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May 01, 2023

Brazil Riot: Pro

The police and military troops retook office buildings in the capital that had

The police and military troops retook office buildings in the capital that had been stormed by supporters of Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil's far-right former president, and detained 1,500 people.

Jack Nicas

For the past 10 weeks, supporters of the ousted far-right President Jair Bolsonaro had camped outside Brazilian Army headquarters, demanding that the military overturn October's presidential election. And for the past 10 weeks, the protesters faced little resistance from the government.

Then, on Sunday, many of the camp's inhabitants left their tents in Brasília, the nation's capital, drove a few miles away and, joining hundreds of other protesters, stormed Congress, the Supreme Court and the presidential offices.

By Monday morning, the authorities were sweeping through the encampment. They dismantled tents, tore down banners and detained 1,200 of the protesters, ferrying them away in buses for questioning.

Why an encampment demanding a military coup was allowed to expand for over 70 days was part of a larger set of questions that officials were grappling with on Monday, among them:

Why were protests allowed to get so close to Brazil's halls of power? And why had security forces been so outnumbered, allowing throngs of protesters to easily surge into official government buildings?

Brazil's justice minister, Flávio Dino, said various security agencies had met on Friday to plan for possible violence in the planned protests on Sunday. But, he said, the security strategy hatched in that meeting, including keeping protesters away from the main government buildings, was at least partly abandoned on Sunday and there were far fewer law enforcement officers than had been anticipated.

"The police contingent was not what had been agreed upon," he said, adding that it was unclear why plans had changed.

Some in the federal government blamed the governor of Brasília, Ibaneis Rocha, and his deputies, suggesting that they had been either negligent or complicit in understaffing the security forces around the protests.

Late Sunday, Alexandre de Moraes, a Supreme Court justice, suspended Mr. Rocha from his job as governor for at least 90 days, saying that the upheaval "could only occur with the consent, and even effective participation, of the security and intelligence authorities."

Whatever security lapses may have occurred, Sunday's riot laid bare in shocking fashion the central challenge facing Brazil's democracy. Unlike other attempts to topple governments across Latin America's history, the attacks on Sunday were not ordered by a single strongman ruler or a military bent on seizing power, but rather were fueled by a more insidious, deeply rooted threat: mass delusion.

Millions of Brazilians appear to be convinced that October's presidential election was rigged against Mr. Bolsonaro, despite audits and analyses by experts finding nothing of the sort. Those beliefs are in part the product of years of conspiracy theories, misleading statements and explicit falsehoods spread by Mr. Bolsonaro and his allies claiming Brazil's fully electronic voting systems are rife with fraud.

Mr. Bolsonaro's supporters have been repeating the claims for months, and then built on them with new conspiracy theories passed along in group chats on WhatsApp and Telegram, many focused on the idea that the electronic voting machines’ software was manipulated to steal the election. On Sunday, protesters stood on the roof of Congress with a banner that made a single demand: "We want the source code."

Walking out of the protest encampment on Monday morning, Orlando Pinheiro Farias, 40, said he had entered the presidential offices on Sunday with fellow protesters to find documents related to "the investigations into the source code, which legitimize that Jair Messias Bolsonaro is the president of Brazil."

He rattled off several government acronyms and secret investigations that he had read about on the internet, and then said that he had to go back to his tent to retrieve a Brazilian flag he had stolen from the building.

Delusions over the election extended to many protesters’ explanations of what had happened in the riots. People filing out of the encampment on Monday morning, carrying rolled-up air mattresses, extension cords and stools, each had a clear message: Mr. Bolsonaro's supporters had not ransacked the buildings. Rather, they said, those causing the damage were radical leftists in disguise, bent on defaming their movement.

"Have you ever heard of the Trojan Horse?" said Nathanael S. Viera, 51, who had driven 900 miles to take part in the protests on Sunday. "The infiltrators went in and set everything up, and the damn press showed the Brazilian nation that we patriots are the hooligans."

The scenes on Sunday of right-wing protesters draped in their national flag roaming through the halls of power were strikingly similar to those from the Jan. 6 storming of the United States Capitol, and so were the confused beliefs that drove protesters in both countries to invade federal buildings and film themselves doing so.

"Donald Trump was taken out with a rigged election, no question about it, and at the time he was taken out, I said, ‘President Bolsonaro is going to be taken down,’" said Wanderlei Silva, 59, a retired hotel worker standing outside the encampment on Monday.

Mr. Silva saw his own similarities between the riots on Sunday and those on Jan. 6, 2021. "The Democrats staged that and invaded the Capitol," he said. "The same way they staged it here."

Brazil has long seen itself in the mold of the United States: a sprawling, diverse country rich in natural resources, spread across a collection of independent states and governed by a strong central government. But its tumultuous political history never truly mimicked the American system, until the past several years.

"If there was no Trump, there would be no Bolsonaro in Brazil. And if there was no invasion of the Capitol, there wouldn't have been the invasion we saw yesterday," said Guga Chacra, a commentator for Brazil's largest television network, who lives in New York and tracks politics in both countries. "Bolsonarismo tries to copy Trumpism, and Bolsonaro supporters in Brazil try to copy what Trump supporters do in the United States."

Even a description of Brazil's 2022 presidential election reads like a summary of the 2020 American one: a far-right populist incumbent with a penchant for insults and off-the-cuff tweets against a septuagenarian challenger on the left running on his proven political track record and a promise to unite a divided nation.

But the election's aftermath was different.

While former President Donald J. Trump fought to overturn the results and urged his supporters to march on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, Mr. Bolsonaro had effectively given up and decamped for Florida by the time his voters were forcing their way into the offices he once occupied.

