'Country of fags': Why is Jair Bolsonaro again attacking homosexuals in Brazil?

Marcia carmo

11/13/2020 7:47 AM

• Clarín.com

• World

Updated 11/13/2020 7:47 AM

Five days before almost 150 million Brazilians vote in the

this Sunday, President Jair Bolsonaro said that "Brazil has to stop being

and face the open chest pandemic."

On the same day, Tuesday, speaking of the American Democrat Joe Biden said that "only with diplomacy is not possible" and "when the saliva runs out, you have to

."

The democrat indicated that Brazil could be punished in the commercial sphere for not protecting the Amazon.

Bolsonaro did not like that Donald Trump was not reelected and had not yet greeted Biden.

The former Army captain used his verbal machine gun again when the judicial investigation against his eldest son, Senator

, for criminal organization, money laundering and misappropriation of events that occurred when he was a state deputy in Rio de Janeiro

progresses

.

According to the investigation, Flávio (of the Republican party) collected part of the salary of the employees of his parliamentary cabinet.

The Bolsonaro family denies that the firstborn is corrupt.

The fight against corruption was one of the flags of the election of the president and the governors and parliamentarians who support - or supported -

the

, which is how his supporters keep calling him in the acts he does in the interior of Brazil.

"Only with diplomacy is not possible," says Jair Bolsonaro.

Photo: Xinhua

Bolsonaro made the comment about the "fags" when talking about the coronavirus, despite the fact that Covid-19 has already killed 162 thousand people in the country.

Fifteen days earlier, on a trip to the state of Maranhão, in the Brazilian northeast, the president made fun of those who consume the popular local soft drink,

, for having the color pink.

"I will transform into a

" he said.

Boiola, like queer, is synonymous with homosexual in vulgar language.

In a country where

of the 205 million people claim to have a religion, the drink was created in 1920 by a communist pharmacist and atheist named Jesus.

Almost 20 years ago in a temple in Buenos Aires, Bolsonaro's ally and founder of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, Edir Macedo, asked, making gestures, to a crowd and in front of the newspaper 'Jornal do Brasil' as it was said in Spanish to those who were gay.

The response of his followers aloud was:

Between those years and today the Church founded in the suburb of Rio de Janeiro has multiplied in Brazil and far beyond.

Other neo-Pentecostal churches proliferated throughout the country where evangelical communities, as in other Latin American countries, became the path of hope for better days for many people who feel

.

The municipal

And in Brazil, faith - and also the use of it - goes hand in hand

, which is again clear in the elections this Sunday in the more than 5,000 municipalities of the national territory.

There are several candidates evangelical pastors, former colonels and former police delegates in the dispute for a chair in the chambers of councilors (vereadores) and in the prefectures.

The campaign and the faith are also visible on the walls of the country.

In the trip of just over an hour between the spas of Sepetiba and Pedra de Guaratiba and Recreio dos Bandeirantes, near Barra da Tijuca, in the West Zone of Rio, it is possible to count

.

Some of them: quadrangular evangelical church;

guaratibana congregational church, church of the family, church reborn in Christ ...

Sometimes, some take up tiny spaces, as one day happened with Universal.

And on the walls of Brazilian cities and inland, phrases that confirm religious diversity in Brazil are also still in force.

"I throw the Búzios - I foresee your future -, I'll bring your love back in a week", says one of them.

But, in the last two decades, in the country that is still famous for having the largest number of Catholics in the world, evangelicals grew up in Brazilian politics.

Not without generating controversy.

Last August, the Federal Police arrested Pastor Everaldo Dias Pereira, known as Pastor Everaldo.

It was in the police operation for irregularities that also determined that the governor of Rio de Janeiro, Wilson Witzel (of the PSC party), was expelled from his post.

Rio, like other states, has not had much luck with governors.

Former Governor Sergio Cabral, who is imprisoned in a maximum security prison, accumulates a series of complaints that add up to

Pastor Everaldo was Witzel's political godfather - a name that many did not know how to pronounce when he, then an unknown judge, was elected as Bolsonaro's ally.

Everaldo was the one who baptized the then federal deputy Jair Messias Bolsonaro in the waters of the Jordan River, in Israel, in 2016, two years before he was elected president.

Today, officially, the three do not speak to each other.

Bolsonaro left the pastor's party and has no party.

The Evangelical Left

In the National Congress, the

is distributed by several parties, including the Workers' Party (PT) of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and this year a fragmentation of the left evangelical caucus was born.

The

is in opposition to the president.

But, there, Bolsonaro began to have, as of this year, the support, also decisive, of the so-called 'Centrão' - they are parliamentarians who do not have presidential ambitions, who vote according to their political convenience, they are fundamental for the approval of the Executive's laws and they are known as 'lower clergy'.

They symbolize the old politics, far removed from the new politics promised by Bolsonaro in his campaign.

Now, the president is campaigning for his candidates in the country's main cities and is also looking at the possibility of re-election in 2022.

In these municipal elections, Bolsonaro declared his support for the re-election of the current mayor (prefeito) of Rio de Janeiro, the evangelical pastor Marcelo Crivella, but also, just in case, he left his electorate free to vote in the former prefeito Eduardo Paes.

Paes leads the polls for the November 15 vote in the city that is the political cradle of the Bolsonaro.

And the expectation, according to the Ibope Institute, is that he will be elected in the second round, on November 29.

But Bolsonaro looks intently for São Paulo, the largest and richest state in Brazil, ruled by his main political rival, João Doria (of the PSDB party), a possible candidate for the Presidency.

There, the prefect of San Pablo, Bruno Covas (PSDB), Bolsonaro's opponent, leads the polls.

The president's candidate, Celso Russomanno (who like Flávio Bolsonaro and Crivella is from the Republican party, linked to the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God) would have little chance of winning, according to polls.

In the one carried out by XP / Ipespe for the newspaper 'Valor Economico', Covas rose 8 points in the last week.

And Russomano fell 7 in that same period.

It's not an easy pick for the president's allies, according to pollsters.

In these municipal elections, the number of professionals in the security field (police and former military) should continue to grow.

According to the Brazilian Public Security Forum, this number has tripled between the 2010 and 2018 elections. In addition, we must count the candidates linked to the militias (paramilitaries), as

 former National Secretary of Security Luiz

said in a recent interview with

Eduardo Soares.

Before, he said, they put their candidates, now the candidates are themselves.

In an environment of politicization of the pandemic, new attacks by Bolsonaro on homosexuals ('I don't know why he always attacks us,' say friends from Rio and São Paulo) and a presidential dispute, the artists decided to actively participate in the campaign to Sunday's elections.

Caetano Veloso won in court the right to do a show on social networks (live) for the candidates Guilherme Boulos (PSOL), from São Paulo, and Manuela D`Ávila (PC do B), from Porto Alegre.

As the music of Gilberto Gil says,

.

Or as Bolsonaro prefers,

- phrase he said when Trump lost to Biden.

ap

Look also

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The evangelist crack: a group marches against abortion and another that is in favor asks for more sex education at school