When Brazil’s far right former president Jair Bolsonaro came to power in January of 2019, student activists were the first to mount a large-scale resistance. In May 2019, they organized the “Tsunami” protests, a wave of actions to protect higher education. Students and teachers held classes in the streets and marched to defend institutions that Bolsonaro had mocked and targeted with cuts.
Though the far right has been defeated in Brazil’s executive branch, student activists remind us that Bolsonarismo is still alive—and that the country’s future is uncertain. Low approval ratings for current president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (“Lula”), and the rise of the global far right raise the stakes. These issues weighed on Brazil’s students who, 10 days after the second inauguration of Donald Trump, once again sought to respond to the rise of the far right.
This time, in February, the venue of resistance was not the streets but a gathering of the largest student congress in Latin America, the Biennial of the National Student Union (UNE), and a parallel event, the CONEB. The event unites thousands of student governing bodies across the country who come together to deliberate on the various paths forward for the student movement, Brazilian politics, and the global fight against the far right. The event offers a window into youth activism and its efforts to confront the critical challenges of our time.
A Long History of Student Mobilization
Brazilian student movements have mobilized against the far right for nearly a century. Founded in 1937, the UNE student body has been part of “building the nation itself,” in the words of one UNE leader.
From the beginning of the country’s military dictatorship, the UNE was a target. The day after the U.S.-approved Brazilian military coup began in 1964, military personnel and civilians set the UNE headquarters ablaze and began to persecute students, underscoring the perceived threat they posed to the regime. Students organized meetings clandestinely, led protests, and challenged the climate of repression in the streets. The murder of one student protester, Edson Luis, spurred “the march of 100,000,” a massive 1968 demonstration. The Brazilian dictatorship followed with a hardline turn just as students were mobilizing society.
Luis was but one of many students who suffered at the hands of state forces. Many were detained, tortured, and, in the worst cases, disappeared. This is what happened to Honestino Guimarães, a former UNE president and university student activist who was arrested four times and never returned from his last arrest in 1973. In resisting U.S.-backed dictatorships, Brazilian students were part of wider student movements across the continent that contributed to the return of democracy in their countries.
Due to its experience resisting far right dictatorship, Brazil’s current student movement intimately understands the stakes of today’s struggles. But, as the demographics of students in universities has changed due to affirmative action and other policies, so too have the movements themselves. Today’s activists have adopted new strategies and cast their defense of higher education as part of a wider feminist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, and environmentalist agenda.
Resisting the Far Right
When nearly 10,000 students gather to dispute the state of the world and their movement, it sounds like an incessant beating of drums, tambores, cheering, and chants. Each moment between plenaries is an opportunity to strengthen the base, attract new student activists, and create and dispute political projects. Each collective waves its flags and feverishly defends its positions. When they are not chanting and drumming, students draft and debate resolutions and motions, sometimes until dawn.
While celebratory, the stakes of this year’s meeting were clear to those who travelled for up to three days by bus to sleep in a sea of tents in a convention center in the northeastern capital of Recife, Pernambuco. The violence of Brazil’s far right – and now Trump’s return to power in the U.S. – cast a shadow over the meetings. Channeling the student movement’s historical resistance to the dictatorship, students cried out, “No amnesty!” for figures involved in torture and the military dictatorship. The UNE also honored family members who lost relatives to the dictatorship, like Luis, and agreed to march on the anniversary of his death on March 28th.
But the neo-fascist regimes are not just of the past. Just after the Congress ended, more details of the far right’s attempted military coup on January 8, 2022, made headlines. The attempt to forcibly prevent a transition of power after Bolsonaro’s defeat, led by Bolsonaro and key allies, included plans to assassinate Lula. For his involvement, Bolsonaro was charged in mid-February with a plethora of crimes and faces decades of imprisonment.
José Antonio Nogueira Belham, a former general and head of an infamous torture and detention center during the dictatorship, woke up in late February to the sounds of students drumming and chanting. The Levante student collective held a “we’re still here” action—referencing the Academy Award-winning film, I’m Still Here—in front of his apartment to say they would not forget the dictatorship.
At the Congress, Douglas Lopes, a young Black student who organizes with RUA Anti-Capitalist Youth Movement, highlighted connections between the struggles of the past and present. Referencing left-wing activists and politicians who were killed, he spoke to the crowd in a packed auditorium: “While they’re January 8, we’re March 28! While they try to advance [the far right], we’ll be [Carlos] Marighella, Marielle Franco, and Edson Luis! Long live the student struggle!”
