The Brazilian President, Jair Bolsonarocaptain of the Army Reserve and the greatest referent of the Latin American right, is playing for his re-election this Sunday against his direct rival Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who is 14 points ahead of him in the polls.
(Read here: Brazil votes today under a climate of polarization and the specter of violence)
With the same base that brought him to power in 2018 and that includes the military, police, evangelical pastors and businessmen from the countryside, the “captain of the people” adopted for this campaign the motto “God, Country and Family”which was popularized in Italy in the 1930s by “Duce” Benito Mussolini.
(See also: Elections in Brazil: the polls open for the presidential elections)
His ideology is completed with “respect” for “Judeo-Christian traditions” and the search for individual “full freedom”, which includes, according to a very particular reading of the Bible, the “right” of citizens to self-defense and to own and carry weapons, which he promoted through laws promoted by his Government.
He is a fervent anti-communist, who tends to see the hammer and sickle in everything when he opposes him, and a self-confessed nostalgic for the Brazilian dictatorship (1964-1985) and other military regimes that prevailed in several South American countries in the 1970s.
Since he came to power, those ideas have caused him more than one problem with other leaders of the conservative camp.
In early 2019, then-Chilean President Sebastián Piñera was forced to clarify that he did not share some glowing comments Bolsonaro had made about dictator Augusto Pinochet.
In counterpart, describes as “communists” all the progressive leaders who have emerged in recent yearsfrom the Mexican Andrés Manuel López Obrador to the Argentine Alberto Fernández, passing through the Chilean Gabriel Boric and the Colombian Gustavo Petro.
He used all of them to disqualify former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the candidate of a broad progressive front and his main opponent in these elections.
“Brazil cannot lose its freedom in the face of those who are against the family and defend gender ideology, free drugs and abortion” or “close the churches,” Bolsonaro repeated in his speech, alluding to alleged intentions that Lula has never manifested.
The permanent conflict
Just like the American Donald Trump, whom he usually cites as a “political model”, Bolsonaro bets on permanent conflict, even with institutions such as the Supreme Court or the Electoral Justice, which he accuses of being “tools of the system”.
Since he came to the Government, he has maintained strong pulses with the Justice, which has regulated his armament and his denial in the face of the covid-19 pandemic, which has so far killed almost 690,000 people in Brazil.
Since the start of the health crisis, Bolsonaro downplayed its severity, condemned preventive measures, questioned vaccines and called the virus a “little flu”.
“We have to stop being a country of queers,” he shouted in the face of the fear that the pandemic instilled. Expressions that many describe as homophobic, as well as others branded sexist or racist, are part of his daily life.
On September 7, during the celebration of the bicentennial of Brazil’s independence, Bolsonaro urged a crowd to praise the virility that he claims to maintain at 67 years of age.
“It’s ‘imbroxável'”, the audience chanted, using a rude word that colloquially defines the man who never fails when it comes to sex.
From the barracks to politics
Born into a humble family of Italian immigrants, Jair Messias Bolsonaro opted for military life in his youth and was trained at the Academy of Black Needles, from which many of the ministers of his Government came out.
His military career, however, lasted only nine years. He finished in 1988, after facing a trial in the Military Justice for almost calling an insurrection demanding wage increases for middle officers.
Then began his political life.
He was a councilman in Rio de Janeiro and then a federal deputy for 28 years, in which he went through a dozen parties.
In 2018 he aspired to the Presidency and won with 55% of the votes with promises to “shoot” leftistsin a campaign in which he suffered an attack by a man who stabbed him in the abdomen at an election rally.
Even so, he was able to bring the right to power in Brazil for the first time through the polls, riding an “anti-system” wave that today does not seem to have the same strength.
EFE
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