It’s a story Carol Hutchins likes to tell. She’s sharing it again now, sitting in her office at the University of Michigan, surrounded by awards that hint at her status as one of the most successful college coaches – male or female – in the United States. It’s about her click moment in 1976.

Ms. Hutchins was a freshman varsity basketball player at Michigan State University, living her dream of playing college sports at a time when few women were student-athletes. On that winter day, her team got a fortuitous break: Instead of practicing where they normally did, in the intramural building with its leaky roof and warped floor, the women were working out in Jenison Field House – the big gymnasium where the men’s basketball team played. They were getting ready for a rare double-header in which both the men’s and women’s teams were hosting major out-of-town rivals. 

As the women ran plays, the visiting men’s team walked in with its famous coach – revered by anyone who followed college basketball. He called the women’s team over. Ms. Hutchins was excited. Surely, she thought, they were going to get a pep talk. Some strategic insights. A motivational anecdote. Not exactly.

“He said, ‘You need to get off the court because nobody gives a damn about women’s basketball,’” Ms. Hutchins recalls. Even today, nearly five decades later, the woman who has gone on to win more games as a college softball coach than anyone else in NCAA history winces at the memory. Her eyes flash anger. “He said it to our faces! I was lit. It definitely changed my world.” 

She won’t name the basketball coach outright. She doesn’t need to. “This is the thing,” says Ms. Hutchins, who has coached at Michigan since 1983. “The reason I don’t name him is because it could be a lot of them. That was the era.”

Tonuy Avelar/AP/File

Brigham Young University goalkeeper Cassidy Smith lunges to block a penalty kick by an opposing player in a tournament in California in 2021.

It’s certainly not the era anymore. The reason a comment like that sounds so archaic now, and women like Ms. Hutchins have been given the opportunity to vault to the pinnacle of the college athletic world, is largely because of a sparsely worded law passed on June 23, 1972, that didn’t even have the word “sports” in it. Title IX simply made it illegal to discriminate on the basis of sex in educational settings that receive federal funding. 

Yet the law ushered in a gender revolution – and has, by many accounts, become one of the most significant pieces of federal legislation to benefit women in the past 50 years. 

Today its ripple effects reach into almost every dugout and locker room in America, almost every living room, almost every classroom, and even corporate suites. It has changed the lives of countless individual women – and society itself. 

The dramatic rise in the number of girls and women participating in sports is the most often cited impact. But the changes extend way beyond that. The law has helped propel more women to get college degrees, provided them some protection against sexual harassment and assault, and aided them in advancing to corner offices and boardrooms. Girls can take auto shop today, in part because of the cultural changes wrought by Title IX, and getting pregnant no longer means getting kicked out of school or losing a job. 

Still, like any revolution, Title IX has generated its share of controversy. Some critics think its scope goes way too far, while many proponents of the law think it hasn’t gone far enough. Indeed, ask almost any women’s rights advocate or female coach who has traced the law’s arc of progress over the past 50 years, and they will say the work of Title IX is hardly complete. 

“It’s still too early, in my view, to be congratulating ourselves,” says Marissa Pollick, a lawyer and lecturer in sports management at the University of Michigan and a Title IX consultant. “I think the law is widely misunderstood, and there’s still a lot of myths and misconceptions surrounding the law and its application.”

Thomas Boyd/AP/File

Runners compete in a preliminary heat of the women’s 200 meters during the NCAA Division I track and field championships in 2021 in Eugene, Oregon.

The use and interpretation of Title IX have, in fact, been inconsistent since its passing, tossed like a political football under changing administrations. In 1984, President Ronald Reagan tried and failed to limit the law’s application to specific programs. In 2005, President George W. Bush suggested colleges dole out federal money to men’s and women’s sports based on the level of interest in them.

In 2011, President Barack Obama pointedly reminded colleges of their obligations to combat sexual harassment under the law, while the administration of President Donald Trump narrowed the definition of sexual misconduct and required that both parties be present at investigative hearings and subject to cross-examination. The current administration is considering extending Title IX protections to transgender students. 

