Free Brazil! Meet the millennial libertarian activists who helped bring down a president.

AuthorEpstein, Jim
PositionRenan Santos, Kim Kataguiri, Pedro Ferreira - Interview

"Less Marx, More Mises" read signs held by some of the protesters who filled the streets of Brazil's cities on March ij, 2015. With a headcount estimated at more than a million, the demonstrators were calling for an end to Dilma Rousseff's disastrous populist presidency. An organization of libertarian millennials called Movimiento Brasil Libre, or the Free Brazil Movement, led the charge. With the country crippled by recession and a corruption scandal dominating the headlines, the demonstrators expressed their anger in explicitly libertarian terms.

The Free Brazil Movement is the activist wing of the country's surging libertarian movement. Founded in 2013, the group played a key role in ending 13 years of left-wing Workers' Party control.

Two months after the first massive protest, the Free Brazil Movement led a 33-day, 750-mile march from Sao Paulo to the federal capital of Brasilia while carrying an impeachment bill to deliver to Congress. Following another year of protests and behind-the-scenes maneuvering, lawmakers took action. On May 12, 2016, Rousseff was forced to step down on charges of secretly borrowing money from state-owned banks to paper over the government's fiscal problems.

The Free Brazil Movement's primary focus, however, is changing politics through culture. With a leadership composed mostly of filmmakers and musicians, the group operates on the theory that most people pick their political views based on a desire to fit in.Thus, the way to change the country's politics is to create a new libertarian cultural identity that allows young Brazilians to be cool without fashioning themselves lefty revolutionaries.

The group functions in part as a media oudet, feeding content to its 1.4 million Facebook followers. ("Without Facebook," says 32-year-old Co-Chief Strategist Renan Santos, "we would still have Dilma.") It regularly produces viral videos heavy on satire, scoring a major hit with a 2014 political advertisement featuring a candidate with "privatizing" laser beams shooting out of his eyes that instantaneously turned poorly run government services modern and efficient.

The Free Brazil Movement's chief spokesperson is 20-year-old Kim Kataguiri, a part-time law student who wears his hair long and clothes loose--a look that in no way resembles the "bow tie libertarians" who he says will "never convince anyone here in Brazil." Pedro Ferreira, 32, the group's other chief strategist, started his career working in marketing for the music industry. He believes the libertarian movement can learn a lot from Justin Bieber about expanding its fan base.

What follows are excerpts from interviews with Kataguiri, Santos, and Ferreira. Conducted in English, the interviews have been edited for clarity. Santos and Kataguiri were also featured in a Reason TV documentary, "How Brazil's Libertarian Movement Helped Bring Down a President," which can be found at reason.com.

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