Mr. Bolsonaro spent part of Monday in the hospital in Florida, dealing with abdominal pains stemming from a stabbing he suffered in 2018, his wife said on social media. Mr. Bolsonaro is planning to stay in Florida for the next several weeks or months, hoping investigations in Brazil into his activity as president will cool off, according to a friend.

Ned Price, the State Department spokesman, would not comment specifically on Mr. Bolsonaro's visa status, citing privacy laws. But he said that any person who came to the United States under a diplomatic visa and who "is no longer engaged in official business on behalf of their government" was expected either to depart the country or request a different type of visa within 30 days.

"If an individual has no basis on which to be in the United States, an individual is subject to removal," Mr. Price said.

In a recorded address in the final days of his presidency, Mr. Bolsonaro said that he had tried and failed to use the law to overturn the 2022 election, and suggested that his supporters should now move on. "We live in a democracy or we don't," he said. "No one wants an adventure." On Sunday, he posted a message on Twitter, criticizing the violence.

But his years of rhetoric against Brazil's democratic institutions — and his political strategy of instilling fear of the left in his supporters — had already left an indelible mark.

Interviews with protesters in recent weeks appeared to show that Mr. Bolsonaro's movement was moving beyond him. It is now driven by deeply held beliefs among many right-wing Brazilians that political elites rigged the vote to install as president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, whom they regard as a communist who will turn Brazil into an authoritarian state like Venezuela.

Mr. Lula, the new president, is a leftist but is not a communist. And independent security experts said there was no evidence of irregularities in the 2022 vote. A separate analysis by Brazil's military found just one potential vulnerability in Brazil's fully digital voting system, which would require the coordination of multiple election officials to exploit, a scenario that security experts said was extremely unlikely.

Mr. Lula, who had campaigned on unifying the divided nation, is now faced with investigating and prosecuting many of his political opponents’ supporters just a week into his presidency. The authorities said that roughly 1,500 protesters had been detained by Monday evening, and that they would be held until at least the investigation was finished.

On Monday, Mr. Lula spoke with President Biden, who conveyed "the unwavering support of the United States for Brazil's democracy and for the free will of the Brazilian people," White House officials said. Mr. Biden invited Mr. Lula to the White House in early February. (It took more than 18 months for him to meet with Mr. Bolsonaro at a summit in Los Angeles.)

In a televised speech on Monday night, Mr. Lula said that his government would prosecute anyone who had attacked Brazil's democracy on Sunday. "What they want is a coup, and they won't have one," he said. "They have to learn that democracy is the most complicated thing we do."

He and many of Brazil's top government officials then walked together from the presidential offices to the Supreme Court, crossing the same plaza that a day before was thronged with mobs calling for the overthrow of his government.

Reporting was contributed by Ana Ionova, André Spigariol, Yan Boechat, Leonardo Coelho and Michael D. Shear.

Anushka Patil

The Bolsonaro supporters who stormed the Planalto Palace, the office of the president, on Sunday vandalized several works from revered Brazilian artists, including the painter Emiliano Di Cavalcanti, the palace said on Monday after a preliminary assessment of the damage to its collection.

The Planalto Palace had one of the most important art collections in the country, particularly for Brazilian Modernism, said Rogério Carvalho, the director of curatorship of the presidential palaces. "The value of what was destroyed is incalculable because of the history it represents," he said in a statement.

One of the most significant pieces damaged during the riots was a mural by Di Cavalcanti, titled "As Mulatas." Its estimated worth was 8 million reais, or over $1.5 million, the palace said.

Di Cavalcanti is considered one of the fathers of Brazil's Modernist movement and is known for work that focused on marginalized classes of society. Photos shared on social media after the attack showed punctures across the canvas of "As Mulatas." Seven tears were found, the palace said.

"As mulatas", de Di Cavalcanti. 7 rasgos. pic.twitter.com/1HMMbcF9JB

Bolsonaro supporters also caused significant damage to a 17th-century grandfather clock by Balthazar Martinot, a famed clockmaker for Louis XIV of France. The clock was a gift from France to King Dom João VI, the ruler of Portugal and Brazil, and is one of only two such Martinot pieces, the palace said. The second is part of a collection at the Palace of Versailles.

Restoration of the Martinot clock will be "very difficult," Mr. Carvalho said.

The palace also said that:

Branches were broken off from a wooden sculpture by Frans Krajcberg, a renowned artist and environmentalist who decried the destruction of the Amazon. It had an estimated value of 300,000 reais (over $57,000).

A bronze sculpture by Bruno Giorgi with an estimated value of 250,000 reais (over $47,000) was entirely destroyed and its pieces were scattered.

A Jorge Eduardo painting of the flag of Brazil, "Bandeira do Brasil," was found floating in water after protesters opened fire hydrants and flooded the first floor of the palace.

Margareth Menezes, a singer who was tapped to lead Brazil's Ministry of Culture after it was reinstated by Mr. Lula, said on Monday that she had been in touch with representatives from UNESCO and the country's National Historic and Artistic Heritage Institute about restoring the damaged works.

Sheera Frenkel

On TikTok and YouTube, videos claiming voter fraud in Brazil's recent elections have been recirculating for days.

On the WhatsApp and Telegram messaging services, an image of a poster announcing the date, time and location of the protests against the government was copied and shared over the weekend.

And on Facebook and Twitter, hashtags designed to evade detection by the authorities were used by organizers as they descended onto government buildings in the capital, Brasília, on Sunday.

One day after the thousands of people broke into government buildings to protest what they falsely claim was a stolen election, misinformation researchers are studying how the internet was used to stoke anger and to organize far-right groups ahead of the riots. Many are drawing a comparison to the Jan. 6 protests two years ago in the United States, where thousands broke into the Capitol building in Washington. In both cases, they say, a playbook was used in which online groups, chats and social media sites played a central role.