As these whipsaws have occurred at the top levels of power, clashes have erupted on college campuses, too. Critics have long argued that requiring equal opportunities for women will diminish men’s opportunities. In some ways, they have.

By protecting budgets for revenue-generating programs such as football and men’s basketball, athletic directors – a majority of whom are male – can feel forced to cut smaller programs such as men’s swimming and wrestling in order to fund women’s programs.

Yet the benefits to women, even if not as much as they’d like, have been undeniable. The law has helped create a female sports culture where none existed and even relaxed rigid gender stereotypes in society.

Daryl Marshke/©University of Michigan/File

University of Michigan softball coach Carol Hutchins talks with one of her players at a game in Oklahoma City in 2015.

Ms. Hutchins has seen all the progress of the law, and its pitfalls, up close. 

Carol Hutchins was a self-described tomboy as a youth. She resisted makeup sessions with her two sisters to play sandlot baseball and football with her brothers and neighborhood kids.

But once she reached a certain age, her mother pulled her aside and told her girls don’t really play sports. Plus, she was annoying the boys. “There was nowhere to play organized sports,” Ms. Hutchins says of Lansing, Michigan, in the 1960s. Her brothers got to play on a baseball team sponsored by an insurance company. “I felt like I was different in a bad way, like, there was something wrong with me. ... I used to think I wanted to be a boy. And then I realized I didn’t want to be a boy. I wanted to be an athlete.”

She would soon benefit from someone who lived half a country away and whose focus wasn’t sports at all. In 1970, Bernice Sandler was struggling to find a job. She had a Ph.D. in education from the University of Maryland, where she had been teaching part time, but she was not getting any full-time offers. Her younger male classmates, meanwhile, were having no trouble advancing in their careers. “You come on too strong for a woman,” one male faculty member suggested to her as an explanation.

At the time, women were entering the workforce in record numbers, but their participation was predominantly in traditional “female occupations”: nursing, child care, primary education, secretarial work. Schools reinforced that ethos. Girls were barred from auto mechanics and boys from home economics, explains Sarita Pillai, co-author of “More Than Title IX: How Equity in Education Has Shaped the Nation.”

Jose Luis Magana/AP

Students attend a graduation at Georgetown University in Washington in May. Title IX has propelled more women to get college degrees.

Quota systems limited female enrollment at colleges and universities, further narrowing their job prospects. In 1972, only 12.4% of working women between the ages of 25 and 64 had a bachelor’s degree or higher, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

So Ms. Sandler took action. She joined the Women’s Equity Action League (WEAL) and began researching federal compliance for contractors. She studied the strategies that activists used in the civil rights movement and how they might apply to women in higher education. In a footnote, Ms. Sandler found a reference to an executive order amended by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1967 stating that entities receiving federal funding could not discriminate based on race, color, religion, national origin, and sex. Ms. Sandler, who died in 2019, described this as her “eureka” moment. 

Universities that received federal aid and failed to hire qualified women and pay them accordingly were in direct violation of the mandate. It was an opening through which the “godmother of Title IX” would deploy a full-court legal press. Together with WEAL, Ms. Sandler launched a historic class-action suit, filing more than 250 complaints on behalf of all women in higher education.

AP/File

Bernice Sandler, called the “godmother of Title IX,” helped initiate a class-action suit that led to the introduction of legislation in Congress.

The avalanche of compliance requests spurred a series of congressional hearings on the issue. “Professionally, women in the United States constitute only 9 percent of all full professors, 8 percent of all scientists, 6.7 percent of all physicians, 3.5 percent of all lawyers, and 1 percent of all engineers,” Rep. Edith Green, a Democrat from Oregon, testified at one of the hearings in 1970.

