When Brazil re-elected President Dilma Rousseff in 2014, I challenged the idea – shared by the Economist magazine, among others – that had the elections been determined by GDP (that is, by economic wealth) and not by universal suffrage, Rousseff would have never been re-elected. What seemed like a harmless remark back in 2014 turned into a nightmarish reality, as the president was forced out of office earlier this week.

Let’s start calling things by their name: what’s happening in Brazil today is a coup d’etat. A coup sponsored by both internal and external forces; forces that have many times before done away with democratically elected governments in Latin America, to satisfy the needs of neoliberal capitalism. Just for a quick check, remember the coups orchestrated in Venezuela in 2002, Haiti in 2004, and Honduras in 2009, under the uninterested eyes of the international community.

What we are seeing now is an impeachment process that was well in the making from the moment the validity of one of the largest democratic elections in the history of the world was questioned.

White, privileged, wealthy, male Brazilians have led the impeachment charges; those same white, privileged, wealthy, male Brazilians that used to have suffrage all for themselves – before power was wrested from their often-bloody hands by former slaves, indigenous populations, women, and LGTB groups.

If you have any doubt, take a look at the photographs of every anti-Rousseff demonstration in the past few months. These street demonstrators did not hesitate in openly calling for a military intervention, and went as far as asking America’s Donald Trump for help.

This sort of unruly conduct was not limited to the streets. White rich men, in politics and the media, have been stoking the fires for almost as long as long as President Rousseff was in office. If there was any doubt about what sort of people the campaigners are, the impeachment vote in the Brazillian parliament a few weeks ago, featured congressman Jair Bolsonaro, who dedicated his anti-democratic vote to a former Military Junta leader and to a known torturer.

Rousseff's supposed ‘crime’ is to have used some state-controlled banks to fund a series of social projects for the most needy in Brazilian society – projects that had been affected by the world financial crisis from 2008 onwards. In other words, as far as we know, she hasn’t moved a single real from the state’s coffers into her own pockets, unlike many of her accusers.

Five of the best Brazilian writers, past and present Show all 5 1 /5 Five of the best Brazilian writers, past and present Five of the best Brazilian writers, past and present Clarice Lispector Complete Stories (translated by Katrina Dodson) Clarice Lispector’s stories have now, finally, been collected in English, so that we can read all the major works that have made her a legend in Brazil. The stories bring out the heat and passion of everyday characters and everyday lives, including teenagers becoming aware of their sexual and artistic powers, middle-class women with the daily concerns of home and love (or lack thereof), animals, and children. Lispector was born in 1920 into a Jewish family in the Ukraine and brought to Brazil as a child, when her family fled the pogroms. The author of varied and dazzling works, it is perhaps for her stories, such as ‘Love’ and ‘Family Ties’, she is most adored. Five of the best Brazilian writers, past and present Paulo Scott, Nowhere People (translated by Daniel Hahn) Driving home through São Paulo one night, Paulo, a well-heeled law student and democracy activist, passes a figure at the side of the road. A n indigenous, Guarani Indian girl stands in the heavy rain. When Paulo elects to give her a lift to her family’s roadside camp, their fleeting encounter will have far-reaching repercussions. Scott conjures a society riven with race and class divisions, still seething with anger at the now fading hopes raised during the county’s awkward transition to democracy Five of the best Brazilian writers, past and present Tatiana Salem Levy, The House in Smyrna (translated by Alison Entrekin) A light-footed and subtle novel that doesn’t skirt life’s sorrows (love gone wrong, disease, death). The protagonist, who suffers from a mysterious and debilitating illness, is the granddaughter of a Sephardic Jew who left Turkey for Brazil. When her dying grandfather gives her the key to his house in the ancient city of Smyrna, Turkey, she sets out on a quest, retracing her family’s history across continents and reviving with every step. Five of the best Brazilian writers, past and present Michel Laub, Diary of the Fall (translated by Margaret Jull Costa) The narrator of Diary of the Fall is marked by his complicity in a childhood prank at his Jewish private school which left the school’s only Catholic boy badly injured. Meanwhile, his father wrestles with his own memory as it is unpicked by A lzheimer’s, and his grandfather, an Auschwitz survivor, spends his final years jotting down fictionalized memories, so determined is he to forget the reality. Notable for the restrained power of its short paragraphs, this novel tackles guilt, class and racism in a fresh and moving way. Five of the best Brazilian writers, past and present Milton Hatoum, The Brothers (translated by John Gledson) Set in a Lebanese immigrant community in the A mazonian city of Manaus, The Brothers is the story of the identical twins Yaqub and Omar, their mutual jealousies and their family’s disintegration. It conjures up the sights, sounds and smells of the Amazon as well as the experience of a Lebanese family in a setting very different to the one in Raduan Nassar’s Ancient Tillage, but one equally prone to strong passions. Hatoum’s novel was, in fact, first read by Nassar, who was a mentor to Hatoum years before the novel appeared.

To have an idea of how unreasonable the charges are, imagine a UK in which the British people would take to the streets to demonstrate against David Cameron and George Osborne for having deviated funds from military or trade budgets to pay for social housing or boost teachers’ salaries.

Unlike President Rousseff, many of those who have attempted to impeach her or replace her in this new corporate and corrupt government are being investigated for charges including conspiracy, money-laundering, forging documents and misappropriating public funds.

These include new acting president Michel Temer, who has appointed a new cabinet of wealthy, privileged, white, male politicians like himself.

Brazil, remember, is among the most diverse countries on the face of earth. Not since the last dictatorship has a cabinet been so unrepresentative of the Brazilian people.

Though it has not been widely reported outside Brazil, anti-coup demonstrations are still going on (just follow the hashtag #NaoVaiTerGolpe) and the future of this most wonderful and distinct country still hangs in the balance.

Once again, the spectre of an unequal, undemocratic Brazil has been awakened. Hopefully this time ordinary Brazilians – white, black, Asian, indigenous, men and women, gay and straight – will find the strength put it to sleep for good.