"Digital platforms were fundamental not only in the extreme right-wing domestic terrorism on Sunday, but also in the entire long process of online radicalization over the last 10 years in Brazil," said Michele Prado, an independent researcher who studies digital movements and the Brazilian far right.

She said that calls for violence have been "increasing exponentially from the last week of December."

She and other misinformation researchers have singled out Twitter and Telegram as playing a central role in organizing protests. In posts on Brazilian Telegram channels viewed by The New York Times, there were open calls for violence against the left-wing Brazilian politicians and their families. There were also addresses of government offices for protesters to attack.

In one image, which The Times found on more than a dozen Telegram channels, there was a call for "patriots" to gather in Brasília on Sunday to "mark a new day" of independence. Underneath many of the posters were details of gathering times for protesters.

The hashtag "Festa da Selma" was also widely spread on Twitter, including by far-right extremists who had previously been banned from the platform, Ms. Prado said.

In the months since Elon Musk took over Twitter, far-right figures from around the world have had their accounts reinstated as a general amnesty unless they violated rules again.

Ms. Prado said that misinformation researchers in Brazil have been reporting the accounts to Twitter in hopes that the company takes action.

Twitter and Telegram did not respond to requests for comment.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, said that the attacks Sunday were a "violating event" and that the company was removing content on its platforms that supported or praised the attacks on government buildings in Brazil.

The protesters in Brazil and those in the United States were inspired by the same extremist ideas and conspiracy theories and were both radicalized online, Ms. Prado said. In both cases, she added, social media played a crucial role in organizing violent attacks.

Ana Ionova and André Spigariol

For 10 weeks the protest encampment in the Brazilian capital grew, many in the crowd openly calling for the overthrow of the government.

On Monday, a day after marauders surged into presidential, legislative and judicial offices in Brasília, the protesters were dispersed, but a big question lingered: How did security officials ever allow things to get so out of hand?

Flávio Dino, Brazil's justice minister, told reporters that with a major protest just two days away, security agencies began meeting on Friday to plan for possible violence. But the security strategy hatched at the meetings, including keeping protesters away from the main government buildings, was at least partly abandoned on Sunday.

"The police contingent was not what had been agreed upon," Mr. Dino said.

It was unclear why the security plans changed, but by Sunday afternoon, the protesters severely outnumbered the authorities, enabling the crowds to gain easy entry to what should have been some of the nation's most guarded buildings.

Some in the federal government blamed the governor of Brasília, Ibaneis Rocha, and his deputies, suggesting that they had been negligent, or even complicit, by understaffing the security force.

Late Sunday, Alexandre de Moraes, a Supreme Court justice and the country's elections chief, suspended Mr. Rocha from his job as governor for at least 90 days, saying that the invasions "could only occur with the consent, and even effective participation, of the security and intelligence authorities."

Mr. Rocha said he respected the decision.

"I will calmly wait for the decision on the responsibilities in the regrettable events that occurred in our Capital," he said in a statement.

In some videos posted on social media, law enforcement appeared to be aiding the rioters, pointing the way or removing barricades.

On Monday, Mr. Dino faced tough questions himself as to why the federal government had not acted more decisively in the face of security threats. He argued that the blame lay squarely with the authorities in the Federal District.

"We cannot presume that a state government" will "fail to fulfill its duties," he said.

Deputy Senate President Veneziano Vital do Rego told reporters on Monday that he had tried to contact Governor Rocha on Sunday morning after being warned about a potential invasion of government offices. Mr. Rocha didn't answer that call, he said, the deputy president spoke to his chief of staff.

"I received the statement that we shouldn't worry because the whole situation was fully under control," Mr. do Rego said.

Michael D. Shear

President Biden spoke with President Lula Monday afternoon, White House officials said, conveying "the unwavering support of the United States for Brazil's democracy and for the free will of the Brazilian people as expressed in Brazil's recent presidential election." Officials said Mr. Biden condemned the violence in Brazil and invited Mr. Lula to the White House in early February.

Abigail Geiger

In a tony suburban enclave in Kissimmee outside of Orlando, Fla., residents and visitors were buzzing about an unexpected neighbor: Jair Bolsonaro.

The far-right former president of Brazil has been staying in a gated community since he left Brazil in a fitful rebuke of the inauguration of his successor and longtime leftist rival, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. While Kissimmee is known for its robust Puerto Rican population, the Orlando area, which has grown a lot in recent years, is also home to a great many Brazilians.

"Somos Bolsonaristas para sempre," said Maria Para Cavalcante. "We are Bolsonaristas, always."

Cavalcante, originally from the south of Brazil, described what she perceived of Bolsonaro's accolades: a boon for the Brazilian family.

"Bolsonaro was the best president we had in 30 years," she said.

Cavalcante's views reflected those of others interviewed in the high-end complex.

Helen Lima, originally from an area near São Paulo and who now lives in the same complex, said she supports Bolsonaro but did not agree with the shocking events in Brasília.

"We support Bolsonaro but not about yesterday," Lima said, using "we" to generally speak for those around the complex.

Around midday Monday, the suburban complex was quiet, dotted with pool repair vehicles and the occasional private police patrol. Closer to the center of the complex and the house where Bolsonaro is alleged to be staying, sporadic pockets of people wandered with the sole aim of seeing Bolsonaro.

But Bolsonaro was not there. Instead, the house where he was staying was empty except for a truck and a person, who declined to be identified, shooing away bystanders.

"Have you heard?" Lima asked. "Bolsonaro is in the hospital."

The news was later confirmed by Brazil's former first lady, Michelle Bolsonaro, who said on Instagram that her husband was under observation at a hospital. She said the pain was "discomfort" from a 2018 stabbing during his election campaign that year. "We are in prayer for his health and for Brazil," she said.

