We want to have a great Brazil just like Trump wants to have a great America.
Jair Bolsanaro
Introduction
Jair Bolsanaro is a former Brazilian Military Captain and has been serving as the President of Brazil since January 1st, 2019.
His 2018 campaign led by the motto “Make Brazil Great Again” (originality at its finest) was hugely successful, having won 55% of the vote.
Often referred to as the “Trump of the Tropics”, Bolsanaro is notorious for his strong views on various socio-political issues including (but not limited to), military regimes, human rights, etc. Bolsanaro is the main figure responsible for the rekindling (pun intended) of the Amazon rainforest depletion.
The Amazon
The Capitalist Captain sees the lungs of the earth as a gold mine for his country.
Agribusiness is the driving force of the Brazilian economy which will increase exponentially with an increase of agricultural land. Burning this land is not only bad for the plant and animal species who have nowhere else to go but also intrudes the protected land of 305 uncontacted tribes who are granted protection by the government.
This land is being created after farmers illegally burn down the rainforest to create larger pastures for their animals to graze on which are not at all sustainable and go on to create even more problems for the earth. Bolsanaro has pushed for pardon of farmers responsible for their actions, claiming “Brazil doesn’t owe the world anything” and using this excuse certainly does not warrant his atrocious actions.
Jair has advocated for mining to be conducted in the Amazon Rainforest, which would need huge acres of land and would, once again, need large parts of the rainforest to be burned to the ground.
Actually, the depletion of the Amazon has gone far back but no former Brazilian president has ever been this hostile towards the Amazon Rainforest and its natives.
Prejudice Against the Natives
As mentioned earlier, Jair has made it quite clear that he does not care for the sovereignty or the rights of the uncontacted tribes living deep within the Amazon Rainforest.
Originally the Amazon’s uncontacted tribes were taken care of by a government agency named “Funtai” but on the first day of Bolsanaro’s presidency he took this function from Funtai and placed it in the hands of the corrupted Government of Agriculture, who are notorious for taking bribes from ranchers and loggers.
While the government should be responsible to protect tribes native to the forest, they are the ones backing illegal loggers and ranchers who venture into the forest in order to obtain land. This leaves the smaller tribes to fend for themselves. Luckily, these tribes are extremely skilled at warfare. Instead of guns, they use bows and instead of bayonets they use knives, yet it proves to be a very tough struggle for the modernized logger mafias to get land to their side.
In his presidential campaign, Jair had proposed the removal of reserved lands for these tribes claiming, “There will not be a centimeter demarcated for indigenous or quilombo reservations.”
Not only is this morally incorrect but also illegal as these lands belong to the tribes by the official constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil.
So far we have seen the economic side of Bolsanaro, but what about him as an individual? Bolsonaro is a “Bad Man”. That is to say, he is a racist and male supremacist and so many more things that naming every single one would itself be an individual monologue. Jair also feels strongly about physically and mentally torturing law defectors.
As if that wasn’t enough Bolsanaro wants every Brazilian household to have at least one firearm in their possession, while a good proportion of Brazilian households do not even have food to be satisfied or a roof over their heads. He has also repeatedly failed in curbing Covid-19 from spreading throughout his country. Brazil is ranked third when it comes to Covid-19 cases, making it the only South American nation to be in the top 10.
The Trump of the Tropics is the poster child for the privileged white who even in this day makes it a priority to pursue their personal vendetta against innocent minorities. But don’t take our word for it, take his:
•“I’m in favor of torture. You know that. And the people are too.” ~ Bolsanaro in 1999, (the fact that he won 55% of the vote does mean that the people are in favour of torture. Having him in charge must be atrocious.)
•“I am not going to allow the little flu to knock me down.” ~ Bolsonaro on Covid-19
•“I had the best vaccine; it was the virus. No side effects.” ~Bolsanaro on The Covid-19 vaccine
•“A policeman who doesn’t kill isn’t a policeman.” ~ Also Bolsonaro
Conclusion
In his inaugural speech, Jair told Congress he wanted to free Brazil of corruption, crime and economic mismanagement, but if anything, these have just become worse in Brazil, in no small part because of Jair Bolsanaro.
Bolsonaro has served his presidency for more than two years now and it is truly devastating to see a country with such a rich culture and strong heritage be misguided into the backwards-thinking ideology from which society is trying ever-so-hard to escape.
– Arjun Kakkar, 10H