January 8th, three years: Lest it be forgotten, lest it ever happen again

The calendar marks three years since the headquarters of the Three Powers in Brasília were the stage for one of the most regrettable episodes in Brazil's recent history. On January 8, 2023, the far-right Bolsonaro supporters attempted to materialize what had been brewing for months: a coup d'état to overthrow an elected government and establish a military dictatorship in the country.

For the working class, the memory of this day is not just a historical record, but a call to action: No amnesty for the coup plotters!

A coup foretold
It was not a spontaneous movement. The media of the time and subsequent investigations confirmed January 8th as the culmination of a coup escalation. There were months of encampments financed by businessmen and agribusiness sectors in front of military barracks, criminal road blockades, and hate rhetoric calling for military intervention.

Today, in 2026, the evidence is irrefutable. What seemed like a riot by "fanatics" was, in fact, an organized operation with a chain of command within the Presidential Palace. Investigations have proven that the coup plan and direct encouragement came from Jair Bolsonaro's presidential office, seeking to use the Armed Forces to prevent Lula's inauguration and destroy democratic freedoms.

Breaking the cycle of impunity: From 1964 to 2023
For the first time since the end of the 1964 military dictatorship, we see coup plotters sitting in the dock and being sent to prison. This is a victory for popular mobilization, but the pressure from the far-right for a review of sentences and for lenient "dosimetry" is constant.

CSP-Conlutas reaffirms: the sentences must be upheld and Bolsonaro must pay for his crimes in prison. Brazilian history teaches us the cost of conciliation. The 1979 Amnesty Law, which protected torturers and generals of the 1964 dictatorship, is the open wound that allowed the military to dream of power again in 2023. Because there was no punishment yesterday, they felt authorized to attempt a coup today.

Punishing today's coup plotters is the only way to prevent tomorrow's generals from trying to impose a dictatorship again.

The Capitol Mirror and the Aggression Against Venezuela

The Brazilian script is not original. The parallel with the invasion of the Capitol in the United States on January 6, 2021, is evident. There, the lack of immediate and forceful punishment against Donald Trump allowed the far-right leader to return to power and, now in 2026, to use military force unilaterally.

The recent bombing of Venezuela and the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro by American forces show the true face of this policy: the use of "defending democracy" as a facade for imperialist interests and control of natural resources. Trump was not punished for trying to subvert internal democracy and now he subverts the sovereignty of other peoples. In Brazil, we cannot allow Bolsonarism and the far right to have the same political survival.

Defending freedoms to advance the struggle
Defending democratic freedoms does not mean placing blind trust in the institutions of the bourgeois state, but guaranteeing the ground where the working class can organize, strike, and fight for its rights without fear of batons and bayonets.

The fight against amnesty is a fight against forgetting. We continue in the streets demanding the imprisonment of all the organizers, financiers, and military personnel involved in January 8th.

Never Again to Dictatorship! For the end of the authoritarian legacy and punishment for all the coup plotters!