Dado Galdieri

In Rio de Janeiro, military police officers dismantled a camp of Bolsonaro supporters in front of an Army facility on Monday. The far-right protesters began packing their tents as they were ordered to move out of the camp.

Yan Boechat

Former President Jair Bolsonaro, who has been staying in Florida, is under observation at a hospital in the United States after experiencing abdominal discomfort, his wife, the former first lady Michelle Bolsonaro, said on Instagram on Monday. She said the pain was "discomfort" from a 2018 stabbing during his election campaign that year. "We are in prayer for his health and for Brazil."

Victor Moriyama

Authorities say they have detained rioters at the National Academy of the Federal Police in Brasília, where they are being questioned and could be charged.

Alan Yuhas

Brazilian investigators, taking stock of the damage around the capital and questioning detained protesters, face several major questions as they piece together how rioters briefly seized the seats of Brazil's government.

The protesters, supporters of the far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro, had been camping out since he lost October's election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Mr. Bolsonaro had asserted without any proof that Brazil's election systems were rife with fraud, but he agreed to a transition of power to Mr. Lula after the election.

The pro-Bolsonaro protesters claimed the election was stolen, though Brazil's military and independent experts found no credible evidence of voter fraud.

Now, investigators will focus in part on how the demonstration on Sunday was organized, and on how it transformed into a violent riot. In the days after Mr. Lula took office on Jan. 1, there were widespread calls on social media for a huge demonstration in the capital, Brasília.

Those calls circulated among supporters of Mr. Bolsonaro mostly on two apps, WhatsApp and Telegram. Some messages urged people to organize attacks against critical infrastructure, such as oil refineries and roadblocks. On Telegram, some called for the storming of the Monumental Axis, the avenue that goes directly to major government buildings.

According to an intelligence briefing by the military police of Brasília, at least 100 buses carrying 4,000 demonstrators arrived between Friday and Sunday. It was not immediately clear where the social media calls first originated, or how the caravans of buses were organized.

Most of the people who arrived in recent days stayed in an encampment in the capital that supporters of Mr. Bolsonaro had maintained in front of the army's headquarters since the election in October.

It was also not clear why the rioters were able to breach government buildings — Congress, the Supreme Court and the presidential offices — so easily. State police officers had tried to repel them, but they were far outnumbered.

Videos showed protesters wandering and ransacking the halls of power. Federal officials later distributed images and videos that showed destroyed computers, art ripped from frames and firearm cases without their guns.

Eventually, the military retook control of the buildings, and the authorities began to make arrests. The authorities had arrested at least 200 people as of late Sunday, according to Brazil's justice minister, though Ibaneis Rocha, the governor of the district that includes Brasília, said that evening more than 400 people had been arrested.

At least 1,200 people were detained for questioning, a police spokesman said on Monday. Some could be charged with committing crimes against democratic institutions or with attempting to unseat a democratically elected government, he said.

Overnight, a Supreme Court judge suspended Mr. Rocha, a supporter of Mr. Bolsonaro's re-election campaign, for 90 days while investigations take place into security failures. Mr. Rocha on Sunday called the riots an act of terrorism, and said on Twitter that the hundreds of people arrested in the aftermath would "pay for the committed crimes."

Mr. Lula signed an emergency decree late Sunday that put federal authorities in charge of security in Brazil's capital, and the dismantling of protest camps has since proceeded peacefully. Brazil's Congress was called back from recess for an emergency session.

Mr. Bolsonaro, who appeared to be in Florida, criticized the protests on Sunday evening, saying on Twitter that peaceful demonstrations were part of democracy, but that "destruction and invasions of public buildings, like what occurred today," were not. He also repudiated Mr. Lula's comments that he bore some responsibility for the riots, saying those accusations were "without proof."

Michael Crowley

Ned Price, the U.S. State Department spokesman, would not comment specifically on Bolsonaro's visa status during a daily press briefing, citing privacy laws. But Mr. Price said any person who came to the United States under a diplomatic visa, such as a head of state, and who "is no longer engaged in official business on behalf of their government" is expected either to depart the U.S. or request a different type of visa from the Department of Homeland Security within 30 days of the end of their official business.

Ron DePasquale

Pope Francis warned that he saw signs of "the weakening of democracy," including in Brazil, in his annual address to ambassadors to the Vatican. "I think of the various countries of the Americas where political crises are laden with tensions and forms of violence that exacerbate social conflicts."

Yan Boechat and Leonardo Coelho

Days before supporters of Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil's former far-right president, laid siege to the capital, Brasília, on Sunday, social media platforms were flooded by calls to organize attacks against critical infrastructure, with oil refineries and roadblocks among the main targets.

The instigators of Sunday's riots have not been publicly identified. But in the days after Luis Inácio Lula da Silva was sworn in as president on Jan. 1., messages appeared on the Telegram and WhatsApp messaging apps inviting people to take part in the "Festa da Selma," or Selma's Party.

The organizers appeared to turn the word "selva," or jungle into "Selma" by replacing the letter V with the letter M. The word selva is directly linked to the Armed Forces and its veterans. Over recent decades it has become a kind of war cry for both the military and those who defend them. Many of those are also Bolsonaro supporters.

The term "Festa de Selma" began popping up in social media apps last week, first in Telegram and WhatsApp groups, as first reported by Agência Pública, a Brazilian investigative journalism outlet. Within a few days it had reached platforms like Twitter and Instagram.

"These articulations happen more frequently on WhatsApp and Telegram, where there is less control," said Marcelo Soares, director of Lagom Data, a data intelligence studio in São Paulo. Those apps are encrypted, giving a measure of security to people communicating in private chat groups.