Eventually, Ms. Green and Rep. Patsy Mink, a Democrat from Hawaii, and Democratic Sen. Birch Bayh of Indiana introduced bills in Congress. President Richard Nixon signed into law these 37 words as Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972: 

“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

Far from the halls of Congress, things began to change quickly, including at Everett High School in Lansing, where Ms. Hutchins was a sports-obsessed 10th grader. Even though she had barely heard of Title IX, by her senior year she had other athletic opportunities beyond cheerleading and informally arranged basketball games against girls at other schools. 

“We got our first varsity basketball team and we had a real schedule,” she says. “We had uniforms, we had buses, and we had cheerleaders. I mean, my dream came true. I was so happy.” 

Title IX would slowly begin to spur lawsuits and complaints across the country. And they weren’t just about expanding women’s participation in sports. Over the years, the law has become a pry bar to open up all kinds of opportunities for women. In one sense, it was a way to channel pent-up political energy that had been building since before the 19th Amendment granted women the right to vote in 1920.

Jacquelyn Martin/AP

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (center left) and tennis legend Billie Jean King (center right) take a selfie with members of a girls’ high school basketball team during a celebration of the 50th anniversary of Title IX in Washington.

“Title IX didn’t start all of these intense changes in society,” says Sherry Boschert, author of “37 Words: Title IX and Fifty Years of Fighting Sex Discrimination.” “There were social justice movements already going along that Title IX then just gave [women’s rights advocates] a better tool. All they were asking for was some kind of grievance procedure, some kind of way that the people who were being harassed and assaulted and discriminated against ... could complain and have it be heard by the system. That’s one of the beauties of the Title IX story. It’s a cast of thousands. ... It isn’t one hero or heroine who did all this.”

One prominent member of the cast was Ann Olivarius. She arrived at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1973, just four years after the college opened its undergraduate programs to women. But the thrill of attending one of the nation’s most hallowed halls of learning was soon replaced by outrage.

As an undergraduate researching the status of women at the university, who made up just a quarter of the student body, Dr. Olivarius noticed a pattern: Female students who reported accounts of sexual harassment and rape by faculty members had no protections from the university. 

“We fundamentally could not understand why there was a disconnect,” says Dr. Olivarius, who runs a legal practice today that includes a specialty in sex discrimination. “Our view was that everyone had a mother at least, most had partners, they had daughters, they had cousins, they had sisters. ... Why would they look the other way?” 

She gathered together plaintiffs, with the support of legal theorist Catharine MacKinnon and attorneys at the New Haven Law Collective. They filed a lawsuit in 1977 using an untested argument: By failing to effectively address complaints of sexual assault and harassment, Yale was violating Title IX. Only one of the plaintiffs’ claims advanced to trial. The rest were dismissed. But a single line written by U.S. Magistrate Judge Arthur Latimer in Alexander v. Yale changed history: 

“It is perfectly reasonable to maintain that academic advancement conditioned upon submission to sexual demands constitutes sex discrimination in education.” 

Karl Merton Ferron/The Baltimore Sun/AP

The University of Maryland’s Jordyn Lipkin (left) is hit by Boston College defender Hollie Schleicher during a lacrosse tournament in May in Baltimore.

That line paved the way for grievance procedures in colleges across the nation. “The successful application of the law to sexual harassment ... as a form of sex discrimination in education ... kicked off a normative shift on college campuses,” says Celene Reynolds, a presidential postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University who studies Title IX. “And that shift is not complete by any means. We’re not living in a world where sexual harassment doesn’t happen anymore. But we are living in a world where it’s not accepted as part of life in universities.” 

Although schools now have reporting mechanisms in place, rape on college campuses still happens. In a 2020 study by the Association of American Universities, 20.4% of female students, 20.3% of transgender and nonbinary students, and 5.1% of male students said they had experienced rape or sexual assault.

Harvey Georges/AP/File

Former U.S. Rep. Patsy Mink of Hawaii (left, center) was one of the authors of the Title IX law passed in 1972. Here she appears with social activist Bella Abzug and feminist leader Gloria Steinem (at podium) in 1979.

