How Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro brought the military back to the centre of politics + archaeological garbage investigators

Jair Bolsonaro is openly nostalgic for the era of Brazil’s military dictatorship, which ended in 1985. Since the former army captain was elected president in 2018, he’s packed his government full of military men and maintained a close relationship with the armed forces. But in recent months it’s not always been straightforward. With Brazil heading towards presidential elections in 2022, and Bolsonaro slumping in the polls, some of those military officers who’ve tasted political power may be assessing their options. 

We speak to two experts about the history of relations between politics and the military in Brazil – and what’s at stake. Maud Chirio is a lecturer in history at Université Gustave Eiffel in Paris, is a specialist in Brazil's military dictatorship. And Vinicius Mariano de Carvalho is director of King’s Brazil Institute at King's College London and former member of the army, who studies civilian-military relations. 

And in our second story (24m20s), we travel back to 12th century Islamic Iberia with the help of zooarchaeologist Marcos García García, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of York in the UK. By sifting through ancient household waste at an archaeological dig outside Córdoba in Spain, he’s revealing clues about the people left out of history.

And Nick Lehr, arts and culture editor at The Conversation in the US, tells us about a new series of articles on transgender young people (34m15s). To go alongside it, The Conversation has put together an email newsletter course to help shed light on the issues that transgender young people and their families face. Anyone of any age, gender or sexuality that is interested in learning about the latest research on transgender youth can sign up here to receive the mini-course in the form of four emails over about a week.

The Conversation Weekly is produced by Mend Mariwany and Gemma Ware, with sound design by Mau Loseto. Our theme music is by Neeta Sarl. You can find us on Twitter @TC_Audio, on Instagram at theconversationdotcom. or via email on podcast@theconversation.com. You can also sign up to The Conversation’s free daily email here. Full credits for this article available here.

Further reading

• Brazil’s economic crisis, prolonged by COVID-19, poses an enormous challenge to the Amazon, by Peter Richards, George Washington University
• Le Brésil, une démocratie militarisée, by Maud Chirio, Université Gustave Eiffel
• Populism in Brazil: how liberalisation and austerity led to the rise of Lula and Bolsonaro, by Patricia Justino, United Nations University and Bruno Martorano, United Nations University
• Los cerdos no mienten: un basurero cristiano en la Córdoba islámica, by Marcos García García, University of York and Guillermo García-Contreras Ruiz, Universidad de Granada
• New archaeology finding shows how Muslim cuisine endured in secret despite policing by the Spanish Catholic regime, by Aleks Pluskowski, University of Reading; Guillermo García-Contreras Ruiz, Universidad de Granada, and Marcos García García, University of York
• Trans kids in the US were seeking treatment decades before today’s political battles over access to health care, by Jules Gill-Peterson, University of Pittsburgh
• How the bulletin board systems, email lists and Geocities pages of the early internet created a place for trans youth to find one another and explore coming out, by Avery Dame-Griff, Appalachian State University