Something going viral there, Mr. Soares said, "leaks to Twitter in some cases, either out of enthusiasm or because they want to make the debate public."

As the days went by, the mentions surged, until they reached their peak on Saturday night, hours before the assault took place. On Telegram, some groups called for the storming of the Monumental Axis, the avenue that goes directly to the headquarters of the three democratic powers: Planalto Palace, seat of the presidency; the National Congress and the Supreme Court.

Most tweets were sent from accounts in Brazil's southeast. But Mr. Soares’ analysis also shows that profiles based in Miami played an important role in spreading the message through Twitter.

While digital influencers on social media ignited groups of Bolsonaro supporters, a complex, real-world logistical operation was also being organized. Caravans of buses in different parts of the country were made available to protesters to take them to the nation's capital free or at greatly reduced prices. The messages calling for the "Festa da Selma" promised food, camping and local support at no cost. One post on Saturday, picturing a pile of slabs of raw meat, said "come to Brasília a ton of meat for the Party of Selma."

According to an intelligence briefing by the Military Police of Brasília, the city saw the arrival of at least 100 buses carrying 4,000 demonstrators between Friday and Sunday.

Most of the arrivals stayed in an encampment in the capital that supporters of Mr. Bolsonaro had maintained in front of the army's headquarters since the election in October. The camp was being dismantled on Monday after a judicial order.

Michael D. Shear and Michael Crowley

The Biden administration is confident that the violence in Brazil will not cause Brazil's new government to collapse, said Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser at the White House.

"We believe the democratic institutions of Brazil will hold, the will of the people in Brazil will be respected," Mr. Sullivan told reporters in Mexico City, where President Biden is attending a summit with the leaders of Mexico and Canada. "The freely elected leader of Brazil will govern Brazil and will not be deterred or knocked off course by the actions of these people who have assaulted the instruments of governance in Brasília."

Mr. Biden has not yet spoken with Brazil's newly elected president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Mr. Sullivan said. But he added that a conversation between the two leaders in the near future is likely.

Amid various investigations from his time in office, Jair Bolsonaro, the former president, flew to Florida in late December, during the final days of his presidency. He has been in Orlando with plans to stay for at least a month, living in a rented house owned by a professional mixed-martial-arts fighter a few miles from Disney World.

On Monday, the former first lady, Michelle Bolsonaro, said on Instagram that Mr. Bolsonaro was under observation at a hospital in the United States after experiencing abdominal discomfort from a stab wound he suffered in an attack during his election campaign in 2018.

Mr. Sullivan said the U.S. government was not in contact with Bolsonaro and had not received any official requests from the Brazilian government related to the former president. He added that if the United States were to receive a request to send Mr. Bolsonaro back to Brazil, it would be handled by the State Department, which deals with visas. Speaking at a daily news briefing, Ned Price, the State Department spokesman, would not comment specifically on Mr. Bolsonaro's visa status, citing privacy laws.

But Mr. Price said any person who came to the United States under a diplomatic visa, such as a head of state, and who was "no longer engaged in official business on behalf of their government" is expected either to depart the country or request a different type of visa from the Department of Homeland Security within 30 days of the conclusion of their official business.

"If an individual has no basis on which to be in the United States, an individual is subject to removal by the Department of Homeland Security," he said.

Jack Nicas

In the weeks after Brazil's presidential election, government officials and independent security experts reviewed the results and made a clear determination: There is no credible evidence of voter fraud.

Yet Brazil still finds itself grappling with a wave of rigged-election claims from many supporters of the far-right former president, Jair Bolsonaro.

In November, a highly anticipated report on the voting process from Brazil's military said it found no evidence of any irregularities. It also said that the nature of Brazil's fully digital voting system meant it could not decisively rule out a specific fraud scenario.

Independent security experts generally applauded the report, saying it was technically sound. They had pointed out the same hypothetical fraud scenario in the past — government insiders inserting sophisticated malicious software onto Brazil's voting machines — while also stressing that it was extremely unlikely.

Brazil finds itself in a tricky situation. Security experts say its electronic voting system is reliable, efficient and, like any digital system, not 100 percent secure. Now politically motivated actors are using that kernel of truth as reason to question the results of a vote in which there is no evidence of fraud.

For years, Mr. Bolsonaro has attacked Brazil's election system as rife with fraud, despite a lack of evidence. As a result, three out of four of Mr. Bolsonaro's supporters now say they trust Brazil's voting machines only a little or not at all, according to polls.

To ease those concerns, election officials invited Brazil's military to a transparency committee last year. It was seen as a gesture to Mr. Bolsonaro, a former Army captain who had stacked his administration with generals. Quickly the military began echoing some of Mr. Bolsonaro's criticism, raising worries in a nation that had suffered under a military dictatorship until 1985.

Eventually, the military and election officials agreed to some changes to voting-machine tests.

Mr. Bolsonaro's supporters have pushed videos of malfunctioning voting machines, unattributed reports of foul play from election officials and inaccurate analyses of voting returns as proof of something amiss. Independent experts have examined the claims and said they have no validity.

Three hours after the polls closed, computers had counted virtually all 118 million votes. That efficiency is in part because Brazil is the only country in the world to use a fully digital voting system, without paper backups. Yet for years Mr. Bolsonaro has framed that lack of paper backups as a vulnerability that throws any election into question.

The military said that its technical experts found no inconsistencies in the voting process or in the results of the two national votes last month. It also said that election officials had not allowed its experts to fully inspect the voting machines’ 17 million lines of computer code and that officials did not test enough machines on Election Day to rule out the possibility that they contained malicious software that could manipulate vote counts.

"It's very technically correct," said Marcos Simplício, a cybersecurity researcher at the University of São Paulo who tests Brazil's voting machines.