It is only in the past decade that schools have established robust systems for students to report sexual harassment under Title IX, according to Courtney Bullard, founder of Institutional Compliance Solutions, a Title IX consulting firm. 

“I would argue that if you were to ask someone in 2010 who their Title IX coordinator is, they would have no idea what that even meant,” she says. “So much of the progress that happened with raising awareness, encouraging reporting, believing survivors when they come forward – that’s really happened in the last 10 or 12 years.” 

While Dr. Olivarius was bringing her pioneering lawsuit in New Haven to expand the use of Title IX, Ms. Hutchins was frustrated with the way the law was being applied in her domain – gymnasiums. 

True, she had seen tangible benefits from Title IX in her final years in high school and was grateful for the spot she now had on the basketball team at Michigan State University in East Lansing.

But she was noticing that not all was equal on campus. She saw male athletes getting more funding for uniforms, facilities, coaching, locker rooms, and food and lodging for away games. If the women’s games weren’t yet as competitive or popular, no one was investing in them to at least prove they could be.

When Ms. Hutchins heard in 1976 that a group of upper-level students on her basketball team was going to consult with Jean Ledwith King, a women’s rights lawyer, about suing for unequal treatment between men’s and women’s programs, she made a decision. “I’m in.” 

It took the judge only an hour to rule in the women’s favor.

Since then, similar suits and the practical nudge of the law have spurred widespread changes on athletic fields across the country. In 1971, a year before Title IX was passed, fewer than 300,000 high school girls and 30,000 college women played sports. Today, those numbers have ballooned to 3.4 million in high school and more than 215,000 in college.

Charlie Neibergall/AP

The University of Connecticut’s Paige Bueckers moves on the University of South Carolina’s Destanni Henderson in the NCAA women’s basketball tournament in Minneapolis in April.

Still, none of this means that full equal opportunity under Title IX has been achieved, say its advocates. In 2019-20, American male athletes received $252 million more in athletic scholarships than female athletes, according to the Women’s Sports Foundation. Women make up less than half of NCAA coaches for women’s teams and hold less than a quarter of all college athletic director positions. 

“I’ve seen athletic departments with highly qualified administrators and coaches who nonetheless don’t have comprehensive knowledge of the law,” says Dr. Pollick at the University of Michigan.

A fight is brewing, too, over plans by the Biden administration to add protections for sexual orientation and gender identity in Title IX – a move likely to bring another flurry of lawsuits.

“While we saw [Title IX] coming out of the feminist movement, so originally with a leftward-leaning political bent, now we [conservatives] actually see it as a shield,” says Sarah Parshall Perry, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation. “The conservatives are standing up to say the interests that were sufficient for protection in 1972 now need double protection because all it’s taking is for someone to identify as a female, even though they are a biological male, and take away scholarships, slots in admissions, competitive team roster slots.” 

On a brisk spring day in Ann Arbor, it’s easy to see how far the country has evolved since those 37 words were codified in 1972 – and how far Ms. Hutchins has journeyed. Her office overlooks a $5 million softball complex, where she and a battalion of coaches run three-hour practices with Swiss watch efficiency. The lobby of their training building overflows with trophies. Their games appear on ESPN, and the 2,800-seat stadium regularly fills up with ticket-buying fans.

Over her 39 seasons as head coach, Ms. Hutchins, known in the college softball world simply as “Hutch,” has led the Wolverines to the NCAA Women’s College World Series 12 times, winning it once. She has clinched 22 Big Ten titles and helped produce 69 All-American athletes. She’s been named Big Ten Coach of the Year 18 times, has been inducted into numerous sports halls of fame, and has won more games than any coach – female or male – in Michigan’s storied sports history. She ended the 2022 season in May with 1,707 victories.

