Vol. 5 No. 9 (2018)

The Revista de Estudios Brasileños (Journal of Brazilian Studies) publishes the ninth issue in its fifth year of editorial life, with the full consolidation of the project and a large acceptance by authors and readers. During the last few years, Brazil has experienced some of the most intense moments of its recent history, such as the organization of the World Cup, the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro and, in political terms, the impeachment process of President Dilma Rousseff in 2016. All these events were observed by a perplexed society, which saw the country moving from an intense collective euphoria during the last years of Lula's government and the first term of Dilma's to a feeling of deep economic, political and social crisis, whose solution cannot be foreseen and which, as a roller coaster, has led Brazilians from an exacerbated optimism to a sensation of defeat, asceticism and disaffection towards the political system and its ruling elites. Corruption cases have contributed greatly to this feeling, which, although common in Western democracies in the first two decades of the 21st century, acquires in Brazil a special dimension both for its strategic importance as well as for the depth and intensity of this unstable period.