Still, Mr. Simplício and other experts have said that the machines are highly safe, with layers of security designed to prevent fraud and errors. Mr. Simplício's team of cybersecurity researchers, for instance, have tried to hack the machines to no avail. That is in part because the machines are not connected to the internet, making them virtually impossible to manipulate without physical access, and because they are encrypted and use technology to protect their encryption keys similar to that used in iPhones.

Yet, experts have pointed out one scenario that appears possible. A group of government engineers who write the machines’ software could insert malicious code to change votes. But to do so, multiple engineers would need to act at the exact right time and work together without detection. And the malicious code would have to be sophisticated enough to recognize a test of the machines and deactivate itself for the duration of the test.

Security experts generally back the concept of paper backups, which has been pushed by Mr. Bolsonaro. But they also warn it would introduce another variable that could be attacked by bad actors — or, perhaps more important, exploited by those claiming voter fraud.

Mr. Bolsonaro, who authorized his government to transition to his opponent in the election, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, on Sunday criticized the actions of his supporters, saying on Twitter that peaceful demonstrations are part of democracy, but that "destruction and invasions of public buildings, like what occurred today," are not.

Ana Ionova and Enjoli Liston

Alexandre de Moraes, a prominent Brazilian Supreme Court justice, has suspended Ibaneis Rocha, the governor of the district that includes Brazil's capital, for 90 days while investigations take place into security failings during Sunday's riots at official buildings in the capital.

Thousands of supporters of Brazil's ousted former president, Jair Bolsonaro, stormed Brazil's Congress, Supreme Court and presidential offices to protest what they falsely claim was a stolen election. Mr. Rocha is governor of the Federal District, which includes Brasília.

The riots in the capital, Brasília, took place one week after President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was inaugurated on Jan. 1. Soon after Mr. Lula took office, protesters put out calls online for others to join them for a huge demonstration on Sunday.

In a statement issued early Monday, the supreme court justice, Mr. Moraes, said that the riots "could only have occurred with the consent, and even active participation, of the competent authorities for public security and intelligence."

His comments echoed those of President Lula, who said on Sunday night that there had been "incompetence, ill will or bad faith on the part of the people who take care of public security in the Federal District."

On Sunday, Mr. Rocha called the riots an act of terrorism, and said on Twitter that the hundreds of people arrested in the aftermath would "pay for the committed crimes."

Mr. Rocha said 400 people had been arrested, but Brazil's justice minister, Flávio Dino, put the number at around half that figure. Hundreds more people were detained as the authorities moved to dismantle encampments of Bolsonaro supporters, a spokesman for the civil police said on Monday.

Supporters of Mr. Bolsonaro have long criticized Mr. Moraes, accusing him of wielding power unilaterally.

André Spigariol

The four heads of Brazil's constitutional powers held a meeting on Monday morning at the presidential palace, as maintenance workers began cleaning and repairing the damage from Sunday's riot. A spokeswoman for Mr. Lula told reporters that the president's office was untouched because rioters couldn't break into it. The president also held meetings with the commanders of the armed forces and the defense minister.

André Spigariol

In an official statement in "defense of peace and democracy," the four heads of Brazil's constitutional powers — President Lula, House Speaker Arthur Lira, Chief Justice Rosa Weber of the Supreme Court, and Veneziano Vital do Rego, the deputy president of the Senate — called Sunday's riots "acts of terrorism." The group said they would take legal measures in response and called on the country to return to "normality."

Michael D. Shear

President Biden issued a joint statement on the situation in Brazil with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, saying their countries condemned Sunday's "attacks on Brazil's democracy and on the peaceful transfer of power." They added: "We stand with Brazil as it safeguards its democratic institutions. Our governments support the free will of the people of Brazil. We look forward to working with President Lula on delivering for our countries, the Western Hemisphere, and beyond."

Ana Ionova

The authorities in Brazil detained at least 1,200 people in the capital, Brasília, on Monday, according to a spokesman for the civil police, and began dismantling a tent city where supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro have been camping out since he lost October's election. Mr. Bolsonaro's supporters have falsely claimed that the vote was stolen.

Jack Nicas and André Spigariol

At his inauguration earlier this month, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said that uniting Brazil, Latin America's largest country and one of the world's biggest democracies, would be a central goal of his administration.

The riots in Brasília, the capital, on Sunday suggest that the nation's divisions are more profound than many had imagined, and it saddles the new president with a major challenge just one week into his administration.

After Mr. Lula was inaugurated, protesters put out calls online for others to join them for a massive demonstration on Sunday. It quickly turned violent.

Hundreds of protesters ascended a ramp to the roof of the congressional building in Brasília while a smaller group invaded the building from a lower level, according to witnesses and videos of the scene posted on social media. Other groups of protesters splintered off and broke into the presidential offices and the Supreme Court, which are in the same plaza.

The scene was chaotic.

Protesters streamed into the government buildings, which were largely empty on a Sunday, breaking windows, overturning furniture and looting items inside, according to videos they posted online.

The crowds shouted that they were taking their country back, and that they would not be stopped. Outnumbered, the police fired what appeared to be rubber bullets, pepper spray and tear-gas canisters, including from two helicopters overhead.

"Police are cowardly trying to expel the people from Congress, but there is no way, because even more are arriving," said one protester in a video filmed from inside Congress and showing hundreds of protesters on multiple floors. "No one is taking our country, damn it."

Eventually, Brazilian Army soldiers helped retake some buildings.

Mr. Bolsonaro, meanwhile, appeared to be in Florida. He flew to Orlando in the final days of his presidency, in hopes that his absence from the country would help cool off investigations into his activity as president, according to a friend of his who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. He planned to stay in Florida for one to three months, this person said.

