In 1968 Oscar Niemeyer, Brazil’s most celebrated architect and a communist, put his principles aside to design the headquarters of the armed forces, which had recently seized power in a coup. Today the modernist marvel hulks like a spaceship in the centre of Brasília. But in the first week of January 2023, its clean lines were disturbed by hundreds of tents haphazardly arranged outside the building. Was some kind of festival taking place? The camp was dotted with stalls handing out beer, grilled ribs and bowls of rice with salted beef, known as arroz carreteiro. 

But this wasn’t a carnival—it was the start of an attempted insurrection. The protesters had congregated in support of Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s far-right leader, who had narrowly lost his presidential re-election bid at the end of October 2022 to his left-wing nemesis, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula. Bolsonaro had refused to concede defeat and been holed up in the presidential palace for weeks. 

By December, his supporters were feeling restless. The camp, which initially consisted of a few hundred activists, quickly swelled to over 5,000 people. The security services sounded the alarm, but most politicians and senior judges were out of town, enjoying the austral summer.