More From The Man Who Wants To Fix Brazil
Another Special Guest Post
Last month, we had a special guest post from one of the best accounts on X, the pseudonymous journalist, travel writer, and keen (and often hilarious) social observer, Drukpa Kunley (@kunley_drukpa). He had recently sat down with Brazilian Presidential candidate Renan Santos ("Meet The Man Trying To Fix Brazil"). Kunley got another opportunity to interview Santos, and we have his highlights of their conversation below.
Before we get to that, a quick market note. Back in February, we wrote that it was time to get back into Intel.
⏰Time To Get Back Into Intel
— Portfolio Armor (@PortfolioArmor) February 18, 2026
The bullish case remains the same, but now the technical picture is aligned. Plus, a second reindustrialization trade. $INTC https://t.co/J7oAYvLyVL
Intel has more than doubled since then, but it was our system's #1 name again last night, indicating that it's time to get back into it. We have an options trade teed up for Intel later today, along with trades on a few other AI-adjacent names. If you want a heads up when we place them, you can subscribe to our trading Substack/occasional email list below.
Now on to Kunley's latest with the man who wants to fix Brazil, Renan Santos.
Authored by Drukpa Kunley on X
CONVERSATIONS WITH BRAZILIAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE RENAN SANTOS - ON BRAZIL’S PROBLEMS
What follows is a paraphrased version of a conversation I had with Renan Santos. Renan is currently third on Polymarket’s betting odds to become the next President of Brazil (as of June 2026) and even if he does not win the 2026 election he and his party - the ‘Missão’ or Mission Party - intend to play an increasingly larger role in Brazilian politics over the coming years. Their main thesis is that while it seems like Brazil has too many intractable problems to ever properly ‘fix’ most of those problems do actually have obvious solutions and would be relatively easy to address if a party seriously intent on actually ‘fixing things’ came to power. That is, Missão want to to press the ‘Fix Everything Easily Switch’.
Here are some of the major problems with Brazil as Renan Santos sees it:
“As a foreigner, a gringo, you look at a country like Brazil and the obvious problem with it is the crime. When I walk down the street here and have my phone out I sometimes get Brazilians coming up to me looking genuinely concerned and saying “put your phone away, please, don’t be so naive please put it away I’m trying to help you!” They do sincerely seem to believe that I’m going to get mugged. The sociological question for me there is, why is there so much crime in Brazil?”
“Always reminds me of El Salvador. Of course Bukele’s ‘One Big Trick’ was to point at criminals and say “let’s arrest them” - but before that too the conditions in El Salvador were very similar to Brazil, where you had gangs controlling physical territory in the country. I think you want to say, like Bukele says, “this is obviously an insurgency.””
RENAN: “So there’s two types of crime you’ll encounter, petty low-level crime which is just an opportunistic thug with a knife or a gun thinking hey why not I will have a go at that guy and then, more seriously, organised and organised-adjacent crime. The main reason these are both so prevalent are, I’m sorry to say, the inadequacies of Brazil’s criminal justice system.”
“Always reminds me of El Salvador. Of course Bukele’s ‘One Big Trick’ was to point at criminals and say “let’s arrest them” - but before that too the conditions in El Salvador were very similar to Brazil, where you had gangs controlling physical territory in the country. I think you want to say, like Bukele says, “this is obviously an insurgency.””
“Yeah, this is exactly right. Brazil, you know in its aspirations towards becoming a ‘serious country’ - I mean if it wants to be something close to a First World country - faces a very serious threat from organised criminal groups. Drug-trafficking factions and militias like Comando Vermelho, Amigos dos Amigos, Escritório do Crime and PCC etc. exercise real territorial control in parts of the country. What has happened here is that the state has effectively ceded sovereignty over significant urban areas, particularly in some favelas, which allows these criminal organizations to carve out on their own little fiefdoms where they can become parallel authorities. Then these territories get established and the gangs can basically do whatever they want with impunity, run various rackets out of them. The effects of gang warfare aside this seeps out into regular street crime, a lot of street crime is downstream of these groups.”
“And why aren’t these gang members being prosecuted?”
“The argument that will be made is something like “ohhh well we can’t really know who the criminals are” or “ohhh we don’t have enough evidence to prosecute them” or “ohhh what about their human rights?” It’s some version of one of these three defenses. The last one is most important in terms of the practical consequences of policy. Let me give you an example. Just take for granted here that we’ve somehow managed to prosecute a major gang member. In Brazil, offenders frequently will not serve the full prison sentences imposed by courts. Brazil's legal system allows various mechanisms for sentence progression, parole, temporary leave ('saídas temporárias'), and sentence reductions for good behavior. What happens is that serious criminals just end up returning to society long before they should. There is a legal culture in Brazil that focuses on criminal rights, that is focused on the rights of criminals over the public. You have this alliance of courts, legal activists and parts of the legal profession that are reluctant to impose harsher punishments for ideological reasons. Also with gang members, the system treats them as regular criminals. It doesn’t recognise that these people are participants in entities that actively challenge state sovereignty, that they are part of organisations which exercise territorial control comparable to insurgent groups.”
“What are the political and legal obstacles that stop this from being reformed?”
“With politicians, some - especially on the left - do genuinely believe that these criminals are downtrodden souls who would change their ways if only they had the right education and opportunities for rehabilitation. They make 'socioeconomic conditions' arguments to that effect all the time. Other politicians are too afraid to address the issue because of potential political fallout, others - in the most extreme cases - collaborate with organised crime for financial, political benefit etc. Really the whole incentive structure for resolving the gang crime issue is lopsided. If you are an ordinary politician it can be too much of a legal or media headache to even bother trying.”