Mr. Bolsonaro has never unequivocally conceded defeat in the election, leaving it to his aides to handle the transition of power. He also skipped the inauguration, where he was supposed to pass the presidential sash to Mr. Lula, an important symbol of the transition of power for a country that lived under a 21-year military dictatorship until 1985.

After the election, Mr. Bolsonaro said he supported peaceful protests inspired by "feelings of injustice in the electoral process."

But before departing for Florida, Mr. Bolsonaro suggested to his supporters that they move on. "We live in a democracy, or we don't," he said in a recorded statement. "No one wants an adventure."

His calls were ignored.

Simon Romero

Protesters scaling the roof of Congress. A rock-throwing mob shattering the windows of federal buildings. Fires threatening to engulf Brasília's architectural treasures.

Such scenes left many Brazilians shocked on Sunday. But Brasília is no stranger to huge, sometimes destructive protests; similar displays of outrage marked the last time antigovernment demonstrators swept en masse into the capital a decade ago, in 2013.

This episode is on another scale, however, after supporters of Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil's former president, invaded and ransacked the iconic buildings housing the country's three branches of government. The devastation left behind on Sunday made it clear that this event dwarfed other political demonstrations in Brazil's recent history.

The Bolsonaro supporters damaged various works of art, including a canvas by the modernist painter Emiliano di Cavalcanti, a stained-glass installation by the French-Brazilian artist Marianne Peretti and a bust of Ruy Barbosa, an abolitionist statesman, according to Brazilian media reports. Demonstrators smashed windows and then tossed furniture and electronic equipment out of the presidential palace. Videos on social media appeared to show a protester about to defecate inside a room at the Supreme Court.

In 2013, authorities scrambled to understand what was happening. I covered those events at time, examining how small demonstrations over a proposed bus fare increase sparked a much larger, if diffuse, movement pulling together people from across the ideological spectrum to voice outrage over corruption and appalling public services.

This time around the protesters were far more directed in their fury, taking aim squarely at Brazil's democratic institutions. Many of them called explicitly for the armed forces to seize control of the government and reinstall Mr. Bolsonaro, who lost the presidential election more than two months ago but has refused to concede to his opponent, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Harrowing accounts by witnesses point to scenes of mayhem. A photographer for the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, who was beaten on Sunday by the mob and had his equipment stolen, said that some rioters dislodged the stones used to assemble the sidewalk in front of the government buildings to use as weapons.

The photographer, Pedro Lareira, described the chaos in comments for his own newspaper. "While they assaulted me," he said, "they said they were there to take Brazil."

Yan Boechat

At least eight journalists were attacked or robbed by supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro on Sunday, according to the Union of Professional Journalists of the Federal District, where Brasília is located. Photojournalists from Brazilian newspapers and international agencies were the main victims. At least five had their equipment broken or stolen. A New Yorker magazine reporter was assaulted while covering the riot. Pedro Ladeira, a photographer for Folha de São Paulo, Brazil's largest newspaper, was also attacked. "They destroyed my equipment; they beat me, but I’m fine," he said.

André Spigariol

President Lula arrived at the scene of the riots at around 10 p.m. local time, accompanied by some of his top ministers. The president was seen inspecting the main entrance hall of the presidential offices alongside federal police officials. Army soldiers were stationed around the building.

Chris Cameron

Follow our latest updates on Brazil's anti-democracy riots.

A defeated president claims, falsely, that an election was rigged. After months of baseless claims of fraud, an angry mob of his supporters storms Congress. They overwhelm police and vandalize the seat of national government, threatening the country's democratic institutions.

Similarities between Sunday's mob violence in Brazil and the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, are self-evident: Jair Bolsonaro, the right-wing former president of Brazil, had for months sought to undermine the results of an election that he lost, in much the same manner that Donald J. Trump did after his defeat in the 2020 presidential election. Trump allies who had helped spread falsehoods about the 2020 election have turned to sowing doubt in the results of Brazil's presidential election in October.

Those efforts by Mr. Bolsonaro and his allies have now culminated in an attempt — however implausible — to overturn the results of Brazil's election and restore the former president to power. In much the same manner as Jan. 6, the mob that descended on the Brazilian capital overpowered police at the perimeter of the building that houses Congress and swept into the halls of power — breaking windows, taking valuable items and posing for photos in abandoned legislative chambers.

The two attacks do not align completely. The Jan. 6 mob was trying to stop the official certification of the results of the 2020 election, a final, ceremonial step taken before the new president, Joseph R. Biden Jr., was inaugurated on Jan. 20.

But Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the new president of Brazil, was sworn into office more than a week ago. The results of the presidential election have been certified by the country's electoral court, not its legislature. There was no official proceeding to disrupt on Sunday, and the Brazilian Congress was not in session.

The mob violence on Jan. 6, 2021, "went right to the heart of the changing government," and the attack in Brazil is not "as heavily weighted with that kind of symbolism," said Carl Tobias, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Richmond.

And Mr. Bolsonaro, who has had strong ties with Mr. Trump throughout their years in office, was nowhere near the capital, having taken up residence in Orlando, Fla., about 150 miles from Mr. Trump's estate at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach.

Nevertheless, the riot in Brasília drew widespread condemnation, including from U.S. lawmakers, with many Democrats drawing comparisons between it and the storming of the U.S. Capitol.

"Democracies of the world must act fast to make clear there will be no support for right-wing insurrectionists storming the Brazilian Congress," Representative Jamie Raskin wrote on Twitter. "These fascists modeling themselves after Trump's Jan. 6 rioters must end up in the same place: prison."

Representative George Santos, a Republican from New York under criminal investigation by Brazilian authorities, appeared to be one of the first elected officials from his party to condemn the mob violence in a post on Twitter on Sunday, but he did not draw a connection to Jan. 6.

