, Columnist
This Woman Holds the Key to the Fate of Brazil
An obscure congresswoman is left to decide the course of the nation's anti-corruption campaign.
Brazil's legislature at work.
Photographer: Igo EstrelaThis article is for subscribers only.
Until a couple of weeks ago, not many Brazilians had heard of Eronildes Vasconcelos. Fellow parishioners in Salvador, her home town in northeast Brazil, know the churchgoing 44-year-old widow and mother of two as a junior member of the country's growing evangelical Christian congressional caucus.
But thanks to the unlikely role she's been called on to play in shaping the outcome of Brazil's widening political corruption scandal, Vasconcelos has become a national celebrity of sorts. Her every hosanna now galvanizes public attention from Twitter to the Planalto presidential palace in Brasilia.