Keeping Up With The Bolsonaros

If you liked the Kardashians, you will love the Bolsonaros. 

Like the Kardashians in the United States, the Bolsonaros are household name in Brazil with some 10 million followers on Facebook.  These two clans are social media and reality television sensations.  If Americans have managed to keep up with the Kardashians, the Brazilians may have a harder time to follow the personal and professional lives of the Bolsonaros.  If the Kardashians are a pop or trash culture phenomenon, the Bolsonaros are wild political animals.  These dynamic, although borderline dysfunctional families have attracted a high viewership rating in both countries.  The Bolsonaros started later in the game, but are quickly catching up.  According to the Economist (March, 16, 2019) “The Bolsonaros’ success owes something to Brazilian’s sizzling passion to social media.”  Brazilians are the world’s third largest Facebook users.

The Bolsonaro tribe is led by the patriarch, Jair Bolsonaro (63), a former army captain and a former political-fringe, seven-term congressman.  He has three elder sons, all elected officials, and two younger kids who are not yet playing a role in the family political circus.  Jair married three times, and his two former wives also got a taste for politics.  The current one is mainly involved in charitable work, and evangelical church activities.

Right-wing nerds who espoused congressman Bolsonaro’s law and order ideas used their social media marketing techniques to pull him out of Brasilia’s political woodwork.  These early followers built his reputation and he became their hero, achieving a mythical status: Bolsomito, a contraction of his surname and mito, or myth.  His survival of a near fatal attempt to his life during the presidential campaign strengthened his mythical status.  Subsequently, o mito dived into social media to convey his moralist discourse to adoring fans.  The media has been quick to underline his fundamentalist Christian beliefs and his association with Evangelical Christians to combat feminism, abortions, sexual education in schools, doctrine of evolution, and homosexuality.  He has been portrayed as a carbon copy of Trump, a tropical version of the American president. 

However, for many Brazilians, he is Don Corleone.  They regard him as coarse, racist, ignorant, stubborn, and narrow-minded with an inflated sense of self-worth.  In 1987, he was discharged from the army (with a captain’s pension) for having planned to detonate small bombs to pressure his superiors to increase the salary of junior officers like him.  Soon after, he got elected city council member for Rio de Janeiro.  

 

                                                                  Flavio, Jair, Carlos & Eduardo

Bolsonaro’s praetorian bodyguard consists of his three eldest sons with his first wife Rogéria.  Flavio (37), Carlos (35) and Eduardo (34) are all politicians.  In the   1990s, when he was a congressman in Brasilia, Bolsonaro propelled Rogeria into politics.  She was elected council member for Rio.  After a couple of mandates, Rogéria asserted her political emancipation from Jair who had been remotely monitoring her from Brasilia.  In 1997, this marital cum political arrangement broke down, and the couple divorced.  Rogéria’s independence had seriously upset Jair who subsequently endorsed an alternative candidate: their 17 years old son Carlos.  With daddy’s support, he defeated his mum.

During the same period, Rogéria complained to the police that her former husband was psychologically unbalanced, emotionally instable and violent.  Coincidentally, a few years later, wife number two, Ana Cristina officially charged the congressman for assault, and fearing for her life, flew to Norway with their son Jair Renan.  After having fathered four sons, Jair underwent a vasectomy.

She eventually came back to Brazil, and two years ago ran for congress as Ana Cristina Bolsonaro.  Unless Jair’s party banked her candidature, she threatened to release salacious facts about her former husband.  Name recognition did not work, and she was not elected.  Now, Rogéria and Ana Cristina are back in the Bolsonaro clan, along with wife number three Michelle.  Michelle is much younger than Jair; he claimed that he reversed his vasectomy to make her happy because “women find only fulfillment in motherhood.” He joked that he had a daughter in “a moment of weakness.”  By making a speech in sign language, Michelle upstaged her husband and broke protocol on the day of his swearing-in.  Since then, she has not been seen much in public.

The three hyper-active, supercharged and attention-grabbing eldest sons are masters of the political circus.  It seems at time that they compete among themselves for media scoops.  For others, they look like headless chickens in search of something to pick.

As indicated before, and possibly roused by a negative Oedipus complex, Carlos defeated his mother at the polls at the ripe age of 17.  He is now 35 years old, and lingers in the same political position, city councilor for Rio.  His lack of political ambition is compensated by his hyper-active social media pursuits, he has become a digital influencer on Instagram.  As self-appointed twitter in chief on his father’s behalf; de facto mouth piece, he commonly speaks ahead of his father!  He is the family’s social media pitbull, shoots from the hip and has been compared to a twitting machine gun.   At his father’s inauguration, he acted as an armed bodyguard. The collateral damage lands on the cabinet’s door step.

If Carlos is a Twitter addict, Eduadro is gun crazy.  Once, he absurdly suggested that armed passengers could board planes!  He is a lawyer, a federal police officer and a congressman; he was re-elected with a whooping 1.8 million votes, a record by Brazilian standard.  He is the most right-wing of the brood and a keen follower of Steve Bannon.  Like Carlos, he tweets too much, and as self-styled foreign minister, he talks a lot of nonsense even by Bolsonaro’s tribe standards.  His recent Fox News interview was ridiculed on YouTube, and his mediocre knowledge of English was mocked.  What he lacks in articulation, he makes up in bravado.

Bolsonaro’s eldest son is Flavio, who at present keeps a low profile.  He recently graduated from congressman for Rio de Janeiro to senator for Sẩo Paulo.  Contrary to his brothers, he talks little, too little for the justice authorities who would like to know more about the suspect activities of his associates.  Flavio’s dangerous liaisons and unaccountable wealth have attracted unwanted attention.  The police pointed out that, as congressman for Rio, Flavio had employed the family members of a well-known paramilitary accused of running a criminal organization and a fugitive.  Flavio claims that the media is running a defamatory campaign against him, but he may be under investigation in the future.

The younger son is Jair Renan (20).  A discreet youth until the recent police disclosure that he dated the daughter of a murder suspect[1], and neighbor.  Coincidentally, Bolsonaro père and the murder suspect lived in the same gated community in Rio.

Jair Bolsonaro’s middle name is Messias, or Messiah in English.  A God-given name for a man who was born in a town called Eldorado and was elected president of Brazil with the mission to save the country from its evils.   Explicitly to reverse the legacy of corruption and chaos left behind by the party of Lula da Silva, who likewise in his time, was regarded as a savior.  Hopefully, after a while the Brazilian people will tire of the antics of the four hyper males of the Bolsonaro clan.  By comparison, the Kardashians and the Trumps look like normal families! Keeping up with the Bolsonaros is too distressing to envision. 

Disclaimer: This blog is an exercise of creative compilation.  Calvisson-Leblon assumes no responsibility to any errors or omissions quoted from its sources.

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[1] Ronnie Lessa is a retired police officer, he is suspected of having murdered council woman Marielle Franco, one year ago.