Former Brazilian federal representative David Miranda died Tuesday in Rio de Janeiro at the age of 37, after nine months hospitalized fighting various infections. Her husband, the American journalist Glenn Greenwald, reported his death on social networks: “It is with the deepest sadness that I announce the death of my husband, David Miranda. I was going to turn 38 tomorrow. His death, earlier this morning, came after a nine-month battle in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). He died peacefully, surrounded by our children, with family and friends,” he wrote. Miranda and Greenwald had been together for 18 years and had adopted two children.
The young Brazilian politician was admitted to a clinic in Rio de Janeiro on August 6 last year to treat a gastrointestinal infection, but since then he has been suffering various infections that have led to septicemia. His state of health varied over time, although according to Greenwald himself, there were several occasions when doctors warned that his chances of survival were almost impossible. Most of the time he was stable but in serious condition.
Miranda was born in the Jacarezinho favela, one of the most violent in Rio, and did not have an easy childhood. He never knew his father and his mother died when he was five years old. At nine he already started working delivering pamphlets, and as a teenager he left his aunt’s house and went to live with his cousins. He met Greenwald on Ipanema beach when he was 20 years old, and they were married soon after. They immediately began making plans together. They moved to the US, where Miranda studied journalism and marketing. He began to gain notoriety when he coordinated the campaign to seek asylum for former NSA agent Edward Snowden. He worked with Greenwald in exposing the US’s secret global surveillance programs, and in 2013 he was arrested by the British government at London’s Heathrow airport for precisely that job.
Years later, she would form a tandem with her husband again when he revealed from the Brazilian version of the digital newspaper The Intercept the conversations between former judge Sérgio Moro and the prosecutors who took Lula da Silva to jail. These leaks were key to the political return of the former president. Miranda used to appear alongside the journalist at events on the left, although by then he was already a well-known figure on the Brazilian political scene. He started in municipal politics, when he became the first openly LGTB + councilor in the city in 2016. Three years later, in the elections that gave Jair Bolsonaro victory, he made the leap into national politics, occupying the seat of federal deputy Jean Wyllys, the country’s first gay congressman, who left Brazil due to repeated death threats against him. .
Miranda also suffered resistance from the extreme right, especially for his work in favor of the gay community. His first bill in the Chamber of Deputies tried to include the LGTB + community in the protection mechanisms against violence provided for in the law against gender violence. Another of his flags was the animal fight. She is a great lover of animals, together with her husband she took care of dozens of adopted dogs in her house in Rio de ella.
Miranda began his political career in the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL), to the left of Lula’s Workers’ Party (PT). It is the same formation that councilor Marielle Franco, brutally murdered in 2018, was part of. The two worked together in the Rio City Hall and were great friends. In last year’s elections he intended to reissue his seat as deputy with a party more to the center-left, but his candidacy ended up withdrawing at the last moment because he was already hospitalized. The “extremely difficult” decision had to be made by Greenwald after consulting with his closest entourage, because at that time Miranda was unaware. His death caused a strong commotion in the Brazilian political scene. President Lula da Silva tweeted that he was a “young man with an extraordinary career who left too soon.”
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