Two years and two days after the United States Capitol was trashed by supporters of former president Donald Trump resulting in millions of dollars in property damages, an uncomfortably similar scene played out earlier this week in the Brazilian capital of Brasília, albeit against a strikingly different architectural backdrop.
In lieu of tactical gear–clad rioters scaling sandstone walls on the western front of the Neoclassical U.S. Capitol complex on an overcast mid-Atlantic afternoon, the images that emerged from the January 8 insurrection in Brasília were dominated by swarms of yellow- and green-garbed Bolsonaristas. These loyalists of former far-right Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro descended on a trio of Modernist government buildings that comprise the civic nucleus of a larger UNESCO World Heritage Site. Brasília, a city of the future—with winding ramps, sweeping plazas, flat rooflines, and reflecting pools—plotted out more than 60 years ago in the heart of the Brazilian highlands by Oscar Niemeyer, Lúcio Costa, and Joaquim Cardozo, was under siege.
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