Building a Diverse Left
Students unanimously agree on defeating the far right, but when it comes to how to build a united left movement today, they begin to diverge. Student movements are predominantly progressive, but there are differing tendencies within and across the political parties with which they are affiliated. Each year they come together at national congresses to vie for a say in the direction of the UNE and, in doing so, dispute the direction of the country’s leftist political parties as well.
“The far right today is very important to understanding the divisions among the left in Brazil,” explained Júlia Maia, who is 26 and organizes with the Juntos! youth movement. These differences became more visible after Bolsonaro’s term ended. The current UNE leadership is represented by The Majority and the Union of Socialist Youth (UJS). The leadership and activists in Fearless Youth (Juventude sem Medo, JSM), a second coalition that includes student and social movement groups, tend to support the policies of current Lula’s Workers’ Party (PT). A third group, The Leftist Opposition, argues that the student movement should act more independently.
For those students aligned with the government and JSM, part of their reasoning is linked to the far right’s global potency—and the need for “unity” against it. Fabio Paiva, a RUA activist, said the election of Trump and Javier Milei in Argentina confirmed the “relevance of the far right in the world.” Collectives like RUA used to belong to the opposition but now organize with Juventude sem Medo.
Opposition activists argue against unity in the abstract, and instead promote unity among those willing to critique the current government’s neoliberal logics. Students of the opposition attribute Lula’s low approval rating today to neoliberal concessions his government has made. They argue that students must serve as a vanguard, willing to go to the streets and struggle, rather than accept a model of institutionalization and recognition over substantive funding and policies for Brazil’s most marginalized.
At a plenary of Juntos! activists in a strip of shade next to the tents, long-time former student activist Camila Menezes spoke of being a new Brazilian left, one that would not be afraid to defend the working class rather than make compromises, and to address the “problem at its roots,” – a problem they attribute to a lack of substantive leftist alternatives. Maia agreed, saying “the far right could return again if we don’t have a process of consciousness raising, of occupying streets, and of really promoting political participation.”
A Transnational Student Movement
Students of all political tendencies situated their struggle within a larger battle against the global far right. “With the return of Trump to the presidency, we must return to the offensive against the far right,” said the RUA activist Lopes. “We need to dispute the ideas of the far right and show the power of the streets.” As he finished his speech, students drummed and chanted, “Sou estudante, e vou lutar! Vou na rua, pro facismo derrotar!” (“I’m a student! And I’ll struggle! I’ll go back to the street. To defeat fascism!”).
Students, who often referred to themselves as a part of “youth movements” due to their wide agenda, continued fighting traditional student battles while also expanding to anti-racist, feminist, and eco-socialist struggles. The climate crisis was a central concern. Many students, including those from Indigenous territories, prioritized holding policymakers accountable at the upcoming COP30, the United Nations Climate Change Conference that is scheduled to be held in the Brazilian Amazon in November. In recent weeks, the Lula government has pushed to expand oil drilling in the surrounding area. Anticipating formal talks behind closed doors, students, Indigenous leaders, and land defenders have begun to organize for a parallel, grassroots movement-led COP30.
Commitment to anti-racism, historically tied to anti-racist struggles in the United States, also entailed opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the global crackdown on migration. In his speech, Douglas condemned the weapons that kill in both Palestine and Rio’s favelas. Students called for Brazil to follow Colombia’s example in cutting ties with Israel. Students also condemned the growing far right ideology of framing migrants as criminals, which has resulted in Brazilian deportees being returned from the United States in handcuffs, and massive cuts to USAID funding that have affected Venezuelan migrants living in Brazil; one hundred humanitarian workers were recently fired near Brazil’s northern border.
Yet, just as far right leaders have emerged, so too has resistance grown in Latin America. By combining visible actions like marches and school occupations with sharp political analysis, political education, and the writing of manifestos, Latin American students are charting the complicated path of resistance. While a path to defeating the far right is a formidable one, Brazil’s student movements—alongside Indigenous leaders, workers, Black activists, feminists, and climate activists—are dedicated to the long, slow, steady work of organizing amidst and between elections, in classrooms, hallways, and in the streets.
“Our struggle is huge!” said Vivi Reis, a politician who began in the student movement, “We’ll leave here stronger!” Echoing the connections between the student movement and the national political scene, Reis touched on something the students knew well. After the plenary halls emptied, it was up to them to put into motion the words and commitments of the Congress.
Alice Taylor is a Global Justice postdoctoral scholar at the University of Denver’s Korbel School of International Studies. She earned a PhD from UC Berkeley and an MA in International Studies from the Fletcher School at Tufts University. She lived in Brazil for seven years, including during the June 2013 protests in Rio de Janeiro, which drew her attention to the dynamic Brazilian political landscape and youth activism. She has taught courses on social movements and other areas for eight years. She is currently working on a book manuscript.
