "growing social fatigue with division" as a sign that Brazil could be turning a corner.
Political violence and disinformation in Brazil
Nádia de Souza, CEO of cosmetics company Khenē and member of the BRICS Business Council, told Latin Times that Brazil's deepening divisions are the result of "structural socioeconomic inequality," encompassing income, as well as access to education, information and opportunity.
Digital disinformation, she elaborated, has intensified the "us versus them" mentality.
Indeed, Brazil is "drowning" in disinformation, according to a 2025 study from the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ). Its 12 leading digital and print news outlets reach just 0.82% of the population, and Brazil performed the worst amongst OECD countries for the ability to identify false content.
"When these gaps widen, they generate feelings of injustice, frustration, and distrust between distinct social groups," said de Souza. She added that while Brazil has solid institutional frameworks to safeguard democracy, "the real strength of these institutions depends less on their formal architecture and more on the ethical and civic maturity of the people who lead them."
The real cure for populism in Brazil, the CEO contends, is rebuilding a connection between citizens, politics, and leadership, "not through promises of salvation, but through active participation, dialogue, and collective responsibility."
Conversely, Fabia Monteiro, a business consultant from Rio de Janeiro, sees similarities between U.S. and Brazilian politics. "We are divided here ... and people are crossing limits," she told Latin Times.
Monteiro is wary of upcoming elections, and how leaders might begin to rebuild trust in a Brazil where "people feel that they can kill everybody who thinks differently from themselves."
The country is no stranger to political violence. From November 2022 to October 2024, human rights organization Terra de Direitos documented 714 cases of violence against candidates or elected officials in the country, including 27 murders.
On October 28, a deadly police raid in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro left over 130 people dead, sparking debate between politicians who supported and opposed the action. Felipe Krause, a lecturer in Latin American politics at the University of Oxford, wrote in Foreign Policy that in Brazil there is a "symbiosis between violent repression and politics" which "has created what might be called a market for security -- a system in which police, gangsters, and politicians each profit from the same cycle of repression and fear."
The strength of democracy in an emerging economy
Brazil's democratic strain forms part of a wider global trend. The Global State of Democracy Report 2025, published by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), found that 2024 was the ninth consecutive year in which more nations regressed democratically than advanced.
Democratic backsliding, the report found, spans all forms of governance, reaching capitalist nations once deemed impenetrable by the phenomenon.
Such a landscape has revived the debate over whether free markets and democratic governance can sustainability coexist.
Mesquita, the Impact Hub Brazil president, said she doesn't believe capitalism and democracy are inherently at odds, regardless of a nation's level of economic maturity.
"Economic maturity doesn't determine the strength of democracy – or at least it shouldn't," she said. Rather, democracy rests upon "values of freedom, participation, and justice."
De Souza, on the other hand, believes that the relationship between capitalism and democracy differs in emerging economies like Brazil, where contexts are far more strained and unequal than in mature capitalist democracies.
"Capitalism often develops before full citizenship," she reasoned. "The economic system still operates on fragile foundations of inclusion and social justice." In emerging economies, she added, "this makes democracy, for many, a distant promise rather than an everyday experience."
Latin America is the most unequal region in the world. In Brazil, Chile, Peru, Colombia and Mexico, the richest 10% of their populations capture 60% of national income, according to The World Inequality Database.
A study from The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) union, found that the main structural driver of democratic erosion is economic inequality.
Both Mesquita and de Souza advocated that for each system to thrive, societies must redefine the meaning of profit.
"If profit is understood solely as immediate financial accumulation, it tends to clash with democratic virtues because it fuels the logic of scarcity, predatory competition, and exclusion," argued de Souza. "But, if profit is redefined as the result of genuine value created for society, then it becomes an instrument of democratic strengthening."
Mesquita echoes this sentiment. "We need to move beyond financial metrics [toward measures of] quality of life, dignity, and environmental conservation," she said. "We need a capitalism that values not only what we produce, but what we preserve and how we care for one another."
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