Yet despite the impressive résumé, Ms. Hutchins hasn’t forgotten how in 1985, when she first got the job as head softball coach, she had to mow her own field after doing morning secretarial duties. Or how in 2007, two years after winning the World Series, she took the risk of asking for a raise after the university awarded the men’s baseball coach, who was younger, less experienced, and less successful, a contract that doubled his salary. Ms. Hutchins challenged the discrepancy and eventually won her own more lucrative contract. 

But it was never about the money, she says. “It’s about the value of women.”

Phelan M. Ebenhack/AP/File

Lexie Blair is a star softball player at the University of Michigan and is interested in a career in sports communication.

And she doesn’t want her athletes to forget it, either. Educating her players about Title IX is a task Ms. Hutchins makes as much a part of her coaching as rotating her players through hitting and fielding drills. She often leads team discussions. 

Lexie Blair, a star Wolverines outfielder from Winter Garden, Florida, recalls a rained-out game during a trip to California. Ms. Hutchins took the whole team to see “On the Basis of Sex,” the feature film about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. They spent the bus ride back to the hotel discussing Title IX and gender discrimination. It all leaves an imprint on these young scholar-athletes.

“Hutch, you know, her thing is you want to leave the world better than you found it. And I feel like ... she can go out saying, ‘I left the world better than I found it,’” says Ms. Blair, a communication and media major who aspires to become a sports broadcaster. “She’s huge on leadership, huge on using your voice, huge on just taking the opportunity to expand knowledge and pass it on to other people. ... I think that’s something I’ll carry throughout my career and then throughout my life. [It’s something] that I want to do and pass on to younger girls.”

Just two months after his victory in the presidential elections, French leader Emmanuel Macron is already facing a political crisis. In the second round of legislative elections on Sunday, Mr. Macron suffered historic losses that stripped his party of its absolute majority in parliament and that will oblige him to reach out to opposition groups.

Now, Mr. Macron must deal with a National Assembly perforated into three mutually opposed political blocks, and a public that has lost confidence in its political class. Over half of the French public chose to stay home on voting day last weekend, in what was widely seen as an act of resistance more than apathy.

The coming months will be a formative challenge for the French president, who has been accused of a unilateral style of governing. Mr. Macron will need to find ways of promoting unity and cooperation with opposition parties, or France risks being frozen.

“This culture of compromise is one we will have to adopt,” Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said after the election results became known. Budget Minister Gabriel Attal suggested that, while the results were far from optimal, they provided the opportunity to “overcome divisions.”

The president will also have to regain public trust. “France is experiencing a crisis of representation – people don’t feel like their worries of daily life, their desires, are taken into account by politicians, and the results of this election are evidence of that,” says French sociologist Roger Sue.

“The fracture between civil society and politicians is not going to disappear,” he says. But “at the same time, Mr. Macron will be forced to win back his government if he wants to avoid the dissolution of parliament. He has no choice but to cooperate.”

Michel Spingler/Reuters

French President Emmanuel Macron cheers supporters before voting during the final round of the country's parliamentary elections, in Le Touquet, France, June 19, 2022. His party lost half its seats and will need to cooperate with opposition groups to effect Mr. Macron's policies.

70% of voters dislike politicians

Mr. Macron’s “Ensemble!” alliance claimed 245 seats on Sunday, but that was not enough for an overall majority. The newly created Nupes coalition, a left-wing alliance headed by firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon, took 131 seats while Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party picked up 89 seats – the most in the party’s history.

Unlike in previous “co-habitation” scenarios in France – in which an opposition party won the parliamentary elections – Mr. Macron still holds sway in the parliament. But the loss of an absolute majority means he will struggle to pass legislation, particularly a divisive bill dear to his heart that would see the retirement age upped from 62 to 65.

Mr. Macron’s closest ally, the right-wing Les Républicains party, announced on Monday that it would not form a governing coalition with the president.

“In theory, the current situation is more paralyzing to the country than a ‘co-habitation.’ We really have a fragmented political situation,” says Gilles Ivaldi, a political scientist at CEVIPOF Sciences Po, a think tank in Paris. “Mr. Macron is going to have to work case by case, bill by bill. It will be more difficult to find compromises.”