“What about the judiciary? You talk about the judiciary a lot. Brazil infamously has this arch-vampire like figure of (Supreme Federal Court Justice) Alexandre de Moraes, who some portray as even more of an enabler than (Brazilian President) Lula.”
“Well, about the judiciary - Brazil has a problem of judicial activism, which is the tendency of judges, especially in higher courts, to make decisions that effectively create public policy rather than merely interpret laws. Many issues that should be decided by elected representatives in the legislature are increasingly being decided by courts. The Supreme Federal Court, which Moraes is a part of, has become incredibly dominant in Brazilian politics. In some cases more dominant than the Executive and Congress. Also, judges and prosecutors have very substantial authority but face very limited accountability when they make mistakes or abuse their powers. You can imagine too that not all judges by disposition are going to always apply the law impartially. Another thing, Brazilian court proceedings often last for years, especially in complex criminal and corruption cases involving multiple appeals. Punishment can be delayed for a very long time which is a kind of impunity for all practical purposes.”
“Are all these incentives that keep Brazil the way it is a part of deliberate political project? You talk about Venezuelafication, is it because you have your own version of the Chavistas pulling all the levers of state here?”
“Actually the thing with Brazil, it may surprise you, is that a lot of politicians are not even especially political. Of course there are some but, well, let me give you an example. In Brazilian politics, there is a very influential, informal coalition of centre-to-right political parties known as the Centrão. These parties don’t really have any ideology, they basically exchange legislative support and congressional power for cabinet positions and ‘local budget allocation’. They’re not all corrupt of course but at least some are. There are lots of informal networks in politics here - in Brazil we have this term ‘jeitinho’, which means something like ‘creatively navigating politics and building connections through informal problem-solving’. This is something that is a part of the culture-”
“Sounds like a polite way to describe corruption.”
“It can be sometimes of course. But also it can be the equivalent of lobbying in other countries, your country, which kind of resembles corruption but it isn’t strictly corruption as such. Also it’s just the way a lot of politics works in Brazil, it’s the culture. Either way, what happens is because these Centrão politicians are more interested in political survival they will tend to support governments of different ideological stripes when it becomes advantageous for them to do so. A lot of politicians as they are now do act as blocks to reform, but a lot of that is through inertia. The left is dominant in Brazilian politics but it isn’t so dominant that it would be impossible to flip the incentive structures and make the right dominant instead.”
“I want to go back to the El Salvador comparison again. I know it’s easy to make it almost everywhere in modern Latin American politics but… most of the time it’s a good comparison. So when Bukele was trying to reform the country, what he discovered was essentially that state institutions like the judiciary and like congress were obstructing reform partially for ideological reasons but also basically, again, just through inertia. And he had to do a lot of legal and political manoeuvring to overcome that, that was his main obstacle rather than the actual gangs themselves. Even today he has to exercise control through special emergency powers.”
“Yes. The situation is not exactly one-to-one with Brazil but it is very similar.”
“One of the other big things you notice about Brazil as a gringo is the favelas. It’s really a very distinctive component of ‘Brazilian-ness’ vis-à-vis how foreigners think about Brazil, what they imagine Brazilian identity to be. I saw that you wanted to get rid of the favelas - you have this idea of ‘de-favelisation’. They did achieve this in some Asian countries like Singapore and China, also in Medellín in Colombia - that’s the big successful Latin America example. Why are the favelas able to grow and spread so much in Brazil?”
“So this is again a symptom of state failure. Very weak urban planning, institutional collapse, no planned neighbourhoods for absorbing urban growth. Infamously a lot of the original favelas would emerge on hillsides. In Rio, people would arrive on one of the hills there and just start erecting shanties. And nobody did anything about it so they eventually became established neighbourhoods. This happens even to this day, people arrive at the edge of a city and begin erecting their ceramic brick houses and nobody does anything about it.”
“Reminds me a bit of South Africa. In South Africa you get a lot of township (the South African equivalent of favelas) growth where people arrive at the edge of existing cities from the countryside and just start setting up shacks. And the government doesn’t do anything about it. In fact in some cases it offers legal protections for these people.”
“In Brazil in practice courts can serve evictions. But also in Brazil courts recognise a right to housing. So if someone starts a new favela, you can challenge that legally but it will take so long that by the time legal proceedings conclude the favela will have grown tenfold. There is also the principle of 'usucapião' (adverse possession), which is that people who occupy land continuously for many years can acquire legal rights to it. So even if a favela initially does not have a legal right to exist if it exists for long enough normally it becomes established anyway. Part of the issue too is that Brazilian culture often romanticises favelas, parts of favela culture, makes excuses for different kinds of anti-social and self-destructive behaviours that exist there. Not to mention the problems of gangs entrenching themselves in the favelas and de facto controlling these territories instead of the Brazilian state. It’s downstream from the core reason for a lot of Brazil’s problems, which is at its heart a kind of civilisational problem. No developed country would deliberately choose to house large portions of its population in areas lacking full infrastructure and legal certainty.”
“What is the civilization problem Brazil has?”
“Weak institutions, poor governance, corruption, inadequate public security, lack of long-term planning and so on as a manifestation of some deeper national problem. This is the main question to ask Brazilians - why do we force ourselves to live like this?”
