Brazil’s Right Wing Is Wasting No Time In Undoing Progress

FEATURING MELEIZA FIGUEROA – One of the first actions that Brazil’s new self-appointed right wing government did under President Michel Temer, was to announce a new cabinet consisting exclusively of white men. Temer took over from Brazil’s first female President Dilma Rousseff, who was suspended following unsubstantiated allegations of corruption, by people who are themselves embroiled in corruption scandals. Rousseff’s cabinet was highly diverse in both race and gender.

Meleiza Figueroa is a Ph.D. candidate in geography at the University of California at Berkeley and a producer at KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles. She was head researcher on the 2005 film “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price” and has been a longtime social justice activist and organizer in Los Angeles and the Bay Area. She now joins us from Santarem in Brazil where she currently lives.