The new Brazilian president preaches violence for thirty years

"If I ever became president, I would start with a coup right from the first day, I would like to immediately lift the Congress, which is good for nothing. to see with the elections, we had to go back to the dictatorship, everything was much better then. "

Words of Jair Bolsonaro, former captain of the army, far right, elected new president of Brazil according to the election results. That Bolsonaro, 63, now puts into practice these often repeated statements, the future must be proved. It is certain that Bolsonaro, a congressman since 1990, has always portrayed himself as a far right and anti-democratic leader with very controversial ideas and statements about homosexuals, women, black Brazilians, immigrants and the Amerindian population.

He is an ultraconservative politician nostalgic of the military dictatorship (1964-1985), in which tens of thousands of people were tortured and imprisoned and nearly 500 Brazilians were murdered. "I want to reverse Brazil from thirty to forty years, then everything was better and safer.We will take care of leftist foam and communists.There is no place for them in our country of origin, or they submit to our laws or they flee the country or we put them in prison, "he threatened last week via a live telephone connection at a meeting mass in São Paulo.

Who is this man who divides and tears to death the largest country in Latin America? His disciples attribute almost mythical qualities to him and see him as their great savior.

Italian Migrants

Jair Messias Bolsonaro – his parents were fervent Catholics, hence his second name – was born in 1955 in Glicerio, a small municipality in the state of São Paulo. The great grandfather Vittorio Bolsonaro was ten years old when, with his poor Italian parents, he embarked on the long journey to Brazil at the end of the nineteenth century, where slavery had just been abolished and of large groups of migrants emigrated from Europe.

Jair Bolsonaro grew up in a family of six children. His father was a glorified illegal dentist. He had no formal education, but since there was no local dentist nearby, Father Bolsonaro could create his own patient base and maintain his family. .

Jair Bolsonaro went to the military academy after high school. He became a paratrooper and worked as a captain of the army. In 1986, the thirty-one year old gained national fame when he was discredited after complaining in the magazine Veja of low salaries of officers. It was against military discipline – Bolsonaro had to go to the cell for fifteen days. Two years later, he is again discredited by a terrorist project aimed at throwing grenades into army barracks with the aim of putting pressure on the government for it to raise wages. Although legally paid, it was developed through a redundancy plan.

In a 1993 interview, former General Ernesto Geisel called him an unreliable soldier who thought primarily about himself and his own financial gains. "He was a coward in the army and, above all, a bad soldier," says Geisel.

Demobilized soldier Bolsanaro decided to go into politics. For decades it was a kind of one-man fraction in the Brazilian Congress. He joined in turn various extremely conservative Christian parties. This year, he turned to the Social Liberal Party (PSL) with which he would win the elections.

Bolsonaro did not succeed much in all those years, but he noticed it because of his frequent racist, homophobic and misogynistic statements and by glorifying dictatorship – his favorite theme. He called this period the golden age of Brazil, where according to him many other deaths should have fallen. "I prefer a dead son to a homosexual son," he said in 2011 against Playboy . A member of Parliament once said that she was not worth the rape.

For a long time, Bolsonaro was not really taken seriously and looked a bit like the madman of parliament. But in the last four years, his star has started to increase. Fascinated by the discontent caused by the widespread corruption around the state-owned oil company Petrobras, the seated Labor Party of the Left (PT) suffered hardships and ended Brazil in a political and economic crisis with the decline of the deposition of President Dilma Rousseff and the imprisonment of former President Lula da Silva. because of corruption. During the period of Rousseff's death, Bolsonaro dedicated his voice to the controversial Colonel Carlos Ustra, responsible for thousands of tortures under the dictatorship. Also de Rousseff, then imprisoned communist activist.

Tropical Trump

The authoritarian and populist style of Bolsonaro earned him the nickname "Tropical Trump" and Brazilians see him as the coveted leader who will do everything differently. . Bolsonaro, for example, is in favor of liberalizing the possession of firearms, Brazilians must be able to defend against the wave of violence in which 60,000 murders and countless thefts occur each year. The police must be able to execute the criminals and the age required to judge children in adulthood wants Bolsonaro to be reduced to sixteen. He also argues for traditional, conservative and religious family values, although he is not himself a good example now: he has two divorces behind him and five children with three different wives.

The president of Bolsonaro becomes military. democratically (instead of a coup), return to the center of power after three decades. Bolsonaro has appointed former General Hamilton Mourão as vice-president and wants to appoint four or five soldiers to the posts of minister.

The big question is whether President Bolsonaro will moderate his extremist and hateful rhetoric and be present for all Brazilians. Never before has the election campaign been so fierce, so toxic and so violent. He himself was stabbed with a knife during an election tour by a disturbed leftist opponent. "For nearly thirty years, Bolsonaro has preached hatred and violence," said Christiane Itabaiana, a political scientist at the University of Rio de Janeiro. "Even if he moderates his tone, the spirit may have been out of the bottle for a long time – does Bolsonaro have this group under control?"