In Latin America, 2026 quite literally got off to an explosive start.

Just before sunrise on January 2, the city of Caracas was violently awoken by the sound of bombs, as US forces launched a sudden, high-intensity strike on the Venezuelan capital. Within hours, President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were in American custody — flown out of the country and headed to New York to face criminal charges.

The Venezuelan government has provided no official death count from the strikes, but they are believed to be in the dozens — at least 40, per some accounts.

Even by Washington’s standards, this was extraordinary. But it aligns neatly with Washington’s new worldview.

In its latest National Security Strategy, the US no longer frames Latin America as a partner. Instead, the US describes it as a buffer — a region expected to stop migrants, narcotics and Chinese influence before they reach US shores.

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In any democratic republic, it’s normal for the executive, legislative, and judicial branches to clash. That’s a sign of mutual oversight. It’s also normal for politicians to make concessions to their adversaries. That’s a sign of democracy.

But the sequence of recent events in Brazilian politics has turned into a sweeping narrative about what happens when these dynamics of checks and balances slide into sheer revanchism and bargaining over the rule of law.

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In a country with 27 state governments, more than 5,000 city halls, and around 12 million people working in the public sector, calls to reform — or improve — Brazil’s civil service never really seem to go away.

We talked to Brazil's special secretary for state transformation — and asked him to compare the reform proposals coming from the lower house with the Lula administration's approach.

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Carlos Nobre, head of the Planetary Science Pavilion at COP30 in the Amazon, talks to us about the conference’s results, the climate emergency we are living through, and what Brazil can still do.

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Five years ago, Brazil launched a public digital payment infrastructure — and its impact on the financial market and society has been immense.

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Over the past decade, Brazilian lawmakers have steadily built up procedures to expand their powers over the purse. That has included increasing the overall volume of congressional grants; making a large share of them mandatory spending; limiting the Executive’s discretion over when to release those funds, and creating ways to erase transparency and traceability from the process. A perfect recipe for corruption, which has now trickled down to state and municipal levels.

But the Supreme Court has just ordered the three branches of government to run a nationwide awareness campaign — from December through March — to explain how congressional grants are executed. The idea: show the public where they can access information about these amendments, teach people how to track where the money goes, and encourage them to report irregularities or wrongdoing. Will that finally be enough?

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Each passing year, the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP) gains more urgency. More and more biomes around the world are approaching what scientists call tipping points — the Amazon chief among them. Hosting the 30th edition of COP in Belém, one of the Amazon’s biggest cities, therefore represents one of the most significant responsibilities Brazil’s diplomacy has taken on in recent times.

This week, we are joined by experts with distinct and diverse backgrounds to discuss the climate challenges facing Brazil and the world ahead of COP30. They are:

• Adriana Ramos: Executive Secretary of the Socio-Environmental Institute, a civil society organization that monitors indigenous lands and other environmentally protected areas across Brazil, working both with governments and on the ground. She represented the Brazilian Forum of NGOs on the Amazon Fund Steering Committee from 2008 to 2013 and served on the Executive Board of the Brazilian Association of NGOs.
• Carlos Nobre: One of the world’s leading climatologists, he is a researcher at the University of São Paulo, co-chair of the Scientific Panel for the Amazon, and a member of academies such as the World Academy of Sciences. He co-authored the research that earned the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 and was also responsible for creating some of Brazil’s main government climate centers, as well as the Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in the Amazon.
• Natalie Unterstell: President of the Talanoa Institute, a Brazilian climate policy think tank, and member of the COP30 Adaptation Council and the accreditation panel of the Green Climate Fund. She holds a master’s degree from Harvard Kennedy School and has served as a negotiator for Brazil in global climate talks, helping lead Brazil’s climate policy development.

Listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or on The Brazilian Report.

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Justice Luís Roberto Barroso is retiring. We unpack how factors such as trust, political ties, and electoral considerations may guide President Lula’s next choice for the court.

Listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or on The Brazilian Report.

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