Sarah Meyssonnier/Reuters

Marine Le Pen, French far-right National Rally leader, arrives for a meeting with the French president at the Élysée Palace in Paris, June 21, 2022. In parliamentary elections on Sunday, her party won more seats than ever before.

But the current political climate also leaves room for opportunity and a potential move away from France’s traditionally monarchical style of leadership. Unlike its European neighbors Spain and Germany, where the proportional representation voting system lends itself to compromises, France is not accustomed to the coalition style of government.

Even less so under Mr. Macron, who has said he aspires to be a “Jupiterian” president – an allusion to the Roman god – and whose top-down governing style and reluctance to build consensus sparked the yellow vest protest movement.

While the government has toyed with participatory democracy – such as its Citizens’ Convention on Climate – it has balked at the idea of citizen referendums, proposed by several opposition parties and yellow vest activists.

The 46% turnout rate at Sunday’s election is a reflection of the current disconnect between the French people and their politicians. According to research last January by CEVIPOF Sciences Po, which has measured public opinion since 2009, 70% of French people have a negative view of politicians – 39% with mistrust and 17% with disgust.

A little maturity, now?

Creating stronger links between grassroots organizations, citizen groups, and politicians is one avenue that Mr. Macron should explore in order to restore faith in French politics, say some observers.

“One major reason for this lack of trust is that the public doesn’t see the concrete impact of their vote,” says Marion Le Blanc, co-founder and general secretary of Civic Power, a nonprofit that uses technology to encourage representative democracy. The group has created a digital platform where the public can vote on bills, such as France’s COVID-19 vaccine pass. Legislators are alerted once 1,000 people have voted.   

“We ask people to vote twice every five years for a political program which we may not be entirely on board with,” says Ms. Le Blanc. “But we need a more continuous, refined democracy if we want to restore confidence.”

Though Mr. Macron has not spoken publicly since the elections, his close advisers are giving the impression that the government is prepared to seek new pathways for consensus-building. The next few months will be critical, as the public and opposition parties assess whether Mr. Macron can unite instead of divide. If he succeeds, he may usher in a new era in French politics.

“We should see fewer protests by the public because their representatives are all there [in parliament] now,” says Mr. Ivaldi. “The problem will be for Mr. Macron to convince the opposition parties. But I’m optimistic. Things might take longer now, but there won’t be a total blockage. I think we can expect a little maturity from French politics and that’s not a bad thing.”

In December 1988, when most people were out buying turkey and Christmas crackers, something happened in the Amazon that changed the way the world saw Brazil and the nascent environmental movement.

Three days before Christmas, a man was murdered in the southern reaches of the rainforest. He was a rubber tapper named Francisco Mendes, although everybody called him Chico.

Mr. Mendes had no formal schooling, but he was a born leader. When loggers threatened to cut down rubber trees to create cattle pastures, he ran to the front lines to stop lumberjacks from using chain saws and bulldozers to decimate the forest that Mr. Mendes and his community called home.

It cost him his life.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Mr. Mendes these past two weeks, ever since my friend Dom Phillips went missing in the western Amazon with his traveling companion, the Indigenous advocate Bruno Pereira.

Dom was writing a book about sustainable development in the region, and Bruno, who had worked with Indigenous tribes there for years, opened doors to the isolated communities where many of Brazil’s estimated 235 Indigenous groups live. 

They were killed on June 5 as their boat sped up the Itaquaí River, apparently ambushed by men who Bruno suspected were fishing protected stocks of turtles and pirarucu, one of the world’s largest freshwater fish.

Three men are in custody, one of whom confessed to shooting the pair and burying their bodies deep in the forest. Another five people are wanted by police.