Many of the lawmakers who condemned the violence had lived through the attack on the Capitol that occurred just over two years ago. Mr. Raskin was the lead impeachment manager in Mr. Trump's second impeachment trial over his role in inciting the mob.

In a final echo of the Jan. 6 attack on Sunday, hours after the riot in Brazil began, Mr. Bolsonaro posted a message on social media calling for peace, much the way Mr. Trump did. Authorities had already announced they had the situation under control.

Jack Nicas

Sunday's riots were the violent culmination of years of conspiracy theories advanced by Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil's former president, and his right-wing allies. Nonetheless, Bolsonaro criticized the protests, saying on Twitter that peaceful demonstrations were part of democracy, but "destruction and invasions of public buildings, like what occurred today," were not. He also repudiated President Lula's comments that Bolsonaro bore some responsibility for the riots, saying those accusations were "without proof."

- Manifestações pacíficas, na forma da lei, fazem parte da democracia. Contudo, depredações e invasões de prédios públicos como ocorridos no dia de hoje, assim como os praticados pela esquerda em 2013 e 2017, fogem à regra.

Jack Nicas and Carly Olson

Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right populist who served as president of Brazil until he was unseated by former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in October, upended political norms when he was elected in 2018.

Mr. Bolsonaro's broadsides against women, gay people, Brazilians of color and even democracy — "Let's go straight to the dictatorship," he once said — made him so polarizing that he initially struggled to find a running mate.

But his campaign, full of angry tirades against corruption and violence that largely matched the national mood, appealed to the millions who voted him into power. While his rivals were more conventional, Mr. Bolsonaro, now 67, channeled the wrath and exasperation many Brazilians felt over rising crime and unemployment — problems that they increasingly believed the corrupt governing class was powerless to tackle.

His incendiary remarks over the years and throughout the campaign cast him as a political disrupter, similar to Donald J. Trump in the United States.

Throughout his presidency, Mr. Bolsonaro, who served in the military before entering politics, methodically questioned and criticized the security of Brazil's electronic voting system, despite the lack of credible evidence of a problem, and attacked mainstream news outlets as dishonest.

Since Brazil began using electronic voting machines in 1996, there has been no evidence that they have been used for fraud. Instead, the machines helped eliminate the fraud that once afflicted Brazil's elections in the age of paper ballots.

But those facts have not mattered much to Mr. Bolsonaro or his supporters, who have instead focused their attention on a series of anecdotal apparent abnormalities in the voting process and results, as well as many conspiracy theories.

Like Mr. Trump, Mr. Bolsonaro spent much of his time in office warning that the establishment was plotting against him. Mr. Trump railed against the "deep state," while Mr. Bolsonaro accused some of the judges who oversee Brazil's Supreme Court and the country's electoral court of trying to rig the election.

By the end of Mr. Bolsonaro's term, it was clear that his attacks had had an effect: Much of Brazil's electorate seemed to have lost faith in the integrity of the nation's elections.

Ernesto Londoño and Manuela Andreoni contributed reporting.

Ana Ionova

Brazil's justice minister, Flávio Dino, said the authorities had cleared the country's Congress, Supreme Court and presidential offices of rioters, who stormed the buildings earlier on Sunday. The authorities arrested about 200 people in relation to the attacks, Dino said in a live address. He added that the authorities had identified about 40 buses that brought rioters to Brasília and that the financial backers of the trips would be tracked down and held responsible.

Jack Nicas and Flávia Milhorance

RIO DE JANEIRO — In 2019, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was spending 23 hours a day in an isolated cell equipped with a treadmill in a federal penitentiary.

The former president of Brazil had been sentenced to 22 years on corruption charges, a conviction that appeared to end the storied career of the man who had once been the lion of the Latin American left.

Now, freed from prison, Mr. Lula is Brazil's president once again, a political resurrection that had once seemed unthinkable.

Mr. Lula, 76, a zealous leftist whose corruption convictions were set aside after Brazil's Supreme Court ruled that the judge in his cases was biased, defeated President Jair Bolsonaro, 67, the right-wing nationalist incumbent, and was inaugurated on Jan. 1.

The victory completed a remarkable journey for Mr. Lula, whom former President Barack Obama once called "the most popular politician on Earth."

When he left office in 2011 after two terms, Mr. Lula's approval rating topped 80 percent. But he then became the centerpiece of a sprawling investigation into government bribes that led to nearly 300 arrests, landing him in prison.

Today, the former union leader is back at the helm of Latin America's largest nation, at 217 million people, with a mandate to undo Mr. Bolsonaro's legacy.

"How did they try to destroy Lula? I spent 580 days in jail because they didn't want me to run," Mr. Lula told a crowd of supporters during his campaign, his famously gravelly voice even hoarser with age. "And I stayed calm there, preparing myself like Mandela prepared for 27 years."

Mr. Lula's return to the president's office cemented his status as the most influential figure in Brazil's modern democracy. A former metalworker with a fifth-grade education and the son of illiterate farm workers, he has been a political force for decades, leading a transformational shift in Brazilian politics away from conservative principles and toward leftist ideals and working-class interests.

The leftist Workers’ Party he co-founded in 1980 has won four of the eight presidential elections since the end of Brazil's military dictatorship in 1988.

As president from 2003 through 2010, Mr. Lula's administration helped lift 20 million Brazilians out of poverty, revitalized the nation's oil industry and elevated Brazil on the world stage, including by hosting the World Cup and Summer Olympics.

But it also allowed a vast kickback scheme to fester throughout the government, with many of his Workers’ Party allies convicted of accepting bribes. While the courts threw out Mr. Lula's two convictions of accepting a condo and renovations from construction companies bidding on government contracts, they did not affirm his innocence.

Mr. Lula has long maintained that the charges were false.