Advances in oil exploration and the construction of railways and highways in recent years have shown that, when large infrastructure projects clash with matters of Amazon preservation, the Brazilian government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva tends to favor the former.

Some call this progress; others see it as ultimately self-defeating in the face of the ongoing climate emergency. But this week, the usual script of Brazilian developmentalism trumping environmentalism was turned on its head, and on the Amazonian Tapajós River in Pará state, environmentalist forces prevailed.

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190,000 points. After a string of record highs that have been piling up since mid-January, the Ibovespa — the benchmark index of São Paulo’s stock exchange, the B3 — surpassed this historic threshold during Wednesday, February 11, closing the day just shy of it.

Financial trading volume totaled BRL 38.6 billion, or about USD 7.7 billion. With this result, and only six weeks into the year, Ibovespa has already posted gains of over 18% in 2026.

To give a sense of the scale, stock exchange data on foreign investor flows show a net inflow of BRL 26.3 billion in January alone — exceeding the surplus recorded for the entire year of 2025.

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Brasília is back to work — and the new legislative year has opened with all the familiar rituals: lofty speeches about stability, institutional balance, and dialogue, plus promises of an ambitious agenda ahead.

But this is no ordinary year.

Brazil is heading into a high-stakes election in October. Voters will choose a president, renew the entire House, elect two-thirds of the Senate, pick 27 governors, and decide the fate of hundreds of state legislators. From now on, everything in Brasília will be filtered through the election calendar — what Congress dares to vote on, what the government is willing to push forward, and even how and when Supreme Court justices make their moves.

And looming over all of it is a growing source of anxiety.

Hovering above the capital is the Banco Master case — an investigation lawmakers privately describe as unpredictable, corrosive, and potentially explosive. We touched on it last week, but its shadow is only getting longer.

Since Operation Car Wash erupted in 2014, Congress has not entered an election year under such a serious risk of being overwhelmed by corruption allegations — the kind that can torpedo campaigns, reshape alliances, and, in some cases, lead to criminal consequences.

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