“How To Save the Amazon”

I met Dom at the end of the 2000s, when he came to Brazil to escape the hustle of London, where he had been a successful music writer. I was a foreign correspondent in São Paulo, and Dom was completing a book called “Superstar DJs Here We Go!” about the electronic music boom. He was quiet and easygoing, but always eager to learn about his new home, and I was impressed by the way he listened more than he talked, a rarity among most journalists I know.

When I think about his killing, I want to believe that I haven’t lost a friend for nothing, that something good can come of this. I want to believe that Dom’s wife, Alessandra Sampaio, whose poise and dignity have been as admirable as they are heartbreaking, will be rewarded in some way. And I want to believe that his work was not in vain.

On the last of these wishes, at least, there’s reason for optimism.

Dom had been reporting his book for at least three years. Entitled “How To Save the Amazon,” it was a tough sell at first, or at least not a lucrative one, and he struggled to make ends meet on his meager advance.

But he was determined to get his ideas into print. He talked to Indigenous people, police, cattle ranchers, and illegal miners, and he was aware that his book would not please everyone. He believed these stories were urgent, and many of the people he spoke with still do. Right now, friends, colleagues, his editor, and his agent are discussing how to complete his work. A bestselling book, even by – or maybe especially by – a posthumous author, would shine a light on the issues Dom so cared about.

A Chico Mendes moment?

What connects the murder of Mr. Mendes to the killings of Dom and Bruno 34 years later?

The answer is what came after Mr. Mendes’ murder, and what could happen now.

Tom Hennigan/AP

British journalist Dom Phillips poses for a photo during a hike in Paraty, Brazil, April 2, 2010. His quest to unlock the secrets of how to preserve Brazil’s Amazon was cut short this month, when he was killed along with a colleague in the heart of the forest he so cherished.

The international community united in outrage at Mr. Mendes’ murder, which led to widespread change in Brazil. The South American nation introduced a series of laws and regulatory frameworks designed to protect the rainforest and the Indigenous people who live there.

The laws are not always enforced, but they are there, and that marked a big step forward.

Will Dom and Bruno’s deaths have the same effect? I hope so.

In terms of outrage at least, the parallels are clear. In the days after they disappeared, a host of celebrities took to social media to register their disgust.

Former soccer player Pelé, singer-songwriters Anitta and Caetano Veloso, and U.S. actor Mark Ruffalo were among the many who demanded action, both to find the missing men and to investigate what happened to them and why.

It was reminiscent of the activism sparked by Mr. Mendes’ murder, when former Police frontman Sting took the lead, meeting with Indigenous people and organizing regular “Rock for the Rainforest” gigs. Consumers and companies woke up to the demand for natural products and sustainable development. Mr. Mendes gave the environmental movement a martyr to rally behind.  

Perhaps naively, and certainly optimistically, I hope we’re witnessing a Chico Mendes moment. The Amazon is a lot more vulnerable than it was in 1988, and the tipping point – the moment when it can no longer recover from drought, fires, and deforestation – is edging closer. Drastic action is needed.  

The Indigenous people who live there are also under increasing attack. Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro has encouraged loggers, miners, and hunters to develop the region, and the number of invasions of Indigenous land has more than doubled since he took power in 2019. Deforestation in the Amazon this year hit a 15-year high.

But when it comes to concrete action, there is one important difference between 1988 and today. Back then, Brazil was emerging from a 21-year military dictatorship. It was embarrassed by Mr. Mendes’ killing and reacted like the modern and progressive democracy it wanted to be.

Today, the military is ascendant again. Mr. Bolsonaro is a former army captain with a general as his vice president. Before taking office, he vowed not to give Indigenous people “one more square centimeter of land,” and he has proudly kept that promise.

With his development-at-all-costs ethos, Mr. Bolsonaro has undermined environmental oversight bodies and ignored existing legislation. The Indigenous agency Funai is so poorly funded that officials in Amazonia had to hire boats to search for their former colleague, Bruno, because their own fleet had been left to rot.

Justice and change

I’ve lived in Brazil for almost all of this century. I’ve seen more senseless murders than I care to remember, and I’ve seen almost as many campaigns for justice. I know that justice is slow and that change, when it does come, is often too little and often too late.

When I speak to people about the events of the last two weeks, there are a number of agreements. Dom and Bruno were good people; the Amazon and the Indigenous people who live there are under serious threat; Mr. Bolsonaro and his policies represent a big part of that threat.

We can’t bring Dom and Bruno back. But we can honor their work. If there’s a silver lining in all this, it will be a renewed focus on the plight of Brazil’s Indigenous people, just as the death of Mr. Mendes focused attention on the plight of the rainforest. They need land, resources, and most of all protection.

Brazil has a presidential election in October. If Dom’s and Bruno’s deaths spark a reaction at the polls, that would be one indication they did not die in vain.

Reuters

Colombian left-wing candidate Gustavo Petro speaks alongside his candidate for vice-president, Francia Marquez, after winning the June 19 presidential election.

The election of Gustavo Petro as president of Colombia on Sunday marks the first time that South America’s second most populous nation will be ruled by a leftist. That fact alone troubles some observers. Mr. Petro seeks to renew ties with Nicolás Maduro, the repressive socialist dictator who has overseen economic collapse in neighboring Venezuela. Mr. Petro’s proposals to halt new petroleum exploration and to redistribute wealth, critics fear, threaten one of the region’s most successful economic recoveries from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Yet Mr. Petro’s policies and political leanings may be less helpful in understanding what kind of leader he will be than a slogan graffitied on walls across the poorest neighborhoods of cities like Bogotá, the capital: “On the other side of fear is the country we dream of.” That aspiration reflects a society that is rejecting apathy for hope and fear for democratic renewal after decades of violence and hardship.

Mr. Petro has an unusual résumé. He is a former guerrilla, mayor, congressman, and senator. He spent 16 months in prison, where he says he was tortured. He holds a master’s degree in economics. His running mate, Francia Márquez, is an environmental activist and human rights lawyer who grew up in poverty. She will be Colombia’s first Black vice president.

The two leaders personify the popular demand for change that has fueled a leftist shift across Latin America in countries like Mexico, Peru, Honduras, and Chile. That “pink tide” reflects a broad yearning for a break from decades of rule by established parties marked by corruption and economic disparity. As Transparency International noted in its latest annual study of corruption in Latin America, the region saw an uptick in serious attacks on key democratic freedoms like speech and the media that defend societies against corruption. In Colombia, it noted “serious excesses in the use of police force” to quell mass demonstrations.

Violence is also up, according to the United Nations. In the first two months of 2022, violence escalated by 621% over the same two months in 2021, resulting in the displacement of roughly 275,000 people.

In past elections, corruption and violence contributed to widespread cynicism among voters. A national dialogue organized by six Colombian universities last year brought together more than 5,000 people in nearly 1,500 conversation sessions. The participants found that corruption, violence, and economic inequality contributed to widespread apathy and mistrust.

Significantly, however, 70% said that dialogue and a willingness to listen to diverse opinions generated trust and showed a model for how government can rebuild confidence in democracy through transparency.

That may partly explain Mr. Petro’s appeal. He promised to tackle corruption and restart a peace process between the government and a former rebel army that stalled under outgoing President Iván Duque Márquez. Like his newly elected reform-minded counterparts in Honduras and Chile, he starts without much political leverage. He won with just over 50% of the vote, and his Historic Pact party will have to find partners in Congress to enact his proposals.

But the election showed a rekindling of hope among voters. Martha Inés Romero of Pax Christi International told the international press agency Pressenza that, partly as a result of Mr. Petro’s independence from past ruling parties, younger Colombians had more confidence in the power of their vote. “Colombia deserves a different option, one that shows possibilities for the incorporation of those who have been historically excluded, and we have hope that there will be a real change,” she said.

Throughout Latin America, voters are embracing peaceful change at the ballot box. In Colombia, they expressed hope that Mr. Petro represents a new era of leadership by listening.